French prime minister Manuel Valls issued a stern rebuke to The New York Times on Monday after the newspaper published an article he claimed painted a “false” and “intolerable” picture of what life as a Muslim woman is like in France, reports FRANCE 24.
The US newspaper published the article on Friday after appealing for Muslim women living in Europe to send in their views on the recent burkini bans in a number of French coastal towns.
“What emerged was a portrait of life as a Muslim woman, veiled or not, in parts of Europe where terrorism has put people on edge. One French term was used dozens of times: ‘un combat,’ (a struggle) to live day to day,” the article, by journalist Lillie Dremeaux, said.
The article, also published in French, quoted a number of Muslim women living in France, many of whom said they had been the subject of stigmatisation and racist abuse that had worsened following recent terror attacks in the country.
“I am insulted, spat on (literally) every day in the subway, on the bus, at school. Yet I have never insulted or hit someone,” one woman in the French city of Lyon told the newspaper. “I am afraid of having to wear a yellow crescent on my clothes one day, like the Star of David for Jews not so long ago.”
Another woman said that: “To be a Muslim woman in France is to live in an apartheid system of which the beach bans are just the latest incarnation. ... I think that French Muslim women would be justified to request asylum in the United States, for instance, given how many persecutions we are subjected to.”
However, Valls, who has voiced support for banning the burkini, said he felt the article misrepresented what life is really like for the majority of Muslims in France.
The article “paints an intolerable picture, as it is false, of France, the country of lights and of liberties", Valls wrote in a response published by the Huffington Post on Monday.