This blog is my personal soap box, so today I will share my thoughts about tolerance versus judgement, using a topical subject: the "burkini" ban debate.
For those of you living under a rock and only reading my blog, the burkini is a swimsuit covering the whole body and the hair, mainly worn by Muslim women trying to stay within their religious clothing norms yet wanting to enjoy a swim, and a very va-va-voom cooking show star who shall remain nameless, who may have wanted to swim without showing off the consequences of all the yummy food she cooks and eats.
I must admit that inside me, the arguments of both sides were fighting it out: should someone's fear force other people to undress to fit in with the environment? where do we draw the line? and by extension what do I think about the whole burka debate?
First disclaimer: my mother is muslim, though not practicing (I'm protestant for those who want to know). She only wears the minimum enforceable head-covering (i.e. a scarf, preferably Hermès lol) when travelling in muslim countries, and dresses like you and me when in Europe. She tells me that the one advantage of being dressed according to the local customs when travelling is that it gives her an enhanced feeling of security. She has never been indecently approached even when on her own on public transport. For me, having lived in Paris where being chatted up is the best case scenario, and felt up the worst, that sounds not like too bad a deal, except it's bloody hot and sunny in Iran in summer.
My thoughts on the burka are that if a woman freely chooses to wear it, she should be allowed to. Freely though means no pressure whatsoever has been applied on her to wear it, not by her family, not by the society she lives in. If that freedom is not present, I think the burka is just another instrument of oppression of women.
Now, to the burkini. We don't expect nuns to wear bikinis or one-pieces to the beach, and yet we don't seem bothered by them not "looking like everyone else". So clearly, this debate is not just about fitting in. What this debate is really about, is the visible presence of muslims.
I understand that in the light of the terrorist attacks in France in particular, the temptation for knee-jerk reactions is quite high. I also understand that French people are scared of potential suicide terrorists, so that any clothing that could hide a bomb is suspect. Yet the burkini can hardly hide anything - try smuggling a bomb under a wetsuit and you'll quickly understand the difficulty.
So what we are really left with, is the question of how to react to people who are different from us.
And even that question is two-pronged: because what we feel, and what offers the best outcome, are not always overlapping.
In the burkini ban debate, clearly what most people feel like is "if only they looked like us, they would become like us" and I think that is a fallacy.
Forcing people to look like something they aren't cannot possibly the best possible outcome.
Separating them into "you're different because your beliefs are different, so you must be a threat" cannot possibly be the best outcome.
Let us not forget that some 4.7 million muslims live in France, of which I would guess 4.699 million are not a threat to anyone, are getting on with their neighbours, and generally contributing to French society like any other minority there. Oh I know, someone will dispute that number, and explain to me that only 4.4 million (or whatever) of them are actually good citizens. It still leaves an overwhelming majority of decent people, who have done nothing to merit judgment or intolerance.
What the burkini ban will do, what this picture did, is divide people into "us and them". It will make it easier for extremists to recruit because it shows our occidental society to be intolerant.
If my neighbour is different, does that mean he is "not as good" as me? My answer is: value has nothing to do with sameness. Some time ago I wrote a blogpost on how our judgement reveals more about us doing the judging than about the person we judge, and I stand by it: if I judge my neighbour according to my own personal standards, it just shows the narrowness of my mind, and has nothing to do with his value.
The way out of the very difficult, complicated situation that the world is in, cannot possibly be an arms-race, where we just try to "outgun" those who threaten our way of life.
If all of us, normal, decent people were to reach out, to the other, to the different, if we engaged the conversation, were generous, like the muslims I personally know are, wouldn't we stand a better chance to win each other's hearts?