The burkini bans have triggered a fierce debate in France and elsewhere about the wearing of the full-body swimsuit, women’s rights and secularism.
Advertisement
Women dumped tonnes of sand outside the French Embassy in London on Thursday for an impromptu beach party to protest the burkini bans.
Dawkins said she was moved to attend the demonstration after seeing pictures of French police overseeing a woman remove part of her clothing on a beach in Nice.
Italian tourist Amal told CBS News she’s afraid to wear her burkini in Nice. “France is a democratic country, there is justice and this is good for Muslim women”, he said after Friday prayers at Paris’ main mosque.
“A genius came up with #motorkini in solidarity with Muslim women banned from wearing #burkini on French beaches”, tweeted Yasmin Khan, director of women’s charity Staying Put UK.
But Friday’s decision, at 3 p.m. local time (1300 GMT), will not be about the legality of the ban.
The controversy has also made French cultural identity a hot issue in political debates ahead of next April’s presidential election. Around a decade ago an Australian woman of Lebanese origin created a swimsuit for Muslim women designed to permit them to keep their bodies covered while working as lifeguards on Australian beaches.
Human rights lawyers have focused mostly on the swimwear edicts as an infringement on citizens’ rights, and warned that if the court does not reject them, they could spread to bans on public transportation and other public spaces.
This is why, for instance, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls expressed his opposition to the bathing suit in nothing less than the language of human rights: the burkini, he said, was a means of “enslavement”.
The hashtag #WearWhatYouWant also trended as social media users joined the chorus of criticism over the decrees. Elsewhere in Europe, burkinis are rare but no municipal bans exist.
The bans have divided France’s government and society and drawn anger overseas, especially after images circulated online showing French police appearing to force one Muslim woman to take off her tunic.
Rights groups and anti-Islamophobia associations, which have appealed to the court to overturn the ban, argue that the move is discriminatory and in breach of French law, stressing that the ban violates basic freedoms of dress, religious expression and movement.
The conservative mayor in Villeneuve-Loubet, Lionnel Luca, has said he wanted to foresee any disruption to public order in a region badly hurt by the deadly Bastille Day truck attack in nearby Nice last month. But you do have to respect the choice of Muslim women to wear it.
Advertisement
A French ban on the burkini – a swimsuit that covers the whole body except for the face, hands and feet – is boosting sales of the beachwear. “No one, regardless of their religion and race, should be told what they should wear and where they can wear it”. The administrative court added that wearing “conspicuous” religious clothing on the beach may be seen as a “provocation” by some people and increase local tensions.
