How France’s ideology led to banning Burkinis
You may have heard about the story of four armed French police officers that fined a woman for wearing a Burkini. It violated the French law forbidding any public sign of religious affiliation — meaning you can show your beliefs how you want at home, but out in the public, nothing on you should let you be recognized as a member of any religion.
To understand why, we have to go back to the Edict of Nantes, signed on 1598. The edict extended civil rights to Protestants in a very Catholic France. It did that by separating religion union from civil union. Protestants were at the time prosecuted during the Inquisition, and this edict would grant them safe heavens in the country, and guaranteed their protection while traveling abroad.
This paved the way for a set of laws that would further separate religion from the government, and this became over time one of the fundamental ideas behind French’s republic. The separation of church and state has the same principles than the US one, for example, but goes the extra mile to ensure that France nor its citizens are linked with any religion. This translates into a set of laws that forbid any sign of religious affiliation while in public. This, is part of France’s “Egalité”, which is part of the national motto.
Hijabs, veils, and now Burkinis are considered objects of religious affiliations, and by those laws, are forbidden in public. So at this point, it does makes sense, at least on a law standpoint, that the police officers would fine women wearing them. Except that since the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Muslims have been more targeted than ever to these laws. For what it’s worth, in my own personal experience of the French society (which I’m daily part in, as a native French), people walk around with crosses around their necks, non-covert tattoos of Jesus, but I’ve seen two women wearing Hijab being fined under the aforementioned laws. There is an implicit bias that works against Muslims in general, and in all parts of lives too. Islam is seen more and more as “incompatible with French values”, Muslims as criminals, and the recent influx of migrants further add fuel to the xenophobic flames.
The Burkini ban has been issued after the Nice attacks during the National day (or Bastille Day) to “more easily prevent terrorists attacks”. 15 towns actively enforce the ban as of today, including Nice and Cannes, where two women were fined for wearing “a bit too many clothes” while on the beach.
Where personal freedom encounters French secularism
Pro-ban activists say “it’s the first step towards fighting the submission to a misogynistic dress code”. That argument doesn’t hold when women actually chose to wear the hijab, or, in this case, the burkini. Anti-ban activists, on the other hand, believe that it is yet another act to prevent Muslims to completely integrate themselves into the French society.
The facts are, the last two years have seen more anti-Muslim threats than ever before. The extreme right getting more and more of the political scene with its anti-Islam platform is surely the biggest marker of that current Muslim hate. These laws, despite existing long before those incidents, have been used more and more to target Muslims. They originated from utopian ideas about a strong society that share the same values, when everyone is different, and holds a different set of ideas. The laws against public religious affiliation was made to protect people from their beliefs, but it seems some people are protected more than others. Maybe it’s time to let personal freedom shine in France, more than it has already.