Woman in a burkini: What it's like to be forced to leave a French beach
The sight of burkini-wearing women getting kicked off French beaches by police became a point for immense controversy over the European summer.
That incident followed a ban on the swimming garment from a number of the country's beaches in July, with women facing fines if they are caught wearing one.
Overturned in one French town, it's puzzling ban for Zeynab Alshelh, a 23-year-old woman from Sydney, Australia, who just appeared on the television program, Sunday Night.
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She laughed off any suggestions that the burkini or veils like the hijab are oppressive, instead talking about her experience of wearing the hijab since she was 10 years old.
"I thought it was such a beautiful thing, everyone around me ... they wore it so beautifully. I just wanted be a part of that," Alshelh explained.
"It is a symbol of my faith, it is a symbol of my religion, it is a symbol of Islam and to go out there and wear the hijab, it helps people focus on what's inside rather than what's on the outside for me," she said.
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As an act of solidarity with other Muslim women, Alshelh travelled to a beach in the French Riviera with her family, to understand what would happen if she wore the burkini.
"I just wanted to see it for myself. I just wanted to see what is going on here," she told the program.
"Why is this happening? I wanted to speak to the girls that have gone through all this stuff ... hopefully if there's anything we can do to help these girls live a normal life."
It seemed like a matter of moments before the locals began to show hostilities, with Alshelh and her family told to leave the beach otherwise police would be called.
"It starts off at the beach, and God knows where it ends ... they are seeing something that's not there, and I kind of want to just open their minds. But it's not under my control," she said.
Alshelh later took to the streets with a local activist in a burkini, holding a sign saying "ask me about my burkini," with a mixed response from passers-by.
France's state-sanctioned discrimination towards Muslim dress, condoned under its secular policy of laïcité, is something Alshelh finds "difficult to comprehend."
"In Australia there's some racism here and there, whatever. But the government does not say it's okay to be racist towards anyone," she said.
Amid the furore, sales of the burkini have actually spiked according to its Australian creator, Aheda Zanetti. Most of these orders are from non-Muslims, and she's been getting a lot of messages from skin cancer survivors.
"A lot of the correspondence was that they are survivors of skin cancer and they've always been looking for something like this, and saying, 'Thank God we've found someone like this producing such a swimsuit,'" she told reporters in August.
As for Alshelh, she just wants to be treated equally. "There shouldn't be a connection between terrorism and the burkini. There shouldn't be a connection between terrorism and Islam altogether," she said.
