Muslim mothers accosted at school

The Mayor of a Corsican town has moved to calm tensions after two men prevented a pair of Muslim mothers from entering a nursery school.
Police and school authorities had to intervene when the women, who were wearing headscarves and loose-fitting djellaba robes according to local newspaper Corse Matin, were stopped by two brothers at the gates to the school in Bonifacio, on the southern tip of the island.
Local prosecutor Eric Bouillard later said the men, 'thought it was not right that their children [were] not allowed to wear religious symbols at school and yet these women could enter wearing their headscarves.
After the incident on Monday, September 5, mayor Jean-Charles Orsucci chaired a hastily-arranged public meeting in the town hall.
He reminded an audience of about 100 residents that no laws had been broken and that a ban on the wearing of 'religiously ostentatious symbols' in schools extended only to staff and students, not their parents. He also denied reports that had been circulating that an alternative menu had been introduced for Muslim pupils at school canteens.
Last month, the mayor of Sisco, Ange-Pierre Vivoni, was among the local authority leaders to impose a burkini ban on beaches in the resort following trouble between tourists and locals. He said at the time it was 'for the safety of property and people in the town because I risked having deaths on my hands'.