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French Court Overturns Ban on Burkinis

HeadlineAug 26, 2016

France’s highest administrative court has overturned a local ban on full-body swimsuits known as “burkinis,” amid ongoing controversy over an incident in which armed French police confronted a woman on the beach over her full-body dress. Photos of the incident show two armed police officers approaching the woman as she lay sleeping, and then standing over her as she removed her long-sleeve shirt. The police then gave her a ticket, which said that she wasn’t wearing “an outfit respecting good morals and secularism.” More than two dozen French towns have banned the burkini, saying the swimsuit violates French secular laws. On Thursday, dozens of women protested the burkini ban at a rally outside the French Embassy in London. This is one of the protesters.

India Thorogood: “It’s never right to tell a woman what she can wear or to take her clothes off. That’s not for a man to say. And I think, in a time of increased Islamophobia, which we’ve seen in the U.K. and in France, it’s just an even more horrible image to see, because it just shows the kind of things that Muslim women have to deal with. So we wanted to show solidarity with Muslim women in France and call for a repeal of the ban.”

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