US Muslim Brotherhood Group Condemns French Ban on Modest Swimwear, Alleges Persecution of Muslims by French Government

On 25 June 2022, the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) issued a press release con­demn­ing a French ban on mod­est swimwear, call­ing the rul­ing “dis­crim­i­na­to­ry” and accus­ing the French gov­ern­ment of per­se­cut­ing Mus­lims. Accord­ing to the press release:

Once again, the French gov­ern­ment is tar­get­ing Mus­lims with big­ot­ed leg­is­la­tion com­plete­ly con­trary to reli­gious free­dom. The ludi­crous rea­son giv­en by the court is fur­ther evi­dence of the lengths French author­i­ties are will­ing to go to in order to pre­vent Mus­lims from prac­tic­ing their faith. We con­demn this dis­crim­i­na­to­ry rul­ing and the French government’s broad­er cam­paign of per­se­cu­tion against the Mus­lim community.

Read the rest here.

In June 2022, France’s top admin­is­tra­tive court upheld a ban on body-cov­er­ing swimwear in pub­lic pools for reli­gious rea­sons, argu­ing that it vio­lat­ed the prin­ci­ple of gov­ern­ment neu­tral­i­ty toward reli­gion. In May 2022, the south­ern French city of Greno­ble autho­rized all swimwear, includ­ing body-cov­er­ing swimwear, spark­ing a legal bat­tle with the government.

French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron’s state­ments against reli­gious sep­a­ratism and the French government’s broad crack­down on Islamist groups have long drawn ire from orga­ni­za­tions tied to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB). In Novem­ber 2020, CAIR issued a state­ment con­demn­ing Macron, accus­ing him of Islam­o­pho­bia and warn­ing his nation was steer­ing towards the colo­nial racism of its past. In Octo­ber of the same year, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that CAIR had warned Mus­lims against trav­el­ing to France, say­ing they may face dan­ger and dis­crim­i­na­tion due to the crack­down on groups accused of rad­i­cal­ism. In Decem­ber 2020, we report­ed that CAIR had offered office space and logis­ti­cal resources to a banned French Islam­o­pho­bia watch­dog. In Feb­ru­ary 2021, we report­ed that a coali­tion of 36 NGOs, some tied to the GMB and includ­ing CAIR, had tak­en action against France at the UN Human Rights Coun­cil (UNHCR) over its alleged sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­tion of Muslims.

CAIR describes itself as “a grass­roots civ­il rights and advo­ca­cy group and as “America’s largest Islam­ic civ­il lib­er­ties group.” It was found­ed in 1994 by three offi­cers of the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Pales­tine, part of the US Hamas infra­struc­ture at that time. Doc­u­ments dis­cov­ered dur­ing the ter­ror­ism tri­al of the Holy Land Foun­da­tion con­firmed that the founders and cur­rent lead­ers of CAIR were part of the Pales­tine Com­mit­tee of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and that CAIR itself is part of the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The orga­ni­za­tion is led by Nihad Awad, its long­stand­ing Exec­u­tive Direc­tor and one of the three founders. Recent­ly, CAIR has been gen­er­al­ly por­trayed in the media as a Mus­lim civ­il rights group.

For more on CAIR, go here.