What a world: Sports Illustrated puts a woman with a burkini and hijab in their swimsuit issue; everyone hails her as a hero and history maker

April 30, 2019 • 11:15 am
UPDATE: Apropos, here’s a piece from the spoof site Babylon Bee (click on screenshot to see it):
__________
The Hijab symbolises gender apartheid in countries that impose it by law. Women wearing it voluntarily endorse patriarchal religious dogma that imposes “modesty” on women, not on men. I defend your right to wear this, but will not celebrate your choice to do so. —Maajid Nawaz
Once again a hijabi is being celebrated for “making history,” this time, oddly enough, for being the first hijab- and “burkini”-wearer (a modest swimsuit designed for Muslim women) to appear in the Sports Illustrated (SI) swimsuit issue. You can see the articles about Halima Aden, a Somali-American model from Minnesota, at the HuffPost link below, or at the other three links. All of them say pretty much the same thing (click on screenshots to go to articles):

From CBS 4 in Minnesota:

From the BBC:

And from the New York Times:

First of all, I do object to the BBC calling her a “burkini girl”. That is both demeaning, since she’s a woman, and reduces her to her swimsuit. It’s patronizing.

But of course that’s what the SI swimsuit issue is about: it’s a cold-weather opportunity—which has been going on for decades—for men (the SI subscribers) to ogle scantily-clad women. In other words, it’s a socially acceptable version of Playboy.

And that’s the rub. Ms. Aden is beautiful, but remember what a burkini and a hijab are there for: they come from the tenets of Islam, tenets specifying that revealing part of one’s body, be it hair or curves or naked flesh, is supposed to incite the uncontrollable lust of men. In Islam, it is the woman’s responsibility to keep men from being harassers and rapists. That is not an enlightened view. Yes, a woman can dress how she wants, but several Muslim countries make covering obligatory, and you can be beaten or jailed if you don’t cover up.

Even in Western countries, where the hijab, niqab, burqa, and similar modest garments are supposedly a “choice,” in many cases they really aren’t. Muslim girls can be sent to faith schools wearing hijabs at a very young age. In the case of Aden, she started wearing her hijab at the age of seven. In other countries, like Turkey, there can be considerable social pressure to wear a hijab or other modest clothing. It is a “choice” in name only.

Given that this clothing is supposed to hide the “allure” of women, it’s bizarre that Aden’s photos are alluring, highlighting her beauty, and that they will appear alongside the nearly naked non-Muslim women who regularly adorn the pages of SI’s swimsuit issue. Here are the photos put out by the magazine:

Is that a provocative pose or what? (See the one at the top as well.)

Certainly SI can do what it wants, including parading its virtue, and Aden can wear what she wants. What bothers me is that the display of her body and her beauty, even in the veiled form above, is supposed to get men excited, and is designed to arouse their lust. In other words, the very clothing she’s wearing contradicts the image she’s lionized for presenting—that of a modest Muslim.

When trying to think of counterarguments to my own criticism of both Aden and SI’s judgment, I said to myself, “Well, maybe she’s just proud of the clothes as a symbol of her faith, and that is all.” But that doesn’t wash, for what these clothes symbolize is a tenet of Islam: modesty for women to avoid exciting men. That’s oppressive and yes, misogynistic.

In other words, Aden’s clothing symbolizes, and not obliquely, a view of women that is demeaning and oppressive. And yet she’ll be on pages next to women who are wearing basically no clothes at all, and whose disporting in SI is explicitly designed to arouse men’s lust. (If you’ve seen a swimsuit issue, you’ll know what I mean.)

Aden is not a hero or a pathbreaker, but someone who insults the tenets of the very faith she claims to espouse. She is using “modesty” as a way to sell herself because, after all, she’d hardly be unique without a head covering and a burkini. The reason why the media adore her is simply because Muslims, viewed as “people of color”, are allowed special dispensation for signs of their faith. In the end, though, a hijab and burkini are simply cloth versions of a ball and chain. Why do Western feminists celebrate the modesty of Muslim women when that modesty derives entirely from patriarchal, oppressive dictates? It’s bizarre, no?

The Woke New York Times reports this:

M.J. Day, the editor of the swimsuit issue, said in a statement that she and Ms. Aden “both believe the ideal of beauty is so vast and subjective.”

