Just wrong

IT IS STRANGE to see an armed policeman ordering a woman on a beach to take off some of her clothes. And yet that is precisely what has been happening in France – the inevitable consequence of the ban on the so-called burkini, now in place in 15 French municipalities.

A number of women opting for more modest beachwear have already been fined, with a philanthropic French business figure stumping up for many of the penalties.

No great genius for prediction is required to know where this story is going next. One day soon, in a sort of Rosa Parks moment, a blameless woman is going to refuse to comply with the request to remove her garments, or refuse to pay the fine. At some point, there is every possibility that some misguided magistrate will lock up a woman on the basis of her religion. That will provoke protests and worse across France, and more widely.

If the aim of the terrorists who took so many innocent lives in Paris, Nice and elsewhere was to foment hatred and conflict, and to provoke the French state into an overreaction, then the French authorities have more than fulfilled their unsavoury ambitions. Victimising and bullying Muslim women on holiday is not only bad PR, it is wrong in principle and entirely counterproductive.