Monty92
08-25-2016, 11:15 AM
From the Economist...
"The government’s defence of the burkini ban rests on worries about religious tension and public order after recent terrorist attacks, coupled with two underlying principles. The first is laïcité, a strict form of secularism enshrined by law in 1905 after a struggle against authoritarian Catholicism. This principle is supposed to keep religion out of public life, and has been the basis of previous French bans: on the headscarf (and other “conspicuous” religious symbols, including the Jewish kippah and oversized crucifixes) in state schools (in 2004), and the face-covering niqab in all public places (in 2010). The other principle is women’s equality. It may appear bizarre, or frivolous, to argue that women should bare more flesh. But many on the French left in particular regard the need to protect women from a male-imposed doctrine as being at stake—and are willing to put it even before liberty, another founding value of republican France."
"The government’s defence of the burkini ban rests on worries about religious tension and public order after recent terrorist attacks, coupled with two underlying principles. The first is laïcité, a strict form of secularism enshrined by law in 1905 after a struggle against authoritarian Catholicism. This principle is supposed to keep religion out of public life, and has been the basis of previous French bans: on the headscarf (and other “conspicuous” religious symbols, including the Jewish kippah and oversized crucifixes) in state schools (in 2004), and the face-covering niqab in all public places (in 2010). The other principle is women’s equality. It may appear bizarre, or frivolous, to argue that women should bare more flesh. But many on the French left in particular regard the need to protect women from a male-imposed doctrine as being at stake—and are willing to put it even before liberty, another founding value of republican France."