It does insist that religious belief and religious practice should not be accepted as being part of public life.

It should remain a private matter, in which case it will not be troubled.

Hello, I'm Neil McGregor, and in this series of podcasts, I'm looking at objects to see how shared beliefs help shape societies.

In this final set of programmes, we explore the relationship between faith and the political sphere. In this episode, we look at states that have tried to impose uniformity of faith on all their citizens.

This is the BBC.

I'm in Paris in the Rue Jean-Pierre. on all their citizens. This is the BBC.

I'm in Paris in the Rue Jean-Pierre Thinbo,

one of the city's centres for Islamic women's fashion.

But alongside the clothes I can see in the windows in front of me is another item that has proved too daring, even for the French.

If you'd risked wearing one of these on any

number of Riviera beaches in the summer of 2016, you might well have found the state stepping in

to stop you, the police warning you against the disrespect you were showing for good morals and

secularism, not because you were wearing too little, but because you are wearing too much. These are

balkinis, full-body swimsuits, designed for women who want to observe Islamic modesty codes

while on the beach or in the sea. But in August 2016, with France still coming to terms with a

terrorist attack in Nice, several French Riviera towns banned women from wearing them.

National politicians queued up to support the ban.

In the words of the then Prime Minister, the Burkini is not a fashion.

It's the expression of a political project, a counter-society.

How could a swimsuit designed in Australia cause such a constitutional storm in France?

The answer is simple, because it was about faith and the public role of faith in French society.

And the question is clear, how does a strong central state like France, with an unambiguous view of what

...