27/01/2018 Why the French keep trying to ban Islamic body wear - The Economist explains

The Economist explains

The Economist explains

Why the French keep trying to ban Islamic body
wear
France regards the resilience of the republic itself as being at stake

The Economist explains Aug 24th 2016 | by S.P.

LIFEGUARDS in Australia wear them. A mainstream British retailer sells a fashion

version of them on the high street. But the “burkini”, a body-covering swimsuit
(named with the portmanteau of “burqa” and “bikini”), has been banned this
summer by the mayor of Cannes from his stretch of Mediterranean beach, as well
as by a dozen other mayors of French seaside towns. In countries with a tradition of
liberal multiculturalism, such a ban is greeted by incomprehension, if not ridicule.
Within France, however, it enjoys widespread political backing, not just from the
far-right National Front but also from the mainstream right and left. Manuel Valls,

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27/01/2018 Why the French keep trying to ban Islamic body wear - The Economist explains

the Socialist prime minister, has argued that the burkini is “not a fashion item”, but
represents the “enslavement of women”. Why are the French so offended by Islamic
body covering?

The government’s defence of the burkini ban rests on worries about religious
tension and public order after recent terrorist attacks, coupled with two underlying
principles. The first is laïcité, a strict form of secularism enshrined by law in 1905
after a struggle against authoritarian Catholicism. This principle is supposed to
keep religion out of public life, and has been the basis of previous French bans: on
the headscarf (and other “conspicuous” religious symbols, including the Jewish
kippah and oversized crucifixes) in state schools (in 2004), and the face-covering
niqab in all public places (in 2010). The other principle is women’s equality. It may
appear bizarre, or frivolous, to argue that women should bare more flesh. But many
on the French left in particular regard the need to protect women from a male-
imposed doctrine as being at stake—and are willing to put it even before liberty,
another founding value of republican France. The logic of the burkini, says
Laurence Rossignol, the Socialist women’s minister, is to “hide women’s bodies in
order better to control them”.

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France. When the French began to debate a
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what clothes a Muslim woman should
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Some civil-liberties groups within France
have tried—but so far failed—to get the burkini ban overturned in the courts. Yet
French governments bristle at the notion that their various attempts to defend
laïcité amount to intolerance or an infringement of the freedom of expression.
They may note that in 2014 the European Court of Human Rights upheld France’s
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27/01/2018 Why the French keep trying to ban Islamic body wear - The Economist explains

burqa ban. What outsiders fail to understand, the French argue, is that such body
wear is not just a casual choice but part of an attempt by political Islamism to win
recruits and test the resilience of the French republic. Mr Valls dismisses as naive
those who see it as being no different than a wetsuit. The burkini, he says, is part of
a “political project”, and complacency plays into the hands of Islamists.

The difficulty is that, after a series of deadly terrorist attacks over the past 18
months, France is in a state of heightened tension. Perceived provocations on both
sides are amplified. It is not just civil-liberty activists who consider the mayors’ ban
excessive, or stigmatising. Some French scholars of Islam, such as Olivier Roy,
consider it “absurd” to conflate the burkini with hard-line Islamism, not least
because the latter would not permit women to bathe publicly in the first place.
Politicians, though, are unlikely to cede ground. The nature of French identity is
likely to feature prominently in next year’s presidential election. Some contenders,
such as Nicolas Sarkozy, a centre-right former president, argue that the Muslim veil
should be banned on the campuses of state universities. France looks set to defend,
if not tighten, its strict approach to head-covering.

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