Category Archives: Gender and Sexuality

Beyond Allahu Akbar: WWMD, WWJD, WWYD

"Arab Spring", Bible and Holy Land, Gender and Sexuality, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Muhammad


The manipulated political fury expressed in religious rhetoric over a pathetically provocative anti-Islamic film trailer buried among the millions of needles in the haystack that is Youtube continues, now with a focus in Pakistan. It is not surprising that most Muslims should find the film’s absurd claims offensive. Yet, despite the media images of angry rock throwers holding signs in English, this does not drive the vast majority into the streets or trespassing into Western consulates. If all the cameras stopped rolling, the riots would stop cold. But, of course, now the cameras never stop and any bit of footage can appear on Youtube in a nanosecond. What should we do?

My friend Omid Safi posts on a commentary blog he calls “What Would Muhammad Do?” In his comments on this controversy, he notes that there is enough textual information to reconstruct what Muhammad did when he was insulted:

Yet we know that our Prophet himself was the target of repeated assaults and mockery, and even in his moment of triumph when he had the power to punish, he chose to forgive his enemies and set a higher moral example.

We invite Muslims from every country to raise their voice and be heard, and yet to do so in a way that honors the very example of the manners, the ethics, the path, and the being of the Prophet that we so adore.

There is no way, other than by religious faith in sacred writings, to know what the real Muhammad would do in the modern world, all those hadiths notwithstanding. So in effect Omid and everyone else must argue for what they would expect Muhammad to do if he did live today. But he doesn’t, and neither does Jesus or Moses or any of the revered prophets of the three major monotheisms. In a sense all of the commentary on the reaction to the film is WWWWMTD “what we would want Muhammad to do.”

WWMD is, of course, a take off on WWJD. Since J (as in Jesus) happens to be a revered prophet in Islam as well as Christianity, in principle a Muslim can accept that Muhammad and Jesus would do the same thing morally as guided prophets of the same God. Continue reading Beyond Allahu Akbar: WWMD, WWJD, WWYD →

Newsweak

"Arab Spring", CyberOrient, Egypt, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Libya


Edward Said wrote a poignant critique of media coverage of the Iranian hostage crisis just over three decades ago. He called it “Covering Islam.” The subtitle was “How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World.” Once again Islam is being covered, the latest being the “cover” on Newsweek Magazine. Said’s [Covering Islam (1997 edition), p. lv.] assessment is as relevant as ever today:

For the right, Islam represents barbarism; for the left, medieval theocracy; for the center, a kind of distasteful exoticism. In all camps there is agreement that even though little enough is known about the Islamic world there is not much to be approved of there.

The latest Newsweek cover demonstrates just how weak its sense of responsible news reporting is. The trope of “Muslim Rage” conflates the cultural dimensions of politics with a religious faith. When Israeli planes bomb Hamas in Gaza, no major newspaper calls this “Jewish Rage.” When Terry Jones burns a Quran or when Anders Behring Breivik shoots fellow Norwegians, I have yet to see a headline of this act as one of “Christian Rage.” Rage is almost always political at base and the events subsumed under a blanket umbrella of “Muslim Rage” are local politics to the core. The fact that we see these images on CNN and the Internet tells us more about the audience than it does about those engaged in the activities.

The photograph captures “rage” to be sure, but the choice of turbaned and bearded protesters (when the majority in Cairo at least are young clean-shaven men in Western clothing lobbing rocks at the police) identifies rage with a style of dress and a style of dress with a violent religion. Ironically, the voices of those who are enraged are not to be heard anywhere inside the story. Instead, the cover boasts an article inside by Aayan Hirsi Ali, a controversial Somali whose claim to fame was posing naked with Quranic verses on her body and then becoming a darling of the Islamophobic mob. Her knowledge of Islam is so immature and biased that the very idea she might have something to contribute to the issue staggers my imagination.

