France’s battle of the burkini

France’s battle of the burkini

Debate deepens secularism fault lines in context of terror attacks.

“Isn’t it a deliberate strategy to force Muslim singularity in the public space, aiming for a formal proper statute at a later stage?” Helvig asked.

For some, the burkini is a provocative religious symbol, and for others just a matter of individual freedom

By PIERRE BRIANÇON 8/17/16, 7:49 PM CET

PARIS — All that was needed was the opinion of the French prime minister.

http://www.politico.eu/article/france-battle-of-the-burkini-muslim-swimming-pool-forbidden-religion/

It came soon enough, as Manuel Valls became the first major French politician to wade into the great Summer Burkini Battle. The full-body Muslim swimwear, he told regional newspaper La Provence, is “the instrument of a political project, a counter-society based on enslaving women.”

As such, the head of France’s Socialist government said, it is “not compatible with France’s values.”

Not everybody in Valls’ own political camp agrees with him on the question of whether the burkini should be allowed on French beaches this summer. But across party lines, the banning of what is for some a provocative religious symbol and for others just a matter of individual freedom has underlined the conflicting views of France’s long-established tradition of secularism.

If burkinis really enslave women, as the PM alleged, should the matter really be left to small-town mayors?

The debate started with the decision of a conservative Riviera mayor to ban the burkini on his town’s beaches, and took a dramatic turn with a violent brawl in Corsica allegedly started over a beachgoer wearing the garment.

The question is whether local authorities can legitimately ban the pyjama-like swimsuit, which allows women to cover most of their bodies, in the name of France’s strict secular traditions.

Context, of course, is everything — and the debate likely wouldn’t have taken on the same tone or attracted as much attention if France hadn’t been the target of several ISIL terror attacks since January 2015, forcing the country to confront the question of its uneasy cohabitation with its Muslim minority.

Sightings of actual burkinis have been rare on French beaches this summer, according to anecdotal evidence, but the July 28 decision of Cannes mayor David Lisnard to ban the garment on the town’s beaches lit a fuse.

A French administrative court, ruling under an emergency procedure two weeks later, gave its legal blessing to the mayor’s decision, saying it was in line with Article 1 of the French constitution, which “prevents anyone to advance religious beliefs in order to abstain from the common rules on relations between individuals and public entities.”

The court added that wearing a burkini “could be interpreted as not being just a religious sign,” hinting it could mean something more at a time when France is under a state of emergency after terror attacks such as the one that happened in close-by Nice a month ago.

The Cannes mayor’s actual ruling didn’t make any specific mention of the burkini, but banned from the beaches anyone who wouldn’t wear “correct attire, respectful of decency and secularism.” It also prohibited swimmers from keeping their clothes on in the water.

But in public statements Lisnard made no attempt to cover up his intentions. “I wanted to ensure my city’s security in the context of a state of emergency,” he told local paper Nice Matin. “I’m banning a uniform that has become a symbol of Islamist extremism.”

The same day as the court’s ruling, on a beach in Sisco, a small village in northern Corsica, a brawl between Muslim beachgoers and local youths necessitating the intervention of 100 riot police was first presented as having erupted after an attempt by tourists to photograph a burkini-clad woman. The Socialist mayor of Sisco soon banned the swimwear, even though the actual presence of the offending garment hasn’t so far been confirmed.

Since then, mayors of other beachside French cities have issued similar rulings, or stated their intention to do so — even in towns where no burkini has been spotted this summer, such as Le Touquet, a posh holiday resort on the English Channel.

“There are no burkinis in Le Touquet at the moment, but I don’t want the town hall to be caught off-guard,” mayor Daniel Fasquelle told the AFP news agency, without specifying what would be the risk of being caught “off-guard” in such a matter.

Barely a month after the Nice attack, the debate was bound to trigger the type of uneasy discussion that has pitted the advocates of a strict “laïcité” — the principle of secularism enshrined in the constitution — against those who warn that now may not be the time to stigmatize the general community of French Muslims.

Even politicians from other countries are weighing in, with Italy’s interior minister suggesting Tuesday that the bans could provoke another terrorist incident.

At stake is whether the burkini must be considered as a sign of religious proselytism, or whether it should be considered as a simple piece of clothing — the use of which should be left to anyone’s discretion.

The burkini-on-beaches debate is bound to end with the summer. But it won’t end the French authorities’ problem in their fight against symbols.

The main argument of the partisans of a ban, such as Valls, is that women may be forced by their families to wear Muslim attire such as veils, hijabs or burkinis, and that prohibitions – whether in public high schools, public spaces such a swimming pools or beaches – help preserve the freedom and dignity of possible victims of fundamentalist bullying.

Having long positioned himself as an intransigent partisan of “laïcité,” the French PM has even come out in the past in favor of banning veils in universities — a measure he himself acknowledged would be contrary to the French constitution.

Yet even Valls inadvertently underlined the difficulty of his stance when he stated in his Provence interview that local authorities must be left free to rule on Muslim garments without the need for national legislation. “A general regulation of clothing prescriptions cannot be the solution,” he said.

That triggered the obvious reply: If burkinis really enslave women, as the PM alleged, should the matter really be left to small-town mayors?

“If it’s that serious, then we’d need a law,” was the wry response of Benoît Hamon, one of Valls’ former ministers turned adversary, who is preparing a run for the Socialist presidential primary.

But others, such as political commentator Jean-Michel Helvig, have suggested that the relatively recent appearance of Muslim-specific clothing in France may be part of an Islamists “soft power” attempt to drive a wedge between French communities.

“Isn’t it a deliberate strategy to force Muslim singularity in the public space, aiming for a formal proper statute at a later stage?” Helvig asked.

The burkini-on-beaches debate is bound to end with the summer. But it won’t end the French authorities’ problem in their fight against symbols: the need to toe a delicate line between clamping down on extremist Islam and the risk of victimizing Muslims as a population.