The burkini ban

The burkini has, of recent, become a cause of great anxiety and fear in France. The full body suit donned by Muslim women during their excursions to the beach is, according to municipal administrations, a symbol of Islamic extremism and a threat to public order. A number of French cities have therefore decided to ban the burkini from their beaches, preserving, thereby, the good morals and secularism upon which the State of France has been founded. Yet the coercive control of Muslim women’s bodies and their religiously driven exclusion from public spaces and recreation smacks of illiberal secularism, incompatible with the values and principles ostensibly cherished by Western democracies.

Secularism mandates the separation of the state from religion to guard against the risk of imposition of a majoritarian collective morality on the citizenry through the instruments of the state. To such extent, secularism is grounded in ideals of liberty and equality that guarantee each citizen, regardless of gender, race or religion, the freedom to follow their beliefs without interference or patronage from the state. Secularism is then not per se anti-religion.

The rationalisation of the burkini-ban with reference to secularism, is tenuous. The municipal decisions are, in reality, grounded in a context-driven fear of Islam and any overt expression of Islamic belief. The prohibitive ordinance issued by the Mayor of Cannes makes this abundantly clear by unequivocally stating: “manifesting religious affiliation in an ostentatious way [through donning a burkini], while France and its religious sites are currently the target of terrorist attacks, could create risks of trouble to public order.” A court in Nice has upheld the ban on similar grounds. There has thus been a public admission of Islamophobia by branches of the French state. They have deemed the woman on a beach displaying overt signs of religious affiliation to Islam as instigating such discomfort that she comes to pose a risk of sparking tension. This singling out of the Muslim woman violates liberal guarantees of the right to dignity and privacy, of freedom of expression and religion and against discrimination. The burkini-ban is irrational in its exaggerated fear of what is a modest and maybe less attractive swimming garb. It is also anti-feminist in its appropriation of women’s bodies for the purpose of ideological control, arguably of a secular variety.

The burkini-ban is not the first attempt by the French state to regulate the Muslim woman’s (arguably) “Islamic” dress. In 2004, the state banned the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols, such as headscarves, in primary and secondary schools. More recently, in 2011, the National Assembly of France passed a law prohibiting the wearing of a niqab or other face-covering headgear in public. It is interesting to note that in 2014 the European Court of Human Rights upheld the niqab ban not on grounds of public safety, but as amounting to a violation of others’ right to “live in a space of socialisation.” The Court’s decision is problematic. But what one must at present ask is whether the “public integration” argument would also justify the burkini-ban. Does the Muslim woman in a body-suit pose the same (questionable) impediment to socialisation as the Muslim woman concealed behind a niqab? The European’s court rationale is unlikely to the burkini-ban.

In France, Muslim women are faced with a choice: to either conform to “secular” or Western norms of morality and dress, or quit the lives they have in built in Western societies. This choice essentially amounts to a form of majoritarian hegemony, anathema to principles of both liberalism and secularism. Such control, many argue, is essential to liberate the oppressed covered-Muslim woman from the religiously justified patriarchal control of her body. Not all Muslim women are compelled to don the hijab or shun a bikini. Some may, without doubt, do so under compulsion. Such women must, however, find their own agency and determine for themselves their practice of Islam. The state may facilitate such self-determination through an empowering counter-narrative in educational instruction or the provision of empowering economic opportunities. To coerce a Muslim woman to shed the burkini is no different from forcing her to shroud herself in a burqa or a niqab. Both represent extremist standpoints that must be condemned.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 21^st, 2016.

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