PARIS — A parliamentary panel will recommend on Tuesday that France ban face-covering Muslim veils in public locations such as hospitals and schools, but not in private buildings or on the street, the group’s president said.

The decision appeared to indicate that the 32-member, multiparty panel had heeded warnings that a full ban of the all-encompassing veils would be unfair, possibly unconstitutional, and could even cause trouble in a country where Islam is the second largest religion.

A 2004 law already bans Muslim headscarves in classrooms.

A couple blackmailed a Muslim girl by threatening to show her family pictures of her in Western dress.

The woman, in her 20s, wore a veil in public in line with her parents’ strict beliefs.

But she changed into a T-shirt and jeans for an “innocent” but secret seaside day trip with Emal Ismaeli and Joanne Richards.

Asylum seeker, Ismaeli 34, and ex-wife Richards, 22, claimed she owed £7,000 they lent during their friendship. They threatened to show the photos to her family and fiancé unless she paid them back, Wolverhampton crown court was told.

The pair, from Lye, West Mids, admitted blackmail. Ismaeli was jailed for 15 months. Richards got 12 months.

Dalia Mogahed, a Muslim, is one of 25 people President Obama tapped to advise him on faith issues. She may have met the president exactly once, but to Muslims, she’s a celebrity — thanks to the headscarf, or hijab, she wears every day.

Muslims everywhere see her voluntary appointment as a backstage pass to the White House. She hears everything from “My father is in jail, and I want you to ask Obama to pardon him” to “I need a visa,” she says.

What Mogahed actually does for the president is work on his faith-based council. They’re supposed to come up with ideas on how the American government can partner with communities and social groups. What she brings to the table is research from her polling of Muslims at her day job with Gallup.

Mogahed says she’s not there to represent Islam.

A Canadian Muslim group wants the federal government to ban two kinds of garments, the burka and the niqab, worn by some women.

The Muslim Canadian Congress said the garments, which cover the face, have no basis in Islam.

The group’s spokesperson, Farzana Hassan, said the practice of wearing the burka and niqab is more rooted in Middle Eastern culture than in religious teachings. She added that there is nothing in the Qur’an that stipulates women must cover their faces.

She said the issue is one of public safety. “To cover your face is to conceal your identity,” she said.

The burka is a veil that generally covers the entire body, with only a mesh screen left to see through. The niqab covers virtually all of the face — with a slit generally left open for the eyes.

The proposed ban would not extend to the hijab, the head scarf that leaves the face uncovered.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – About one fifth of all schools in Belgium’s Dutch-speaking Flanders region will ban pupils from wearing Muslim headscarves, the schools said on Friday.

“This decision promotes the feeling of equality and prevents group formation or segregation on the basis of external symbols of life philosophy,” said a statement from the schools, which number about 700.

The leader of an advocacy group for Muslim women and girls urged a French parliamentary panel on Wednesday to press for laws that would ban the wearing of Islamic body- and face-covering veils.

Sihem Habchi appeared as the first witness before a newly created parliamentary group studying Islamic clothing such as burqas and niqabs — part of France’s effort to integrate its growing Muslim population while preserving its heritage and secular roots.

The panel will hold months of hearings before issuing a report, likely by January. It has no power to draft laws but could recommend legislation restricting or banning women from wearing head-to-toe Islamic robes that mask facial features in public.

In today’s RNB Religion News Roundup: Scientologists harass Swedish family; John Travolta a Scientologist ‘now and forever’; and Scientology’s PR push.

Also: a summer camp for atheist kids; Much to do about the Islamic headscarf; a guide pony for a blind Muslim woman; and assorted Islam-related terrorism items.

Plus religion news briefs…

A Muslim-owned jewellery shop has decided to ban customers wearing veils after being targeted by robbers disguised as Islamic women.

The family said they accepted the policy may offend some Muslims, but expect other businesses to take a similar approach.

Criminals wearing Islamic veils have carried out at least one other robbery in the city.

Australian Retailers Association executive director Richard Evans said the suggestion the Muslim face covering was a security threat was distressing and outrageous.

“What these folks have done in Brisbane is to promote uncertainty and suspicion about everyone who wears a burqa,” Mr Evans said. “It sends the wrong message to the whole community.”

Europe’s human rights court has thrown out a complaint by two French Muslim girls who were expelled from their school for refusing to remove their headscarves during sports lessons.

France, which takes secularism in state schools very seriously, passed a law in 2004 banning pupils from wearing conspicuous signs of their religion at school after a decade of bitter debate about Muslim girls wearing headscarves in class.

A Southern California county will allow jailed Muslim women to wear head scarves after settling a lawsuit with a woman who claims that deputies violated her religious freedom by making her remove her hijab.

As part of the settlement the county, which did not admit wrongdoing, will pay $45,000 in damages.

Female travelers consider Egypt one of the worst countries in the world for harassment on the streets — second only to Afghanistan, where the Taliban forced all women behind the veil and into seclusion in their homes.

And it’s not just women’s perceptions. The United States and Britain both warn female visitors in travel advisories that they may face unwanted attention, or sexual attacks, in Egypt.

People in Calgary will now be allowed to swim in city pools wearing saris, hijabs and other religious clothing under a new policy designed to encourage ethnic and religious minorities to participate.

But for safety reasons, saris will be banned from the deep end.

Some British Muslims object to the use of sniffer dogs or body scans.

Meanwhile in Denmark, the Muslim headscarf is causing waves.

And Britain’s most senior Muslim and Asian officer sues the Metropolitan police for discrimination.

A lawyer representing a Muslim woman who sued a judge for dismissing her small-claims court case after she refused to remove her veil said he’s prepared to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.