Who fears the lady in the burkini?
When there is a fear for any religion , it provokes the hatred and end the humanity in an individual.
There is a pseudo phenomena going all over the world and this has lead to the rise in hatred in the clogged minds of people. They are blaming a certain religion and now fear the practice of that particular one.
In Europe, however beset
by the continued weakness of the euro, Britain’s vote to defect from the
European Union and the rise of the far right, a vacation is a right for
oneself, a duty to one’s family. In Italy, especially, the beach doesn't just
beckon -- it commands attendance.
On the beach, Italians and tourists doze,
chat, leaf through magazines, minister to the old folks, play with, or shoo
away, the kids, and at times take a dip in an almost-warm sea.
But, as "Corriere della
Sera's" commentator Beppe Severgnini observed, it's a summer composed
of sun and insecurity, fun and fear. Italy's peninsula isn't just seductive for
natives and visitors; it is also for the migrants who continue to risk their
lives crossing the Mediterranean to get to a country that has, till now,
remained relatively calm about the influx. It even welcomed them -- perhaps
heeding Pope Francis' passionate plea for tolerance toward immigrants.
That toleration is
breaking down now, however, out of a growing fear that agents of Islamic State
lurk among the migrants, ready to unleash more terror on a European state that
has suffered relatively little. That last fact allowed Interior Minister
Angelino Alfano to declare that he would not go down a road that, were it not
so serious, would have otherwise seemed a product of the August silly season: a
ban on Muslim women wearing an article of clothing called a
"burkini."
A burkini is a linguistic cross
between a burka and a bikini. But it is most of the former with none of the
latter. Likely invented in 2004 in Australia -- another beach-worshipping
nation -- it is a one-piece swimsuit that covers the body, with only the face,
hands and feet exposed.
It seemed to cause no great fuss
in Australia. But it did in Paris in 2009, when a woman wearing one was banned
from swimming in a public pool. Now some French resorts, starting with the
classiest, Cannes, have ruled the burkini against the law and levied fines on
those defying the ban.
It hasn't stopped at the beach resorts. Looking a
little embarrassed (as well he might), French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said
on Wednesday that he supported mayors who had banned the garment because it is
“not compatible with the values of France." He did not announce a
national ban, though.
Valls and the various mayors are appealing to France’s strict
secularism, which bans all wearing of religious symbols in public institutions,
though not, until now, on beaches. Secularism has been a national choice for a
century. But applying it to Muslim women who wish to remain modest, as seems to
be the case, tips into legal extremism and makes the state look ridiculous.
Critics say the ban could provoke a violent reaction from
Islamist terrorists, in a country that has had more than its share of attacks.
Indeed, that was the main reason Alfano, the Italian minister, gave for
rejecting a burkini ban. He received a justified rebuke from center-right
Senator Lucio Malan, who said that laws should not be adopted, or not adopted,
based on presumed threats.
Both the far right and center right are beating hard on the
drum of fear. The French mayors who have banned the burkini are largely center
right. In Italy, the most right wing of former Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi's TV channels, Canale 4, broadcast on Tuesday a program that
featured the town of Mirandola, which was the epicenter of a serious earthquake
in 2012 and where a beloved church remains unusable.
Yet a new mosque has opened in the town, built with public
funds, as well as money from Qatar. Citizens, massed in the square, screamed
“Shame! Shame!” at the lonely spokesman from the governing center-left
Democratic Party, whose plea for understanding seemed to enrage them more.
The miasma of fear spreads across the West, prompted by
massacres in France and the United States, by the continuing official police
warnings of the "not if but when" variety, by the evident
enthusiastic ruthlessness of Islamic State and other terrorist groups, as well
as freelance murderers who act in their names after brief exposure to their
methods on the Internet.
There seems no point in saying that more victims die in
highway accidents in a month than terrorism in a year, nor that Islamic State
is losing territory in Syria, Libya and Iraq.
The fear of evil hidden
in the community is too great for that kind of reckoning. It has become a
political fact on the ground, which causes leaders who probably know better to
back futile and perhaps illegal bans.
Donald Trump has long known the
power of the fear of terrorism, and his speech this past week on
immigration was one of his most carefully constructed. That isn't saying
much because many of his remarks seemed streams of reactionary consciousness.
But one proposal was actually doable -- if still extreme. Trump pulled back
from his blanket temporary ban on all Muslim visitors to the United States and
called instead for a ban confined to nations where terrorism was out of control
and for an "ideological test" on those who did seek to come to the
United States.
Peter Feaver, a former George W.
Bush official who signed a letter along with 50 top Republican former
national-security officials saying they would not vote for Trump, said it was a
“surprisingly serious” speech. He added, though, that "the good parts are
not new and the new parts are not good."
It was serious, though, because
Trump knows he has to be credible on the issue. This is what people beyond the
roughly 30 percent of the population who strongly believe in him are fearful
about -- and fearful for their children.
This is big politics, which can
make a center leftist like Valls endorse nonsense because, if he doesn't, his
already unpopular government may slide into toxicity. This is the largest
element that created the majority in Britain for Brexit. This is a defining
period in the West's relations with the Muslim world.
One that fear, even on sunny
beaches, makes it very hard to manage.
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