Bavarian Broadcaster Promotes Islamist Veils Using Phone Analogy
Germany's public broadcaster faced criticism for promoting Islamic modest fashion without challenging views comparing women to objects needing protection.
The taxpayer-funded broadcaster ran a segment glorifying so-called “modest fashion” at a store in Nuremberg owned by Selda Dastan, who wears a headscarf herself. The report presented the increased covering of women’s bodies as simply one fashion choice among many, without any critical examination of the religious ideology behind it.
The BR piece opened by noting that as temperatures rise, many people wear less clothing and show more skin. It then introduced modest fashion as a counter-trend involving clothes that cover most of the body, giving it a platform in Dastan’s Nuremberg shop.
Most controversially, the segment allowed Dastan’s husband to speak at length about Islamic dress requirements without any pushback or journalistic scrutiny. He explained that in Islamic belief, women must dress covered, with only face, hands, and feet from the ankle down permitted to be visible.
He then compared women to mobile phones requiring protective cases. Important things should be protected, he argued, and since a woman is important with all her body parts, she too should be protected. Women should not be objects for other men, he claimed. The BR narrator left these statements completely unchallenged, offering no context or counterpoint to this view of women as objects requiring concealment.
To suggest that modest fashion appeals beyond Muslim women, the broadcast featured a customer expressing delight at finding items suitable for her, adding that she did not want to commit cultural appropriation.
The segment went on to describe modest fashion as a worldwide trend since the 2010s, with the market growing continuously and now estimated at several billion euros. The narrator concluded that the message behind modest fashion might be not how much skin is shown, but how it is shown.
The uncritical promotion of religious veiling by a state-funded German broadcaster has sparked questions about editorial standards and the willingness of public media to challenge fundamentalist interpretations of women’s roles in society.
With information from Nius
