French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Parliament Monday that the burqa, the traditional dress worn by some Islamic women, will no longer be tolerated in France. “The burqa is not a religious sign; it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women,” said a straight-faced Sarkozy, whose lovely wife Carla Bruni has modeled high-end designers like Chanel, Versace, and Christian Dior. (Some may argue her best work is done wearing nothing at all. In 2008, a nude photograph of Bruni sold at auction for $91,000.)

Nevertheless, Sarkozy has decided banning the burqa is “a question of freedom and of women’s dignity.” Battling both gender inequality and religious extremism – and it’s not entirely clear which is Sarkozy’s target – is a courageous undertaking, but battling the burqa, as Western Europe has learned many times, is a losing fight, and completely irrelevant to either objective.

If you’re truly an advocate for women, at the very least you’d allow them to wear the clothes they want. Voting, driving and holding positions of authority are okay, but putting a robe on isn’t? And if you’re truly an advocate for religious freedom, you’d never ban a traditional religious practice that doesn’t impinge on anyone else’s rights.

But more importantly, if you’re an advocate for women’s rights or religious freedom, you’d want a stake in the global war on terrorism and Islamic extremism, which threatens both. When Sarkozy uses the burqa as a symbol of oppression – while France has happily criticized from afar the foreign policy of other Western states in the Middle East who want actual freedom from oppression – the irony is laughable.

But it’s also typical of the kinds of misdirected battles Sarkozy tends to pick, and one from which I hope our president doesn’t take any cues.

France has grappled with these issues for years, and banned head scarves and other religious garb from public schools in 2004. Divisions between French nationals and Muslims have grown both in width and in strength, and Sarkozy’s statement is in line with a recent ratcheting up of pro-secular rhetoric that looks to reduce the three major religions to their most common (and inoffensive) denominator. Continued...