Aldo Sterone on the Burkini and Islam’s Treatment of Women

After a long hiatus, Aldo Sterone, the Algerian-French “Auto Pundit” returns with a discussion of the recent controversy in France over the burkini, and related matters.

Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

00:00   Good morning, my friends, it’s 7 am. It’s rather rare for me to make a video this early,
00:04   but this burkini story struck me.
00:08   I haven’t watched the French news for some time; I was completely disconnected..
00:12   And now that I’m back I find that you entered the age of the burkini.
00:16   In fact it doesn’t matter if you’re for or against it,
00:20   I think this debate made us all
00:24   a little more stupid, just because of following it. Anyway, if I watch French movies
00:33   from the sixties or seventies
00:37   I have hard time thinking that this country, years later,
00:41   would be in the middle of a discussion about the burkini.
00:45   So, what is being said about it? In fact, there’s, first of all, women who are telling you:
00:54   “My freedom to wear that thing is being trampled.” All right?
00:58   That their freedom has been violated. And many support them. Let me tell you something.
01:02   I’ll tell you something. I often say one thing in another thing. Maybe it’s my African trait.
01:07   So, a system. I think it’s rule number one in politics,
01:14   but you can apply it to everything —
01:18   that a system isn’t working if it doesn’t manage
01:23   to get some assistance, some support, some help
01:27   outside its own camp, outside its target audience
01:31   because it’s very simple to prove, because in any
01:35   subject that you suggest, people are extremely
01:39   divided, and at the end you won’t get, normally, in a typical case,
01:43   support except from the people who are
01:47   for this subject. But it only works
01:52   if you manage to go beyond your target audience.
01:56   Let’s take ISIS, let’s take the terrorist group called Islamic State.
02:00   their target audience, their bull’s-eye, it’s what? Their target it was the Moslem extremists,
02:05   and finally they got the support, above all
02:12   they got the classical support. We have to see that their first supporter was the Saudi Arabia,
02:16   for example, that is classical support, but alone it wouldn’t be enough
02:20   to make this terrorist group what it is today. There was the USA
02:25   that supported them, for totally different reasons, all right?
02:29   Geo-strategic reasons; there were France and England
02:33   that supported them for other geo-strategic reasons,
02:37   but they depend on the USA, so when the USA did it, they followed.
02:41   You have Turkey that supported them as well, they supported their group, but for different reasons,
02:45   because of Mr. Erdogan, who is in power, and who was doing business with them.
02:50   So this group, if you notice, managed, it owes its success to the fact that
02:58   they were raking a little outside of their target audience.
03:02   The burka and such things, are today going outside up to
03:06   the feminist camps. Which means, I think,
03:10   in France, I don’t know for other countries, but
03:14   in France the burka can expect a long life.
03:18   The problem of the Moslem women, who say — because I was talking about that at the beginning —
03:22   “my freedom, my freedom to wear the burka is being trampled”,
03:26   brings us to a huge misunderstanding concerning the totalitarian system, you know?
03:31   The totalitarian system, you’re often told, it’s a system where you have no freedom at all.
03:35   But no, no, that’s false. Yes! And I think this misunderstanding
03:39   concerning the definition of the totalitarian system is costing us a lot nowadays.
03:43   So, a totalitarian system is a system
03:47   where you have absolute and total freedom,
03:51   but only in one sphere, all right? It’s for example
03:55   If you are in North Korea, you have the absolute and total freedom
04:00   to support the communists. You have the right to applaud
04:04   their never-ending speeches, you have the right to
04:08   support the ruling family, you have right to belong to
04:12   the syndicate managed by the party in your factory,
04:16   you have right to vote the way you are told. And so on. So, you have absolute freedom in this sense
04:20   So a totalitarian system isn’t a system with absence of freedom,
04:24   but where there’s a managed freedom, a freedom that is channeled in one and only one way.
04:29   The question is, that if you leave this path,
04:33   what is going to happen? Voilà, that’s the question, and in general
04:37   there’s a sort of coercion in order to, so you would —
04:41   there’s social violence, there’s violence, sometimes state-sponsored,
04:45   depending on the country, there are countries, where, I don’t know, you take Iran for example
