The recent Islamophobic incident came to light after several French towns recently took the decision to ban a full-body swimsuit worn by some Muslim women, known as the burkini, in public, causing more uproar.
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Earlier this summer, burkinis were banned from municipal beaches in 15 French towns, including Nice, which suffered a terrorist attack in July that left 84 people dead.
On August 28, the owner of a restaurant in Tremblay-en-France told two women wearing hijabs, “Terrorists are Muslims and all Muslims are terrorists”, after refusing to serve them, according to BBC News.
A court ruling on Friday overturned France’s controversial burkini ban on civil liberties grounds, but some local authorities have vowed to keep it in place.
The ruling from the state council agreed burkini bans are a “serious and manifestly illegal violation of fundamental freedoms”. Colville said the ban actually “fuel religious intolerance and the stigmatization of Muslims”, additionally they “have only succeeded in increasing tensions”.
Cazeneuve warned in an interview with France’s Roman Catholic newspaper La Croix that if the political class can not unite all French “the dynamics of division may prove risky”.
At Monday’s day-long meeting in the capital, Paris, Cazeneuve said he meant to establish a new foundation for aligning Muslims more with France’s interpretation of secularism.
Muslim leaders and politicians in France have met Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve to discuss the future of Islam in the country.
“You have to behave in the way that people behave in the country that accepted you, and that is it”, Cogolin Mayor Marc Etienne Lansade told CNN. Religion and the state are completely separated.
The bans had been justified on public order grounds, and Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls appeared to defend the town officials who imposed them.
The restaurateur responds: “Racists like me don’t plant bombs and don’t kill people”.
In addition, he said, under global human rights law, measures adopted in the name of public order must be appropriate, necessary, and proportionate.
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Images of police apparently ordering a woman in a headscarf on the beach in Nice to remove clothing which allegedly opposed to the ban, sparked worldwide outrage.
