Burkini is a fashion choice, like a bikini

IT’S time again to furiously debate what we Muslim women wear, after the French women’s rights minister, Laurence Rossignol, was upset that we want to go swimming, modestly.

Marks & Spencer recently started selling “burkinis” to women in the UK, something the retailer had already been doing abroad with success. (Burkinis are available in South Africa from independent stores and online outlets.)

Rossignol said brands that offer such garments were promoting women’s bodies “being locked up”. But she fails to notice the irony of taking away choices from women and enforcing her own vision of how a woman should dress.

The claim that Muslim women can’t make independent, carefully considered choices of their own (including determining their own fashion sense) is insulting.

For a “women’s rights minister” to claim that any woman can’t think for herself and must be helped to know what’s good for her is a perfect example of the very attitude that feminists have been attempting to dismantle for centuries.

This attitude is clear in her other comments in which she directly compares women who choose to dress modestly with “negroes who support slavery”.

For someone in charge of rights to use such dehumanising language is shocking.

In the past 10 years the Muslim fashion industry has grown and is expected to be about halfa-trillion dollars by 2020. It’s not just Muslim women driving “modest wear”, other faiths are too, including Jewish, Christian and Hindu. Even Madonna has worn a burkini.

Muslim women are constantly berated for stereotypes that claim that we don’t participate in society; we are too submissive; IN THE SWIM: A woman takes to the water in a burkini we need to do more to empower ourselves; and we should do more sports. Yet when Muslim women find creative ways to contribute to the retail economy, get out and do sports, or engage in the fashion industry, our own choices on our own terms are deemed wrong.

Rossignol and the French designers who reject Muslim fashion should stop and listen to the global call by women that the fashion industry stop objectifying and sexualising women.

Malala Yousafzai dresses modestly and says her faith inspires her work. Fellow Nobel laureate Tawakkol Karman speaks with pride of her choice to cover up.

The burkini, and what it represents, is not the thin end of the wedge. It is an issue that should be put down to women’s right to choose. We should move on to delivering women’s rights instead of talking about swimsuits. A headscarf or a swimsuit is not the sole definition of a Muslim woman. — © The Daily Telegraph, London

Janmohamed is a writer and blogger

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