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BBC News

David Lisnar issued the ordinance on the grounds that burkinis, which are popular with Muslim women, “could risk disrupting public order while France was the target of terrorist attacks”.
He also said burkinis were a “symbol of Islamic extremism” which are “not respectful of [the] good morals and secularism” upon which the French state was founded.
Muslim women from around the world have been quick to react to news of the ban.
“This is just an Islamophobic attack on Muslim women in Cannes,” Aysha Ziauddin, who lives in Norfolk, told the BBC.
“The burkini allows me the freedom to swim and go on the beach, and I don’t feel I am compromising my beliefs for that.
“No-one has ever told me to wear it – it’s my own choice.
“How is a woman on a beach swimming in a wetsuit with her head covered a symbol of Islamic extremism?
“Even Nigella Lawson wore one!”
The mayor of Cannes issued the ordinance in late July forbidding beachwear that doesn’t respect “good morals and secularism”
“I own a burkini and I love it,” Sabrina Akram told the BBC. She grew up in Pakistan, and now lives in the US state of Massachusetts.
“I am a practising Muslim, and I believe there should be a choice,” she said.
“I honestly don’t like exposing my body in public, and I like to work fashion into my preferences on how I wish to clothe myself.
“A big part of being in a modern society, part of living in freedom, is allowing people to live their life how they want to live it.
“By putting forward this ban [the mayor of Cannes] is infringing upon a human’s basic right to live how they wish to.
“It’s not the responsibility of a public servant to dictate how I choose to cover my body.”
“I don’t have a burkini, but I do swim wearing a headscarf, tracksuit bottoms and long T-shirt,” Kerry Amr told the BBC.
Kerry, who lives in the town of Telford in the west of England, converted to Islam eight years ago, and although she chooses not to wear a burkini, she believes women should be free to choose what to wear when they go to the beach.
“I think [the ban is] slightly ridiculous,” she said.
“In Victorian times swimmers would wear long baggy trousers, full tops and swimming caps and no-one blinked an eye!
“I fail to see how a woman wishing to cover her body with a particular style of costume whilst swimming can possibly be a symbol of Islamic extremism.
“I accept that there are some horrendously psychotic people out there proclaiming to be fighting on behalf of one group or another.
“However, what a woman chooses to wear on a public beach is not going to make the slightest bit of difference, and just hands ammunition to those who want to… recruit to their twisted ideology.”
Cannes Mayor David Lisnard’s ban on the “burkini” comes at a time of heightened security in France
Maryam Ouiles, from Gloucester, told the BBC she wears the burkini so she can play with her children at the pool and at the beach.
“I think it’s outrageous that you would effectively be asked to uncover some flesh or leave,” she said.
“When did it become a crime to cover yourself?
“People are always complaining that Muslims should integrate more, but when we join you for a swim that’s not right either.
“Why is it necessary for us to show off our bodies when we don’t want to?”

Source: www.bbc.com

Adam Walker
The Huffington Post

Over the past weeks and months, the world has been witness to the tragic destruction of historical sites across Iraq – both secular and religious. The most recent attacks on humankind’s shared civilisation saw ISIS destroy the ancient cities of Nimrod and Hatra.

As illustrated in a recent article by Gerard Russell, there appears to be a growing feeling that ISIS is only fulfilling its ‘’Islamic’’ obligation through its destructive rampage. The justification for this view is often found in the edicts of ultra-conservative Islamist scholars who go so far as to call for all ‘’non-Islamic’’ symbols to be destroyed.

However, how true is this extreme position to Islam’s history and teachings?

Islam, the world’s second largest religion, was established in 610 CE. Over the 1,400 years that followed, the Muslim community was ruled over by dozens of dynasties and rulers, some good, some despotic and most indifferent. However, Muslims consider the leadership of the Prophet Muhammad and his first four successors (the Rashidun caliphs) to have excelled in justice and piety – symbols of the most pristine representation of the teachings of Islam.

For example, following two decades of heavy persecution, 10,000 Muslims are said to have been led by the Prophet Muhammad into Mecca, in what has come to be known as the ‘bloodless victory’. With very few exceptions, the hundreds, if not thousands of Meccans who had persecuted, often viciously, the Prophet and his community were met with compassion and no revenge. The Orientalist Stanley Lane-Poole described the scene as follows:

“The day of Muhammad’s greatest triumph over his enemies was also the day of his grandest victory over himself. He freely forgave the Quraysh all the years of sorrow and cruel scorn to which they had inflicted him, and gave an amnesty to the whole population of Mecca.”

Critics often point to reports that the Prophet, shortly after the victory of Mecca, entered the Ka’ba, the large black object situated in Mecca to which all Muslims direct their prayers, and had the idols therein destroyed. And this much is true.

According to Muslim belief, the Ka’ba was considered a monotheistic symbol that had emerged from the Judaic tradition. It was felt that the Meccans had taken charge of the Ka’ba and abused its monotheistic provenance. Now that Mecca was again under monotheistic rule, the removal of the idols was to restore the Ka’ba to its original, Abrahamic purpose.

However, critics often ignore what the Prophet Muhammad did not do; for example, he did not enter people’s homes and destroy their idols or prohibit them from pagan practice and belief; neither did not have his followers scour Arabia in order to remove all remnants of paganism or idol worship. A far cry from the recent scenes of destruction and intolerance in Iraq.

The second caliph and successor to the Prophet Muhammad was ‘Umar b. al-Khattab, known for being a devout Muslim and firm in upholding the Islamic teachings. As anyone who has ventured down to Cairo’s Giza suburb will have seen, when Egypt came under Muslim rule, during Umar’s reign, the Muslims did not tie ropes around the Sphinx and pull it down or destroy Coptic monasteries.

When Iraq soon followed in Cairo’s footsteps, Muslim rulers made use of its ancient cities as cultural centers rather than to destroy them. And when Jerusalem came under Muslim rule, Umar had the Temple Mount restored as it had become, under Byzantine rule, a site of ruins and a rubbish dump. Had the teachings of the Qur’an and practice of the Prophet Muhammad demanded the destruction of such sites, then they would have been destroyed, without exception.

So while our attention is rightly focused on the recent indefensible destruction of the ancient cities of Hatra and Nimrod by ISIS, it should not be lost on us that what ISIS destroyed in hours stood intact for almost 1,400 years under Muslim rule.

Moreover, it is important not to fall into the trap of thinking that ISIS’ attacks have been limited to non-Muslim sites and artifacts – or, as it were, to the symbols of the ‘kuffar‘ (unbelievers). This is simply not the reality. Last month ISIS also destroyed a prominent sunni Ottoman Mosque in Mosul; a city that has also seen the destruction of sufi shrines, shi’a mosques, and a seventh century church that dates back to the very beginnings of Islam.

Likewise, Muslim leaders are far from silent on this matter. For example, the gap between ISIS and mainstream Islam was illustrated at London’s much lauded annual international ‘Peace Symposium‘, held last month in western Europe’s largest Mosque. Speaking about desecration and destruction of ancient heritage sites, the Caliph and worldwide head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, said:

“For more than 1400 years these cities were preserved and protected by successive Muslim rulers and governments and yet now the extremists claim to have destroyed them in Islam’s name. This can only be branded as an extreme cruelty and a transgression of Islam’s teachings. No true Muslim could ever comprehend acting in this way.”

To take ISIS and the destruction it inflicts as representative of Muslims and Islam is a betrayal of history and feeds into a divisive narrative of ‘us and them’. In reality, when contrasted with Islam’s wider teachings and history, ISIS’ destructive rampage clearly demonstrates just how far the apple has fallen from the tree.

Source: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk