Giulio Meotti
The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books.. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary.The most amazing aspect of the French burkini’s story is the non Muslim Western fascination for this garment.
Ismail Sacranie, a founder of Modestly Active, the Islamic sportswear manufacturer that designed burkini, told the New York Times that 35 percent of its clients are non-Muslim. One third!
You find the same percentage in Aheda Zanetti’s assessment of the business. She is the Lebanese woman living in Australia who created the burkini and claims that over 40 percent of sales are from non Muslim women. (And we are not talking about Orthodox Jewish women, some of whom wear similar swimsuits - without the burqa - to mixed gender beaches, but of their own volition. Nothing happens to them if they don't.)
Western non Muslim women recently dumped tons of sand outside the French embassy in London and sported a burkini to protest against the French law banning this Islamic garment. Last April, Islamic university students invited fellow non Muslim classmates at the prestigious Sciences Po university to sport the veil against “Islamophobia”. And they arrived in hundreds. We have also seen many feminists, especially the more radical, standing in defense of burkini..
What the hell is happening to these women?
Umma, sharia, fitna, jahiliya, hijab, niqab, abaya, jihad and now burkini: Islamism is imposing a disturbing vocabulary which has become familiar.
A hyper inclusive left is refusing to see burkini as an Islamist tool. It turns a blind eye to the repression of women that it symbolizes. Instead it is embracing it and turning it into a symbol of human rights to defend at all costs. The New York Times ran an article titled: “At the beach with my burkini”.
It is a culturally fanatic relativism with a heavy bias against Western civilization and it is fundamentally allergic to any “difference”. The burkini and the veil have now become symbols of a new frontier in the unstoppable conquest of human rights. It has become a political cause.
It is precisely because the Islamic veils radically contradict Western values that a relativistic and romantic Left defends them with such enthusiasm and energy, forgetting that Muslim women do not have a choice in the matter. Islamists have perfectly understood this dominant psychology among our élite, who are so terrified of being accused of “xenophobia”. Islamism hypnotizes Westerners and turns the burkini against them.
Umma, sharia, fitna, jahiliya, hijab, niqab, abaya, jihad and now burkini: Islamism is imposing a disturbing vocabulary which has become familiar. A kind of blindness leads journalists and scholars to stigmatize orders made by some French cities against wearing this outfit. They invoke sovereign freedom of individuals to justify social submission. Women wear burkinis as a mark of freedom?.
For many feminists, domination comes only from the White Male Europeans. Facing this enemy, all minorities are secured.
It might be useful to recall that after the massive sexual assaults in Cologne, many Western feminists were at the very least ,discreet and even played down the circumstances in which Muslim rapists attacked dozens of German women, because these savages were the new Franz’ Fanon’s “wretched of the earth”. A burkini is no more a personal choice but a militant symbol in the Muslim struggle against the Western world joined by many non Muslim useful idiots.
But there is an even bigger irony in this cultural pirouette: one day, Islamic fundamentalists will impose the veil and the burkini also on what they see as debauched Western women who are now expressing solidarity with them. It will be a day of bitter laughter..