BY KEVIN SAWYER – Another city in France has banned Muslim women from wearing their burkinis in public after a weekend beach brawl that left several seriously injured. The brawl began after a group of Muslim men took offense to tourists taking photos of women wearing their burkinis on the beach. It took over 100 police officers to quell the riot.
A burkini is the accepted form of beachwear for Muslim women. The suit covers all of their body except for their face, feet and hands. It is authorized as being the proper beach wear by Muslim authorities concerned with the proper display of Muslim female modesty. The brawl happened in the Corsican town of Sisco and details are somewhat muddled with regard to how the brawl, that left five seriously injured, actually started.
The mayor of Sisco, a self proclaimed socialist, announced an immediate ban on the wearing of burkinis in public to, he said, “protect the population”. This is the third city or town in France to execute such a ban on the Muslim female swimsuits this year. The brawl apparently began as tourists from the North Africa region began taking photographs of the Muslim females swimming in their burkinis. The locals, apparently, took offense to that and began to attack the tourists.
The attackers fought with rocks and broken bottles and five vehicles were burned to the ground while several other vehicles were victims of slashed tires. There were nearly 70 people involved in the massive fight and it took a while for the 100 police officers to get things under control.
The Sisco mayor, Ange Pierre Vivoni, said that his burkini ban is, “not against the Muslim religion but to avoid the spread of fundamentalism. I am not a racist. I want to protect the population, notably my area’s Muslim population because I think that they are the main victims in these extremist provocations.”
Who the provocateurs were seems to be a matter of perspective. Were they the tourists taking the pictures or the Muslim men who attacked them for doing so? The mayor seemed unclear about that.
While a traditionally, and historically, Catholic Christian country, France has been in upheaval for many years as an unstoppable flow of Muslim immigrants have come into the country and the religion of Secular Humanism has bullied its way into dominance as it has in so many other areas of the world.
France has been plagued by brutal fundamentalist Islamic attacks in the past year that has had the country, and its politicians, on high alert for any possible discord or Islamic fundamentalist violence. In 2010, France became the first country in the world to ban Muslim dress, especially female dress, that covered the face such as the burka.
PHOTO CREDITS Mercury News