All posts by dvarisco

Shock Value and nothing to snore about

Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Islam in America, Islamophobia


Billboard ad of SnoreStop, top: the actress sans hijab, bottom

Given the range of images available with a click and the sensationalism-hungry news media, it is hard to find anything that has shock value anymore. PETA asks Hollywood celebs and beauty queens to take off their clothes so rich people will shun mink fur. But there is so much nudity on the web that it hardly raises an eyebrow any more. Spencer Tunick, the Brooklyn photographer who invites several thousand people to don their clothes for a mass aesthetic photograph, sends few shock waves through the media. Gay marriage is slowly becoming a Blue State inevitability; even the new pope has asked Catholics to chill over the hot button moral issues that abort civil dialogue. So what can still be shocking? How about a billboard ad showing an American soldier embracing a Muslim woman in hijab?

This is an ad put up by “SnoreStop,” a pharmaceutical company with a slogan of “keeping you together.” Having identified one of the primary causes of relationship breakups (ahem), they offer a medicalized kit for only $14.95 that will pinpoint where your snoring occurs and zap it with a pill. Here is how the website explains it:

Every night in America and throughout the world millions of spouses have to make a decision about leaving the bedroom in order to get a good night’s sleep, which destroys all intimacy. When we lack a good night’s sleep, we break down emotionally, mentally, and physically. Moreover, snorers have sex less often or have a decreased interest in sex due to being tired. SnoreStop® saves relationships by ‘bringing peace to the bedroom.

Green Pharmaceuticals, a “woman-owned company,” is turning heads (the oldest and easiest way to stop snoring, although the company does not note this) with an ad that will definitely be a cup of tea for conservatives. According to a spokesperson the ad is not just about selling a product but making a wholesome point about people being together. So they went and looked for real couples and found the oddest couple an ad maker could imagine. Yes, this is supposedly a “real couple,” Jamie Sutton or Paul Evans (depending on the news source) and Aleah or Lexy, although it does not appear that the Aleah or Lexy normally wears a hijab, nor if either of them suffer from the trauma of snoring. As it happens “Aleah” is Lexy Panterra and she has a saucy video in which there is no niqab in sight but plenty of flesh. And it seems her boyfriend is not the soldier in the ad. No niqab, no snoring (well, I can not confirm this) and no soldier husband (or at least no longer). Her boyfriend is, appropriately for Instagram fame, Aladdin. How shocking: an ad campaign that deceives in order to sell a product that nobody probably needs. Continue reading Shock Value and nothing to snore about →

Tabsir Redux: The Prophet’s Medicine, Part 1

Islamic Sciences, Miniatures, Muhammad


[Illustration: Miniature illustrating the treatment of a patient, Serefeddin Sabuncuoglu. Jarrahiyatu’l-Hâniya. Millet Library, Ali Emiri, Tib 79.]

In the 7th century Muhammad set in motion one of the world’s great religions, Islam. As an Arabian prophet, Muhammad spoke of the same God known to Jews and Christians for centuries. The message received by Muhammad, and revered today by over a billion Muslims, is contained in the Arabic Qur’an. Although the focus of this scripture is on the spiritual health of mankind, there are also numerous statements regarding physical health and emotional wellbeing. Muhammad himself often spoke regarding medicine and diet, and his words are accepted as authoritative only beneath the level of God’s revelation in the Qur’an. As Muslim scholars in later centuries encountered the medical traditions of classical Greece, Syriac tradition, and India, they compared this indigenous knowledge with the Qur’anic view of man and the prophet’s statements about health. Eventually, a specific literary genre called the “Prophet’s Medicine,” or al-tibb al-nabawi in Arabic, came into existence. In the texts of this genre Muslim scholars tried to merge the most accepted and current scientific knowledge about medicine with the folklore of Muhammad’s Arabia. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: The Prophet’s Medicine, Part 1 →

Thought Police: What were they thinking?

