They see the burkini bans themselves as sexist, not to mention racist and a reactionary backlash to terrorism fears.
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Oliver Majewicz, the socialist mayor of Oye-Plage, a town close to Calais and the latest to impose the ban, told French newspaper Le Figaro that not enough had been done to protect France’s secular values and that access to his beaches would be forbidden to anyone whose “choice of clothing did not respect good morals and secularism”.
The burkini – a conflation of the burqa and bikini – is designed for Muslims who believe that Islam requires women to hide everything except the face, hands and feet from all men who are not their husbands or unmarriageable kin.
While only a small number of women have reportedly been fined $43 for breaking the new rule, several other towns have followed suit.
Valls explained to La Provence, “There is the idea that [in Islam], by nature, women are immodest, impure, and that they therefore should be totally covered”.
Tubiana of the French League of Human Rights (LDH) said the decrees are “stigmatizing … and violate individual liberties”.
Three Mediterranean towns – Cannes, Villeneuve-Loubet and Sisco on the island of Corsica – have banned the burkini, and Le Touquet on the Atlantic coast is planning to do the same.
Rim-Sarah Alouane, a researcher at the University of Toulouse who has written on Muslim and women’s issues, vigorously disagrees. Critics say the bans are discriminatory and could inflame religious and social tensions.
However, Valls said he’s not in favor of a national law against burkinis.
“Women’s rights imply the right for a woman to cover up”, Alouane, a Muslim born and raised in France, said. He further said “the Republic must defend itself” against any provocations. The burkini “was created by Western Muslim women who wanted to conciliate their faith and desire to dress modestly with recreational activities”.
Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the incoming head of the government’s Foundation for French Islam, urged Muslims Tuesday to act more “discreet” in public places.
But according to sociologist Jean Baubérot, the Muslim community risks feeling even more excluded from French society following the burkini bans. “A hundred years passed, but [according to burqini inventors] a woman who reveals her ankles or hair is not a woman of virtue”.
The bans, which carry small fines for violators, reflect an unusually fierce attachment to secularism in this country, and have perplexed people outside France.
“I do not think women want to walk around on the beach with such a monstrosity in the name of their faith”, she told Flemish daily De Standaard.
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Some reports said it started because a young man took a photo of a woman in a burkini, though the exact circumstances of the incident remain unclear.
