Rabat – A Moroccan woman residing abroad has denounced the discrimination she faced for wearing a burkini in a pool in Morocco. The Moroccan Residing Abroad (MRE), named Salma, took to TikTok last week to vent her frustration, saying that three French tourists – two men and a woman – took offense to her wearing a burkini at the pool.
The caption of the TikTok video reads: “You leave Europe and go to Morocco, a Muslim country, to spend your holidays and feel free to wear whatever you want … White French people calling security because they feel uncomfortable by us wearing a burkini in the pool.” According to Salma, the incident took place in the “Club Evasion Mirleft” in the city of Mirleft, 130 kilometers south of Agadir.
While Salma and her family were enjoying their time by the pool, their joy to visit Morocco quickly shifted to bitterness after three French tourists visited the pool and started “staring” at them and “complaining” to the lifeguard, she said.
The lifeguard then approached Salma and her family, “politely” asking them to leave the pool and come back another time, she added. Stunned by the guard’s request, Salma refused to leave.
According to Salma, the three tourists then started screaming and making a scene at the pool. As the MRE asked them to leave, they started taking pictures of them and insulting them, she added.
Read also: French Court Suspends Law Allowing Burkini in Public Pools
“I told them that if they didn’t like this, they shouldn’t come to a Muslim country in the first place and impose their mentality in our country,” Salma indicated.
“Disappointed” with how the hotel staff handled the incident, Salma said that the “security didn’t do much about that except for trying to calm them [the French tourists] down.” While security “didn’t completely side with them, they didn’t want to speak against them either,” she explained.
“After seeing that we didn’t want to go out, they just put their clothes on and left the pool, because they didn’t want to ‘share the pool’ with us,” Salma concluded.
Morocco World News (MWN) contacted the hotel for comments. A receptionist at the hotel told MWN that he had no idea about the incident, but stressed that “it is nobody’s business” what the woman in question wears, “whether they are a foreign tourist or a local one.”
He added that the people asking the woman to exit the pool for wearing a burkini “are the ones that need to leave, not her,” defending people’s right to wear as they please.
The Burkini, a head-to-toe swimsuit intended for Muslim women, was banned in several French cities over the past years. Despite being home to the largest Muslim population in Europe, France was the first European country to ban burkinis in 2011.
French authorities have strictly enforced the ban, which was extended to anyone wearing more clothes that the country deems necessary. France’s highest court, which suspended the wearing of burkinis in public pools, claims that the attire goes against the country’s “principles of secularism and neutrality of public services.”
