Does it look like they are setting her free?!: Niqab Ban in France

Seeing this picture, I ask you dear readers, be honest with yourselves, does it look like these men are setting this woman free? Well, the French Government says that the aim of the niqab (face veil) ban is to make french women citizens free. I don't understand how freedom can ever come with arrests. This woman being arrested, like most Western Muslims living in democratic countries, was not forced by her family or husband to wear the niqab, because such men do not allow their wives to speak in public or attend protests, and with the ban, will simply force these women the ban aims to protect (so they claim) to stay in their houses and never go out at all. (Wow, these loser men are probably even happier by the ban, and guess what, if these women didn't want the veil or these men they'd have stood up to them in France without the help of the ban, with the help of other Government services!). All such a ban does is make those who choose to do so for their own comfort or beliefs unequal before the law, and it strips them of their rights to attend school, go out for groceries, make an independent living.

You may not believe it, but many many European and Western and indeed Muslim women choose to wear the face veil of their own accord and they actually love it. I am one such woman. I know eight other women personally like me. I wore the niqab in Canada (and I had a job and went to school and had non-Muslim friends and a life), U.K., Germany, UAE, and now in Oman. I have never ever met a woman (even among my Saudi friends) whose husband or family forced her to wear the niqab when she was living in the West. I know there are women in Salalah, and Yemen, and Pakistan, and KSA, whose tribal customs pressure them to veil in their country and they have no belief in it, but understand, these women remove the veil when they go to free countries like Canada, USA, and UK. Ask Nadia os Dhofari Gucci. She took off her niqab that Salalah custom requires of women when she travelled. So women in France and European & North American countries, the ones who do wear it, THEY CHOOSE it. Otherwise, they'd have taken it off already.

President Sarkozy said: "In our society we can't accept that women be prisoners behind a screen"

But I guess the government is willing to have women who love and choose their veils and do indeed want to be out in society be prisoners behind bars. What ever happened to "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality" hmmm.

Apparently, it means that women who are not forced to veil, who choose it as their freedom (and indeed as a means to make them equal to other women but through their actions and statements, not on account of their physical form or wordly accroutments), and who were born French citizens, some of them with family histories dating back to Joan of Arc, are arrested, fined, and forced to attend a citizenship class on what is means to be a French person.

People often say women who choose the veil are brainwashed. By who was I brainwashed I ask you? I became a Muslim without a husband, and family, and found my veil through my own religious studies independent of majority opinions, and more people tried to make me take it off then to put it on. I support the right of Muslim women and non-muslim women to choose whether or not to cover. It can only be done to please God or please one's self, and anything else is just a waste. I believe a French citizenship course (just an excuse to tell Muslims their belief is stupid) for a French National who believes in Freedom, Brotherhood, and Equality, to be more in the line with brainwashing then anything I have ever had to experience.

I wish people would set a date to protest at the French Embassy here in Muscat for a woman's right to choose whether she wants to wear a bikini or a burka. Even if it's not your religion and not your choice. I would do the same if Oman wanted to start forcing expat women to wear abayas like KSA.