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Saudi Arabia's top religious authority slams
French ban on headscarves

(AFP, January 27, 2004)

Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority called
France's plan to pass a law banning the Islamic
headscarf in schools an "infringement on human rights"
and said the country was more concerned with the
rights of nudists than Muslims.

"Interfering in the affairs of Muslims regarding the
headscarf is an infringement on the human rights that
they (French) say they are defending," grand mufti
Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh said Monday night during a
meeting with Saudi academics in Mecca, west of Saudi
Arabia.

The mufti attacked what he saw as France's double
standards, saying the country is more willing to
defend the rights of "nudists" than those individuals
wanting to wear the headscarf.

He also said efforts to relax strict Islamic norms in
Saudi Arabia to allow women to mix more freely with
men were "satanic and dangerous."

The outspoken mufti poured scorn one week ago on women
who appeared unveiled at a recent economic conference
in the western port city of Jeddah, warning of
the "dire consequences" of such behaviour.

Women have long been marginalised in the conservative
kingdom and are still expected to cover from head to
toe and many wear in public the so-called niqab, a
stricter version of the headscarf or hijab, which only
permits a slim slit at the eye-level.

French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin reaffirmed
on Sunday his government's determination to pass a law
which bans "signs and clothing which conspicuously
display a pupil's religious affiliation" in public
schools.

He said the law would be submitted to the National
Assembly on February 3 after it was backed by
President Jacques Chirac last month with the aim of
enforcing France's strict secularism in the classroom.

The proposed law has provoked an angry backlash from
many Muslims -- both within France's five million-
strong Muslim community and abroad -- who believe they
are being singled out for discrimination, although it
would also outlaw the Jewish skullcap and large
Christian crosses.