CyberOrient, Ethics, Islamic Law, Qur'an, Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi


Celebrating Saudi Arabia’s National Day

In case you missed it, September 23 was Saudi Arabia’s National Day, the oil-driven nation’s 4th of July. Not surprisingly many people, proud of their country, took to the streets to celebrate. But what is good for the state is not necessarily seen as good for the faith, especially in the conservative Wahhabi/Salafi variety that weds tribal origin with a dogmatic theology. The tension between a strict form of Islamic practice and the diversity that instills cultural practices has always been a problem, perhaps even more so with the wealth economy that the current generation of Saudi youth has grown up in. In 1927 King Abdul Aziz established the Committee for Promotion of Virtue and The Prevention of Vice. In short this is known as the “religious police.” For those less familiar with Islamic doctrine, this relates back to the classic Quranic principle of al-amr bi- al-maÊ¿ruf wa-al-nahy Ê¿an al-munkar, generally translated as commanding right and and forbidding wrong. There is a long history about the use of this penchant phrase, analyzed in detail by Michael Cook in his Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2010), a work of over 700 pages.

Abdullah Hamidaddin has written an interesting commentary on a recent tragedy on the Saudi National Day in which a car of religious police chased a vehicle that apparently was thought to contain two drunken men. In the chase the car careened off the road, killing the driver and his brother. The religious police fled the scene, but the chase was captured on a cell phone video. When the video was posted to social media, there was an outcry to rein in the zealous religious police. In this case it turned out the men had not been drinking.

What were these “thought police” thinking? I say “thought” rather than “religious” police, because the very nature of the committee leads to a kind of witchcraft mentality. Continue reading Thought Police: What were they thinking? →

Enough! Damn this continued violence

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Iraq, Islamophobia, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Terrorism Issue, Tunisia


Up to 600 worshipers had attended the service and were leaving to receive free food being distributed on the lawn outside when two explosions ripped through the crowd. Photograph by Mohammad Sajjad/Associated Press

Enough blood has been shed in the past few days to make any sane person question how anyone could possibly justify such cold-blooded and senseless attacks on innocent people. The poison gas in Syria is bad enough, but now we hear that the Somali Shabab have decided to kill shoppers in a Nairobi mall rather than play Captain Hook off the East African coast and now at least 78 Pakistani Christians are killed in a blast at a historic church. This is the ugly side of religion. More than a hijacking of Islam, this is dragging the faith that produced great scholars like Ibn Sina and al-Ghazali into the sewer. To say that the Prophet Muhammad would have condoned this kind of indiscriminate murder is as absurd as the medieval Crusader claim that Jesus would bless the slaughter of Jews and Muslims. But at least the crusades ended several centuries ago.

Muslims killing fellow Muslims or Muslims targeting Christians for death are both equally insane acts. Every day the death toll rises in Iraq and Syria, as though we have returned to the days of the Mongols and Mamluks. Continue reading Enough! Damn this continued violence →

Make love and make war?

"Arab Spring", Arabic Cartoons, Gender and Sexuality, Journalism and Media, Syria, Terrorism Issue, Tunisia


A number of Tunisian girls who had travelled to Syria for “sexual jihad” have returned home pregnant, the government says

Newspapers love a juicy story line. What could be more apt for tabloid sensationalism than one that combines multiple sex partners and jihad fighters? The Telegraph (no one seems to have informed the management that telegraphs are a bit on the ancient side these days) has come up with the following headline ‘Sex Jihad raging in Syria, claims minister” for its September 20th edition. Here are the lead paragraphs…

Tunisian women have travelled to Syria to wage “sex jihad” by comforting Islamist fighters battling the regime there, Interior Minister Lotfi ben Jeddou has told MPs.

“They have sexual relations with 20, 30, 100” militants, the minister told members of the National Constituent Assembly on Thursday.

“After the sexual liaisons they have there in the name of ‘jihad al-nikah’ – (sexual holy war, in Arabic) – they come home pregnant,” Ben Jeddou told the MPs.

He did not elaborate on how many Tunisian women had returned to the country pregnant with the children of jihadist fighters.

