French imam seeks ban on burqa as report set to urge prohibition in public places

France’s National Assembly is expected to pass a resolution soon denouncing the burqa – a term commonly used in France to describe all face-covering veils – and to consider drafting a law to ban it in certain public places.

Hassen Chalghoumi, whose mosque is in the Parisian suburb of Drancy, said women who wanted to cover their faces should move to Saudi Arabia or other Muslim countries where that was the tradition.

“Yes, I am for a legal ban of the burqa, which has no place in France, a country where women have been voting since 1945,” Mr Chalghoumi told the daily Le Parisien. He said that full veils had no basis in Islam and that “the burqa is a prison for women, a tool of sexist domination and Islamist indoctrination”.

Tunisian-born Mr Chalghoumi, a naturalised French citizen, has received death threats for his promotion of dialogue with Jews. His suburb, Drancy, was the site of a notorious wartime prison camp where Jews were detained before transport to Nazi concentration camps.

Although he criticised some of the tougher measures proposed by conservative politicians, such as imposing fines or cutting off child support payments for veiled women, the imam agreed France should not grant citizenship to immigrant women who cover their faces.

“Having French nationality means wanting to take part in society, at school, at work,” he said. “But with a bit of cloth over their faces, what can these women share with us? If they want to wear the veil, they can go to a country where it’s the tradition, like Saudi Arabia.”