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ShareNew Delhi: French president Nicolas Sarkozy's comments on burqa created a storm. Normally, what France, or for that matter any other country, decides on dress code should not be anyone else's business, but the debate on burqa is of great relevance to India, given that we have the second-largest Muslim population in the world.
A large number of Muslim women in India do not wear the burqa unless required by tradition or pushed by families, and their number is swelling. Therefore, Sarkozy's decision has reverberations here.
Every sovereign country has the right to enact laws it deems fight for its citizens, so long as it is constitutionally right, and France being an avowedly secular country is well within its rights to enact a law proscribing the burqa, the turban or the cross if it is convinced wearing these symbols encroaches on its secular culture.
Equally, there are people who believe citizens must have the right to dress as they please, and that includes the right to wear religious symbols. But is banning the burqa something that Muslims should get worked up about? No. France, like Saudi Arabia or any other country, has the right to enact laws for its citizens. In Saudi Arabia, everybody has to be covered from head to toe. People accept it, even if they don't like it, because it's part of Saudi culture and not following it would grate against the sensitivities of that country. If it's OK to accept the Saudi way in Saudi Arabia, what's wrong if the French want to do away with the burqa?
It's gratifying that the ban has not been taken as yet another assault on Islam by the West. That would be grossly unfair to France. The French strained their relationship with the US by not toeing its line on Iraq, and have consistently been more than sympathetic to Palestinians.
The burqa has little to do with religion. The emphasis in Islam is on purdah. The emphasis is on dressing modestly, not on being covered from head to toe. My mother was a deeply religious woman, prayed five times a day, read the Quran daily, fasted regularly, but she never wore a burqa. Neither does my wife. But does that make them less Muslim?
