Humiliating Muslim women won’t stop war on terror
I AM ashamed of myself. When I recently saw the footage on BBC news about the burkini ban and police officers in France forcing a woman to remove her burkini, I found it disturbing and sad.
Then I forgot about it until I was confronted with the image here, which has now gone viral. Why was I not more outraged? Why was it a momentary concern?
As an artist who creates images, I am interested in what pictures convey, and this one has grabbed my attention.
The burly men, armed, with hands on hips standing over her. I am shocked at the intimidation and disturbed by the fact that everybody else in the picture dressed in what some would consider usual swimwear, is looking on dispassionately, or some not even looking at all. Did anybody get up to defend her, to offer support or help?
It’s hard to buy the bit about freeing women from oppression by forcing them to undress. This line of swimwear has allowed Muslim women to go to the beach and take part in the fun.
The fabric is flexible and light, it gives room for movement and play. The pictures show women both relaxed and exuberant. I had to remind myself that with all the political rhetoric, we mustn’t forget what this is. This is three fully clothed men with guns, forcing a woman to take her clothes off in public. This is brutal humiliation.
To humiliate women as retaliation against an attack is not a new tactic in war. Lauren Wolfe has written about why women are raped in war.
She lists several reasons, among them: to humiliate. The terrorist attacks in the past year have left us dazed and fearful. And angry.
The men who have perpetrated these horrors against innocent citizens have mostly disappeared back into the places they came from.
We are outraged by the loss, the threat to our lives and way of life. But we are also powerless. It’s hard to know where they are, what they are plotting to do next.
I am ashamed because I realise that the reason I had not dwelled on this issue was because I too had somehow integrated the idea that it was okay. The random brutality of the terrorist attacks, the innocence of the victims made it, at best, “understandable”.
We can’t punish the extremist terrorists who perpetrate these attacks. The French prime minister set his sights on the burkini, calling it “dangerous”.
If the Muslim women on the beach in burkinis were an easy and visible target, then it was okay that they should pay a price for this war. Somebody’s got to.
Trope is an artist with an interest in photography and social aspects carried by pictures
Leader P8, Op-ed P9