Burkini fine: Is this really the fight against extremism?

What happened in Nice on the night of July 14th earlier this year whilst the French were celebrating Bastille Day in Nice was a truly despicable act of hate and horror. 84 people died at the hands of an extremist who drove his lorry into crowds.

The French and in particular those living in Nice are no doubt still hurting and equally nervous about future attacks, but do they really believe that banning Burkini’s on French beaches is in any way an effective tool to fight terrorism or to bring different religious communities together?

Pictures were flashed around the world today of French police ordering a Muslim woman to take off her Islamic style swimming costume –headscarf and tunic -on a beach in Nice.

The police officers gave her a fine which cited that she was “not wearing an outfit respecting good morals and secularism”.

A witness to the scene, Mathilde Cousin, confirmed the incident. “The saddest thing was that people were shouting ‘go home’, some were applauding the police,” she said. “Her daughter was crying.”

If we just focus on the language of the contravention: ‘an outfit that does not respect good morals’, which in effect says going topless or even naked on public designated beaches does respect good morals, whilst Islamic modesty doesn’t, then where is the French ‘liberty' for the women to choose?

For those extremists in France and beyond, they could not have been given an easier propaganda tool to highlight the way the Muslim faith is being humiliated and penalised for showing modesty.

This gesture of French defiance in the aftermath of the Nice tragedy will sadly not bring Muslim and Christian communities together, rather it will tell the vast majority of French Muslims 'we don’t like you and we don’t want you', which ironically will surely have the opposite effect of 'healing the nation'.

Simon Woolley