Acceso usuarios
Koen Lemmens
The French and Belgian burqa bans are heavily criticised by many legal scholars since they constitute a disproportionate and discriminatory (if not "racist") interference with the freedom of religion, as protected by art.9 ECHR. In this article, I argue that this critique fails to see that the phenomenon of the burqa raises questions primarily about the concept of concealing the face in public that go beyond mere problems of freedom of religion. The question that has to be addressed is whether (new) cultural practices, even if in some forms they may be inspired by religious beliefs, can be outlawed whenever they affect the core of what it means to live together in a society. I claim that this is a political question - rather than a legal one - and that both possible answers to it are compatible with the ECHR.
