Mayors in several French towns say they are under pressure from Muslim residents to oppose the proposed ban on burqas and niqab veils – as they fear it will prompt even more women to cover up in defiance.

The mayors made their opinions clear to a parliamentary panel set up to study the issue after President Nicolas Sarkozy declared in June that burqas were alien to France and should be discouraged on the grounds that they represent the oppression of women.

Although many public officials, including many mayors, supported the 2004 ban on headscarves in schools, they are unsure how a ban on burqas in the street would be enforced.

“Who’ll be responsible for enforcing this law?” asked Claude Dilain, chairman of the Association of Mayors of French Cities and Suburbs. M. Dilian is also mayor of Clichy-sous-Bois, an ethnically mixed north Paris suburb rocked by rioting in 2005. “Police in Clichy won’t even give out parking tickets in some places or at some times,” he said.

Renaud Gauquelin, mayor of Rillieux-La-Pape near Lyon was in favour of the ban. He told the committee that failing to take a stand would mean failing to defend the separation of church and state and, above all, women’s rights. “What sign would we give to women around the world?” he asked. “To Iranian women fighting for their freedom? To Saudi women who want to be able to drive a car?”

Xavier Lemoine, mayor of the Montfermeil suburb east of Paris, said some Muslims there were being re-Islamised and France should firmly defend its secular system. Even so he wasn’t convinced of the wisdom of a ban on burqas. “I prefer to do nothing for a good reason than something for a bad reason,” he said. Police estimate that only 367 women in France wore such veils.

Chairman of the parliamentary investigative panel, Andre Gerin, former mayor of a mixed suburb of Lyon, said full veils were medieval customs and the tip of the iceberg of an Islamisation drive led by what he called gurus from outside the neighbourhoods where they appear. He promised that the panel would consult with French Muslim leaders and hold hearings in several French cities and visit Brussels before handing in its report early next year.

All the mayors said that they were facing increasing religious demands from Muslim residents – such as halal food in schools and women-only hours at swimming pools. Some women were refusing to be treated by male doctors and those Muslims who did not fast during Ramadan were being pressurised. Civil servants who did not comply with every demand from Islamists — even when they were against the law — were being denounced as Islamophobes.

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