The campaign against the Muslim veil in France went a step further today with a ban endorsement by a parliamentary commission. More:

“France’s National Assembly should pass a resolution denouncing full Muslim face veils and then vote the strictest law possible to ban women from wearing them, a parliamentary commission proposed on Tuesday.

Presenting conclusions after six months of hearings, the panel also suggested barring foreign women from obtaining French visas or citizenship if they insisted on veiling their faces.

But it could not agree whether to opt for an absolute ban on the veils, known here as burqas or niqabs, or one restricted to public buildings because some members thought a total ban would be unconstitutional.

‘The full veil represents in an extraordinary way everything that France spontaneously rejects,’ National Assembly President Bernard Accoyer said as the commission delivered its report.

Jean-François Copé, the head of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party, has pushed for a full ban, which was backed by 190 members of parliament and a poll last week that found 57 percent of French favor a total ban on the hijab.

More from the Daily Telegraph on the report:

“The cross-party report recommends passing a parliamentary resolution, paving the way to a law making it illegal for anyone to appear with their face covered at state-run institutions and on public transport, for security reasons.

Niqab-clad women could be denied services at the post office, or other government buildings, as well as access to a work visa, residency papers or French citizenship, the report said.

Parliament is expected to pass a resolution after regional elections in March, with a law possible ‘by the end of the year’, according to one commission member.

The opposition Socialists refused to endorse the final report but were split. Some, like MP Manuel Valls, wanted a total ban, while others boycotted a vote on the report, saying the veil was a ‘marginal’ problem and the report had been ‘polluted’ by a debate on national identity.

President Sarkozy last June said the full Islamic veil was ‘not welcome in France’ but has been advised an outright ban in the streets would likely be rejected by France’s Constitutional Court or, failing that, by the European Court of Human Rights.”

What do you think?

(Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)