The Muslim Times has the best collection about Hijab and Secularism

Source: The Daily Beast

By Christopher Dickey

The ban in Cannes of the Muslim bathing suit known as a ‘burqini’ was intended as a statement of secularism. In fact, it’ s a declaration of intolerance.

PARIS — Not long after the horror in Nice a month ago—as soon as the police barricades were cleared, and while flowers and stuffed toys were piling up in memory of the 85 people who died—topless sunbathers were back on the beach beside the azure waters just below the scene of carnage on the Promenade des Anglais.

The banality of bare breasts seemed a statement of defiant normality, given where we were and what had happened: a two-bit sexual hustler with a Muslim background looking to turn his shitty little life into a global spectacle, apparently had embraced the publicity campaign of the so-called Islamic State and driven a truck through the crowd that had been watching Bastille Day fireworks.

But nothing was going to stop French sun worshippers at the height of summer. The topless women on the beach were mostly senior citizens, but that’s the Riviera for you. Men, whether pot-bellied or buff, wear Speedos or their moral equivalent. And younger women these days tend to wear fairly classic bikinis.

So, what is the dress code on the sun-drenched strands of the Côte d’Azur? Until this last month it was pretty much according to your taste.

But now, if you are a Muslim woman who wants to cover her body at the beach, whether to satisfy yourself, the man in your life, Allah, your dermatologist, or all of the above, that’s become a problem, and the city of Cannes—famous for its film festival and the starlets flaunting their two-piece splendor—has declared that your outfit, widely known as a “burqini,” is banned. A French court, moreover, has backed that up.

As with so much in the overlapping debates about immigration, integration, Islam, and terror in France, this measure smacks of political posturing. It’s not as if the Croisette in Cannes is crawling with women in these designer body suits (which is what many burqinis are), and it’s unlikely the rule will be enforced against the Saudi and other Gulf princesses coming in from their yachts—certainly not in this depressed tourist season.

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