Sheikh al-Azhar stresses France right to ban the veil

Al-Azhar Sheikh, Muhammad Sayed Tantawi, considered that it is the right of the French officials to issue a law banning the wearing of the veil in their schools and government's establishments.

In statements he made yesterday in Cairo before meeting with the French minister of the interior, Nicola Sarkouzi, Tantawi said that the veil is an Islamic prescription, and that if the woman does not abide to that, she will be punished by the God Almighty and that no Muslim being ruled or a ruler can violate that.

But he said that this prescribed principle is applicable when the woman stays in a Muslim country, not in a country whose citizens do not embrace Islam, such as France.

Earlier this month, the French President Jacque Chirac supported a report by a committee bans what it called religious symbols in government's schools including the Islamic veil, the Jewish ( bonnet) cap and the large Christian crosses. This decision raised a wave of denunciation in several Islamic states.