A French court has suspended a by-law banning wearing religious symbols on a public beach in a Paris suburb in a case that challenged the by-law which “violates the principals of the Republic" and amounts to "religious discrimination".
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The rule “violates a fundamental freedom, the freedom of religious belief”, argued Sefen Guezguez, the lawyer for the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.
The Versailles Administrative Court ruled on Saturday that the municipality could not stop beach-goers from wearing religious signs, pending a final ruling on the merits of the case.
The case, filed by CCIF, complained that two Muslim women were denied the right to enter Wissous beach, about 30 kilometers south of Paris, for donning Islamic veil or hijab.
“The children were shocked and did not understand why they could not play on the inflatables like every other child,” Abdelkrim Benkouhi, president of the local Islamic association Al Madina, said.
The by-law was taken to affect by Wissous Mayor Richard Trinquier, of the right-wing UMP party, had been at the beach the previous Saturday and had made the decision to turn the women away.
Trinquier told the hearing the beach rule protected France’s commitment to secularism.
Denying that he was acting against the practice of religion, he claimed that there had been an increasing presence of religious symbols in public, which were “an obstacle to living together”.
Lawyer Guezguez told the hearing the mayor was confusing secularism with the eradication of all religious expression.
“The law is absolutely not applicable in that way,” he said.
“In the past, veiled women went to Wissous beach without the least problem…. I do not see how life is improved by excluding one part of the population,” he said.
Islam sees hijab as an obligatory code of dress for Muslim women.
The French obsession with the Muslim veil in all its forms is partly rooted in the country’s attachment to secularism.
Over the past decade, France has passed a number of controversial laws restricting the wearing of religious symbols in public areas.
In 2004, France banned Muslims from wearing hijab, an obligatory code of dress, in public places. Several European countries followed the French example.
France also outlawed the wearing of face-veil in public in 2011. /SR
