But French premier Manuel Valls says the debate isn’t over and ripped into the Burkini ban critics.
Advertisement
And how are politics contributing to the debate over the future of Islam in France?
Twenty-two towns in France are maintaining a ban on the burkini despite court rulings that have said mayors have no legal right to dictate what women wear on the beach.
Several towns and regions across France that enforced the bans insisted that they remained in force within their respective jurisdictions, arguing that the country’s secular makeup renders burkinis as offensive to women’s rights under “liberty, equality and fraternity”.
France’s highest court, the Council of State (Conseil d’Etat), has already struck down one town’s ban on the burkini, effectively invalidating all such bans.
Bishop Nunzio Galantino, the secretary-general of the Italian bishops’ conference, also criticized the burkini ban, saying that he found it “ironic” that officials are concerned about women who are overdressed while going out for a swim.
Eighty-six people were killed in Nice in July and over 400 people injured when Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drove a truck into crowds leaving a fireworks display on Nice’s waterfront on France’s national holiday.
Rightwing figures are pushing for a nationwide ban to be written into law, led by former president Nicolas Sarkozy who this week launched his bid to regain the presidency in next year’s election.
In a damning critique he added the decrees “fuel religious intolerance and the stigmatization of Muslims in France, especially women” and “may actually undermine the effort to fight and prevent violent extremism, which depends on cooperation and mutual respect between communities”.
Rupert Colville of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has asked for the bans to be lifted immediately.
Rulings over the bans have been closely watched in France and around the world, after photos of armed police surrounding a Muslim woman as she removed her top on a beach in Nice sparked outrage. She noticed that the figure of Marianne was chosen to embody the French republic at a time when women were reduced to the status of minors and barred from voting.
Though France has been the sight of terror attacks during the summer of 2016, owners of public establishments do not have the right to deny access to Muslim individuals. She added that they wanted to “express their solidarity with wear the burkini but can not swim”.
Advertisement
The comments from Sarkozy came in response to the French interior minister’s statement that a nationwide burkini ban would be unconstitutional.
