Olympians In Hijab And Bikini Summary

In Roger Cohen’s August 11th New York Times opinion editorial titled “Olympians in Hijab and Bikini,” the author delves into the symbolism apparent in an increasingly controversial photo, in which a woman in the acutely conservative and covering clothes associated with Islam stand opposite a scantily-clothed German athlete. In his thesis, Cohen implicitly synthesizes that we as a society cannot stoop to accepting our own black-and-white preconceptions of “us” versus “them”, of good and evil, right and wrong. He asserts that this sort of vicious tribalism only serves to divide us, and that, instead of being so self-assured in our views, we should strive to discard the smokescreen and really challenge our assumptions, thereby dismissing things that “may be little more than dangerous caricatures.”

As he stated previously in his thesis, Cohen believes that the primary reason for this dual resentment between West and East is the blanketing of each side’s respective residents in a box. He even uses his own personal experience to

By soaking our black-white contrariety in all shades of gray, Cohen is forcing us to contend with a harsh truth, that the primordial causes of this stagnancy between tradition and progress are far less clear-cut than we make them out to be. In questioning ourselves, including the efficacy of society, we are forced to ask the very questions Cohen has been pushing us to since the beginning of the article: are we truly trying to comprehend the “enemy” as we should, and are we truly putting aside our preconceptions as we strive to make our world