As opposed as I am to oppressive cultural practices that get legitimized through fundamentalist religious beliefs, I don’t think I agree with this new initiative in France. In the midst of a public enquiry into the hijab and burqa, the government of France now wants to enforce its ban of the burqa by denying women wearing the garment access to public transport or government services. This declaration comes a day after President Sarkozy declared that women wearing the full face veils should not be granted citizenship.

Mr Lefebvre said: ‘When you don’t respect your responsibilities you should not have access to any benefits.

‘The rights and responsibilities of citizens in France are important.

‘When you ignore rules that make things illegal, like a ban on the burka, you have some of your rights taken away, like the right to state benefits or using public transport.’

UMP party chief Xavier Bertrand said on Sunday that women who wear burkas or niqabs should not be allowed to acquire French citizenship.

He said: ‘The full veil is simply a prison for women who wear it and will make no one believe a woman wearing it wants to integrate.’

The proposals have gone further, with another prominent UMP member, Jean-Francois Cope, calling for women to be fined more than £700 for wearing the burqa and the niqab (veil) in public. He also wanted any man forcing a woman to cover her face burka should be fined even more, with those who refuse to pay up facing arrest and prison.

While I fully support government regulation of harmful cultural practices, I think this approach is going about the liberation of women in a completely misguided way. If it were, in fact, women that the government were concerned with, why would they be seeking to punish these women? Roughly 2,000 women wear the niqab in France, for whatever reason, and I’m sure for some of them the reason involves pressure or threat of violence from a family member.

But then, maybe drastic measures are necessary, given it was draconian laws that converted once liberal Mideast countries into the fundamentalist nightmare for women they are today. And it’s been incredibly effective at changing public opinion. And part of me really wants to trust the intentions of the UMP, since they have also just announced proposed legislation mandating all corporations to appoint women to at least 40% of their board seats.

Unfortunately, a side-effect of extreme measures is the influence it has on the rest of the French public. With such demonization of the burqa in the French media, there are reports of French muslim women being verbally abused in the street for wearing a burqa.

Dalila, who grew up in a poor suburb of Dijon, said she has been insulted in the streets and attacked by a man who told her to “go back to Afghanistan.”

“I told him ‘I’m French’,” said the student, who has been wearing the full-face veil for five years.

The danger of implementing ad-hoc laws to address social problems is that they risk stigmatizing Muslims in France and do not really address the root of the problem in the first place. Much like the Australian laws aimed at particular social problems, the drafting of another piece of legislation targeting a specific issue serves only to limit freedoms rather than address the actual problem. If France is worried about women’s freedom, it is probably more effective to promote education and dialogue around oppressive cultural traditions rather than actually limit women’s freedom by dictating what they wear.

So while I totally oppose the burqa, I just don’t think these legal measures will have the desired effect, but could rather create negative repercussions for the integration of muslims in French society.