French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve warned against stigmatising Muslims as a furore over the banning of burkinis grew with the emergence of pictures of police surrounding a veiled woman on a beach.

“The implementation of secularism, and the option of adopting such decrees must not lead to stigmatisation or the creation of hostility between French people,” said Cazeneuve on Wednesday, after a meeting with the head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM).

“I am so ashamed,” French feminist Caroline De Haas tweeted.

On Thursday, France’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, will examine a request by the Human Rights League to scrap the ban.

Lower courts have upheld the bans, with a tribunal in Nice, where a Tunisian man used a truck to mow down a crowd of Bastille Day revellers on July 14, saying the burkini could “be felt as a defiance or a provocation exacerbating tensions felt by” the community.

France enforces a strict form of secularism, aimed at keeping religion out of public life.

Islamic dress has long been a subject of debate in the country, which was the first in Europe to ban the Islamic face veil in public in 2010, six years after outlawing the headscarf and other conspicuous religious symbols in state schools.

However, ordinary citizens are allowed to wear the headscarf in public.

Dozens of French towns and villages, mostly on the Cote d’Azur, have banned beachwear that “conspicuously” shows a person’s religion, a measure aimed at the full-body swimsuit dubbed “burkini” but which has also been used against women wearing long clothes and a headscarf.

CFCM president Anouar Kbibech requested an urgent meeting with Cazeneuve after pictures emerged of a veiled woman sitting on a beach in Nice removing her tunic, watched by four policemen.

The images, which went viral on social media, were interpreted as showing the woman being pressured by police into removing the garment.

[Source:-ALJAZEERA]