Of Bodies and Burkinis: Institutional Islamophobia, Islamic Dress, and the Colonial Condition
| Author | Kimberley Brayson |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12142 |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 46, NUMBER 1, MARCH 2019
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 55±82
Of Bodies and Burkinis: Institutional Islamophobia, Islamic
Dress, and the Colonial Condition
Kimberley Brayson*
The 2016 burkini controversy and the criminalization of visibly Muslim
women in France is a violent reminder of the precarity of colonial
bodies in public space. These laws demonstrate the ongoing manage-
ment of colonial bodies and communities which speaks over time from
historical colonization to present, and future, neocolonial narratives.
This article moves beyond the dominant logics of security and gender
oppression in the Islamic dress debate which, it is argued, are invoked
in a strategic manner to obfuscate the colonial condition and engender
a normative, institutional Islamophobia in the public-political imagi-
nary. It critiques the instrumental use of law in creating political space
for such agendas and analyses the whiteness of public space and
institutions. The article insists that it is necessary to acknowledge the
epistemic lens of the colonial condition in the Islamic dress debate and
critically reflects on the alienation and reduced capacity for action of
bodies wearing Islamic dress.
INTRODUCTION
On 24 August 2016 the Islamic dress debate erupted again, on a beach in
Nice. A Muslim woman lying on the beach was approached by four armed
policemen and asked to remove items of clothing that were considered to
contravene a rule enacted in the wake of the Bastille Day attack in Nice,
1
55
*University of Sussex, Department of Law, School of Law, Politics and
Sociology, Freeman Building, Brighton BN1 9QE, England
K.D.Brayson@sussex.ac.uk
I would like to thank Bal Sokhi-Bulley, Tarik Kochi, Jo Bridgeman, and the journal's
anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions on previous versions of this article.
1Conseil d'Etat, CE decision du 26 septembre 2016, no. 403578.
ß2019 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2019 Cardiff University Law School
which had been claimed by Islamic State.
2
She was also issued with an on-
the-spot fine. The term `Muslim women' is inherently problematic for the
universalism that the term propagates, denying cultural variations and
specificities.
3
For the purposes of this article, the term should not be
understood as essentializing Muslim women as a homogenous group. The
term Muslim women is therefore employed in a strategic manner,
4
and is
understood in its situated and materialist context as disclosing many
divergent realities.
The controversies surrounding Islamic dress depend on the situated
context in which they take place. Context notwithstanding, the persistence
and unresolved nature of these controversies unifies varying discourses on
Islamic dress. The term Islamic dress is understood as constituted through
difference to include the hijab, a veil or headscarf; jilbab, full black dress
head to toe; burqa, a cloak covering the whole body including the face;
niqab, the face veil. The burkini can now be added to this list.
5
The
administrative rule in question on the beach in Nice refers to modes of dress
that do not cover the face and follows the criminalization of visibly Muslim
women through the enactment of French law 2010-1192
6
which prohibits
wearing full-face coverings in French public space. The oft-witnessed
56
2 H. Karimi, `No liberty, no equality, no fraternity: The death of French secularism'
Middle East Eye, 3 September 2016, at <http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/no-
liberty-no-equality-and-no-fraternity-death-french-secularism-1248910892>.
3 N.J. Hirschmann, `Western Feminism, Eastern Veiling, and the Question of Free
Agency' (1998) 5 Constellations 346.
4 G.C. Spivak, The Post-colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, (1990) 11.
5 The burkini can be likened to a wetsuit with a hood. The term is derived from
`bikini', a term coined in 1946 by Louis ReÂard in Paris to describe the bathing suit.
ReÂard named the bathing suit after the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands to convey
its explosive effect, see <https://www.reard.com/en-uk/history>. The OED cites the
etymology as follows: `Bikini, the name of an atoll in the Marshall Islands where an
atomic bomb test was carried out in July, 1946' and attributes two meanings to the
word bikini:
1. A large explosion. 2. [ < French, apparently < sense < 1.] A scanty two-piece
beach garment worn by women . . . [Le Monde Illustre
Â, Aou
Ãt 1947, 929/1: Bikini,
ce mot cinglant comme l'explosion me
Ãme .. . correspondait au niveau du
ve
Ãtement de plage a
Áun ane
Âantissement de la surface ve
Ãtue; a
Áune minimisation
extre
Ãme de la pudeur.]
The French text links the garment with the Bikini explosion. The colonial origins of
the term bikini are therefore acknowledged. The Bikini Atoll hosted the most
destructive atomic bomb tests to date, displacing native populations, and imperial
actions persist today. The imperial inception of bikini as a garment signifies the
appropriation by white women of the sexual allure attributed to native women in the
enduring imperial imagination. `The bikini rehearses the central paradox of sexual
modernity as some form of going native': N. Hoad, `World Piece: What the Miss
World Pageant Can Teach about Globalization' (2004) 58 Cultural Critique, 56, at
62, 61±3.
6 At <ht tps :// www .le gij fra nce .go uv. fr/ affi ch Text e.d o?c idT ext e=J ORF TEX T
000022911670&categorieLien=id>.
ß2019 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2019 Cardiff University Law School
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