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Ghita El Hafidi
Rabat – A group of people allegedly forced a Hijabi woman out of the “Hacienda Bay Resort” in Egypt, for wearing a body-covering burkini.
The incident has prompted many people to take to social media networks to share pictures taken to expose the reality of “the regressive and bigoted religious conflicts.”
Sarah El Amry, a Facebook user, who witnessed the entire incidence, shared a post about it on Sunday, saying that she found it “outrageous how people reacted when they spotted the woman swimming in a burkini at beach resort.”
“A group of people forced her out of the beach and wanted to check the material of her burkini because they worried it was ‘unhygienic,” El Amry wrote. “Some of them even beat the woman’s husband and her young son,” she added.
Soon after she shared it, El Amry’s post went viral and thousands of people worldwide took advantage of the platform to comment on the incident.
While many were irritated by the way the woman was treated, others shared comments stating there was more to the story, saying the woman was forced out because she was taking pictures of other women in bikinis.
Other Facebook users who claimed to witness the incident, however, said that the event was “true” and confirmed El Amry’s post.
The dramatic episode is only the most recent incident of its kind to be shared on social media in the past year. Over the Eid El-Fitr holiday, a Lebanese Muslim woman shared her own experience of being forced out of a beach resort for wearing a burkini. A video was also uploaded on YouTube last August showing a woman in Egypt forced to leave a swimming pool due to her swimsuit.
Designed to help Muslim women enjoy the beach without compromising their modest dress code, the burkini has stirred controversy all over the world in the past couple of years.
In 2016, several towns in France decided to ban full-body swimsuits. The country’s highest administrative court, however, later ruled that the “burkini ban” is illegal and a violation of fundamental liberties.
