France’s Burkini Bigotry

[elleng]

'After bans on full-face veils, head scarves in schools and rules about students’ skirt lengths, France’s perennial problem with Muslim women’s attire has taken its most farcical turn yet with a new controversy over the “burkini,” body-covering swimwear whose name is an amalgam of burqa and bikini. As of Thursday, five French mayors had banned the burkini, calling it, variously, a threat to public order, hygiene, water safety and morality, tantamount to a new weapon of war against the French republic. Thierry Migoule, an official with the city of Cannes, the first to ban the burkini, declared the swimwear “clothing that conveys an allegiance to the terrorist movements that are waging war against us.”

This hysteria threatens to further stigmatize and marginalize France’s Muslims at a time when the country is listing to the Islamophobic right in the wake of a series of horrific terrorist attacks. And with presidential elections scheduled for next spring and the right-wing National Front’s popularity on the rise, French officials and politicians have leapt to support the mayors. . .

The fact that French parents are increasingly dressing their toddlers in remarkably similar suits to protect them from the sun, or that a wet suit also covers the head and body, adds to the hypocrisy of this debate. But at the heart of the dispute is something far darker: French politicians’ paternalistic pronouncements on the republic’s duty to save Muslim women from enslavement — by dictating to them what they can and can’t wear. The burkini rumpus is also a convenient distraction from the problems France’s leaders have not been able to solve: high unemployment, lackluster economic growth and a still very real terrorist threat.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/opinion/frances-burkini-bigotry.html?

[mwrguy]

1. Islamophobia is the wave that fascism is riding into power

[jberryhill]

2. Out of the water, Jacques!

[msongs]

3. quite peculiar how men do not have to wear these...or hajibs or burkas either. really odd nt

[Shoonra]

4. Oddly enough, this was intended to be "liberating"

The French ban on the burqa and similar shroud-like coverings for women was established more than a dozen years ago and it was, at the time, intended to be liberating. At the time it was explained that these coverings were now legally forbidden to protect wives and daughters from being coerced by their husbands and fathers into wearing those coverings against their own inclination. The possibility that the women themselves might want to wear such degrading garments was not regarded, or at least was considered unlikely compared to the generality of the Muslim female population in France.

I daresay the ban on the burqa has had a liberating effect on Muslim women in France - and perhaps has discouraged the immigration of really fundamentalist Muslims into France, otherwise there might be more terrorist acts than we have seen.

[elleng]

5. 'Liberate' from their religious practices, more like.

[FigTree]

6. I am French.

Living in the US for a while. Born in the early 50's.
What people here don't seem to grasp is the very strong laic tradition of this country. Separation of church and state was achieved legally only in 1905 and french people keep, rightly in my opinion, a deep suspicion and resentment against the church and religions in general. Back then, priests walking down the streets were often welcome with crowing (black uniforms, feeding on death). This is based on the historical exploitation of the people by the church, who was a huge landlord across the country. As of recently, and maybe this is still the case, the church was still the largest real-estate owner in the country.
I grew up in the 50's and 60's and back then, thanks to laic pressure, religion never was present in the political life or in my personal life for that matter. The first memory I have, as a child./adolescent, of seeing religion crossing my path was the fundamentalist christian movement in the early 60's playing the martyr card (which they do so well: it's the foundation of their narrative) to its fullest, insisting that mass was to be spoken in latin (which by the way is not real Latin but a inelegant version of it, which is called "latin de cuisine", kitchen latin). Occupying churches and whining around but really trying to resume the shoving of their agenda down everyone's throat (catholic = universal).
The other manifestation I remember was teens ostentatiously wearing the star of david, as the conflicts in the middle east started to escalate. Guess they needed to affirm their identity as jewish at that time and that was fine with everyone because it didn’t go beyond that.
In the 70's, although there were already millions of immigrants from muslim countries, their religion was never either threatening, let alone repressed. They were doing their belief stuff like any other remnant-of-the-past believers and we spent hours at the great mosque in Paris, which was a beautiful, peaceful place where we were always welcome and drank mint tea. Then, people from muslim areas were in fact mostly leftist guerilleros and rebellious french youth were commonly wearing the feddayin scarf in sign of solidarity.
Of course this was back then and a host of other factors have turned up since, complicating the picture but you can count on one thing, once the separation of church and state gets blurry, once a group tries to push its religion in their face, french people will get pissed. Past that point, it's relatively easy for a right-wing movement to recuperate this anger and channel it anywhere.
There is a statue dedicated to a 20yo french aristocrat who was executed by the end of the 18th century because he refused to remove his hat and bow while a procession of bishops or what not was passing. You can see it at the foot of the church-cake thing called Montmartre in Paris.