Anniversary of France’s niqab ban passes almost unnoticed

c. 2015 Religion News Service

PARIS (RNS) The fifth anniversary this month of France’s law banning the full-face veil in public has gone almost unnoticed here, as have the few niqabs that Muslim women can occasionally be seen wearing on the streets of Paris, Lyon, or Marseille.

Once so popular that Parliament passed it with almost unanimous support, the ban hardly figures anymore in the recurrent debates about the place of the 5 million-strong Muslim community in a country that limits the role of religion in the public sphere.