A French court has suspended municipal by-laws banning religious symbols from a public beach in the Paris suburb of Wissous, under which two mothers wearing Muslim headscarves had been refused access, reports FRANCE 24.
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.
Emergency legal action by the French government and the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) targeted by-laws enacted in June to police the temporary beach installed in Wissous for the summer.
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. Wissous is about 30 kilometres south of Paris and is a popular summer leisure spot.
Trinquier told the hearing the beach rule protected France’s commitment to secularism. He said it was in no way an obstacle to the practice of religion, but that there had been an increasing presence of religious symbols in public, which were “an obstacle to living together”.
The applicants argued that the by-law forbidding religious symbols on the beach established by the mayor amounted to “religious discrimination” that “violates the principles of the Republic”.
Read more of this report from FRANCE 24.