“We both know that women are so often perceived to be one way or one thing based on how they look or what they wear,” she said. “Whether you feel your most beautiful and confident in a burkini or a bikini, you are worthy.”

The thing is, the whole point of modest clothing is to HIDE beauty, not show it off!

The way I feel about this issue, then, was better expressed by Pakistani-Canadian feminist and activist Alisba Zarmeen:

. . . as well as by several other people:

A hijabi said this:

Another:

While activist and ex-Muslim Sarah Haider was on the fence:

I don’t conceive of women like Aden as heroes or pathbreakers or particularly courageous, but neither do I think hijabis or Muslim women with other forms of covering should be discriminated against, either. (Exceptions can be made to regulate covering in government offices, courtrooms, or banks.) When such clothing should be called out, as I have done above, is when its wearers flaunt the hijab as a religious symbol, but a symbol diametrically opposed to the how it’s being used. Thus I wouldn’t get terribly excited about the hijab as a feminist symbol, which some people have made it out to be. As Alishba Zarmeen noted, “do not forget the fucking history and traditional use of that symbol.”

h/t: Grania

104 thoughts on “What a world: Sports Illustrated puts a woman with a burkini and hijab in their swimsuit issue; everyone hails her as a hero and history maker”

  1. I look forward to the moment when a woman wearing a burka becomes the first centrefold. There’s a market for ogling black fabric!

    It’s also odd in another respect. The Woke dislike “objectification” of women, but apparently are good when she’s covered up, revealing that they really have a problem with nudity or sexuality, as everyone suspected all along.

    1. Also I think that some fetishism of “islamic identity” as being Oppressed and so Beautiful by the woke plays a role. Woke Orientalism, to paraphrase Edward Said.

      In reallity the “burkini” is actually looked at with suspicion by many liberal/cultural muslims AND by quite a few conservative muslims, for opposite reasons of course.

      Although it’s also possible that Sport Illustrated might be trying to attract sponsors from a Muslim theocracy, or at least to kill two birds with one stone by being superficially woke and corporatively coddling to potential investors.

    2. Well, maybe men are turned on by baldness in a woman-what do I know. But I suspect that a bald or scarred woman would be even more ‘encouraged’ to cover up for such a sight might destroy the idealised image of the perfect woman. Covering up encourages fantasies??? Just as any kind of non-communication encourages rumours and worse.

      In response to Dominic below.

    3. The woke problem isn’t with nudity or sexuality per se, but with “male gaze”, what is deemed attractive by the woke stereotype of heterosexual men, which is seen as part of “rape culture”.

      The “burkini” isn’t seen as stereotypically sexy for men (although from the pictures, I can tell that it CAN be made quite alluring) so it gets a pass. A “plus size” model would also qualify, even if she was very attractive to men in practice, because it wouldn’t confirm to the stereotype that the wokes have of what is attractive to men.

      A couple of years ago a woke Twitter user, Lauren Chief Elk, claimed that “duckface” selfies were woke because she argued that men didn’t like them (even though lots of men liked her “duckface” selfies).

  2. Is sexuality linked with hair? I think I missed that class – perhaps Joe Biden was teaching it! But seriously – if a moslem woman is bald – does she still have to wear one?

    1. Good question. But a bald woman would probably want to cover up anyway. I’ve been told by ex-Muslim women that the hair is CERTAINLY a provocative sign. That’s why the morality police in place like Iran and Afghanistan frown on stray wisps of hair protruding from beneath the hijab.

    2. Absolutely, sexuality is linked with hair. My wife never likes when I get my hair cut too short because then she can’t run her fingers through my hair. Unfortunately my hair is beginning to thin and my hair-line is advancing in the wrong direction.

      A liking for long hair on females and associating it with “attractiveness” seems to be pretty common among males.

        1. Also with other animals, horses, dogs, cats, etc. we humans find a nice lustrous coat attractive and a sign of good health.

          1. True! Recently, a set of experiments by my colleagues failed because their mice despite the proper hormonal stimulation failed to produce many oocytes, and the few ones produced were good for nothing. As the researchers scratched their heads why (hormone expired? mice too inbred?), someone mentioned, “Did you pay attention to their fur? Thin and lacking shine!” It turned out that the breeding facility had kept the poor mice malnourished.

