Zawahiri slams France’s veil ban

DUBAI: Al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri slammed France’s move to ban Islamic face veils, saying Muslim women must hold on to their veils at any cost, in an audio tape posted online on Tuesday.

“In France, the pioneer of secularism, there is an overt and shameless war on hijab (veil) and niqab (face cover),” he said in the tape posted on a website.

“What France is doing, which is spreading across Europe and the West, should prompt us to hold on to our true religion in face of their deviant ideologies,” he said in the message whose authenticity could not be verified.

“My Muslim sisters, hold on to your hijab, even if it would cost you your money, education and jobs. You are mujahedat (female holy warriors) in the most important battlefield,” he said.

The law to ban the Muslim face cover, which was passed overwhelmingly by French lawmakers, reveals that freedom in the West is confined to “fighting Islam ... and insulting the Prophet (pbuh), while banning anything touching anti-semitism, or questioning the Nazi Holocaust,” he said.

“France cannot remove the head cover of a nun, but aggresses every Muslim woman wearing niqab, and every student covering her head,” he said.

“Europe is revealing its real face, telling Muslims that all the (European) citizenships they obtained ... do not grant them the freedom and peace that they were imagining,” Zawahiri said.

France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim community. Other European countries, including Belgium and Spain, are working on bills similar to France’s law to ban full Islamic veils in public places.

Zawahiri resurfaced last week in an audio message in which he slammed Arab leaders as “Zionists” and mocked US President Barack Obama’s claim that Taliban would never return to power in Afghanistan.

It was his first tape since December.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 28^th, 2010.