Angela Merkel has endorsed her party’s call for a partial ban on the burqa and the niqab in Germany. Showing her support for this for the first time, she told delegates at the Christian Democratic Union’s conference in Essen “the full facial veil is inappropriate and should be banned wherever it is legally possible”.
This week the German chancellor’s CDU party is expected to pass a motion proposing a ban on the full-face veil in some areas of public life such as courts, schools and universities and during police checks.
It comes after the Netherlands’ move at the end of November to introduce a partial ban on the full veil in hospitals, municipal institutions, schools and on transport. It’s a measure that also covers other pieces of clothing such as motorbike helmets or balaclavas. There are similar bans already in place in Belgium, Bulgaria and the Swiss canton of Tessin.
Many politicians on the right of her party welcomed the speech “The party desperately needed to distance its policies from those of other parties,” said the MP Carsten Linnemann.
But Burhan Kesici, the general secretary of Germany’s Islamic Council, criticised Merkel’s comments. “The government should carefully study similar moves in France, and ask themselves if one side-effect of such a ban is that it can actually lead to women feeling more excluded from society,” he said.
If you live in Germany we’d like to hear your views, do you agree with Merkel? Are you a Muslim and if so how does the proposal of a partial ban make you feel? What impact could it have? Why do you think Merkel has suggested this now? Share your views with us via the form below.
