OUTRAGE ON THE BEACH
Bullying Muslim women into removing modest beachwear plays straight into the hands of fanatics, says SARAH VINE – and has chilling echoes of the Nazis
FrANKLY, I have never been a fan of religious dress and I am especially not keen on burkas and hijabs; I find it hard to communicate with a blank piece of cloth, and I like to see a person’s smile.
I strongly suspect that these garments make it harder for immigrant communities to find acceptance in their adoptive countries and they certainly act as a barrier to integration.
I also think that sometimes — not always — they are used as an instrument of oppression by men within the communities from which the women hail.
But none of that stopped me feeling furious on behalf of the middle-aged Muslim woman pictured yesterday being forced to undress in front of policemen on a beach in Nice in the South of France. It was, to put it bluntly, an outrage. The poor woman was not even in breach of
the so-called ‘burkini ban’ imposed by authorities in 15 French regions since the beginning of the summer.
The ban made it illegal for women to wear swimwear that covers their whole body and, as such, is popular with Muslim women whose religion dictates that they dress modestly. In France, however, burkinis are said to ‘ostentatiously show religious affiliation’.
The ban, sanctioned by French law, has been seen by many as an understandable, but totally over the top, knee-jerk reaction to the spate of atrocities carried out by religious fanatics across the Channel over the past 18 months.
The most recent was the Bastille Day massacre, in which 83 people were murdered as crazed Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel ploughed his lorry into crowds celebrating on Nice’s seafront, a stone’s throw from where the female Muslim was made to strip this week.
The funny thing is, the woman wasn’t even wearing a burkini. Her outfit, conservative, admittedly, and certainly very different from the array of tiny bikinis gripping perilously to bronzed French flesh on the rest of the beach, was a completely inoffensive blue cotton shirt and black leggings teamed with a headscarf.
Indeed, it was the sort of thing any woman wanting to preserve her modesty (or indeed her skin) might wear on a hot summer’s day by the seaside. And then four policemen, armed with guns and pepper sprays, descended on her, and ordered her to remove her shirt, or get off the beach.
TAKINg in the photograph, another even more sinister image popped into my mind. It took me a while to locate the memory in my brain, but there it was. Some of the most disturbing images I have ever seen in my life: photographs of Jewish women being forced to strip by armed, uniformed men during the anti-semitic pogroms in Eastern Europe in World War II.
Words cannot describe the pain in those women’s eyes as their friends and neighbours, egged on by Nazi soldiers and sympathisers, revelled in their brutal humiliation, their total dehumanisation. They were left standing naked in the street, their anguish, mixed with surprise and incredulity, etched on their faces.
The attacks got crueller and more widespread. On January 24, 1940, three Jews in the village of Zelechow, Poland, were stripped in freezing weather and had water poured over them, before being ordered to run around a telephone post for half an hour.
And here we are in 2016 witnessing an eerily similar scene: a lone, defenceless woman surrounded by armed, uniformed men being humiliated. Why? Because her religious faith was different to that of the men so ruthlessly bullying her.
It looked — felt — like this woman, in her cheesecloth blouse, was being singled out not because of who she was or something she had done but because she represented the terror that stalks France.
She wasn’t just a middle-aged woman on a beach; she was an opportunity to exact some sort of price, however feeble, for the savagery inflicted on France by men who profess to act in the name of her faith.
You could see the confusion on her face as the policemen descended, as she snoozed on the beach, which runs past the Promenade des Anglais, scene of that lorry atrocity on July 14.
She looked utterly incredulous as they woke her and instructed her to undress. Meanwhile, the officers appeared unmoved, immovable, intransigent and cold.
They loomed over her, hands on hips, faces emotionless, weapons at the ready, as she sat on the pebbles, struggling to get the offending item of clothing over her head. No assistance was offered. One of the policemen even looked away, impatiently. The rest of the beach stared on.
No one offered her help. No one intervened. No one remonstrated with the men. A sea of tanned flesh seemed to be captivated by the distraction.
The picture presents a deeply unsettling tableau which, unsurprisingly, has generated outrage around the world. Not just because the sheer dynamics of the scene — four men, one woman — are so distasteful, but because it is the most pointless and self-defeating of gestures.
France has suffered unbearable tragedy since the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January 2015. The murderous actions of brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, who slaughtered the editor and staff at the satirical magazine, have been followed by ever more violent and shocking attacks.
