Excerpt:
France's proposal to ban the burqa is not the right way to get Muslim women to stop wearing the full Islamic veil, Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan said.
'The French...are responding to the burqa, the niqab by restricting freedom and I think that's not going to work,' Ramadan said during one of his first visits to the United States since a travel ban imposed on him by the administration of President George W Bush was lifted. The travel ban, which US authorities eventually pinned to Ramadan having donated money to a Swiss charity that helps Palestinians, was lifted earlier this year.
'We have to be very cautious not to translate every sensitive issue into a legal issue,' said the professor of Islamic studies at Oxford University.