The secular clothing police

TO OUTSIDERS, the scenes being played out on the beaches in southern France seem incomprehensible. Photographs from Nice on Tuesday showed armed French police asking a woman to remove her burkini, twopiece sportswear made up of a headscarf and long-sleeved tunic, preferred by some Muslim women. In Cannes, a woman wearing leggings, a tunic and a headscarf on the beach was given a ticket and told she was not wearing “an outfit respecting good morals and secularism”. The burkini police are on the move.

The burkini was invented in Australia some years ago. It does not cover the face and is not the same as a burqa, a more restrictive full-body garment. In recent weeks, the burkini has been banned by a dozen French resort towns – the latest was Nice, scene of a truck attack July 14 that killed 86 people. The burkini bans enjoy widespread support in France, which has been hit by three major terrorist attacks in the past year and a half and is still on tenterhooks.

The French have their logic. A strict form of secularism known as laïcité is enshrined in French law and has been the basis of previous French bans on headscarfs in state schools and the face-covering niqab in public. Also, many in France argue that the burkini is oppressive to women, epit- omising control over their bodies. The rallying cry has been that the burkini is an affront to French morals and secularism. The ban in Nice specifically refers to clothing that “overtly manifests adherence to a religion at a time when France and places of worship are the target of terrorist attacks”.

There are certain security situations in which it is appropriate for rules to dictate what not to wear, such as prohibiting face masks when entering a bank. But banning the burkini is misguided. The effort seems to be propelled by an unspoken layer of bigotry, suspicion and hysteria. It is entirely possible to uphold France’s desire for secularism without the nan-