A practical matter

THE bid to ban burkinis (Islamic swimwear) in France was provoking and also hilarious.

I seldom swim at the beach mostly for fear of sharks and other unknown creatures lurking about. When I do, to hide my actual weight I wear trendy professional swimwear and so does my wife. We visit the beach as the kids love it and because it is free.

From what I know, the majority of women wear some covering at the beach because we are not all built for swimwear like Rihanna or Justin Bieber. Middle-aged people sag because we worry about school fees, homework, projects, living costs and do not have time or money to tone for hours at the gym. Truth be told many of us are chubby as we are kind of lazy and often tired, and no longer fixate about who is looking at our physical body.

Thus the burkini is helpful as it hides what we do not want other people to see. In truth the burkini has little to do with overt religious obsession.

There is nothing worse than an overweight 50-year-old “has-been” wearing a thong strutting at the beach with delusions of grandeur.

To flip the religious argument on its head, many prophets operated near sources of water, including the Red Sea, Sea of Galilee, the River Jordan and so on. Are we to believe that none of the prophets or their wives went for a swim? When John the Baptist, known as Prophet Yagyah in Islam, baptised Jesus in the Jordan River, what was John and Jesus wearing?

We could argue that times change and wearing hijab, like Mary mother of Jesus did or like nuns do, is old fashion. Ironically in Corinthians 11:6, women who do not cover their hair are considered a disgrace. We could argue that a bikini or going topless at the beach is European culture. Does that imply that in 20 years everyone must be naked as the micro-bikini is already fashionable on the French Riviera? Cllr Yagyah Adams Cape Muslim Congress