Paris:
Six months ago President Sarkozy declared that the burqa was "not welcome" in secular France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority. A special 32-lawmaker parliamentary mission was set up to consider a law banning the full-face Islamic veil.
Now, France's ruling party has launched a website to debate the burqa question - complete with a glossary of terms and photographs. The website encourages surfers to follow the debate. There's even an opinion poll on whether people feel the burqa poses a security threat in crèches, schools, hospitals and public service offices.
"It's not Islam or Muslims that pose a problem. Behind the burqa, there are extremists and fundamentalists who instrumentalise Islam for political objectives against the values of French secularism," explains Andre Gerin, President of the French Parliamentary Mission on the Burqa.
On Wednesday, the party's parliamentary leader laid out plans for new legislation in a newspaper article, which appeared just as three ministers were to testify before a parliamentary panel.
"The issue is not how many women wear the burqa," Jean-Francois Cope wrote in the Paris newspaper Le Figaro. "There are principles at stake: extremists are putting the republic to the test by promoting a practice that they know is contrary to the basic principles of our country," he said.
The new legislation will be enacted after a period of consultation with Muslim communities in France "so that this measure is understood for what it is: a law of liberation and not a ban," he wrote.
Most Muslim organisations have distanced themselves from the practice of wearing the burqa, and many even say it is not Islamic. Either way, the burqa debate puts the Muslim community in the dock - especially at a time when President Sarkozy wants that the question of French national identity addressed.
"What is it to be French?" - the question clearly addresses Muslim immigrants in France, many of whom are French-born with families originally from France's former colonies in north Africa.