Beyond the Summer’s Burkini Debate

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/opinion/beyond-the-summers-burkini-debate.html

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PANTIN, France — Where I live in Pantin, a banlieue, or suburb, northeast of Paris, the brouhaha this summer in France over the burkini — body-covering swimwear whose name is an amalgam of burqa and bikini — seems very much at odds with the positive and inclusive changes occurring here.

In the wake of the Bastille Day terrorist attack in Nice that killed 86 people, about 30 French mayors banned the burkini on local beaches, saying it was a “provocation” to see women in Muslim garb when people were still grieving. Senior politicians, from the Socialist prime minister, Manuel Valls, on the left to Les Républicains candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and the National Front candidate Marine Le Pen on the right, vociferously defended the bans.

The politics are obvious. Presidential elections are coming next spring, and suspicion of Muslims is running high. Many feel the country’s culture and values are under attack and see the burkini as a sign of women’s oppression and an affront to French secularism.

The residents of Pantin, located in the department of Seine-St.-Denis, are no strangers to such fears. Radical imams have made inroads here, as elsewhere in France, among an immigrant Muslim population suffering from high unemployment and social exclusion. At the same time, the far-right National Front is striving to gain support among a population spooked by terrorism and joblessness. In response, many here have chosen to tackle the problems that feed extremism by encouraging broader participation in cultural and civic life.

Take Djazia Larachiche, who wears a head scarf out of religious conviction and who serves as a member of the advisory council set up by the mayor, Bertrand Kern, to give Pantin residents a voice in local decisions. On a recent visit to a community garden she helped found, she exchanged a “Salaam aleikum” greeting with a man on the street and a warm “Bonjour” with a young French and Irish couple who are part of the garden crew.

When I asked her about the burkini bans, she said: “My first reaction was: Once again, we are the scapegoat, that always focuses on veiled women, as if there were no other problems in France. Some people on the beach are topless. Some are covered. It’s a question of personal liberty.” And she warned: “It’s going to backfire. You exclude people from public life, they will just retreat. It doesn’t help us move in the direction of accepting each other.”

Ms. Larachiche participates in a dance workshop led by Delphine Cammal, a choreographer who co-directs the Compagnie La Mangrove, which uses dance to break down cultural stereotypes and encourage first-generation immigrants to express themselves. For Ms. Cammal, the key to living together is creating together. “When diverse people come together to create something new, that really changes the social dynamic,” she said.

A diverse community coming together to create something new is the idea behind the recent move of the French advertising giant BETC out of Paris to the Magasins Généraux, a former grain warehouse in Pantin. Relocating to the banlieue is a bold move, but, for the founding co-chairman Rémi Babinet, Paris’s banlieues represent an opportunity. The company made the choice to move, he said, “because the future of Paris will be largely determined by the banlieue, which is young, entrepreneurial, with a wealth of cultural diversity.”

The warehouse has been renovated to make the building open to the public, with a cobbled “street” running through the ground floor, a radio station, restaurants and a space to host cultural events. The point is inclusion.

Political moves like burkini bans, Mr. Babinet said, only serve to “stigmatize an entire population.” And that would undermine the effort that is underway to reinvent Paris as a metropolis that embraces its surrounding suburbs. At a time of deep anxiety, cultural diversity as it’s lived in Pantin offers an example of a way forward.