France's Culture War: Should the Burkini be Banned?

In the “country of Chanel and Brigitte Bardot” the burkini can only be seen as “a provocation”, said Jean-Michel Servant in Midi Libre. The hideous full-length swimsuit that some Muslim women have taken to wearing on beaches is not just “an affront to human dignity” – as an “ostentatious religious symbol”, it’s a challenge to the secular republic. So full marks to the mayor of Cannes for having the gumption to ban it, on the grounds that the sight could stir up trouble in a country still “traumatised” by recent Islamist terror attacks. As if to prove his point, a riot broke out in Sisco in Corsica last week, as men of North African origin clashed with holidaymakers who’d been taking pictures of their burkini-wearing female relatives. Now a ban is in place there too, while 15 other French towns have followed suit.

These bans are a symptom of racism as much as a stand on a point of principle, said Aziz Benyahia in Algérie-Focus. Yet French Muslims need to be sensible: this isn’t a good time to wear the burkini. They must know that people are jittery, and they should “adapt their behaviour” instead of getting into fights they can’t win. Islam, after all, enjoins its followers to respect the countries they live in as minorities. After the massacre in Nice, the authorities are in no mood to compromise, said Berna González Harbour in El País. Prime Minister Manuel Valls fully supports the bans, calling the burkini “the expression of a political project, a counter-society, based notably on the enslavement of women”. Most politicians of the Left and Right agree. All the same, the French should avoid leaping to “irrational intolerance”. The critics can hardly claim there’s a direct link between wearing a “cumbersome and impractical” bathing suit and committing mass murder. The existing prohibition on religious symbols in schools and public institutions is fair enough, but “in the name of equality and liberty, please keep the battle off the beaches”.

Quite, said Remona Aly in The Guardian. “Nothing says ‘losing the plot’ more than demonising what is, let’s face it, a wetsuit.” The burkini ban is “farcical”, agreed The New York Times. It has been prohibited on the basis that it is “variously, a threat to public order, hygiene, water safety and morality”. Saving Muslim women from “enslavement” by “dictating to them what they can and can’t wear” makes no sense at all. This madness threatens to “further stigmatise France’s Muslims at a time when the country is listing to the Islamophobic Right”.