04:49   or another country, there’s people who drive around on scooters
04:54   and they have the right to stop and hit a woman,
04:58   right away, if they see that her veil isn’t 100% the way it should be.
05:02   So she has the freedom to wear the veil, alright,
05:06   she has total freedom to wear the veil, but she has no freedom to oppose it.
05:10   OK, this is Iran, it’s not France, but you know,
05:14   a society, while it becomes Islamic,
05:18   you are going to automatically and immediately notice a regression
05:23   in women’s rights. It’s like in my country, Algeria, for example; look at the pictures.
05:27   It’s easy to find; that’s why I’m giving you this example,
05:31   you have to watch the pictures of the crowd in 1962,
05:35   when independence was declared. There were cameras on cars
05:39   that were driving around, and filming almost everything, everybody,
05:43   all the levels of Algerian society: women, children, old, young, everyone was outside.
05:48   Find a veiled woman. There wasn’t any. NO veil and no burka. It didn’t exist.
05:55   Back then it didn’t exist. And what is happening:
06:00   in the sixties it doesn’t exist, in the seventies it doesn’t exist,
06:04   and at the end of the seventies it’s starting to arrive slowly, the beginning of the eighties
06:08   it is slowly arriving with Islamism. The generation of my grandmother,
06:12   and I’m saying it with a certain pride, my grandmother’s generation had the right to vote
06:16   in 1962, while some women in Switzerland had no right to vote at that time.
06:20   You see what I am saying? It means that at some point my home country
06:24   — and it’s rare that I would find that we were avant-garde in something —
06:28   my home country was in avant-garde comparing to other Western countries,
06:31   but after that, this progress, we unfortunately lost it, in just about three years.
06:37   Why? because when the Islamism arrived, it came with this narrative,
06:41   an absolutely crazy narrative, I’m going to tell you in a way a little shocking
06:45   but it’s not a caricature, it’s a direct way.
06:49   When Islamists arrived
06:53   they told us, your women:
06:57   your mothers, your sisters, are more or less sluts —
07:02   I won’t use a more complicated word — I didn’t want to use the word…
07:06   the real word. You all have guessed it.
07:10   That it fact, their only vocation, their calling,
07:14   that if you don’t keep an eye on them, in five minutes,
07:18   they will sleep with the entire neighborhood.
07:22   With everybody. That’s what the Islamists came with.
07:26   In any society, more or less balanced,
07:31   a statement like that would be received with a lot of
07:35   hostility, all right? People who said that
07:39   would have been kicked out, I think. In my country
07:43   we accepted everything in the name of Islam. You could do anything. As long as
07:47   it was in the name of Allah, you could do it, no problem.
07:51   So they didn’t really say it like that, they didn’t say: “your sisters, your mothers
07:55   your wives are whores,” they didn’t say it like that, but they said: “but they are whores
08:00   in the name of Allah”. They said, of course, yes. What can we do? Solution? Put them in bags!
08:04   All right? So we started to imprison them in bags.
08:08   We imprisoned them at home. They were not allowed to leave.
08:12   We supervised them. She had no right to have a phone, to drive, to take a train,
08:16   she had no right… all right? You might tell me, come on! — a woman in Algeria
08:20   has the right to drive. Of course she can drive! Understood. Legally she can, but in many
08:24   families a respectable woman won’t get a driver’s licence and won’t drive.
08:29   All right? She won’t take the train alone. Even in Europe, even in Europe, all right?
08:33   So what’s going on, I was telling you that, I was giving you that
08:37   analogy there, where Islamism arrives there,
08:41   where this new level of Islam, advanced by the Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabism, in fact, arrives,
08:49   women’s rights recede. Because if you want Islam lambda,
08:53   you are going to say: “yes, but anyway Islam has never been woman-friendly,
08:57   and so on.” Yes, of course, it’s never been woman-friendly;
09:02   it’s very easy to understand, because, look:
09:06   if today I create a religion in the London area. That religion will give
09:10   a part to men and a part to women. Why? Because socially
09:14   women are taxpayers, women are professionals
09:18   women have right to vote, women have as much power as men.
09:22   So if you invent a religion, literally, you want
09:26   that a man or a woman adheres, to your religion, it’s all beneficial.
09:30   You win as much by advertising to women as men
09:34   for your religious system. Now, if you were creating a religion
