French judge upholds burkini ban despite top court ruling

Socialist mayor Ange-Pierre Vivoni said there was a “risk of people dying” if the ban was not in place.

Bypassing the recent State Council’s decision that burkinis are not a matter of national security, a French administrative court has approved the ban of Muslim woman’s full-body swimming suits.

A judge in the Bastia court said Tuesday that the ban issued by the mayor in the Corsican resort village of Sisco was legal because public order had been disrupted in the region.

The court “considered that in this case, given the recent events of August 13, 2016. and that the sentiment is not settled, the presence of women wearing a bathing suit [burkini]… would in the current circumstances risk the disturbance of public order, which is to be prevented by the mayor”, the court ruling said.

Inside Story – Can Islam be integrated with French secularism?

French prime minister Manuel Valls published an op-ed in the Huffington Post to decry a New York Times article, “The Way People Look At Us Has Changed’: Muslim Women on Life in Europe”.

The article, which appeared on Friday, painted an “unacceptable image of France because it is false”, Valls wrote in the French-language online edition of the Huffington Post.

Another said: “French Muslim women would be justified to request asylum in the United States… given how many persecutions we are subjected to”. “It prides itself in Islam being the second religion of the country”.

One respondent said she was “afraid of having to wear a yellow crescent on my clothes one day, like the Star of David for Jews not so long ago”.

According to local prosecutor Eric Bouillard, the two men who stopped the women “thought it wasn’t right that their children weren’t allowed to wear emblems of their religion at school and yet these women could enter with their veils”. “Millions of citizens of the Muslim faith or culture respect their duties perfectly and fully enjoy their duties”.

More than a dozen French towns had imposed the ban before the ruling by the Council of State outlined the unlawfulness of the measure. In the piece, French Muslim women described being persecuted, mistreated, and discriminated against due to their religious beliefs.

A burkini ban by local authorities in a string of resorts in southern France divided opinion and ended up in the courts.

Some of the women quoted by the NYT said the clothing was a chance for them to take part in activities, such as going to the beach, in line with their religious beliefs.