12 Issues and Stories that Captured the American Muslim Communities in 2016

August: On Burkini Bans

Seemed like most Muslim communities got on board with the burkini ban story out of France in August – a story that held our attention nearly as much as the summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. With the beach community of Cannes declaring the full-coverage (mostly Muslim) burkini swimsuit as illegal, debate raged on if France was abandoning its democratic principles. Soon enough the ban was overturned, and in this article by Rim-Sarah Alouane, she wrote that the ban was “ … not only revealing of how little these proponents know about what laïcité and secularism mean, but also of an anti-Muslim sentiment so entrenched that some will openly advocate for the restriction religious freedom in order to target religious minorities (specifically Muslim) whom they consider to be a threat to the existence of the nation.”

Next: September and the Playboy Controversy