The Muslimah and the Pool

I want to talk about how a Muslim woman, upon reaching adulthood, and starting to abide by Islamic dress rules for her manages not to miss out on that wondrous hobby that is swimming. I love swimming, I adore it. I grew up in a hot sunny country in a swimming pool. Becoming a woman, and even though not yet a hijab wearing woman, meant that swimming was no longer such an easy activity. Swimming costumes for women fall short of the Islamic dress code to say the least, and if you wanted to even partially abide by these rules and still swim, your only option was women only swimming sessions. Luckily this was an option for me, as was the option of a womens only beach.

In London I discovered, that often even when the local pool advertises a womens only swimming session, this is often accompanied by male life guards, or is overlooked by a mixed-gender gym. A few pools do offer real(ish) womens only sessions, such as Highbury pool in North London, and the Mile End Leisure centre (East London). They both guarantee that only female life guards are used. I used to go swimming in the Highbury pool, but on one occasion a man walked through the swimming area during the session. I attempted the Mile End option, but I had to queue for an hour for the ‘chance’ of getting in!

Recently though there has been an upsurge in what have been termed the Islamic swimsuit. These arguably started in Turkey with the hasema range, then spread to Australia (home of the Burqini), the USA (home of the Splashgear suit), also to the United Arab Emirates (home of the mycozzie suit) and to Brazil (home of the AquaGym suit). None of them are cheap, you are looking to pay around £80 for any one of them. But the liberation they offer makes it worth it.

Admittedly, many women are uber-conservative, and consider the wearing of trousers or the swimming in mixed company to be sinful to women. I am not one of those women, and believe each of us are different and differ in some matters. I personally own the Splashgear swimsuit and the MyCozzie suit. The Splashgear is made of a loose fitting rashguard top and wide board-trousers (made of the same material as the Male board shorts), while the MyCozzie is loose fitting lycra trousers and a long lycra top.

I have used the Splashgear suit in the public pools here in the UK, with no problems, only once did a lifeguard question me on it, but once I let her feel the material and explained that it was a purpose made suit, she was happy with it. I have yet to try out the MyCozzie suit, but because of its more familiar style (it looks a bit like a loose wetsuit) I expect pools wont be as scared by it.

The next thing I want to try is to go to one of these water parks. The only problem is finding people to go with, the Burqini craze is not quite a craze and is yet to ‘arrive’ in the UK, so it is problematic finding other Muslim women to go with me. So if you are a London based burqini owner, and would like a day at one of the Souths water parks, why not pester Imaan networking for an event like that ;) On another note, if you happen to own a sports equipment shop, why not look into stocking up on these swimsuits? People are happier to part with £80 if they can try them on, and I want some burqini friends.