    3. Sexuality has historically been linked with hair in Western culture too, from pre-Christian times. It’s the reason women used to be required to cover their hair in Church until fairly recently. When Western countries converted to Christianity, women were seen as more modest if they covered their hair. Married women in particular covered their hair as a matter of routine in a way very similar to a hijab.

      Prostitutes specifically DIDN’T cover their hair, and often dyed it garish colours, especially red. One of the punishments for prostitution was to have your head shaved.

      1. As “The Good Book” says somewhere, “A woman’s hair is her glory.” Aaay-maahn! (As they say in Pentecostal/Charismatic circles in the Southern U.S.)

      2. Remember women’s hats? (men’s too)
        Not that long ago. Both my mother and father had hat boxes in the upper shelf in the front closet.

        1. I have a photo of my mother in her hat in 1969 for my sister’s christening, She never wore a hat back then except for church. (Nowadays she wears sunhats.)

          1. I’m older then. My folks wore hats until they went out of fashion. When, in 1961, JFK gave his inaugural outdoors in January without a hat, hats became passe.

  3. Strange. Very strange indeed. That’s all I have to say.

    Back to the bathing beauties of the 1890’s.
    When a glimpse of stocking was looked on as simply shocking. Now heaven knows.

    1. That ain’t the half of it, OG. Good authors who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose.

      1. Just by chance I came across Elton John’s song ‘Nikita’. I reckon the girl in that video looks pretty good in Russian uniform:
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg-Q-Acv4qs

        And changing planes in China, I actually found the female airport security guards in (I presume) Chinese Army uniform, looked quite attractive.

        In neither case is my opinion driven by any sort of political correctness, it’s purely male licentiousness.

        But hijabs / burkinis suck, aesthetically.

        cr

  5. Oh look, an “accomplishment” by wearing a medieval body cloth, according to Western press. What are the odds? /sarcasm

    1. I remember what Gerald Durrell wrote about his mother’s “swimsuit”, which covered most of the body and looked like the skin of an incompetently skinned whale. Meanwhile, his sister Margo had a “microscopic” suit (bikini?).

      Talks about cultural regression.
      Cover up, ladies, because “winter is coming”!

  6. Totally agree. I also find it highly objectionable based on the fact that girls are pressured into wearing the hijab as well. What young girl can say that she freely chose to wear the hijab.

    I will always remember the time when I was at a fair on a scorching hot day. A girl of about 10 was wearing a full black bodysuit under a flowered sundress and a hijab. She was the only girl in a family with several young boys and men all in shorts and t-shirts looking perfectly comfortable. They allowed her to take off her hijab for a moment while they poured water on her head to cool her off. Her face was bright red from the heat. The poor girl was clearly overheating. I felt profoundly sad for this child.

    If Halima Aden really wants to do something courageous, I wish she would speak up for all the girls that are forced to wear a hijab against their will.

  7. This is exactly the type of illogical nonsense that Majid Nawaz keeps getting into trouble for. No matter how much he tries to point out the paradoxical nature of articles like that in SI, and that he the is not criticising Muslims as such, he still gets labelled as Islamophobic.

  8. All this proves is that if you are drop dead gorgeous you still look pretty great in a wet burkini. I doubt that it is practical for actually swimming, though.

    1. Typical examples are probably not great for swimming. But they could be. Suits made of the right specialized fabric can actually reduce drag compared to bare skin. Speedo came out with their LZR suit for competative swimmers and immediately records started dropping like flies and anyone not wearing one couldn’t compete. Eventually, in an attempt to level the playing field new regulations were put in place limiting how much of the body could be covered by the suit material.

    2. I’ve been to a place in Indonesia where all the locals were swimming completely clothed – men included. Women were in the usual Muslim garb; men were often in denim jeans, long-sleeved cotton shirts etc. None of these people could actually swim. Compared to this, the lycra burkini with its much reduced drag is a significant improvement for both comfort and safety. Not really that much different from me swimming in a wetsuit or rash vest and tights.

  9. I have encountered several women who clearly were also trying to be both hijabi and “sexy” – in one case, very high stilletos, “skinny jeans”, etc.

  11. Well, not being familiar with Sports Illustrated, I had to do some research.

    One of the photos which popped up in Google was this. I think Halima would probably have to answer, “Yes,” to the question posed on Samantha Hoopes’s embonpoint.

