蜜芽传媒

I am just back from a fabulous but disturbing holiday in France. Fabulous because of the glorious weather, wonderful scenery, great food and wine. Disturbing because France is in turmoil. Soldiers and police patrol the streets toting guns following the Paris and Nice atrocities, and the response to the Islamist threat has been in part to scapegoat Muslim women over how they dress on the beach.

At the coast, I watched a few Muslim women in headscarves walking on the promenade but none ventured to the sand where westernised women sunbathed topless or in bikinis. Their avoidance may well have been because around two dozen mayors of seaside towns have banned the head-to-toe beachwear known as a burkini. This week came the troubling photo of a Muslim woman ordered to remove her cover-up by armed police.

During my stay I argued with a French friend who insisted the authorities must ensure women鈥檚 freedom by banning restrictive clothing. The irony was that we were visiting a gorge, surrounded by women in wetsuits about to descend to the water below. Nobody minds about covered up nuns on the beach either.

That the burkini has become such a battlefield in France is not only down to current tensions over terrorism but is also due to the nation鈥檚 belief in laicete, the concept of secularism which limits religion鈥檚 influence. Yet it is also supposed to embrace freedom of conscience. The assumption has been that Muslim women are not free in their choice of what to wear. Other Abrahamic faiths have traditionally required women to cover up due to notions about modesty and reverence. Orthodox Jewish women wear wigs to hide their own hair while Catholic women used to veil theirs at Mass.

Although veils are no longer required by Catholic rules, some younger women prefer them. This is partly a statement about their faith but also because they reject contemporary objectification of women鈥檚 bodies. And if young Muslims, like young Catholics, choose to cover up for this reason, should the authorities be telling them what to do?

Back in 2010, during his visit to the UK, Pope Benedict XVI offered his views to parliament about faith and reason. Religion is not competent to provide political solutions, he said, and reason can be a corrective to it. But he warned that reason too can fall prey to distortion if it is manipulated by ideology in such a way that human dignity is compromised. When French police fine a woman for covering up on the beach, Pope Benedict鈥檚 warning about ideology damaging dignity seems prophetic.

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