Jihad al-nikah, permitting extramarital sexual relations with multiple partners, is considered by some hardline Sunni Muslim Salafists as a legitimate form of holy war.

The minister also did not say how many Tunisian women were thought to have gone to Syria for such a purpose, although media reports have said hundreds have done so.

Here is a new twist that might actually revolutionize the way jihad is being waged by the most militant crazies. Continue reading Make love and make war? →

Of Missile Strikes and Moros

"Arab Spring", Ethics, Obama Administration, Syria, Terrorism Issue

In today’s New York Times columnist Nick Kristoff responds to critics of his support for targeted missile strikes on Assad’s regime to send a lesson about the use of poison gas. I agree with his opening comment that columny (whether by a columnist or not) is not a very useful way to think about a complex issue. There is indeed a lot of bluster, so much so that one might metaphorically call the debate over the use of a retaliatory strike on Syria poisoned from the start. For President Obama, drawing a red line in a public speech was bound to be seen as a red flag by the bullshit artists of the Tea Party anti-Obama-anything club. For Republicans who wore their hawkishness on their sleeves under Bush to criticize Obama for daring to apply American military power to a foreign conflict, the irony is very much the epitome of politically expedient hypocrisy. Then we have the normally peace-promoting liberals who want to make a principled statement about the horrific results of using chemical weapons. How could there be anything but contentious calumny?

American public and political outrage at Assad’s callous use of poison gas has a red line as well: virtually unanimous agreement on all sides that there shall be no American boots-on-the-ground. Given that the U.S. has an arsenal that makes that possible, as was evident in Kosovo and Libya, we can forge ahead with smug assurance that as long as our sophisticated missiles do not carry any Sarin gas we are on higher moral ground. There is an ethical dilemma here that transcends who you support in the civil war that is raging in Syria. In sheer numbers Assad’s forces have killed 1,000 times more with so-called “conventional” weapons than the lobbing of several canisters of gas at a Damascus neighborhood. Even if you believe that poison gas is so horrific that its use must be punished, then there is the obvious retort that the U.S. knew Assad had used poison gas earlier, as it knew Saddam used it against the Kurds and against Iranian troops. At best this is a case of situation ethics, where the ethical point only matters if the situation is politically expedient.

Also in today’s news on Al Jazeera is a report that Philippine troops are securing the southern port city of Zamboanga, where an estimated one hundred Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) guerrillas have taken a number of hostages in a failed attempt to take over city hall. Although the “Moros” are a nationalist movement, they are also a brand of Muslim extremists who kill fellow Muslims, like the current morass in Syria. I suspect that most Americans are unaware that the Philippines were once under the direct control of the United States, as part of the spoils of the Spanish American War. Continue reading Of Missile Strikes and Moros →

Unbrotherly Brotherhood, Undemocratic Military

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Ethics, Syria, Terrorism Issue

The debate over whether or not to send a cruise missile or two into Syria and spank Bashar al-Assad for adding chemical weapons to his bloody arsenal of putting down the revolt in Syria has overshadowed the continuing battle in Egypt for control of the political future. In both situations there is an alarming paradox for most Western observers: there seem to be no good guys wearing white hats, like in an early John Wayne movie. The al-Assad clan has run a security-based dictatorship that, like Saddam Hussein, tortured and killed opponents. But the major opposition, at least at this point in the ongoing civil war, includes a number of extremists who would be as bad a choice to take over. As the American experience in both Iraq and Afghanistan well demonstrates, the friendly (to us) leaders we would like to install (and did with impunity in the old days) do not work out so well these days.

Egypt may not be today’s top story coming out of the Middle East, but it is hardly a stable situation. An article just out in the New Yorker by Joshua Hersh illustrates the clear objective of the Muslim Brotherhood to de-secularize Egypt. Those who came to power around Morsy were not very brotherly brothers and created a backlash by attempting to muscle out those who were not of their ideology. Continue reading Unbrotherly Brotherhood, Undemocratic Military →