    /@

    PS. Jerry, you have a typo: “Is that a provocative post or what?” → “pose”.

  12. I take it as too obvious to be worth mentioning that we — for very large values of “we” — do not share what we understand to be the underlying theology/ideology/psychology behind the orthodox Muslim view of the hijab. And a sexy hijab certainly conflicts with our understanding of orthodox Islam. But if people claiming to be Muslims act inconsistently with our understanding, or even a correct/ authoritative understanding, of Orthodox Islam, especially in ways we do not disapprove of, what standing do we have to tell them they are wrong, and what interests are we advancing by criticizing them for not adhering to values we do not want them to adhere to?

    1. But if people complaining about being anti-racists nevertheless wave around Confederate flags as a sign of their “culture”, or don’t act in ways consistent with our understanding of Southern “culture’, what standing do we have to tell them that they’re wrong?

      Remember, people still display Confederate flags around all the time, claiming that they have nothing to do with racism and are simply proud symbols of Southern culture. But those flags symbolize racism, just as the hijab symbolizes misogyny.

      1. The problem isn’t that the hypothetical anti-racist rebel flag wavers — and they are hypothetical — are inconsistent, it is that if they say that they are lying. If there really were an actual anti-racist bunch of rebel flag wavers, we might want to encourage them — or at least not bother about them.

        1. I’m not sure they are all lying; how do you know? Do you think that all of those people are really in favor of slavery? And no, I wouldn’t want to encourage anti-racists to brandish the Confederate flag.

          That’s enough discussion for me.

      2. When I was in Hays, Kansas, I saw a house that had two flagpoles with both the American and Confederate flag flying side-by-side despite Kansas (which was a territory back then) not taking part in the Civil War once so ever and the latter flag being the symbol of a group of traitors that lost a war, costing thousands of lives.

          2. If I’m recalling my Kansan pre-Civil War history correctly, even as a territory seeking statehood, it was deeply involved in the run-up to the war with the “Bleeding Kansas” confrontation over slavery.

    2. Most all of these types of criticisms that I’ve seen come across to me as being directed at the “Woke” crowd and pandering to the “Woke” crowd by media and corporate interests. I think your point does have some merit but, what about the large majority of Muslim women in many Muslim societies around the world for which the hijab really is an instrument of oppression? Shouldn’t they have our support? How can we support them without criticizing sexy hijab? We can’t. They are literally the same thing.

  13. I imagine that imams all over the world are foaming at the mouth right now. I hope she has a body guard.

    1. I agree with that. I really wonder what Linda Sarsour has to say about this. Would she condemn it or praise it? I wonder, especially because I doubt that her habiliments would pass muster with the Wahabi crowd.

      It’s time for “The Real Housewives of ISIS,” The Fashion Edition

        1. You’re spot on! But she could work for them — they could develop a line of hijabi cosmetics.

        2. Those the folks won’t screw standing up, ’cause it might be mistaken for dancing?

  15. I am fairly confused by Jerry’s commentary on this. Is it not the free market at work? The magazine (Sports Illustrated) continues to stimulate its core demographic (blokes who want to get off on women they can fantasise about being desired by). The model (who is both beautiful and alluring in the clothes she wears) stimulates the same core demographic, but also titillates by her “otherness”, offering the possibility of multiple overlapping fantasies. This is excellent marketing in a world where close-ups and virtual reality access to women’s bodies have become banal and unremarkable. It is not the “woke” confusing it signals, it is the machinery of capitalism converting culture and religion into dollars.

    1. Perhaps, but it still normalizes the oppression of women throughout the world who are forced by their government or their family or their society to wear hijabs, and neglects what wearing the hijab really means to Muslims.

      So what if this is the free market at work, or if it’s efficacious? I am criticizing the effect of this kind of marketing on women’s right.

      The free market also makes women feel inferior all the time by selling clothes using impossibly skinny models, who are usually airbrushed

      1. The free market also makes women feel inferior all the time by selling clothes using impossibly skinny models, who are usually airbrushed

        Indeed. I find SI’s move here to be calculating and tactical. They know what they are selling (sex appeal) and they know that people will buy the issue. Either way, burkini or bikini, it is exploitative.
        –
        That said, a long, skin-covering suit is not such a bad idea for some folks with particularly fair skin and if this promotes industries to market and sell ones that are ‘stylish’ – all the better.

