France's highest administrative court will decide on Friday whether to overturn the ban on wearing the full-body burkini swimsuit, which has sparked controversy at home and abroad.

The State Council heard arguments on Thursday from the Human Rights League and an anti-Islamophobia group which is seeking to reverse a decision by the southern town of Villeneuve-Loubet to ban the Islamic swimsuit.

The ruling, due at 3:00pm (13:00 GMT), is likely to set a precedent for about 30 French towns which have banned the burkini, mostly along the sun-drenched southeast coast.

A court in the Riviera resort of Nice upheld the ban this week.

The burkini bans have triggered a fierce debate about the wearing of the full-body swimsuit, women's rights and the French state's strictly guarded secularism.

WATCH: French 'burkini' ban - secularism or security?

President Francois Hollande said on Thursday that life in France "supposes that everyone sticks to the rules and that there is neither provocation nor stigmatisation".

Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Thursday condemned any "stigmatisation" of Muslims, but maintained that the burkini was "a political sign of religious proselytising".

"We are not at war with Islam ... the French republic is welcoming [to Muslims], we are protecting them against discrimination," he told BFMTV.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who announced that he will run in the 2017 election in, said if he becomes leader again he would ban the full-body swimsuit.

So Sarkozy calls the burkini a 'provocation.' Whether women cover or uncover their bodies, seems we're always, always 'asking for it.' — J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 25, 2016

'Viral' photo sets off anger

Anger over the issue was further inflamed this week when photographs in the British media, which quickly went viral, showed armed police surrounding a woman in a headscarf on a Nice beach as she removed a long-sleeved top.

The office of Nice's mayor denied that the woman had been forced to remove clothing, telling the AFP news agency that she was showing police the swimsuit she was wearing under her top, over a pair of leggings, when the picture was taken.

The police fined her and she left the beach, the officials added.

1: Siam just wore clothes, not burkini.

2: French morality police fined her anyway.

3: Citizens since >3 generations. pic.twitter.com/yXebi3TCea — b9AcE (@b9AcE) August 24, 2016

In a sign of the divisions within the Socialist government on the issue, Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said the "proliferation" of burkini bans "was not a welcome development".

Vallaud-Belkacem, who is of Moroccan origin, took issue with the wording of the ban in Nice which linked the measure to the attack in the resort last month in which 86 people were killed.



"In my opinion, there is nothing to prove that there is a link between the terrorism of Daesh and what a woman wears on a beach," she said, using another term for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS).



Prime Minister Valls contradicted his minister's claims, saying the bans were necessary to maintain "public order".

The burkini/niqab/hijab debate isn't about 'telling women what to wear.' It's about Islamophobia and bigotry, and it's about Muslim women. — Zainab Akhtar (@comicsandcola) August 25, 2016

'Necessary ban'

The administrative court in Nice ruled on Monday that the Villeneuve-Loubet ban was "necessary" to prevent public disorder after the lorry attack in Nice and the murder of a Catholic priest by two attackers in northern France.

The so-called burkini bans never actually mention the word burkini, although they are aimed at the garment. The vague wording of the prohibitions has caused confusion.

Apart from the incident in the photographs in Nice, a 34-year-old mother of two told AFP on Tuesday she had been fined on the beach in the resort of Cannes for wearing leggings, a tunic and a headscarf.

"I was sitting on a beach with my family. I was wearing a classic headscarf. I had no intention of swimming," said the woman, who gave only her first name, Siam.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of a major Western capital, condemned the bans as he visited Paris on Thursday.

"I don't think anyone should tell women what they can and can't wear. Full stop," he told the London Evening Standard newspaper.

France firmly separates religion and public life and was the first European country to ban the wearing of the Islamic face veil in public in 2010.

Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that a burkini ban would "merely stigmatise practising Muslim women, exclude them from public spaces - and from sharing those spaces with their families and friends - and deprive them of their rights to autonomy, to leisure activities, to wear what they choose, and of course to practising their faith."

Several protests against the ban have taken place, and are planned.

In London on Thursday, activists gathered in beachwear outside the French embassy. While some wore burkinis, others wore bikinis.