THE TELEGRAPH: The Burkini. You’d think it was a joke invention: a bit like the grotesque “Mankini” so hilariously sported by Sacha Baron Cohen on all those posters for Borat. What, after all, could be more absurd than melding the not-notably-sexy Muslim dress - the Burka - with the kind of achingly seductive kit worn by Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman?
But no, the Burkini is for real. It was designed by an [sic] Lebanese Australian Aheda Zanetti to enable women in thrall to extreme Saudi-style dress codes to go swimming on beaches and in public baths without incurring a beating or instant divorce from their characteristically tolerant and cosmopolitan menfolk.
“Practical and stylish,” is how they’re described on a BBC website. Hmm, up to a point. Practical if your primary goal is to protect yourself from box jellyfish stings; stylish, maybe, if your points of comparison are a gorilla outfit, or a Barbara Cartland pink dress, or a tent. But I do think we should be wary of viewing the burkini in terms of a fashion story or an amusing novelty, when it also represents something more sinister. I’m sure the designer didn’t intend this, but the Burkini has become yet another weapon in the Islamist assault on Western cultural values.
When most of us think of militant Islam, we tend to think in terms of suicide bombs on London buses, planes flying into Twin Towers and 19-year olds getting their limbs blown off by Taliban IEDs. But as any extremist Imam could tell you, there are at least two ways in which a good Muslim can further the ongoing struggle to convert the whole world from the House of War (that’s the non-Muslim world) to the House of Islam (ie global submission to the will of Allah): one (see above) is by poison or the sword; the other is by honey.
So the Burkini is part of the honey campaign: all those parts of the Islamist war on the West that have nothing to do with killing people. This campaign includes everything from schoolgirls fighting legal battles (with the help of one Cherie Blair) to fight for their inalienable right to go to school dressed like a sack, to Muslim supermarket workers trying to dictate the terms of their employment (refusing to sell alcohol), to the ongoing campaign (apparently endorsed by our own Archbishop of Canterbury) for certain civil decisions in the Muslim “community” to be made under Sharia law. The goal is to establish the view that Islam is a religion [that] should be allowed to trump everything, including the cultural norms of any non-Muslim society in which its adherents find themselves living.
Why should we care if women want to dress up in burkinis? Well we shouldn’t. It’s a free country. Where we should worry very much is when, in the name of weasel concepts like “tolerance”, “respect” and Multiculturalism, the wider society is bullied into adopting similar “Muslim” (ie Saudi-style, Wahhabist) dress codes too. >>> James Delingpole | Sunday, August 16, 2009
THE TELEGRAPH: The freedom to wear a small, practical swimsuit without feeling self-conscious is hard-won, and fragile, says Jemima Lewis.
The Burkini is such a ludicrous garment that it is hard to take seriously. Designed to enable veiled Muslims to go swimming without compromising their modesty, it covers every inch of flesh except the feet, hands and face. It makes the wearer look like a cross between a Teletubby and an enormous condom.
In France it is banned from public pools, on the grounds that its copious material carries more germs than conventional swimsuits. In England, incredible though it may seem, it is becoming required wearing at some pools, during "Muslim-only" sessions.
It was not so very long ago that women were unable to take a dip in public without first donning an enormous mohair crinoline and being dragged out to sea in a bathing machine. The freedom to wear a small, practical swimsuit without feeling self-conscious is hard-won, and fragile. All it takes is for one burkini to appear at the poolside, and everyone else feels underdressed.
Wearing a burkini is not merely a personal choice, but a judgment on others. It says: I am modest, you are not. It is, in its own way, no less oppressive than a mohair crinoline. [Source: The Telegraph Jemima Lewis | Saturday, August 15, 2009
