Seven uncomfortable facts about a burkini controversy
The Washington Post
The “burkini ban” recently implemented in some French cities has become a topic of global controversy this week after images spread online of a woman being forced by a group of male police officers to remove her clothing at a beach in Nice.
But really, the French debate over Islamic clothing has been going on for years.
Hijabs were banned from public schools in 2004, along with other “ostentatious” religious articles, including large Christian crosses and the Jewish kippa. In 2007, fullface Islamic veils were banned from public places in France. In recent months, a number of French cities have issued their own bans on the burkini, a type of swimwear that covers most of the body.
In some ways, the French situation is hard to understand for outsiders: The country considers religion a private matter and its concept of laïcité means that the country is officially secular. Even so, the sentiment behind the bans doesn’t seem to be limited completely to France: Germany recently announced that it was considering some kind of ban on the full-face veil in public.
To many outsiders, however, there are confounding facts surrounding the burqa and burkini bans. Here are just a few:
1. In 2009, as France moved to ban the full-face veil, then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the burqa a symbol of “debasement” that was “not welcome” in the country. What Sarkozy didn’t reveal was how few women actually wore the burqa in France.
Part of this is semantics: The burqa is a single piece of cloth that covers the entire body with usually only a thin mesh for the woman to see out of. What you are more likely to see in Europe are niqabs, a veil that usually covers the bottom half of the face and leaves the area around the eyes open.
The Interior Ministry estimated that just 2,000 French women wore the niqab (for reference, France’s Muslim population is now estimated at 7.5 million).
Germany now seems to be following in France’s footsteps. Despite a proposed ban on full-face veils and one prominent politician calling himself a “burqaphobe,” German journalists have found little evidence of anyone wearing the burqa in Germany and only a few hundred are thought to wear the niqab.
2. It doesn’t seem like the ban acts as a great deterrent. Women still wear the niqab in France. French data from 2015 showed that 1,546 fines had been imposed under the law. Of these women who were charged, many were repeat offenders. One woman was fined 33 times. Agnes De Feo, a researcher and documentary maker who has followed around 150 women who wear the veil for years, explained recently that often these women viewed the act of wearing the veil as one of “rebellion” against the French state.
3. French women face fines of $167 for wearing the full-face veil in public. However, a businessman named Rachid Nekkaz claims to have paid at least 1,165 fines in France so far, as well as 268 more in Belgium, two in the Netherlands and one in Switzerland. The total cost, Nekkaz says, is around $278,000 with attorneys fees. “Thanks to the fund allocated to the defense of these women’s freedom to dress as they please in the street, women are no longer afraid of wearing the niqab,” he said.
4. Some say the law has propelled more women to wear the veil rather than discouraged it. De Feo said many women who wear the niqab in France today were inspired to wear the veil by the law; often they are young converts to Islam.
5. The burkini was invented in Australia and was designed as a means to allow Muslim women to participate in Australian culture.
In fact, given that it is a twopiece garment that doesn’t cover the face, it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the burqa in general. It was created in the early 2000s by a woman named Aheda Zanetti, who had moved to Sydney from Lebanon at the age of 2.
6. The burkini isn’t just for Muslims. “We’ve sold to Jews, Hindus, Christians, Mormons, women with various body issues. We’ve had men asking for them, too,” Zanetti explained. In a separate interview with Women’s Wear Daily, Zanetti estimated that around 40 percent of her client base was non-Muslim.
7. Extremist groups have tried to use France’s burqa ban as a recruitment tool.
Last week, Italy’s Interior Minister said the country would not be implementing a burkini ban on public beaches, warning that such responses could “become provocations that could potentially attract attacks.”
Extremist groups have already used France’s ban of full-face veils as justification for attacks.