ABSTRACT
The issue of Muslim women wearing a face-veil has provoked a flurry of reactionary responses in Europe. In the Belgian and French political debates in 2010 preceding the passage of the acts prohibiting face-veils, in the 2014 European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) judgement approving the French ban on face-veils (ECtHR 2014), and in the Spanish political discourse (2010-2014), the arguments turn around le vivre-ensemble or convivencia, respectively, and the realization of the fundamental societal and state values required to achieve this. In the opinion of the ECtHR judgement in 2014 on the French face-veil legislation, and in the important decision of the Spanish Tribunal Supremo (the highest appeals court) in 2013 granting constitutional protection to the face-veil, le vivre-ensemble and convivencia are also central terms, as is also the question of fundamental societal and constitutional values (Tribunal Supremo 2013). However, the texts reveal both significant cleavages and also parallels around this central issue of the expression of growing religious diversity in modern European societies.
