Which made me think: If you want to make America “great,” Donald Trump, take a look around the city you live in. Hop on a train (or a limo, more likely) to Brooklyn or Queens or the Bronx or even the Lower East Side and take a gander at the neighborhoods, at the medley of people living side by side. Take a drive down Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn towards Coney Island where you can pass through alternating Hasidic and Muslim neighborhoods. Look, I’m not suggesting New York is a perfect paragon of racial and religious harmony; there are hate crimes here, yes, against people, sadly for their religious beliefs and their sexual orientations, too. But largely, day by day, this city does provide a working model for both diversity and assimilation.

Some might argue that the sight of these women in a pool wearing their distinct and discreet garments runs counter to the idea of assimilation, but assimilation doesn’t have to mean a complete abandonment of one’s culture and beliefs. And those beliefs vary. It only takes a quick search to find advice for Muslim women that swimming in public pools “frequented by men and women, this is a great evil.” Of course, you can also find advice that wearing a hijab while swimming is an acceptable solution for women wanting to swim with their families at mixed-gender beaches. In other words, interpretations of the Muslim faith vary as much as interpretations of Christianity do. (And you can easily find Christians who don’t believe in mixed bathing in the United States, too.) You could simply reach this conclusion, though: The burkini encourages integration, as it allows Muslim women to participate in activities they otherwise couldn’t in a more secular society.

In fact, that’s what the inventor of the burkini hoped. Designer Aheda Zanetti, a Lebanese-Australian, first devised the “hijood,” which Muslim girls could wear to play sports, such as netball. Writing in The Guardian, she says, “When I invented the burkini in early 2004, it was to give women freedom, not to take it away.” The word “burkini” conceivably could reinforce misunderstandings of Muslim culture, since a burqua is quite distinct from a hijab, the former arguably being more severe than the latter, as it completely covers a woman’s face. Zanetti, however, is apparently Muslim herself, though she didn’t start wearing a veil until after she began designing these outfits with her niece in mind. When she began designing swimwear for Muslim women, she simply found the fusion of the two words “burqa” and “bikini” irresistible. Her creation has been enormously successful. Now, she says, 40 percent of burkini sales are actually to non-Muslims. And sales have spiked since the French ban. (A reader points out that Zanetti didn’t invent Islamic swimwear for women, though her specific, trademarked design has captured the public imagination.)