I should note my irritation is not with any woman choosing to wear the queerly named thing, but with the blanket declaration.

Mine is more with the former. The latter can be fixed with a ticket to the tunisian beaches where local ladies can sunbath topless along with european tourists. For the former, I don't see a remedy. There's a picture of the said suit in one of eerie's links, the ladies look like smurfs. It's hilarously ridiculous and despairing at the same time. I don't understand the post-79 tendency of pious Muslim ladies to want to look like ETs at best - when not outright repulsive. So much for the image of Islam.

- or correction to myself, borrowing from Col -

...I don't understand the post-79 tendency of highly conservative Muslim women to want to look like ETs...

A cross between the bikini and the burqa? It looks like neither.

Agree. And the term 'burqini' seems to have more to do with offering readers the titillating 1001 Nights vision of a muhagababe in a bikini than with describing the actual swimthingy. These suits have been around for a while and there are funkier ones available online too...

I had nothing to do with that link!

Looks like those clothes the stewardesses wore in Kubrick's 2001. Which were cute, but would be a bit out of place on a beach.

Dear all,

I put up those links. I think they are quite interesting, particularly as the whole story takes place in Australia. It fits into the whole "people abroad are more traditionalist than people at home". I see the burqini as yet another expression of the (sometimes rather desparate) attempt to "not stray" and identify & live according to one's culture and avoid one's dissolution into the mainstream.

There have been "sharia-conforming" bathing suits around for a while now. There's a Turkish company selling them, and I know of Levantine women wearing bathing suits in the style of the 1910s in the West.

What nobody seems to pick up on is the fact that, if you wear a body-hugging piece of clothing and you get wet ... well, it doesn't really matter whether the sleeves go all the way down to the wrists and the legs all the way down to the ankles ...

This goes hand in hand with muhajabaat who wear skin-tight jeans & t-shirts.

--MSK

MSK - rather like Islamic banking. Not a perfect solution, but intended to get the job done within the letter of the law.

Not a perfect solution, but intended to get the job done within the letter of the law.

The problem here being that the whole hijab concept is not a matter of letter but a matter of interpretation - the letter itself isn't unambiguous about the issue. Just like Islamic banking by the way, the letter only mentions usury, and the confusion between usury and interests is contemporary (e.g. Ottomans accepted interests).

Never fails.

Post on something involving cutlure, women and sex, comments.

Business and development, zero.

Leaving that aside as a mere observation of the wry sort, I agree in grosso modo w Shaheen Bey.

The issue at hand is the Salafi types pimping a very narrow vision of the law and its appropriateness as the sole view.

On the other hand, as MSK notes, this sort of thing goes hand in hand with hidjab wearing girls in form fitting sexy outfits.

In the end, I am a pragmatist, and if the rational argument is not going to win out, but irrational scratching one's ear from behind one's head solutions get one moving forward - well so be it.

Such is the case w Islamic finance - I despair of the rational observation with respect to usury winning over the ostentatiously pious, so give them "islamic finance" instead.

shaheen what's the difference between interest an usury? what kind of interest did the ottomans allow and how did they define the usury they prohibited?

thanks a lot!

Cheers...

You will find a discussion of the Muslim (Sunni) debate over usury (riba) vs interest (fa'ida) here. Historical and religious references are given. The Ottoman practice of issuing bonds and allowing interests through the awqaf is briefly mentionned there as well, but you can find more elements on the Ottoman awqaf here, on interests uses and issuance by the Ottoman state here for example... I can't find web references to how the Ottoman state called upon its muftis and ulemas to legitimize the use of interest, but that's basically what it did.

Lounsy: I don't know about others around here, but I'm not actually all that versed in the minutiae of business development, so while I'm interested and like the posts, I can't reply that much. As for the culture splash issues, we're swimming in it, even here (or particularly, rather) in Toronto and other large cities.

Speaking of business, I noticed the other day while googling myself that I had missed your reply on our little Stiglitz-related tussle. I'll be reading the Stig soon for class so I'll then pick up from there so I can argue closer to what's in there rather than conjecture. Instead of replying to that old entry, I'll probably just tag along some newer entry, unless I find myself having to reply explicitly to that old entry. We'll see.

Not "highly conservative", I would say just regularly conservative women, and typically all Gulf women. It is extremely rare for them to swim here, except possibly at private ladies clubs, where there are even "modesty codes" although it's all-women there.

You see Gulf women walking by the sea while their husband and kids swim. You occasionally see them wading in, but that's about it. At Wild Wadi waterpark, you see them walking past the edge while their husbands and kids swim and go on the rides. (They're not allowed to wade in wearing non-swimming clothes at Wild Wadi).

In Europe the no-sun stay-indoors lifestyle of many Muslim immigrant women has led to some health problems. Any reports of the same in the Gulf?

They have sun in Denmark? The celestial body is restricted to wearing a niqab on many daylight hours in the British Isles as well. In fact, it's restricted to being seen in daylight hours only in all countries. Texas is quite liberal however.