Rachid Nekkaz, 38, a real-estate businessman based in Paris, traveled to Belgium on Wednesday to pay 100 euros for two women fined in the first case in the country since the law against head coverings was adopted there. He’s set aside a million euro of his own money to pay the fines of women criminalized for wearing head and face coverings.
“I’m in favour of a law to convict a husband who forces a women to wear the niqab and who forces her to stay at home,” Nekkaz said. “But I’m also for a law that lets these women move freely in the streets, because freedom of movement, just like any freedom, is the most fundamental thing in a democracy.”
The same day, he paid a 75 euro fine for a woman in the north-eastern French town of Roubaix.
“I am calling for civil disobedience,” he told FRANCE 24. “I am telling women to not be afraid to go out wearing their veils. And by paying the fines, I am neutering the law, rendering it inefficient and pointless, showing that it doesn’t work. It is a humiliation for the politicians.”
This is ally work, right here. 👌👌👌
http://muslimmatters.org/2011/10/15/french-businessman-to-pay-all-burqa-niqab-fines/
And by paying the fines, I am neutering the law, rendering it inefficient and pointless
Enforcing this law is trivial. Suppose French legislators shrug and say, “It’s a revenue stream, we’re fine with keeping it”?
It might play out the way this gentleman says, but I’ve seen my share of laws that remain on the books because it becomes a means of fundraising.