The sight of French police arresting two women yesterday because they were wearing the burqa - the full face veil -  was hardly edifying.

For a country based on the principles of fraternity, equality and liberty, to resort to such measures seems like rank hypocrisy.

Liberty, critics would say, is either absolute or it is nothing.

Certainly, there is something in the claims that the government of Nicolas Sarkozy has only introduced the ban on the full face veil for electoral reasons. There is a growing resentment between France's majority population and its five million strong Muslim community (the biggest in Western Europe)

And yet I feel some sympathy for the French government.

The burqa is seen far more frequently on the streets of European capitals than in major American cities. To me, and to many others, the wearing of the full face veil is a display of cultural 'otherness' - almost aggression.

Because there is zero requirement according to the Quran for women to cover their entire faces, to do so is a matter of choice. And when the burqa is worn in secular European societies, then it can only be construed as a deliberate affront.

There may be some women who are forced to cover up by their husbands. A law banning such things would seem to be a logical response to such medieval patriarchy.

The banning of the burqa in France - something that may be copied by other European countries - is in precisely the same vein as the modesty laws applying to anyone living in Islamic countries.

When I lived in the Middle East, some of the 'modesty' laws - such as allowing the lethal practice of 100 per cent black tinting of car windshields - seemed bizarre.

But: When in Rome. It was their country, their culture, their laws. We had no sympathy for the Western tourists arrested because they tried to walk through the supermarket in a bikini or other swimwear, or have drunken sex on a public beach. It was just a dumb, insulting thing to do.

The wearing of the burqa - and remember the French law covers only the entire face veil, not a simple head covering - is exactly the same.

Most Europeans are tolerant of the growing Muslim populations in their midst. They respect the right of freedom of religion and expression - even when that means Muslims screaming vile abuse at European soldiers on their homecoming from Afghanistan.

Banning things by law is a serious step and one that should only be taken where alternatives have been tried and failed.

But what is, surely, intolerable, is the basic tenets of civil life being ignored and confronted by anyone. When that anyone is regarded as an incoming population or culture, then the situation rapidly becomes toxic.

France is a proudly secular state. The wearing of the burqa, even though it is not a religious obligation, is a challenge to that.

To accept that is a one-way ticket to eventual national oblivion.

There is a reason why people migrate. Mostly it has to do with enjoying the benefits of the host state. In Europe that means very generous state benefits and freedoms beyond the wildest dreams of people doing the immigrating.

And the quid pro quo is integration and assimilation: an acceptance of the primary importance of the laws and cultures of your new home.

If anyone refuses to follow that rule - as the two Muslim women arrested yesterday did - then the host country has the legal and moral right to intervene.

'Otherness', from whatever source, cannot be allowed to take root on a macro scale. Individual beliefs, traditions and practices are private business. The civic space is public business.

I repeat: this was not about limiting the religious freedoms of anyone. It was about protecting the hard-won norms of the French state and the Sarkozy government was right to do so.

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