(AFP) France’s interior minister on Sunday said he opposed a proposal put before parliament to ban young girls wearing the Muslim headscarf, saying such a move risked being “stigmatising” for the minors.
The issue of tightening legal limits on the wearing of the hijab in public is being raised with increasing insistence in France, where the far-right is growing in strength but which has one of Europe’s biggest Muslim communities.
Laurent Wauquiez, the head of the parliamentary faction of the traditional right-wing Republicans (LR) party, submitted a bill to the lower house National Assembly last week to ban the wearing of the veil by minors in public.
