Spain planning burqa ban: government

MADRID (AFP) — Spain’s government plans to ban the use of the Islamic burqa in public places under a proposed new law on religious freedom, the justice minister said Tuesday.

“We believe that there are things like the burqa which are hard to reconcile with human dignity and which especially pose problems of identification in public places,” Francisco Caamano told reporters.

The burqa is a body-covering Islamic garment worn by women.

The new law “will have to include measures on these symbols which impede identification in public places” for reasons of “security”, Caamano said.

The Socialist government announced in 2008 it was preparing a “religious freedom” law which would ensure respect for religious pluralism, in a country which is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.

The law would also ban the display of crucifixes in schools, the newspaper El Pais said Sunday.

His remarks came a day after the mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Hereu, announced it would be the first large city in Spain to ban the use of the full-face Islamic veil in public buildings.
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