Yes. I didn’t realise this until this week as I evidently needed a white French man to tell me this. So thanks Sarkozy, I appreciate your love for secularism and the need to free me from my oppressed ways, without you I’m not sure how Muslim women would live.
I mean without being given direction and forced to dress in certain ways to please a political elite who find such ease to target Muslim women, we’d be totally lost, I know I would be.
<end sarcasm>
But seriously, the whole idea that women covering is a provocation is nonsensical. The fact that covering your head is deemed to be the only part of your identity and that it clouds your judgement is frankly insulting. If someone feels offended by my choice then I would suggest the problem is not my choice to cover but the intolerance that has created that persons judgement.
Last week I was sat at the beach in Morocco, a Muslim country, fully clothed in a maxi dress and light cardigan, barefoot, enjoying the smell of the sea and the feel of the warm sand. Around me women were enjoying the water dressed in an array of different clothing choices, bikinis, one piece swim suits, shorts and t-shirts, burkinis, leggings and tunics, traditional long Moroccan dresses amongst other choices. Believe it or not, no one cared how they were dressed, or how I was dressed on that beach.
However, as I log on to my facebook and other social media I am amazed that something like a burkini ban could be imposed in a secular society like France. That police would actually physically be patrolling the beaches to fine and undress women who went against this ban.
I’ve never owned a burkini, mostly because even though I love the beach I can’t swim, so never felt the need for it. However, I know many Muslim women, those who wear the headscarf and those who don’t, who have one and wear it to be able to engage in water activities be it in their local swimming hall or when they’re on the coast.
The designer of the burkini, suggests the reason for her design was to offer more freedom for women to engage in different activities. And it does just that.
The issue is that as a hijabi Muslim woman, I've often heard that we need to be more visible, we need to integrate into mainstream society (as if we aren’t), we need to participate in events (even though many of us already do), yet the moment solutions are created that provide women the ability to be in spaces they didn’t feel previously comfortable in, it is attacked.
The absurdity of the burkini ban in France is nothing unusual. Attacks on what Muslim women wear has been ongoing for a long time, very often unchallenged. Only last year students in France were told they couldn’t wear long skirts in school because it shows some kind of religious affiliation. The idea that headscarves and certain ways in which only Muslim girls and women dress is conspicuous and potentially dangerous pops up to show the government is doing something about those Muslims.
It completely dismisses the fact that regulating what women can and cant wear is not going to address the security concerns France has.
You know why?
Because Muslim women are not the issue. Muslim women are not generally the ones perpetrating violence in the name of anything.
But they are a delightfully easy target for politicians, and secular liberals who want to ‘save’ us all, and the racists and xenophobes who frankly couldn’t care less, but can find themselves backing calls to regulate the way Muslim women dress.