09:39   1400 years ago, in the Arabian desert, of course
09:43   only men counted, because it was a society,
09:47   already from the start, where you could buy
09:51   women in the marketplace, (you can tell me “men as well”), which means they had
09:55   no social weight, it was no use to advertise for them. To a point that when you look at
09:58   the salvation plans proposed by Islam, I don’t even know what they are proposing for women.
10:03   I don’t even know, except, no idea: maybe they will get to Paradise to do the dishes.
10:08   I don’t know, honestly, I have not a slightest idea. Perhaps a woman
10:12   who is watching could answer me and tell me what they’re proposing for her.
10:16   Anyway, in any case the women’s rights regress.
10:20   And among the markers, the markers are:
10:24   the burkini, the burka,
10:28   veiled little girls, things like that.
10:32   There are Moslems nowadays who go to the barricades, who feel,
10:37   they feel that they are treated unjustly, discriminated against, and so on.
10:41   My friends, there is someone, an Algerian, a Kabyle
10:45   who converted to Chistianity, he was arrested, he was convicted, sentenced
10:49   to five years in prison, in Algeria, two or three weeks ago, and still, that was in Algeria,
10:53   I am sure that in a country like Saudi Arabia they would behead him. Voilà.
10:57   This is more or less the tolerance you find in Moslem countries.
11:01   There’s not a single Moslem country, honestly [unintelligible]
11:06   There’s no Moslem country nowadays, where you could walk around with a cross, you could
11:10   convert to another religion, you could order Bibles online and have them delivered at home,
11:14   where you could organise a group with Christians or Jews, or doesn’t matter what religion,
11:18   and discuss your religions, talk about it, put a table outside and
11:22   distribute I don’t know, a book about whatever, the deity you believe in.
11:26   I mean it doesn’t exist in the Moslem countries. It doesn’t exist.
11:31   And at the same time Islam is demanding huge freedoms
11:35   in Christian countries. So, this I don’t understand.
11:39   Well, you will tell me, that France isn’t a Christian country. Well, I know that France is nothing.
11:43   It’s a country that has lost its soul. It’s obvious, it has nothing to defend itself with, because
11:47   they are nothing, so if you are nothing, well, you let other religions do what they want, you see?
11:55   When they go to a country of Christian tradition, France for example,
12:00   they have thousands of mosques, compared with the number of mosques thirty years ago,
12:04   today financed mostly by the taxpayer, they received
12:08   absolutely extraordinary things, they live in the respect total and absolute freedom of their religion.
12:12   They have right to do anything, they have probably,
12:16   say…
12:20   a Christian or a non-Moslem has not even 1%
12:24   of the freedom that a Moslem enjoys in France,
12:29   Alright? Non-Moslems living in Algeria, alright,
12:33   or even Moslems form other persuasion, even Moslems
12:37   Sufi or Shia, even different Moslems, who express
12:41   their Islam in a different way, would like at least 1%
12:45   of the freedom that a Moslem enjoys in France.
12:49   And they keep pushing: they push even more.
12:53   The burka. “Why don’t they let us wear a burkini
12:58   on the beach?!” Well, in the same,
13:02   in the same sequence of ideas, you could say: “why not, in five years,
13:06   we would be talking about, why they wouldn’t let you cane people,
13:10   why they wouldn’t let you stone people, why they don’t let you
13:14   marry four women, why they don’t let you own slaves and sleep with them.
13:18   Why, why, why? I’m telling you my friends, you have to understand
13:23   that your religion was created 1400 years ago, by Bedouins and it’s something
13:27   that is very little adapted to modernity. You need to know that, my friends.
13:31   By the way: fortunately the entire world is not Moslem, because
13:35   we would be in the Stone Age today, seriously.
13:39   Look at the Moslem countries and remove — just imagine —
13:43   remove everything that was created by the non-Moslem societies, and you will see what’s left.
13:47   Honestly, there would be only sand and tents. I mean, it was invented for these types of societies.
13:51   You cannot take their system in its entirety
13:56   without modifying it, without giving up anything
14:00   and bring it to today. I mean, yeah…
14:08   Well, I’m leaving you my friends, and I’ll be back.
14:12   I’ll be back another time. I was planning to never come back, I don’t deny it.
14:16   I was, I was, yes…
14:20   I was telling myself, given where they already are, what’s the point of returning?
14:25   I mean they are at the point of the Extreme Unction [Last Rites].
14:29   But, I’ll be back, anyway.
 

