Behind France's Islamic veil

"GreenTiger" said
I'm a bit of a smart-ass, if we really wanted to have some fun have some og the CAnadian Hotties wear a niqab and very ver little else. Why not poke some fun at the Islamofascists?

Mrs Drider, born in France to Moroccan immigrant parents, is one of the few Muslim women in France who wear the niqab. The official count puts the number at no more than 2,000 in a Muslim population of well over five million.

Relaxing on a bench in the park in Avignon, the mother of four young children explains how she bought her niqab nearly 11 years ago and did not tell her husband until she put it on to go out shopping with him one day.

"He knew very well it wasn't up to him whether I went out like that," she says, recalling that he merely said "OK, let's go", and she has worn the niqab ever since.

And she says that for women who wear the niqab in France, the majority of them French-born and many of them converts to Islam, "it's a personal decision, it's their freedom" to do as they wish.

And she has a message for the members of parliament who want to stop her wearing her veil in certain public places. She will not comply.

"The MPs who talk about liberty, equality and fraternity don't really understand the French Republic," she says back at her apartment in Avignon where, with only family and other women present, she removes the niqab and sets about making dinner for her children.

"Liberty means freedom of conscience, of expression," she says. "Equality means not judging the foreigner and fraternity means the support of French people for a French citizen."

Her words are a sign of the growing challenge to the long established values and principles of France as more and more Muslims put down roots in the country. The niqab is only the visible indication of a struggle to define what it means to be French.