A 32-member French parliamentary commission opened hearings Wednesday on whether to ban the ‘head-to-toe veil’, beginning with comments from experts who urged France to discourage Muslim women from wearing the garment. The task force will also hear from women's groups, Muslim associations, educators and mayors in the coming months before presenting a report at the end of January.

The panel’s president, André Gerin, stated that the official goal of the hearings was to take a closer look at the use and implications of the ‘head-to-toe veil’ in France before deciding on further action. He also explained that commission members would use the term ‘voile intégral’ (which translates roughly into ‘total veil,’ or ‘head-to-toe veil’) instead of ‘burqa,’ which is technically an Afghan garment, or ‘niqab,’ which is Saudi Arabian.

The discussions have brought back to the forefront France’s longstanding struggle to strike a balance between accommodating Islam and upholding a tradition of resolute secularism.

France is home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority, and has wrestled with the issue of religious clothing since a hotly debated law was passed in 2004 to prohibit head scarves and conspicuous religious symbols from public schools.

Debate over principles versus practicality

The panel’s efforts to examine whether a similar ban should be applied to the ‘head-to-toe veil’ are backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, who said such clothing was "not welcome" in France when he spoke before Parliament a few weeks ago.

That position has drawn concern from some who hesitate to make too much of something considered a marginal phenomenon in France. Many prominent Muslims and some French politicians from the left, such as former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, have also warned of unnecessary stigmatizing of Muslims in France.

But others insist the issue is as much about gender as religion. In a France 24 debate, French politician Jacques Myard, a parliamentary member from Sarkozy’s center-right party who supports the ban, contended that the ‘head-to-toe veil’ is “contrary to the dignity of women.”

Pointing to the historical example of Joan of Arc triumphantly leading soldiers against English forces in 1429 as a symbol of a French tradition of gender equality, Myard expressed alarm that “today we realise there are women hiding behind a piece of cloth, and we don’t even know who they are.”

Responding to Myard was Reuters Religion editor Tom Heneghan, an American who put forth that he was not opposed to the ban, but rather to the “emotional” arguments French politicians used to make their case. He cited the absence of statistics on the issue as indicative of a lack of pragmatism in the French debate, and emphasized the logistical difficulties of enforcing such a law: “Will police go to the market, stop women wearing niqabs and haul them out to the stations?” he asked.

The difference in opinion highlights the contrast between the strictly interpreted French separation of church and state - enshrined in a 1905 law - and what some call the “Anglo-Saxon” model, which places no formal restrictions on religious clothing. This divergence recently made French headlines when Barack Obama, in his otherwise-lauded speech in Cairo, said Western nations should not impede their citizens’ practice of Islam by telling them what to wear.

Heneghan, in the France 24 debate, was not as unequivocal, but he predicted that a law “singling out a tiny minority of Muslim women would bring more antagonism.” Still, he noted that the measure was popular among French people and some form of new anti-veil legislation was likely to pass.

A practice ‘out-of-place’ in modern France?

Indeed, at the French commission’s first hearing on Wednesday, arguments in favor of at least preventing the spread of the ‘head-to-toe veil’ in France gained momentum.

Two French-Muslim academics described the garment as a throwback to an archaic Islam out-of-place in modern France. Islam expert Abdennour Bidar said it was the republic’s role to help French Muslim women “resist this pressure" to cloak their entire bodies, though he stopped short of calling for a specific law banning the practice.

Anthropologist Dounia Bouzar noted that the Koran does not dictate that women fully cover themselves, and suggested that France adopt security measures to forbid people from concealing their faces, be it with a veil, a hood, a ski mask or even a paper bag. Such a law would apply equally to all citizens, ensuring that France's five million Muslims would not feel targeted.