There is an article in the the Weekend Australian today written by Emma-Kate Symons. It is one of those mischievous opinion columns with words like activist and pugnacious freely used.
But the article and some of the comment proves one thing. Australia is rapidly developing into the land of the sanctimonious. Ms Symons takes aim at Channel Seven with proclamations of thou shalt apologise. Commenters likewise declare I shall never watch your channel again. What rot. What happened to our spirit of fighting injustice?
Ms Symons priggishly claimed Zeynab Alshelh and her (activist Ms Symons words) parents wore the Burkini on a French beach "to “show solidarity” with (radically conservative) Muslims and, featured the 23-year-old flaunting her burkini in an obvious attempt to bait Gallic sun lovers into religious and ethnically motivated hatred."
Radically conservative? Radically conservative Muslims don't show their faces let alone don a Burkini and go to the beach. Worse was the claim, "To bait Gallic sun lovers in religious and ethnically motivated hatred?" My God. Talk about gilding the lily to generate a comment. If locals did resort to ethnically motivated hatred doesn’t that say more about them than Zeynab Alshelh and her parents?
As for the reader comments suggesting the perpetrators need to pull the stunt in Nigeria or Saudi Arabia. Sorry, but I believe you miss the point. You don't fix the problem in Nigeria or Saudi Arabia by caving in where freedom to choose how we dress has been a right that's been won. A right that is now being striped away. If people don't stand up for the erosion of rights in the west, then we run the risk of systematically losing more rights.
Banning of the Burkini is a total over reaction by the French local authorities who have imposed it. A ban which has been over turned by the French High Court as unconstitutional. The Burkini is a simple item of clothing. The claims made in trying to justify the removal were absurd. Particularly the one about a health risk. If that were true I would think willies and bare butts flapping around in the ocean on nude beaches would be a bigger health risk.
Removing external signals of modesty linked to religion is not going to fix the problem of radical Islam in France. Using women as weapons in the fight is appalling and should be resoundly condemned.
Now for Ms Symons. Ms Symons is an Australian journalist who resides in the US. Her profile on the ABC highlights this in reference to Charlie Hebron.
"We should have stood with Charlie Hebdo and others willing to fight for freedom of expression sooner, not just after the massacre in Paris.
Their fidelity to the fundamental values of democracy, even as many around the world and in France found their editorial line too "provocative" or "offensive", will long endure after these killers are brought to justice."
But it seems that same demand to show willingness to fight for freedom of expression. To fight for the fundamental values of democracy doesn't extend to Muslim women who just want to go to the beach. In doing so to dress modestly. Freedom and democracy for some but not for all. How sad.
