Comments

1. blf says

   September 3, 2016 at 11:36 am

   Somewhat related, today’s dead-tree edition of the International New York Times had a brilliant front-page article, ‘The Way People Look at Us Has Changed’: Muslim Women on Life in Europe:

   The storm over bans on burkinis in more than 30 French beach towns has all but drowned out the voices of Muslim women, for whom the full-body swimsuits were designed. The New York Times solicited their perspective, and the responses — more than 1,000 comments from France, Belgium and beyond — went much deeper than the question of swimwear.

   What emerged was a portrait of life as a Muslim woman, veiled or not, in parts of Europe where terrorism has put people on edge. One French term was used dozens of times: “un combat,” or “a struggle,” to live day to day. Many who were born and raised in France described confusion at being told to go home.
   […]

   I am insulted, spat on (literally) every day in the subway, on the bus, at school. Yet I have never insulted or hit someone. No, I am just Muslim. I am seriously thinking of going to live elsewhere, where other people’s looks won’t make me cry every night in my bed.

   I am afraid of having to wear a yellow crescent on my clothes one day, like the Star of David for Jews not so long ago.

     — Charlotte Monnier, 23, Toulouse, France. Architecture student.
   […]

   To be a Muslim woman in France is to live in an apartheid system of which the beach bans are just the latest incarnation. … I think that French Muslim women would be justified to request asylum in the United States, for instance, given how many persecutions we are subjected to.

     — Karima Mondon, 37. French teacher who recently moved to Casablanca, Morocco, from Lyon, France.
   […]

   Thank you ever so much for viewing us as human beings and for taking into account our opinions. In Belgium, as in France for that matter, we never get the chance to speak, even though we Muslims (veiled or not) are the main people concerned by these recurrent controversies on Islam and women. We are seen as brainless bigots who are submissive to our husbands or fathers. I myself am a Muslim, a teacher, tolerant, feminist AND veiled.

     — Khadija Manouach, 29, Brussels. Teacher in an elementary school.
   […]

   The whole article is worth reading.

   Teh trum-prat is proposing something even more extreme. He’s not quite to the literal yellow crescent on clothing stage, but his hate speech (as the International New York Times called it) this past Wednesday could easily be part of mein kampf.