Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, caused uproar on Tuesday after he invoked the national symbol of the republic, Marianne, as proof the burkini was an affront to Gallic values. She isn’t wearing a veil because she’s free,” he said during a Socialist rally on Monday night. Mathilde Larrere, an expert on the French Revolution, said Marianne was an allegory and the use of her naked breast “just an artistic code” borrowed from antiquity and nothing to do with femininity. While revolutionaries opted for the naked Marianne, more conservative republicans backed the clothed figure, even banning bare breasts at one stage. But he added that such decrees “fuel religious intolerance and the stigmatization of Muslims in France, especially women.”

Source: National Post August 31, 2016 13:30 UTC