A customer examines a selection of "Sharia swimsuits" in a Cairo boutique, BBC Sept 2000

Do you think that Muslim  Swim wear was an invention of  Lebanese Australian, Ahiida Zanetti? But, It is not true as many of you believe.  Unfortunately,  many  bloggers still wrongly believe that Muslim women were not able to swim before  5 Feb, 2007, the day  Ahiida launched her Burqini®™ brand with the support of aussie media.  The property rights of a brand is virtually  limited to the country in which it registered and fortunately, she cannot do it all over the world.  Even if she spent more money on such a legal blunder,   she cannot act like Bill Gates with a swim wear, which doesn’t have any technological or proprietary secrets.  Ahiida explained the term Burqini as a blend of Burqa + bikini. The  burqa is an extreme form of fundamentalist gear that is not found in much of the Muslim world outside of Afghanistan and, to a much less degree, India and Pakistan.  In fact, the word “burqa” or  “burqini” don’t have any commercial value out side this region. Have you ever heard of Afghani women swimming under the protection of Taliban?

However, I agree that she was successful in marketing  her product and now “burqini” is the standard issue for Muslim female lifeguards in Australia.   According to 2006 census, Australian Muslim population was  merely 340,392 .  36 % of them are born in Australia.   10 % of Australian Muslim population are Lebanese , while  Turkish comes third  with 8.5%.  By comparison, the United Kingdom is home to between 1 million and 2 million Muslims, about 3% of its total population.  So  let her take the brand name Burqini®™ , or Burkini ®™  but not the whole world of Muslim swimwear.

But the fact remains that Aussie media and Mr. Rupert Murdock fooled  the entire  Islamic world and Muslim bloggers with such a hyped coverage for Ahiida to market an Australian product for unreasonable pricing.   Australian media will promote another brand niqabikini ®™  if it is a matter of business. Turkish Muslims were very familiar with Muslim  swim wear before Lebanese Australian  Ahida Zanetti launched Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA) burqini  mission with 20-year-old beautiful model Mecca Laa Laa.  But even before that, Turkish Muslims had special swim wear for muslim women. To Turkish Muslim women swimming is a part of their daily life like their centuries old Turkish Bath. Turkey  has 20,196,000 and Egypt  has 78,513,00 Muslims.  One-in-four (25%) Muslims in the Middle East North African region live in Egypt.

According to PEW survey, 80 % of the world  muslim population lives in non arab speaking countries. Only 20 % of Muslims live in Middle East-North Africa region.  Indonesia alone has  12.9% world muslim population.  Muslimahs,  Let us not stop swimming.

For those who don’t believe me, please read the following link.
On Tuesday, 5 September, 2000,  Caroline Hawley reported this story to BBC from Cairo.

Warm welcome for ‘Sharia swimsuit’

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/910379.stm

“Some Western countries violate the principles of freedom by laws and court rulings that transgress on the rights of their minorities.”A Swiss court turned down on Friday, October 24, a request by a Swiss Muslim father to exempt his two sons from attending mixed swimming classes.

It argued that exempting students from mixed swimming classes for religious reasons must be very restricted.

Equality between the two sexes and the success of the integration process should be given priority over religious considerations, argued the court.

The verdict runs counter to a 1993 court ruling which allowed the exemption of a Muslim schoolgirl from attending mixed swimming lessons that violate her religious tents.

There are more than 340,000 Muslims in Switzerland, which has a population of 7.4 million.

Islam is the second religion in the European country after Christianity.

Necessity

Some Swiss schools have taken measures to encourage Muslim students to attend swimming classes by allocating separate pools and changing rooms for boys and girls.

But many Muslim students had to dropped out from the mixed swimming classes when such accommodations were not make.

Sheikh Ounis Guergah, the head of the fatwa section of the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF), said people should strike the right balance.

“In principle, people should ne be very rigid when it comes to children who have not yet reached puberty,” he told IOL.

“But even in this case, parents must teach their kids modesty and chastity.”

Sheikh Guergah stressed that the case is different with adults and grown-ups.

“We recommend that they dress the way Islam dictates,” he said, noting that international swimmers in the Beijing Olympics wore swimming suits that almost covered all their bodies.

The scholar said Muslim students should abide by their religious dressing code as much as possible and seek exemption when possible.

“But if this will lead to expulsion from school as was the case in many French schools, it would be in the best interest of students to attend these (swimming) lessons.”
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By  Hadi Yahmid, IOL Correspondent

Muslim Swimwear from ZEHBA.COM

RALEIGH, N.C. — Salman Sheikh was organizing a swim class for his two sons last summer when fellow Muslim parents approached him about starting a class for girls. Sheikh told them he would ask the Curran Aquatic Center in Cary, N.C., whether it could accommodate a group of Muslims who preferred a women-only pool. Yes, of course, the leaders of the aquatic center said, and showed him a 15-yard pool that could be rented for $170 an hour.  Problem was, the small pool overlooked a larger, Olympic-size pool, and Sheikh wondered whether the center could provide blinds to cover the windows and shield the women from onlookers.Sure, the center’s leaders said, but it would cost $3,000 for custom-made blinds. Sheikh was ready to drop the idea. But the Muslim community in Raleigh, N.C., and Cary wouldn’t let him.  Within a month, Sheikh, a native of Pakistan who works as a project manager for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, raised the money and signed up 35 women for the first class.

