BURQA BAN: RIGHT DECISION – PERHAPS AT THE WRONG TIME

Public Security Minister Sarath Weerasekara last week said that he had signed a Cabinet paper to ‘ban the wearing of burqa’ for national security reasons. The paper should be presented to the Cabinet for approval and then pass a vote in Parliament to become law. Both requirements are a mere formality given that the government has near two-third majority in Parliament.

- Ranga Jayasuriya

The Bill could nonetheless be challenged in the Supreme Court by the interested parties for purported infringement of religious freedom. Yet that reasoning had not held water in other parts of the world. Last week, Swiss voters in a referendum choose to ban face-covering in public places. While the ban did not explicitly refer to Niqab or Burqa, the proposal was widely touted as the burqa ban, and the Right-wing, Swiss People’s Party that put forward the proposal campaigned to ‘stop Islamic radicalism’.

Elsewhere, France, Netherland and Belgian have outlawed the burqa in public places. Last month, the French parliament passed the ‘anti-separatism bill’ which is aimed primarily at countering what President Emmanuel Macron described as ‘Islamist separatism, an enemy of the Republic’. The Bill tightened the state scrutiny on religious teaching, mosques, religious associations and foreign financing. The new laws came in the wake of the beheading by a Muslim youth of a French school teacher who showed the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in a class discussion on freedom of expression.

In Sri Lanka, the proposed ban on Burqa is the right thing - though perhaps it was undertaken at the wrong time. The details of the cabinet paper are also hazy. The mere allusion to it by Public Security Minister in a ceremony in a temple - not the ideal place to announce the decision - has already invoked strong reactions both in favour and against.