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French minister Fadela Amara, speaks to journalists |
The Muslim minister for urban regeneration told the Financial Times newspaper that the head-to-toe body covering and veil represented the "oppression of women, their enslavement, their humiliation."
Amara, who is of Algerian descent, said France was a beacon for an enlightened Islam at ease with modernity, so it was necessary to fight the "gangrene, the cancer of radical Islam which completely distorts the message of Islam."
"The vast majority of Muslims are against the burka. It is obvious why," Amara told the newspaper.
"Those who have struggled for women's rights back home in their own countries -- I'm thinking particularly of Algeria -- we know what it represents and what the obscurantist political project is that lies behind it, to confiscate the most fundamental of liberties," she said.
The comments came as French lawmakers conduct hearings on whether to ban the burka after President Nicolas Sarkozy said it was "not welcome" in secular France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority.