Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

France is right to ban the burkini

May I interrupt, for a moment, the howls of anguish from those liberals in uproar at the news that authorities in France are banning burkinis on their beaches? I’d like to relate an incident that occurred earlier this month in France.

It involved my girlfriend, who was on her way from Paris to visit her grandmother in eastern France. An hour into her journey she pulled into a service station to fill up with petrol. On returning to her car she made a small sign of the cross as she slid into her seat. Navigating one’s way on a French motorway during the height of summer can be a fraught experience, particularly for the nervous driver. Suddenly there was a violent thump on her window. She jumped with fright. A man stooped so his face was level with hers. ‘Why do you make that sign?’ he asked, menacingly. ‘You don’t make the sign of the cross in France.’ The man then ran his eyes over my girlfriend’s summer dress. ‘And next time you go out,’ he sneered, ‘cover yourself up.’ She was still in shock when she phoned moments later. Did you get his number plate? I asked. She hadn’t, she’d been too bewildered. But she’d spotted the headscarved woman in the front passenger seat.

I have a fund of similar stories from female friends in France. There’s the one who was insulted by two women in headscarves while out jogging because she had on a pair of shorts; the friend who no longer travels on the Paris metro after a certain hour because, as a Muslim, she’s fed up with being insulted by men of her religion because she dares to wear a skirt and blouse; and the one who sold her baby’s car seat through an ad in the local paper. The man met her asking price but refused to shake the hand of a woman.

Then there are the cases outside my immediate milieu.

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