      2. I agree. I was being ironic, but I should have realised by now that irony needs to be explicitly signalled in online communications, since there is no way that the reader can tell when they are being employed without additional information.

  16. Doesn’t look all that comfortable for beachwear.

    Then again, I haven’t the foggiest how comfortable women feel in disporting themselves around the beach in three teeny triangles of cloth and some string, all of which could likely fit inside a silly-putty egg.

    1. When I dip in the water, or rather when I go out of the water, the less cloth I have the better. I hate wet cloth on my body!
      Personally, I’d wish to dispose of the top 2 triangles (absolutely useless), but I am not brave enough to wear monokini.
      It is true that some women (esp. after a certain age) feel uncomfortable showing their non-perfect bodies.

      1. From what I’ve seen on Miami Beach, some of those little string numbers also have a hard time staying put while the wearer is out riding the wild surf.

        1. True. In the water, a whole swimsuit is to be preferred (though it become unpleasant once you get out of the water).
          In my country, keeping the tiny bikini on against waves stopped being a problem when resorts started to hire thuggish lifeguards. They guarantee safety of all (and easy job for themselves) by ordering everyone to stay out of water at the site of the tiniest white crests.
          (Waves with white crests appear in the Black Sea in late July or early August and stay through September.)

      2. “I hate wet cloth on my body!”

        Now there I agree with you.

        For some reason quite a lot of males in NZ seem to swim wearing a T-shirt or similar ‘top’. I just won’t, and I can’t imagine why they do it. It certainly doesn’t keep any cold out, in or out of the water, in fact I think the extra water it retains just means more evaporative cooling if there’s any wind.

        ‘Wet suits’ of course are different.

        cr

        3. I’m a fan of swimming in the all-together myself. Hell, one of life’s fine pleasures is an al fresco swim with a romantic partner on a deserted beach. (Of course, if the water’s cold, it requires a fella explain the concept of “shrinkage.” 🙂 )

        4. Indeed. Sunburn is a big problem, especially when you don’t have anyone to put sunblock on your back! Rash tops are so cheap at The Warehouse though, so I don’t know why anyone would wear a t-shirt instead of something in lycra designed for swimming. But if the t-shirt wearers are Pacific Islanders that might explain it. In the Islands it is not polite to go about shirtless, even for men.

  17. Halima is deluded if she thinks any of this is liberating and a step forward in progressive Islamic ideas.

    I am certain these photos will put her life in jeopardy somewhere in the world. She does look fantastic and she is beautiful, but she cannot undo the representation of oppression that is the hijab/burka.

    Religion is more poisonous to women. That’s a something that Halima should consider.

  18. I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, but is it possible that the net result of what she is doing is in fact to give NEW MEANING to the clothing that Islam obliges her to wear by precisely contradicting its original intent. The hijab is meant to imprison her ideologically, but she “transgresses” those boundaries by wearing those very same clothes in a provocative counter-cultural way.

    Consider what the gay community did to the word “queer” by appropriating it and using it for its own purposes in “queer studies” and the like. The word no longer has the negative power it once had. Is she doing something similar?

    When you say that “Aden is not a hero or a pathbreaker, but someone who insults the tenets of the very faith she claims to espouse.”, that shockingly sounds exactly like what an fundamentalist imam would say, which is not a comfortable position to put yourself into!

    1. I doubt that she’s trying to reappropriate Islam in the way you say with your postmodern jargon. For one thing, she isn’t explicit about it, as the gays are.

      And I’m perfectly comfortable with my position, so thank you for your advice about what I’m supposed to say, which I have put in the circular bin.

  19. What perplexes me about this so-called swimming gear is why hijabi swimmers need to bring their hijabs to the water, when there are such nice swimcaps at the market.
    Maybe non-Islamic head coverings do not do the job, even if they cover the hair.

  20. “it is completely counterintuitive to strike a sexy pose in a magazine known for objectifying women.”

    I would substitute “bat-shit crazy” for “counterintuitive” in the above.

  21. Well, there is a reason why SI would publish this woman dressed in all her glorious modesty – publicity. Worked, didn’t it?

    1. Maybe, but how many Social Justice Wankers buy Sports Illustrated, much less the Swimsuit issue?

  22. Wearing that garb in the surf of a west coast NZ beach it wont be males eyes you would be deflecting… but more likely, the gaze of the grim reaper.

