The Burqa Affair across Europe

Abstract

This edited collection provides a comprehensive analysis of the legal contextswithin which the “burqa affair” is located across Europe. It was published followingthe December 2012 “Secularism and Religious Diversity in Europe:Opportunities and Perspectives” conference organized under the auspices ofthe RELIGARE project (Religious Diversity and Secular Models in Europe).Its aims are ambitious and commendable: to analyze the socio-legal situationof face-veil wearers in eight Western European countries where regulationsrange from outright bans (disguised under the tagline of banning full or partialface coverings to avoid reasonable allegations of religious discrimination directedat the already besieged European Muslim populations) to the simultaneouslack of general prohibitions but specific rulings against full-face veils.Despite the baffling personal interpolations made by some contributorsto express their personal dislike of this practice (e.g., p. 5), they neverthelessrecommend in their collective conclusion that legislators should not introducegeneral prohibitions into the common space (i.e., “the physical territory thatpeople must necessarily enter to meet their basic needs,” p. 53), for doing sowould unjustly criminalize those who exercise their personal rights, be theyreligious or human. However, they do allow for restrictions based on a caseby-case approach.The contributions are significant in that they display the frequent tensionthat exists between the local anti-burqa movements’ introduction and enactmentof local and regional anti-face-veil legislation and the various nationallegal systems, European law, and human rights frameworks. Many of the casespresented illuminate the issues under discussion in national contexts. For example,Lisbet Christofersson’s “A Quest for Open Helmets: On the DanishBurqa Affair” and Jorn Thielmann and Kathrin Vorholzer’s “Burqa in ...