Sunday - August 16, 2009

It must be Muslim Fashion Day

Here’s another article that ties in with Peiper’s post on the burkhini.

Look at this coin from the other side for once. What if you are a muslim woman, who wants to engage in sports activities? What if you are a woman of any kind who wants to do sports, but find yourself living in a muslim nation with their repressive dress codes?

Personally, I’d opt for starting a revolution.

But others are not so bold. Especially when their culture tends to beat the boldness out of them. So, for those women, a practical solution has to be found. But it isn’t easy. Here is one woman’s story…

By AZADEH MOAVENI

The first time I went jogging in Tehran, I nearly hyperventilated after four blocks, despite wearing the gauziest of head scarves and a decidedly immodest Nike capris. The fabric covering my ears and neck stoked my body temperature unbearably, and the pleasurable strain of running gave way to acute discomfort. “How am I going to stay fit here?” I wailed to my Iranian girlfriends, experts in the dilemma of balancing exercise with Islamic modesty codes. They offered me a rich store of advice, from head scarves with ear slits to calibrating outdoor exercise with the seasons to where to find women’s only gyms.

For the pious Muslim woman, one of the greatest challenges of modern life is how to get a health-conscious work-out. In Iran, of course, the state mandates Islamic dress, so secular and faithful women alike must contend with religious codes that interfere with exercise. But the problem persists for individual Muslim women throughout the Islamic world and the West. It grabbed headlines this week when a Paris swimming pool refused entry to a young Muslim woman wearing a “burqini,” a swim garment resembling a diving suit. In France the incident falls into a wider political debate over how to reconcile the country’s Muslim immigrants to French secular values. And while the number of Muslim women in France - indeed throughout the world - who insist on such a severe covering as the burqa is small, the challenge of staying slim and Islamically proper is not.

There is plenty more here. And while what she writes is practical, to me it is infuriating. It’s submission. It’s going along with forced segregation. It’s accepting the status of a second class citizen. It’s bullshit, in my opinion.


I’d say her best solution is multipart:

a) move to the United States

b) quit that suppressive “religion” and distance yourself from anyone and everyone who would use it to keep you “in line”

c) pack a .38 in your workout kit and go exercise anywhere you want wearing whatever you want. If harassed by any of those camel fuckers in b), above, then

d) shoot their balls off.

Posted by Drew458     on 08/16/2009 at 01:51 PM   
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