Yahoo – AFP, Aurelia END, August 26, 2016
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| People hold a banner reading "No to the ban on burkinis" in front of Port-Leucate city hall in Leucate, southern France, on August 25, 2016 (AFP Photo/Raymond Roig) |
Paris (AFP)
- France's highest administrative court on Friday suspended a controversial ban
on the burkini by a French Riviera town after it was challenged by rights
groups.
In a judgement
expected to lead to bans being overturned in around 30 towns, the State Council
ruled the measure was a "serious and clearly illegal violation of
fundamental freedoms".
The court
said local authorities could only introduce measures restricting individual
freedoms if wearing the Islamic swimsuit on beaches represented a "proven
risk" to public order.
The judges
said there was no such risk in the case before the court concerning
Villeneuve-Loubet, a resort on the Cote d'Azur between Nice and Cannes.
The French
Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) hailed the ruling as a "victory for
common sense".
Police have
fined Muslim women for wearing burkinis on beaches in several towns, including
in the popular tourist resorts of Nice and Cannes, sparking controversy in
France and abroad.
The mayor
of one town in Corsica said he would keep his ban in place in defiance of the
ruling.
The bans
have triggered a fierce debate about women's rights and the French state's
strictly-guarded secularism.
 |
The French
beach ban on Islamic garb has caused controversy over women's
rights and
secularism and confusion over what constitutes a burkini (AFP Photo/
Iris Royer
de Vericourt)
|
'Line in
the sand'
Amnesty
International said the decision had "drawn an important line in the
sand".
"French
authorities must now drop the pretence that these measures do anything to
protect the rights of women," Amnesty's Europe director John Dalhuisen
said.
"These
bans do nothing to increase public safety but do a lot to promote public
humiliation."
CFCM
secretary general Abdallah Zekri said: "This victory for common sense will
help to take the tension out of a situation which has become very tense for our
Muslim compatriots, especially women."
The State
Council heard arguments from the Human Rights League and an anti-Islamophobia
group (CCIF).
A court in
Nice had upheld the Villeneuve-Loubet ban this week.
Anger over
the issue was further inflamed this week when photographs in the British media
showed police surrounding a woman in a headscarf on a beach in Nice.
The mayor's
office denied the woman had been forced to remove clothing, telling AFP she was
showing police the swimsuit she was wearing under her top, over a pair of
leggings, when the picture was taken.
 |
Tunisian
women, one (R) wearing a "burkini", a full-body
swimsuit designed for
Muslim women, pictured at Ghar El
Melh beach near Bizerte, northeast of the
capital Tunis,
on August 16, 2016 (AFP Photo/Fethi Belaid)
|
'We are
protecting them'
Prime
Minister Manuel Valls on Thursday condemned any "stigmatisation" of
Muslims, but maintained that the burkini was "a political sign of
religious proselytising".
"We
are not at war with Islam... the French republic is welcoming (to Muslims), we
are protecting them against discrimination," he told BFMTV.
But in a
sign of the divisions within the Socialist government on the issue, Education
Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said the "proliferation" of burkini
bans "was not a welcome development".
Vallaud-Belkacem,
who is of Moroccan origin, took issue with the wording of the ban in Nice which
linked the measure to last month's jihadist truck attack in the resort that
killed 86 people.
"In my
opinion, there is nothing to prove that there is a link between the terrorism
of Daesh and what a woman wears on a beach," she said, using another term
for the Islamic State (IS) group.
 |
Lawyer for
the French Human Rights League (LDH), Patrick Spinosi, speaks to
journalists on
August 26, 2016 in Paris, after France's highest administrative
court suspended
a ban on the Islamic burkini swimsuit (AFP Photo/Dominique Faget)
|
'No legal
justification'
The
administrative court in Nice on Monday said the Villeneuve-Loubet ban was
"necessary" to prevent "public disorder" after the Nice
attack and the murder 12 days later of a Catholic priest by two jihadists in
northern France.
But in its
ruling, the State Council said: "In the absence of such risks, the emotion
and the concerns arising from terrorist attacks, especially the attack in Nice
on July 14, are not sufficient to legally justify a ban."
Ange-Pierre
Vivoni, the mayor of the small Corsican town of Sisco, said he would keep the
ban in place because the issue had sparked a violent beachfront brawl earlier
this month.
"I
introduced the ban for the safety of property and people in the town because I
risked having deaths on my hands," he told AFP.
The vague
wording of the prohibitions, which never mention the word burkini, has caused
confusion.
Apart from
the photographed incident in Nice, a 34-year-old mother of two told AFP on
Tuesday she had been fined on the beach in Cannes for wearing leggings, a tunic
and a headscarf.
France was
the first European country to ban the wearing of the Islamic face veil in
public in 2010.
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“. New Tolerance
Look for a softening of finger pointing and an awakening of new tolerance. There will remain many systems for different cultures, as traditions and history are important to sustaining the integrity of culture. So there are many in the Middle East who would follow the prophet and they will continue, but with an increase of awareness. It will be the increase of awareness of what the prophet really wanted all along - unity and tolerance. The angel in the cave instructed him to "unify the tribes and give them the God of Israel." You're going to start seeing a softening of intolerance and the beginning of a new way of being.
Eventually, this will create an acknowledgement that says, "You may not believe the way we believe, but we honor you and your God. We honor our prophet and we will love you according to his teachings. We don't have to agree in order to love." How would you like that? The earth is not going to turn into one belief system. It never will, for Humans don't do that. There must be variety, and there must be the beauty of cultural differences. But the systems will slowly update themselves with increased awareness of the truth of a new kind of balance. So that's the first thing. Watch for these changes, dear ones. ...."
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