Although the controversy over the burkini ban is far from over, leaders of France’s Muslim community hope that Monday’s conference will help decisively turn the page on the issue now that the ban has been overturned in at least one town.
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The League of Human Rights campaign group, which had challenged the ban in Villeneuve-Loubet, is right in suggesting that, based on the ruling, all town halls need to reverse their ban orders.
“By overturning a discriminatory ban that is fuelled by and is fuelling prejudice and intolerance, today’s decision has drawn an important line in the sand”, Amnesty’s Europe director John Dalhuisen said.
Artists in France have been protesting against the French burkini ban by drawing cartoons that have been shared widely on social media.
But not everyone is happy with the decision with the mayors of several towns – including Nice, the scene of last months’s horrific attack which left 86 people dead – insisting they will flout the court in defiance of the ruling.
August 13: A massive beach brawl erupts on the French island of Corsica between locals and French Muslims after tourists took pictures of women swimming in burkinis. Villeneuve-Loubet’s right-wing mayor, Lionnel Luca, has said swimming in long sleeves and trousers is unhygienic, but a tribunal in Nice said the Villeneuve-Loubet ban was “necessary, appropriate, and proportionate” to keep the peace in the town.
France’s top administrative court has overturned a ban on burkinis in a Mediterranean town in a decision that should set legal precedent regarding a swimsuit crackdown that has divided the country and provoked shock around the world. Before that, in 2004, the French government banned Muslim headscarves and other “conspicuous” religious symbols in schools.
In the past few days, outrage over the ban spread rapidly online after photos emerged of police on a beach in Nice forcing a woman to remove her clothing. I don’t think it’s right.
The judges of the State Council thus suspend this ban.
The Republic, he said, must be more demanding when dealing with migrants who come to France in a bid to be granted French citizenship, which allows them to claim state benefits.
He told BFM-TV Friday: “Here the tension is very, very, very strong and I won’t withdraw it”.
Aheda Zanetti, the woman who developed the burkini, wrote an op-ed in The Guardian arguing that the burkini ban is fundamentally misguided, as she developed the burkini in the first place as a way to extend freedom to swim and be athletic in public to women who choose to be modest.
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But the mayor of Villeneuve-Loubet, Lionnel Luca, said the ruling will “heighten passions and tensions”.
