By IRNA,
Paris : “I would never have imagined that they would turn me down because of what I choose to wear,” Faiza Silmi said, her hazel eyes looking out of the narrow slit in her niqab, an Islamic facial veil that is among three flowing layers of turquoise, blue and black that cover her body from head to toe.
But last month, France’s highest administrative court upheld a decision to deny Mrs. Silmi, 32, citizenship on the ground that her “radical” practice of Islam was incompatible with French values like equality of the sexes.
“What hurts me most is that people who don’t know me judge me like this,” she said.
Journalists got many facts wrong, she said, starting with the number of her children and ending with the assertion that she refused to take off her veil when she was interviewed for her citizenship.
“It is simply not true,” she said.
M’hammed Henniche of the Union of Muslim Associations in the Seine-Saint-Denis district north of Paris, fears that the ruling may open the door to what he considers ever more arbitrary interpretations of what constitutes “radical” Islam.
“What is it going to be tomorrow? The annual pilgrimage to Mecca? The daily prayer?” said Henniche. “This sets a dangerous precedent.
Religion, so far as it is personal, should be kept out of these decisions.”
In one sign of the nature of some of the criteria used to evaluate Silmi’s fitness to become French, the government commissioner approvingly noted in her report that she was treated by a male gynecologist during her pregnancies.
The Silmis say they live by a literalist interpretation of the Koran.
They do not like the term Salafism, although they say literally it means following the way of the prophet Muhammad and his companions.
“But today ‘Salafist’ has come to mean political Islam; people who don’t like the government and who approve of violence call themselves Salafists. We have nothing to do with them,” said Karim Silm, a soft- spoken man with a visible prayer mark on his forehead and a religious beard.
His wife explains that in 2000 she decided to wear the niqab, a dress code typically found on the Arabian Peninsula, because in her eyes her traditional Moroccan attire – a flowing djelaba with head scarf – was not modest enough. “I don’t like to draw men’s looks,” she said. “I want to belong to my husband and my husband only.” She has given herself until September to decide whether to challenge the ruling.
France is home to nearly five million Muslims, roughly half of whom are French citizens. Criteria for granting French citizenship include “assimilation,” which normally focuses on how well the candidate speaks French.
Lately, though, President, Nicolas Sarkozy has stressed the importance of “integration” into French life. Part of his tougher immigration policy is a new law to make foreigners who want to join their families take an exam on French values as well as French language before leaving their countries.
Karim, a former bus driver who says he is finding it hard to get work because of his beard, dreams of moving his family to Morocco or Saudi Arabia. “We don’t feel welcome here,” he said.
“I am French but I can’t really say that I am proud of it right now.”