France Ends Controversial Burkini Ban

The so-called burkini, a body-covering bathing suit worn by Muslim women, caused quite an uproar on French beaches this summer.

First, about 30 French towns instituted bans on the burkini, but one by one, French courts overturned them, calling them unconstitutional.

Still, with Islamaphobia at a fever pitch in much of France, efforts to curb the Burkini rage on. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has thrown his full support behind the bans, and chances are the rhetoric will continue given Sarkozy is running for president again. “We can’t leave these mayors to deal with this problem alone,” he said in a recent radio interview. “There needs to be a law to keep these Islamic bathing suits out of our swimming pools and off our beaches.”

Sarkozy even threatened to attempt to change the constitution to fully ban the item.

With recent terrorist attacks by self-proclaimed Islamist radicals in France, public opinion tends to agree with Sarkozy; a recent poll showed more than 60 percent of French people support the bans.

The Muslim veil is legal in France, except in public schools, where students must appear equal and not show their religious affiliation in secular schools.