13 thoughts on “Aldo Sterone on the Burkini and Islam’s Treatment of Women

  1. to answer his question, i have read that when females die they are nothing, as though never born.
    i don’t know where the 72 virgins arise nor how they enter paradise if this is true.
    maybe the myth of womens’ fate differs among the moslem sects.

    • mistranslation: it’s either 72 raisins or berries.
      those are more precious in a desert than females…

  2. Ah, how the scales fall from the eyes once Islam is no longer believed in. I applaud this man, and think he is very brave. Ironically, only an ex-muslim could say these things without being called the usual terms of abuse, racist, islamophobe, right wing, Nazi.
    My response now to this is, “You say that as if its a bad thing!”

    Somehow he should be given more exposure to speak.

  3. I only know Aldo from this video and one other that was posted here on GoV back in March of this year which I call the “just go, go ma petite” video which was about the mujahidettes who run away to Syria.

    Aldo is a “tough love” type of person who sees things for what they are and doesn’t mince words when taking about them. The world needs more of this.

    Many great take aways from this video, with what he says from 11:01 to the 11:35 mark being the one I’ll call out here. It’s about tolerance. Tolerance is a two way street, not a one way highway. Before I give you tolerance, you will show me that you will give the same to me. To forego this condition is to commit suicide, a future I don’t want to condemn myself or my posterity to.

    That is why Americans, like myself, need to take a look at legislation (at this point only proposed) such as HR 569. This is nothing more than an attempt to enact a law that mandates toleration for people of “x” religion who will in no way, ever, have tolerance for anyone not of the same religion. If your federal representative has his or her name as a co-sponsor on this horrid piece of suicidal drivel, I would encourage you to consider that when casting your vote this November. BTW, I will not be voting for my representative.

    • This is probably an offshoot of Hillary Clinton’s commitment to shame and shun critics of Islam in the United States, since the First Amendment stood in the way of actually criminalizing criticism. As Secretary of State, she did put the US firmly on the side of those countries that actually banned criticism of Islam.

      Of course, once she is able to appoint Supreme Court justices, the court will validate any sophistry to find that the First Amendment does not apply to hate speech that might result in persecution or discrimination: kind of like the “can’t yell fire in a crowded theater” exception.

      • Ronald B: Concur with all. I failed to mention in my original that HR 569 is an attack on the first amendment and that is probably more important than the “Toleration” angle I took with it in my first post, above. As you know, that amendment in part reads, “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . . ”

        There are now 145 co-sponsors of HR 569. These are 145 men and women who apparently do not understand simple English, but I’m sure that they have their herd of lawyers ready to argue their POV.

        In my opinion, all 145 of these representatives need to go and once again I urge all voters to simply type in “HR 569” into their favorite search engine and it will be there for you to read and make a decision about yourselves.

        Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. Beautiful words, timeless words that are under attack by 145 of those who solemnly swore to protect them. Go figure.

  4. How can women stand hot sweaty uncomfortable head gear of any type in hot middle eastern countries or in any hot climate. Point: Women need to rebel against any “forced dress code” (and other things like forced marriages and FGM) and drop their chains of slavery. Some x-Muslim women have and are speaking out online and talk radio. Why would Euro folks want this type slavery is beyond comprehension.

    • Laura,

      Under no circumstances should Muslim women be counted as supporters for any measures purporting to eliminate the oppression of Muslim women. Similarly, Muslim women should be assumed to be just as fanatic and subversive as Muslim men. Just because they are oppressed in Islam doesn’t mean they are not a firm part of the system of oppression.

      The reason for fighting any manifestation of Islam in the West is to protect Western women, not Muslim women.

      Having said that, it must be recognized that any Muslim women who wishes to leave Islam or ignore it is in dire risk of losing her life; and that there are undoubtedly some Muslim women who would like to change their lives and are prevented from doing so by the extreme risk of death. Yet, on the whole, unless proven otherwise, a Muslim woman is as much an enemy as the men.

      • I agree with you, RonaldB.

        I actually found Moslem women are as bad as their Moslem men in most ways.

        Ultimately, it is us freedom loving disadvantaged individuals that need to be free from their often hostile, exploitive, manipulative Oriental Islamic community.

      • RonaldB-

        The average Muslimah, wrapped in her burrito-like garments is the very definition of learned helplessness.

        Aldo is spot on about only being ‘free’ in certain directions.

        Here in Algeria, the more modern, nonbelieving segment of the population tends to leave the country for things like the upcoming Eid holiday, seeing the ritual slaughter of livestock in the home as, ‘ancient and barbaric’.

        Sadly, these folks will not openly oppose the practice, because the full force of the Ummah AND the State would come down on them.

        • The ordinary Moslems, I noted, very often used or rather misused their being part of their vicious cult Islamic community to bully and very often behaved most unhelpfully towards us disadvantaged nonbelievers who don’t have the clout to counter their invasions.
          They would only pretend to be nice to people who have money.

          They get all the perks of being part of their Islamic community and they certainly are not helpless.
          They are just bidding their time to enlarge their Islamic coffer/clout and destroy whatever little freedom we have in this world.

  5. As a male, I perceive three things wrong with the picture on the right: too much flesh on top, at bottom and at the end of the sleeves.

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