In April 2011, the French parliament enacted additional legislation making it illegal for Muslim women to wear conservative coverings, including the niqab and the burqa. Nicolas Sarkozy, president of France at the time the measure was enacted, declared, “In our country, we can't accept women prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity. That's not our idea of freedom.”

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 711