  23. Certainly, the hair is a sex symbol, but it’s reductive to think that covering is just about the hair or else hijabis would just wear scarves. The entire female body is sexually dangerous. Actually, I’m surprised women aren’t required to wear gloves and knee boots, too, as exposed fingers and feet can be stimulate concupiscent thoughts.

      1. Thanks, but I give myself an F for grammar, even if it is a typo. I see that I inadvertently wrote in some sort of dialect, “exposed fingers and feet can be stimulate concupiscent thoughts.”

          1. Ah! You’ve saved me. It must have been a typo for re-stimulate. I say that because of what I write below.

            A very unpleasant story but it should be told. This was years ago,so perhaps things have changed, at least in the large cities). A friend of mine (a peaches and cream white woman) took a lucrative 6-month job teaching English in Saudi Arabia. When not at work, she lived in a compound, a Western enclave; the government kept Westerners segregated from the general population (I suppose not to corrupt them). The compounds had every Western amenity imaginable to keep ‘inmates’ from going stir crazy in confinement.

            When she did go out, she was covered but not in the traditional Saudi garb (I think she wore a head scarf, long skirt, long-sleeved blouse). She told me that sometimes when men saw her, the would stop in the street and masturbate. I don’t find that at all difficult to believe. When I was in Tunis, then a very cosmopolitan city, I witnessed a number of public (homosexual) displays of the kind that I’ve never seen in hedonistic America, though I’m sure such activities take place in the Castro district of San Francisco. In addition, many men went nuts over Western women, they just couldn’t contain themselves. Things were so sexualized that I felt like joining a convent.

          2. ” . . . that sometimes when men saw her, the would stop in the street and masturbate.”

            I heard the same thing from a different source several years ago. I’d like to see the NY Times do an in-depth article on that, if they could handle it.

            I trust that things are better in Morocco than in in Tunisia.

          3. Now the anecdotal evidence for this kind of repugnant behavior in Saudi Arabia is more than one. Interesting, and extremely telling. The most sexually repressive country on earth, yet men can’t contain themselves and jerk off on the street when they see a woman uncovered but still in modest dress. Where are the notorious Morals Police when you need them? Down the street jerking off, I guess.

            Sadly, I doubt that Morocco is or was any better than Tunisia; both countries have long been notorious for flourishing semi-underground sex scenes (for centuries, I’d say), and both countries (and others)were/are? hubs for international sex tourism, gay and straight. I could tell you stories of some of my unbidden experiences, and I stress ‘unbidden’ such as the time I ended up getting a ride from Tbarka to Tunis in what turned out to be a car full of pedophile pimps and their boys. Allah! Wallah! Jesus Christ! Name of the Creator! Only religious ejaculations (an apt word for the subject) will do here. That’s just one example. I will not go on. I feel sullied just recalling what I witnessed and was subjected to (thankfully I wasn’t assaulted or taken advantage of but it came close).

            Another woman I went to school with went to Morocco with some pals and she ended up in a ghastly mental hospital over there. Ididn’t know what happened to her; it needn’t have been sexual, they were into the hash culture; but whatever happened it was demonstrably life changing not in a good way, and she never was quite the same. The others were also changed in ways that weren’t good. I’d wanted to go with them but didn’t have the bucks. I’m so glad that my impecunious state kept me home.

  24. I had a very similar thought, JAC; while I certainly don’t subscribe to the Islamic rules on modesty, this seems to be a clear case of a believer utterly flouting the spirit of the religious teaching even while obeying the letter of it.

    Still, maybe she is an example of a ‘cultural Muslim’, the same way there are atheist Jews and people who identify as Christians while not doing anything more than putting up a Christmas tree and coloring eggs at Easter.

  25. Wake me when they put a fat, balding, middle-aged man with a butt beard and moobs on the cover…

  26. I recall MMA fighter, Ronda Rouncey, appearing in body-paint made to look like a swimsuit. Would a painted-on burkina satisfy sura 24:31?

  27. I am for any woman who has been repressed finding a way to express herself and assert her rights no matter how strange it seems to people who never had to worry about those rights, especially people who might be prejudiced against them.

    It wasn’t that long ago that women in America were not allowed to wear pants, have a credit card in our own name, or attend Harvard. If this helps muslim women take a step forward, I’m all for it.

