Word: muslims
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...demure suits, pioneered by two Muslim women on opposite sides of the globe, are like lightweight, loose, hooded wet suits and hide everything but the face, hands and feet. Australian retailer Aheda Zanetti, 38, says she was inspired to design her Burqini after watching young Muslim girls struggle to play netball in bulky layers. Her competitor, California microbiologist Shereen Sabet, 36, came up with her full-coverage Splashgear suits after searching in vain for Islam-appropriate scuba gear. The UV-resistant, stretchy swimsuits start at $90 and have found upwards of 6,000 buyers--most of them online--in locations...
...comfortable and be herself in," she says. But the new swimsuits have drawn criticism from both East and West. "This is like playing a game with Allah," asserted a poster on the website ShiaChat, complaining that the stretchy fabric reveals curves. Zanetti's design has also brought out anti-Muslim sentiment since she's become a high-profile member of the Islamic community. She has been called a terrorist online; she says she has even received a death threat...
...that burqas in any form are offensive to women. "Clearly you're not considered a full human being if you're mandated to cover yourself head to toe in this tent," says Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of Equality Now, the international women's-rights watchdog. Sabet responds that Muslim men too have a dress code: the Koran forbids them to wear saffron or silk or expose skin from navel to knee. But Imam Mohamed Magid, who heads a moderate mosque in Sterling, Va., calls debate over Islamic clothing misdirected. "I wish there was more talk about women as leaders...
Still, in this bare-it-all age of the string bikini, when young girls take wardrobe cues from Paris Hilton and body-image pressure is intense, the Burqini swimsuit is making a statement. And that's the point, the designers say: the suits allow women, Muslim or not, to choose comfort over conformity. "I know it sounds like an oxymoron," says Sabet. "But this is really about freedom...
...weeps again, sitting by Anabella before a group of priests, ministers, a rabbi, a cantor and a Muslim Koranic chanter in the Angelica Lutheran Church in Los Angeles' Pico-Union district. Her pastor, the Rev. Frank Alton of nearby Immanuel Presbyterian, is preaching her into her new life here under a kind of benevolent house arrest. Alton's text is Leviticus 19: 33: "The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." Alton concludes, "The New Sanctuary Movement...