LIBERTY, EQUALITY AND IMMODESTY?
“I predict that within a decade, most Western countries will have banned the burka, probably the niqab, and maybe even the pretty burkini,” said Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph. Granted, a French court last week effectively struck down the “burkini bans” imposed in around 30 mayoralties, describing them as a breach of “fundamental liberties”. But several mayors vowed to keep them in place, and Nicolas Sarkozy – who is having another tilt at the presidency – has called for a nationwide ban. This may seem extraordinary to British observers, who were shocked by recent pictures of a Muslim woman on a beach in Nice being ordered to remove her tunic by armed police. But polls suggest that a majority of French people support a ban. Why? Because they feel they are fighting an “existential battle over what it means to be French”. They regard the burkini as an affront to the principle of laïcité (the secularism of the public realm), and a symbol of female oppression and the failure of Muslims to integrate. And as Islamists wage violent jihad in Europe, that feeling is spreading. A new poll suggests that 81% of Germans favour a ban on conservative Islamic dress, including the burka.
But despite its unfortunate name, the burkini is hardly in the same league as the “detestable” burka, said Janice Turner in The Times. Whereas the face veil is intended to “erase women entirely” from the public sphere, the burkini opens up new spaces and activities for Muslim women. It means they can go to the beach, splash around with people they might otherwise never meet, learn to swim (“too many Muslim women can’t”) and have fun. It may not do enough to challenge the Islamic modesty code of awrah – the “old patriarchal lies” that men’s lust is uncontrollable if provoked by the sight of a well-turned ankle – but it does at least “bypass” it. Change doesn’t happen overnight; “Victorian women did not suddenly emerge from bathing machines in thongs”. The burkini is a “compromise”. And compromise is the first step towards integration.
Alas, the French people are in no mood for such subtleties, said Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times. After the traumatic terrorist attacks of the past year or so, there is an “inchoate desire to punish self-identifying Muslims”. Sarkozy – afraid of being outflanked by his right-wing rival for the presidency, Marine Le Pen – claims a burkini ban will show “strength” in the battle against jihadism. But picking on women, and dictating what they wear, is not strength: it is merely bullying.