I found 
a photo labeled “Burka Bikinni”. A lovely young woman was covered literally from head to toe in black, with only the pale oval of her face visible. And there was the fig leaf of a matching black skirt. Thus attired in her “burkini” she was ready for cavorting at the beach. To me the attire highlighted the hypocrisy of going to such lengths to avoid the obvious recognition that girls just want to have fun, and that it is a form of insanity to treat women as if they were infected with some Ebola-like virus capable of destroying the faith of all men who set eyes on them.
*
The name “burkinni” was invented by that ultimate hedonistic group, “Surf Life Saving Australia”, where every Shelia is body proud and dressed so you can plainly see her “map-pa Tassie”. These super-macho types only admitted women in 1980, so a Muslim woman Aussie life guard would
seem tantamount to renouncing her faith. But after the December 2005 Cronulla Beach riot, when some 5,000 drunken Aussies stumbled about beating up anyone who even looked middle eastern, the life savers figured their country was drowning in ignorance. Thus the “burkinni”, intended to allow even a devout Islamic fundamentalist female to pull a drowning male from the waves and give him mouth-to-mouth.
*
Oka
y, the Aussies still have a few problems to work out. And among them is Ms. Michelle Leslie, an Aussie model and Islamic convert who was busted in Indonesia with two tabs of Ecstasy hidden somewhere on her emaciated frame -.they must have looked like bowling pins in her pocket. At her trial, like an American defendant wearing a new suit, she wore a burka as a sign of “public p
rivacy and modesty” - in her own words. But the Muslim nation’s court still gave her three months in jail. Shortly after being released she was seen strutting down a runway wearing a skintight swimsuit that may not have shown her “map of Tasmania” but clearly displayed the total deforestation on her part of the island. Down under the relationship between west and east seems to be in a state of flux.
*
And the flux of Western sexual equality has even reached into Saudi itself, where 18 year old Farhad Qureshi, a student at the Sultan Ahmed Institute of Fashion in the city of Mizapur, showed the Christian Science Monitor her own designs for swimwear, jackets and skirts. Qureshi wears the burka herself but “…I can design for anyone.” The school only has about 100 students but by its very existence offers Islamic women a choice – not an easy choice but still a choice.
*
We in the West may smile at such developments within Islam because we stopped binding our women in whale bone corsets over a century ago. True, our women are still encouraged to hobble themselves in high heels and stress their backs through breast implants, but western women now have a choice. They don’t have to be popular if they don’t want to be.
*
But what
I learned from my research is that the Burka is not in fact what I thought it was. It is not the full body robe: that is the Abaya. The head covering is called the Hijab and may be a simple scarf or a sort of balaclava. The burka itself is merely the veil. And, of course, there is a burka for every price range and inclination, from simply functional to simply ostentatious. It turns out that Muslims are just as hypocritical as Christians, Jews, Hindus and atheists.
*
It’s nice to know we’re all sinners, isn’t it?
- 30 -
a photo labeled “Burka Bikinni”. A lovely young woman was covered literally from head to toe in black, with only the pale oval of her face visible. And there was the fig leaf of a matching black skirt. Thus attired in her “burkini” she was ready for cavorting at the beach. To me the attire highlighted the hypocrisy of going to such lengths to avoid the obvious recognition that girls just want to have fun, and that it is a form of insanity to treat women as if they were infected with some Ebola-like virus capable of destroying the faith of all men who set eyes on them.*
The name “burkinni” was invented by that ultimate hedonistic group, “Surf Life Saving Australia”, where every Shelia is body proud and dressed so you can plainly see her “map-pa Tassie”. These super-macho types only admitted women in 1980, so a Muslim woman Aussie life guard would
seem tantamount to renouncing her faith. But after the December 2005 Cronulla Beach riot, when some 5,000 drunken Aussies stumbled about beating up anyone who even looked middle eastern, the life savers figured their country was drowning in ignorance. Thus the “burkinni”, intended to allow even a devout Islamic fundamentalist female to pull a drowning male from the waves and give him mouth-to-mouth.*
Oka
y, the Aussies still have a few problems to work out. And among them is Ms. Michelle Leslie, an Aussie model and Islamic convert who was busted in Indonesia with two tabs of Ecstasy hidden somewhere on her emaciated frame -.they must have looked like bowling pins in her pocket. At her trial, like an American defendant wearing a new suit, she wore a burka as a sign of “public p
rivacy and modesty” - in her own words. But the Muslim nation’s court still gave her three months in jail. Shortly after being released she was seen strutting down a runway wearing a skintight swimsuit that may not have shown her “map of Tasmania” but clearly displayed the total deforestation on her part of the island. Down under the relationship between west and east seems to be in a state of flux.*
And the flux of Western sexual equality has even reached into Saudi itself, where 18 year old Farhad Qureshi, a student at the Sultan Ahmed Institute of Fashion in the city of Mizapur, showed the Christian Science Monitor her own designs for swimwear, jackets and skirts. Qureshi wears the burka herself but “…I can design for anyone.” The school only has about 100 students but by its very existence offers Islamic women a choice – not an easy choice but still a choice.
*
We in the West may smile at such developments within Islam because we stopped binding our women in whale bone corsets over a century ago. True, our women are still encouraged to hobble themselves in high heels and stress their backs through breast implants, but western women now have a choice. They don’t have to be popular if they don’t want to be.
*
But what
I learned from my research is that the Burka is not in fact what I thought it was. It is not the full body robe: that is the Abaya. The head covering is called the Hijab and may be a simple scarf or a sort of balaclava. The burka itself is merely the veil. And, of course, there is a burka for every price range and inclination, from simply functional to simply ostentatious. It turns out that Muslims are just as hypocritical as Christians, Jews, Hindus and atheists.*
It’s nice to know we’re all sinners, isn’t it?
- 30 -
1 comment:
Testing from the kiddo. Please get the neekid woman off your site or I'll tell your Auntie Marty.
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