The French people are understandably traumatised. They are also
having to re-examine their relationship with their immigrant communities from where these attacks seem to emerge without warning. They want action. They want a government which steps up to the plate, leaders with the strength of character to take the necessary steps to quell the horror. Instead they have a clothing ban. At best it is gesture politics, at worst misguided revenge. Because there can be no satisfaction in actions like these. Quite apart from the fact that they will simply create even more anger and division — what a terrifyingly effective recruiting poster for ISIS the images make — the police are targeting the wrong people. As ever, innocent women are being forced to pay for the sins of men. Incapable of catching the real throatcutters and maniacs, the police are instead reaching for the low-hanging fruit, desperate to punish someone, even if it is the wrong people entirely.
Let’s face it, arresting and fining women (this is just one of several similar incidents reported on the beaches of the Mediterranean) is not going to solve the problems created by terrorism.
Earlier the same day, a Muslim mother was threatened with a pepper spray and ordered off the beach in nearby Cannes, simply for wearing a headscarf.
Last week, ten women, including young mothers and grandmothers, became the first to be criminalised in the resort when they were fined the equivalent of £32 for breaching the ruling which reads: ‘Access to beaches and for swimming is banned to anyone who does not have bathing apparel that respects good customs and secularism.’
All these received ‘warnings’ will now technically form part criminal records.
And what has been achieved? Fining someone for wearing the wrong type of bathing costume will not bring back the young people who died at the Bataclan theatre, or restore the life of the elderly priest who last month was slaughtered as he said Mass.
The terrorist cells hiding in Brussels will not see this picture and quake in their boots. They will not pack up their bombs and their hatred just because a woman has had to remove her shirt and hand over a fine.
What it will do, though, is tarnish the image of France as a liberal, progressive democracy renowned for its elegance and culture, the nation that gave us Coco Chanel and champagne.
It risks turning France and the French into a nation of bigots every bit as intolerant as the fanatics it, quite rightly, despises.
With this image, France has shown that the terrorists are winning. It is a picture of a sophisticated society succumbing to the same kind of twisted ideology and bigotry practised by its tormentors. Of a nation lashing out blindly in anger and pain and shooting itself in the foot.
France’s need to do something — anything — to respond to the reign of terror inflicted upon its citizens in recent months is, of course, perfectly understandable.
But to undermine the very principles for which this great and beautiful country stands — liberte,
egalite, fraternite — for such meagre gains is far too high a price to pay.
Every Western democracy must fight back against these forces of evil; but not at the cost of betraying their own values. Or worse still, allowing the intolerance that feeds terrorism to infect them.
BECAuSE there is a bitter irony here. So much of the horror and brutality perpetrated across the world by followers of Islamic State and their affiliates is carried out by men on women and girls. Rape, forced marriage, sex slavery — these are all tools that have been deployed with chilling effect on innocent women.
Meanwhile, hardline Islam imposes controls on women that we in the west, rightly, abhor. From the driving ban on Saudi Arabian women to the brutal punishments meted out under Sharia law, there can be no question that in certain parts of the Islamic world, women are treated as second class citizens.
Not so in Western Europe. A British Muslim woman has the same rights as any other, whether she be Christian, Hindu or Buddhist. True, she may be prevented from enjoying her freedoms by pressure from within her own community, but that is a different issue. The fact remains that, in the eyes of the law, they are the same.
Since this ruling, that is no longer the case for Muslim women in France. By definition they are the only ones likely to be wearing a burkini on the beach and therefore their rights are in question. unless the police decide to go around arresting nuns in habits, this is undeniably the case.
It is this that is so disturbing about this incident. Because by forbidding Muslim women from wearing long clothes and cover-ups on the beaches of the Mediterranean, France is lowering itself to the level of misogynist Islamism.
Where else in the world do groups of armed men patrol the streets checking up on what women are wearing and punishing any perceived infractions? In hard-line Islamic countries, that is where. Places like Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and parts of Nigeria, where the ‘mutaween’, or Islamic Religious Police, continue to make women’s lives a misery.
Let us not descend to this level. Let us not strip women of their rights by denuding them of their freedom of expression, religious or otherwise. A woman should have the right to wear whatever the hell she likes on the beach — and, for that matter, off it.