    1. To point out how very recent those things in your list are:
      A colleague was in the first class of girls at her (public) high school that was allowed to wear pants – and only because of the very cold weather.
      That same colleague had a true ‘shotgun’ wedding.
      Her husband didn’t want her on birth control, so the doctor wouldn’t prescribe her any.
      Their bank accounts were all in his name, and even though we are in a community property state, she had difficulty accessing her own money.
      Another colleague was the first woman partner at a firm. The partner’s lounge did not allow ladies. For her to attend meetings there, she was made to sit on a male partner’s lap.
      I could go on. I don’t see this model and her burkini as hurting women’s rights in the least.

      1. “she was made to sit on a male partner’s lap”

        I hope she was at least allowed to share his coffee.

    2. Quite right.

      I live in an area that has a fair number of Muslims. There’s a broad range of hijabi clothing that I see, all the way from burka with niqab (thought rare) up to women wearing headscarves along with leggings. I’ve started to see women in headscarves wearing short sleeve tops.

      I often see middle-aged women in headscarves, with their teenage daughters who have uncovered hair.

    3. I agree about Muslim women and the burkini. It was designed by a Muslim woman in Australia who wanted to be able to be a part of the beach culture there.

      Otoh, I also agree with Jerry’s take on the SI.

  28. The thing is, the whole point of modest clothing is to HIDE beauty, not show it off!

    I’ll have to quibble with this. I was raised in a faith tradition that both prized and mandated modesty. I’ve got some feelings about it.
    –
    The point of modesty is certainly not to hide beauty. Modest apparel should highlight wholesome beauty – as it were. It should not incite lust, as Jerry pointed out. So here- I can see why she would think she’s fitting through a loophole. She’s smiling brightly, not exposing bits considered too fresh, and her hands and arms are in positions far from her breasts/groin. So she is being ‘modest’.
    –
    That said, the whole idea of modesty is ridiculous in my opinion. I go for a more utilitarian approach:
    1) The apparel should match the activity
    2) The apparel should be weather appropriate
    3) The apparel should not put one at risk of contracting something nasty while riding on public transportation
    4) The apparel should make the wearer feel at ease.

  29. Leaving all political correctness aside, what’s the point? (Of that SI issue?)

    Guys buy SI to perv at scantily-clad chicks. Why would anyone buy this issue? Novelty value?

    It’s a bit like a hot rod magazine featuring a Prius.

    (In the past I’ve defended the burkini and I still do – for some Muslim women it may be the best option they can manage, depressing as that is. But I can’t imagine a situation where I’d be so desperate as to pay money to drool over pictures of same).

    cr

    1. I’ve never really understood that. Sports Illustrated is a magazine about sport isn’t it? I assume, being published in the USA, it is mostly about American football, baseball and basketball.

      I don’t understand why it feels the need to do a swimsuit edition once a year. Does it sell more copies? If so, why bother with the normal sports bits. Does it improve brand awareness? I find that hard to believe. As a foreigner, I was aware of the swimsuit edition but I had to Google “Sports Illustrated” to be sure that the first sentence of this comment is correct. The message I get from the SI swimwear edition is that SI is all about scantily clad models. That’s not true, is it.

      1. I wouldn’t know since the *only* thing I know about SI is the existence of the swimsuit edition. I assumed it was a ‘men’s mag’ of some sort. If I’m wrong (this has been known to happen, though rarely, I usually manage to dispose of the witnesses first) then I guess my comment applies to the swimsuit edition only.

        😎

        cr

        1. That kind of proves my point. If you visit their web site https://www.si.com or read their Wikipedia entry, it is clear that it is mostly about sports. The swimwear edition presents a completely false view of most of their output.

  30. “Given that this clothing is supposed to hide the “allure” of women, it’s bizarre that Aden’s photos are alluring, highlighting her beauty, and that they will appear alongside the nearly naked non-Muslim women who regularly adorn the pages of SI’s swimsuit issue.”

    Why, it’s almost as if the modern symbolism of the clothing has gone beyond the original symbolism. Who would have thought that possible?

  31. Depressing.

    Maajid is crystal clear.

    My two cents :

    If this is what it takes to get Islam to get with the program and reform – SOME how (it is not clear), then so be it. Religion after all isn’t amenable to reason.

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