French president, PM double down on burkini ban

France’s president and prime minister on Thursday backed a controversial ban on full-body swimwear worn by Muslim women, a day before a top French court decides whether cities can legally outlaw the burkini.

Life in France “supposes that everyone sticks to the rules and that there is neither provocation nor stigmatization,” said President Francois Hollande in his first comments on the subject.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls, meanwhile, said the bans were necessary to maintain “public order.” He condemned any “stigmatization” of Muslims, but maintained that the burkini (a portmanteau of burqa and bikini) was “a political sign of religious proselytizing.”

“We are not at war with Islam… the French republic is welcoming [to Muslims], we are protecting them against discrimination,” Valls told BFMTV.

Former right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy, who this week launched his bid to regain the presidency, has described the burkini as a “provocation.”

The State Council began hearing arguments Thursday from the Human Rights League and an anti-Islamophobia group which are seeking to reverse a decision by the southern town of Villeneuve-Loubet, near Nice, to prohibit the swimsuit.

The ruling, due at 3:00 pm (1300 GMT) Friday, is likely to set a precedent for around 30 French towns — mostly in the southeast — which have banned the burkini.

A lower court in the Riviera city of Nice upheld the ban this week.

The burkini bans have triggered a fierce debate in France and elsewhere about the wearing of the full-body swimsuit, women’s rights and secularism.

Anger over the issue was further inflamed on Wednesday when photographs were published in the British media of police surrounding a woman in a headscarf on a Nice beach removing a long-sleeved top.

Nice's regional president has threatened to sue social media users who post burkini ban photos. Time to re-share. pic.twitter.com/ynUoYjGzQF

— Jack Moore (@JFXM) August 25, 2016

But the office of Nice’s mayor denied that 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.

The police issued her with a fine and she left the beach, the officials added.

In a sign of 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 the jihadist attack in the resort last month in which 86 people were killed.

“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 an Arabic term for Islamic State.

The administrative court in Nice ruled on Monday that the Villeneuve-Loubet ban was “necessary” to prevent public disorder after the truck attack in Nice and the murder of a Catholic priest by two jihadists in northern France.

The burkini was “liable to offend the religious convictions or [religious] non-convictions of other users of the beach,” it added.

The so-called burkini bans never actually mention the word burkini, although they are aimed at the garment, which covers the hair but leaves the face visible and stretches down to the ankles.

The vague wording of the prohibitions has caused confusion.

Apart from the incident featured in the photographs in Nice, a 34-year-old mother of two told AFP on Tuesday she had been fined on the beach in the resort of Cannes wearing leggings, a tunic and a headscarf.

“I was sitting on a beach with my family. I was wearing a classic headscarf. I had no intention of swimming,” said the woman, who gave only her first name, Siam.

Anouar Kbibech, the head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), said he was “concerned over the direction the public debate is taking.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital, condemned the bans as he visited Paris Thursday.

“I don’t think anyone should tell women what they can and can’t wear. Full stop,” he told London’s Evening Standard newspaper.

Around 50 people held a protest outside the French embassy in London, recreating a beach and carrying placards saying “Burkini ban is racist.”

France firmly separates religion and public life and was the first European country to ban the wearing of the Islamic face veil in public in 2010.