France criminalized Muslim face coverings while mandating analogous pandemic masks

Evidence

The pandemic exposed the fundamental hypocrisy of the French plague. While every citizen was ordered to cover their face, Muslim women who covered their face for religious purposes were legally reprimanded and fined 150 euros, fifteen more than the penalty for violating the new face mask mandate. One face covering was legally mandated, the other legally prohibited. Even if a Muslim woman like Ibtissam wore the very same piece of cloth around her face as a niqab instead of a face mask, the intention of wearing it for Islamic purposes could garner punishment. It took a pandemic to expose the absurdity of this French policy and the capricious nature of a gendered Islamophobic regime that denied the free exercise of religion rights to Muslim women. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 728

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to debates over French laïcité and headscarf bans that the reader tracks alongside contemporary European secularism literature. — connects to: QAnon linked pandemic mask mandates to Muslim burqa and Sharia takeover
• SEED: Angle for an essay: the pandemic face-mask mandate as a natural experiment exposing the arbitrariness of France’s burqa/niqab ban — same cloth, opposite legal standing.