Last month, a group of women of all ages dipped their toes into the water for the first time.

This type of accommodation to the religious requirements of their faith is something Muslims are seeing more. All-Muslim Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops have cropped up across the country. Muslims are entering politics, studying Islam at major American universities, even finding halal, or ritually slaughtered foods, at local stores. “I see this as sign of Muslims learning to operate within American civic institutions,” said Omid Safi, a professor of Islamic studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.  For many of the women who signed up for the first class, learning to swim had been a long-deferred wish.

“I didn’t ever want to be in a situation where I fall in the water and can’t help myself,” said Tarannum Khan, 30, who signed up for the class in Cary.

Many devout Muslim women adhere to their faith’s requirements to guard their modesty, which for them means covering their hair and bodies in the presence of men who aren’t their relatives. By doing so, they believe they are deflecting the desires and gazes of the opposite sex and living the kind of life the Prophet Muhammad might have approved.

In mostly Muslim countries, it is common to have separate pools for men and women. But in the United States that’s virtually unheard of, and as a result many Muslim women grow up not knowing how to swim.

Saleha Bhatti of Raleigh, who accompanied her 16-year-old daughter, Sanaa, to the swim class, said that was the case in her family. Had she stayed in Pakistan, she might have taken lessons at a women’s pool, but in the United States, it wasn’t an option.

“We never had the chance to learn,” Bhatti said.

Jenny Jaber, a convert to Islam who lives in Raleigh, said learning to swim should not be a luxury. Indeed, she said, learning to swim is encouraged in the oral sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, known as the hadith.

“I’ve wanted to waterproof this community for a long time,” said Jaber, who worked as a water safety instructor until she converted. “We’re around water all the time, and it unnerves me to see these women standing on piers.”

The first swimming class for Muslim women focused mostly on the fundamentals of water safety: wading, learning to float, learning to breathe.

Many of the women came dressed in full-length Burkinis, swimming costumes that looks much like a scuba-diving suit but are made of water-protected polyester rather than rubber. Designed for Muslim women, they cover the entire body except for the hands, feet and face.

Huma Sheikh, the wife of Salman, said she considers herself a pioneer among Triangle Muslim women who have learned to swim. She is proud that her husband and her two boys, Hamza, 9, and Mohhid, 7, can swim. And proud that she can, too.

“I’ve learned all the strokes,” she said, “but I’m best at the breast stroke.”

The first class ended last month, and the Sheikhs are planning another one in March or April.

“It’s created a lot of excitement,” said Doracy Harrison, program manager at the Curran Aquatic Center. “It’s been really neat.”

For the Sheikhs, the success of the class is a lesson in cultural adjustment. “It makes sense for business and service providers to accommodate the needs of the community,” Salman Sheikh said. “All it takes is dialogue to make it happen.”

By YONAT SHIMRON – McClatchy Newspapers, Wed, Jan. 07, 2009

“Teach your sons/daughters swimming, riding horses and throwing arrow” – Prophet Mohammed ( Peace be upon him)

For some Muslim women, going to the pool or beach used to be difficult because of Islam’s traditional emphasis on modest dress — but no longer. Thanks to new full-body swimsuits developed specifically with these women in mind, Muslim girls and women may be poolside more often.

These are an updated version of full-body swim wear which has been around for decades but complies with Islam’s traditional emphasis on modest dress. They also increasingly stylish, intricate sequin designs with miniskirts that go over long pants.

In many Muslim countries, the sexes are commonly separated in pools and on beaches. In America, however, these places are predominantly co-ed, which means some Muslim women have to abide by their personal beliefs about modesty. There are no explicit rules that would cover all Muslim cultures at all times . It’s not as if a woman who wears a regular bathing suit is not a traditional Muslim. It’s individual taste. You’ll find a wide variety of swimwear on Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The polyester, nylon and Lycra material allows for flexible movement in the water and does not stick to the woman’s body when she exits the ocean or pool.

Most Muslim women purchase three-piece suits, according to Indonesia’s major player in Muslim apparel industry, ZEHBA. The suits now being made are increasingly fashionable in moderate muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia were they are marketed using professional models. Rimma Bawazier, Indonesia’s favourite television host is the brand ambassador for ZEHBA. The great thing is that they don’t absorb water and they are very light and they’re thin, so they’re safe and very comfortable. For many Muslim women, these suits offer the only alternative to wearing regular clothes when swimming.

Aheda Zanetti, a lebanese australian sells her burqinis (Burkha + Bikini = Burkini) for up to A$200 ($160), hopes to widen the garment’s appeal beyond Muslim women at the beach.

