Muslim is the new Jew

    A lot of recent events suggest the increasing xenophobia everywhere in Europe. It has by and large become acceptable to make ignorant and degrading statements about Islam in the media. The statements made by some of the high profile politicians, news anchors and instant opinion makers routinely have words like “strange”, “spooky”, “weird”, “offensive”, “creepy”, “wrong”, “evil-looking”, “sinister” which in my opinion are not words a civilized society should use about other human beings. For the sake of experiment, if we replace the word Muslim by Jew or Black, I am sure they will face criminal charges in their respective countries.

    An Italian minister has reasoned that Burkhas should be banned because they can be disturbing to small children. Now, let’s be honest with ourselves. Haven’t we all, at some point of time saw someone right in the face and wished they wore a Burkha? On a sunny day at the beach, would you prefer a 55 year old in a Burkini^[meaning] or a two piece bikini?

    If anything we should encourage Burkhas selectively. I made my own little list of people who might scare the hell out of those very kids (they occasionally scared me). The toppers in the list are shaven-headed-heavily-tattooed weirdoes. Next in the list are people who have piercings on their body anywhere other than ears and nose. And a close third come gangs of drunken youth wearing hooded sweatshirts. 

    I am “friends-in-law”^[meaning] with a couple of girls in Hyderabad who wear Burkhas to college. They wear Burkhas only when they use some sort of public transport and as soon as they are inside their college campus, they are in their comfortable jeans and sleeveless tees. Their parents know about it too. When I asked her, “why wear it at all ? She said that it is the best way to protect her skin from the sun and also saves her money on sunscreen!

*****

Dictionary help (for people like me):
Friend-in-law: A good friend of a good friend who at best qualifies as a "treasured acquaintance".
Burkini: A portmanteau of burqa (body) and bikini.
Portmanteau:  A word used broadly to mean a blend of two (or more) morphemes and their meanings into one new word.
Morpheme: The smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning.
Semantic: In computer science, semantics reflects the meaning of programs or functions.
Function: Function may refer to:

• Diatonic function describes a music term
• Function (biology), explaining why a feature survived selection
• Function (computer science), or subroutine, a portion of code within a larger program, performs a specific task
• Function (engineering), related to the utility/goal of a property
• Function (language), in linguistics, a way of achieving an aim using language
• Function (mathematics), an abstract entity that associates an input to a corresponding output according to some rule
• Function model is a structured representation of the functions, activities or processes.
• Function object, or functor or functionoid, a concept of object-oriented programming
• A formal event such as a party or meeting

Wikipedia: Never user it as a dictionary.