Sumário:Background: The 2010 French ban. Developments outside France. Back to France : what the uproar around the burkini reveals on the face-veil issue -- Critiques of the face-veil ban and a partial solution: The liberal critique. The republican critique -- The face-veil as blasphemy against the Western state's political community: The face-veil as marker of a different civilizational structure. As the law derives from membership, so must the law protect membership. The preservation of national identity : between legitimate political concern and legally recognizable interest, in France and beyond.