Shereen Sabet, who founded Splashgear, an online swimwear store for Muslim women, based in Huntington Beach, Calif says “Nothing in the Quran says women and men can’t swim or scuba dive together. It’s just a question of finding a solution”. Today, about a dozen stores, based in the United States and abroad, sell swimwear to Muslim-American women, mostly through online catalogs. A full suit can cost more than $100, with pants around $60, shirts at $25 and water scarves and hoods about $15.

In the past, religious women in Turkey either didn’t go to the beach or wore regular street clothing into the water. Most women at beaches in secular Turkey wear Western-style bathing suits. One of the top company producing Islamic bathing suits, Hasema, he can’t produce them quick enough to keep pace with demand. The company exports to Egypt, North America, England and Australia. Mehmet Sahin said he founded the company, because of his own problems on the beach as a university student.

In Egypt swim suites for muslim women is better known as “Sharia swimsuit”. It is part of a growing industry catering for religiously-observant women. It is no longer mainly the westernised elite that can afford such leisure activities as swimming. In such a conservative society, many women have until now either had to sit on one side or go into the water in their clothes. To them, the “Sharia swimsuit” offers one solution. It is a high-necked, swimming costume with sleeves and a small skirt, to be worn over long trousers.
However, the highest religious authority for Sunni Muslims, Al-Azhar, does not recognise the new swimming costume.

One of its clerics, Sheikh Mahmoud al-Hanafi, says there is no such thing as an Islamically-acceptable swimsuit – the only thing Sharia law recognises is Islamic dress that is meant to protect women from what he calls “gossiping eyes.”

The fabric used to make sun protective swimwear is important for a number of reasons. The best uv protective swim wear fabrics will be rated UPF 50+ based on a complete life cycle test when the fabric is wet. Sun protective fabrics will typically lose some of their protection as they age, so garments should be tested for their end of life cycle protection value. Fabrics also provide less sun protection when wet. This is because water displaces air in the fabric and UV transmits better through water than air. A recent modification to the AATCC 183 protocol for testing spf swimwear calls for testing the fabric when wet – providing a better evaluation of the protection level when the garment is used in water as intended. So the best SPF swimwear will provide UPF 50+ protection when wet at the end of it’s life cycle.

Fit is important for appearance, comfort and sun protection levels. For many people, their first thought is to choose tight fitting swim shirts – just like the original rash guards or rash shirts worn by surfers. However, when stretched the weave of a fabric will open and can allow significant amount of UV to pass through the fabric. For this reason, Samira’s sun protective swimwear is designed to be worn close to the skin but not to be skin tight

(ref: Coolibar)

The criteria in choosing the right swim suites are cut, color, pattern, and material. Cut is the most important among this. It’ll formulate or destroy your body’s steadiness and proportion. Color, patterns and material add the finishing touches.

Not all cuts work for all body types. The pattern and fabric for some common body types can be defined as:

Pear-Shaped

If your hips and bottom are larger than your upper body, choose colors, patterns and details that draw attention away from your lower half. Pairing a solid color (like black) for your lower half with a patterned or bold top will draw the eye upward.

Large Bust

To minimize a larger bust, choose a solid-colored bathing suit top.

Small Bust

Large geometric shapes and patterns, especially horizontal stripes, give the illusion of a bigger bust.

Plus Size

If you’re plus size, try a suit in a dark color or swirling patterns.Many Muslim women think that they don’t have the right swimsuit for their body. In fact, by wearing a Muslimah swim wear, everyone can be self confident during swimming no matter what body type they have. There are easy ways to draw attention away from different aspects of your body that will cover up your shape and make you feel your best.

Color and design are important elements of a swim suit. Darker colors tend to be more subtle. A top with some pattern and a relatively clean simple bottom will give slimming effect and brings the eyes upward.

If you do not have a small waist, or your waist measures the same or only slightly smaller than your hips, look for a dress that has a pattern near the waist that minimizes the waist. Diagonal patterns, lines and darts can do this quite well.

Dresses with lower waistlines, or V-shaped waistlines will help to give the illusion of smaller waists.

Dresses that have bunched or ruffled material will create the illusion of a larger bust.

A dress with simple, or solid colors on the bodice will create an illusion of a larger bust.

You can minimize bulging bellies, larger hips and even larger busts by opting for solid colors.

Angled lines and cuts can do well to draw attention away from certain aspects of your figure.

For heavier legs, wear long flowing dresses. There are beach sarongs that you can buy to use as shawls if you have heavier arms.

Find the perfect bra. Whether this bra is going to be a part of your actual swimsuit or under your beach dress, a good supportive bra can lift and shape your bust. A good bra can minimize your waist, add or detract from your bust size as desired.

The right material can help smooth out any lumps or bumps. Choose a suit with at least 15% spandex or Lycra, but make sure it’s not too tight – you don’t want to create unwanted lumps and bumps.

Don’t limit yourself to only what is in the stores. Size selection and inventory is often limited and it can be hard to find the styles that work best for your unique figure.

While you taking attention away from the features of your body, you will become more confident and  enjoy your swimming in a public pool.