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The ruling by a top French court denying citizenship to a foreign woman who wore a full-length Islamic veil called a burqa may shock those who deem this a state assault on freedom, but in France it has met almost universal applause.
It is hard to recall any
legal decision that has received such ardent backing. Far from seeing it as a curb on individual rights, supporters view it as striking a blow for the liberation of women.
To those who condemn the ruling as socially divisive and an attack on religion, they retort it underscores the equality of all under the law and marginalises a fringe sect.
"The ruling is excellent, legitimate and particularly credible, because it is based on the values of our republic," said Fadela Amara, a Muslim woman who is secretary of state for urban policies. "We are reaffirming the principle of equality between the sexes."
The State Council, the highest judicial authority for administrative decisions, backed a refusal by the authorities to grant nationality to a Moroccan woman who was married to a Frenchman, with whom she had three children, also French nationals.
The woman had attended interviews for her citizenship application dressed in a burqa, which covers the head and entire body, leaving only a slit for the eyes.
She and her husband said they were Salafists, or members of a Sunni Muslim sect that applies an ultraorthodox interpretation of the Koran.
She said her husband required her to wear the burqa when she left their home, which was always with a male escort, and that she accepted "submission" under the Salafist code.
The court determined she could be denied nationality as she had shown a "lack of integration" into French life.
Amara, in an interview with Le Parisien, denounced the burqa as "a prison, a straitjacket. It's not a religious sign but the visible sign of a totalitarian political scheme pushing for sexual inequality and which embodies a total absence of democracy".
By its decision, she hoped, the State Council "may dissuade some fanatics from forcing their wife to wear a burqa".
Few women among France's roughly five million Muslims, in a population of 63 million, wear the burqa, although they are visible in high-immigration suburbs around Paris that have become notorious for riots and alienation.
The decision reinforces the line France has taken in tackling religious extremism since September 11. Under this strategy, the state defines and then protects a secular zone, common to all citizens. In it, fundamental freedoms are enshrined but religious practice and tokens are excluded. The secular arena is supported at every level - in new laws, in judicial rulings, decisions at local level and by activism at the grass roots - and is embodied in the notions of citizenship and nationhood, which are conveyed across French life, especially in schools.
France has passed laws forbidding the wearing of religious items, such as Sikh turbans and crosses, at state schools. Several councils have scrapped women-only sessions at municipal swimming pools and sports halls sought by Muslim groups.
"The state is not neutral," said Dominique Sopo, president of the grass-roots organisation SOS Racisme. "When we say liberty, equality and fraternity, it is not just the will of the French, it is also the role of the French state to enforce these values. "
Feminists, in particular, are ardent defenders of the secular arena, saying it provides a vital area of freedom for Muslim schoolgirls and women of working age and sets down a marker to husbands, boyfriends, brothers or fathers tempted to pressure them. This opinion is shared by conservatives, too.
"We do not accept discriminatory practices for using public places in order to satisfy religious or cultural customs," said Dominique Paille of the Union for a People's Majority (UMP), after the mayor of Vigneux-sur-Seine was forced last month to scrap an "inter-mosque" female basketball competition from which male spectators were to be excluded.
Hussain Dilwar, an academic in Britain who specialises in the place of Islam in society, says that France stands at the opposite end of the spectrum to Britain among European countries that are grappling to integrate a large Muslim minority.
The French method is to identify a secular area and defend it, whereas Britain's is based on long traditions of individual rights and acceptance of one another, and without the doctrinal backing. "We [in Britain] have police uniforms that have been altered to allow women to wear a headscarf," noted Dilwar, who works at the Islamic Foundation thinktank.
"Because of their history and culture, each country is different in how it views itself. Britain sees itself as an open, tolerant, vibrant multicultural society. France sees itself as a country proud of its republican unity, a society certain of what it means to be French, a society that has quite a strong notion of equality.
"In the French attitude, the negative is sending the signal to others that you do not belong unless you totally assimilate. In Britain's approach, the negative is that it can accentuate differences. Each of the models has its positive aspects but each does have serious negative aspects."
