What is the right balance between public expressions of religious faith and legally enshrined national values? France, with its 6m Muslims and secular constitution, faces that question in acute form. In 2004 it banned the Muslim headscarf in state schools and other public buildings. Now the wearing of the burqa has been ruled "incompatible" with French values-and nationality.rnA young Moroccan, Faiza M, married a French citizen in Morocco and came to live near Paris. In 2005 her application for French nationality was rejected for "lack of assimilation". Now the Conseil d'Etat has rejected her appeal on the ground that she "adopted a radical practice of he: religion, incompatible with the essential values of the French community, and particularly with the principle of sexual equality." This is the first time the court has refused nationality on the grounds of religious expression. The court heard that the couple followed salafism, a radical form of Islam. The woman adopted the burqa at her husband's request in France, where she "lives in total submission to the men in her family".
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