I see little difference between this cover photo and that on the French tabloid Closer, which brandished the privately bared royal breasts of British princess Kate Middleton. Continue reading Newsweak →

Revealing the News

Anthropology/Sociology, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Journalism and Media, Yemen


…


In attempting to keep up with the news in Yemen, I surf a number of Yemeni news sites. When I tried the usually reliable almasdaronline.com this morning, I was redirected to a commercial site called Mojo Pages. So I switched to yemen-press.com, where the top story was about the Huthi forces arresting two individuals in Sa‘da. While reading the article I realized that it was impossible to ignore the Gestalt of the total screen page, which I reproduce above. Here is a scene of several Yemeni fighters, clearly in a qat-chewing mode, and holding what I suspect (not being a military expert) are grenade launchers. What struck my attention was the advertisement adorning the banner and taking a prominent space on the left of the screen: Scarlet, the new adjustable cleavage bra. I have not been in the market for a bra, so I do not think the ad showed up due to any sophisticated Facebook-style marketing strategy. But I am male, so perhaps the assumption is that any Western viewer is in the market for a bra, since the ad is in English after all. And ten minutes later a new ad took its place: this time for a car rental place in New York.

Then a couple of hours later I happened across an article on Haaretz and there she was again: dear Scarlet hawking her gawking adjustable discount bra. Perhaps I am a victim of cookies twisting, but what a coincidence that is probably not a coincidence. Criss-crossing the endemic violence in the Middle East, the ongoing plight of the Palestinians and the voices in the Zionist wilderness of left-leaning Israelis there is the seductive power of an ad, as if politics did not really matter. In this case the bra fits all sizes of religious persuasions and the model is available to be ogled by anyone, at least from a Western computer. How ecumenical can commercial immodesty get.

It is the multifarious irony of these pages that weighs me down. I will focus on the Yemen website, since that was the first encounter with Scarlet. First, how ironic that I devour news by scouring multiple websites, most of which do not explicitly state their de facto bias. While there are a couple of Yemen News sites that are available in English (like Yemen Times and Yemen Post), they tend to be days old and in need of better English editing. Yemen Times, for example has a most recent post of August 15, five days ago, which is hardly Time Magazine timely. Yemen Post has a story only a day old, but its presentation is nowhere near as slick as any of the major Yemeni sites in Arabic. Irony #1 is that what is available but not in Arabic is old and out-of-date internet-wise. This is only an irony for the hubris with which English-speakers assume that news must be packaged in their native language.

The second irony is the critical crux. Where else can you find images of a seductive woman in a bra revealing cleavage (and at 40% off) counterposed with a truckload of qat-chewing Yemenis holding grenade launchers or on a major Israeli online newspaper in English? Continue reading Revealing the News →

Consuming halal or letting halal consume you

Anthropology/Sociology, Ethics, Food and Drink, Gender and Sexuality, Islamic Rituals, Journalism and Media


Dietary rules — I suspect these have always been around as our earliest ancestors learned what foods made them feel good, what foods made them sick and what foods made them well. The ancient world and the Islamic era have bequeathed a wealth of herbal remedies and food recipes that continue to have relevance. Then there are the taboos, the kosher and halal rules that go beyond any scientific rationale to diet by revelatory fiat. The kosher laws in Leviticus, as anthropologist Mary Douglas showed many years ago, are not really about health, but symbolic for the community that applies them. Tainted beef will get you sick just as quickly as tainted pork. But as long as there is no harm, then eating kosher or halal is not a problem. It may be an inconvenience, but it is not going to harm your health.

It is one thing to eat halal and another to turn the idea of halal food into something that is more about consuming than eating as a religious preference. Devout Christians complain that Christ has been x’d out of Christmas and they are right: Santa Claus, Christmas trees and oligatory gifts define Christmas as it is currently consumed in the United States. I suspect there is a danger that the same thing can happen to halal food and to the fasting month of Ramadan. Let’s take Ramadan first: the original intent was for religious reflection at a time when both Jews and Christians also observed fasting as a reflective rite. Going without food and water, no matter what the exact time dimension, is a powerful symbol pointing to those less fortunate who may have no food or water or barely enough to survive. It can also cleanse your body. But if you simply abstain during the day, then gorge after sunset and spend half the night celebrating, what exactly is the point of fasting? Continue reading Consuming halal or letting halal consume you →

A New War on Women?

"Arab Spring", Gender and Sexuality, Yemen


Bushra Al-Maqtari

by Sama’a Al-Hamdani, Yemen-iati, August 3

“The Arab Awakening protest movement encouraged religious tolerance among its participants, while in some instances, the resulting political crisis provided a context that stoked existing religious tensions” – Yemen’s Religious Freedom Report

Is it possible that the Arab Awakening opened doors for a new war on women? is there a new form of sexism that is declared in the name of religion?
Women all over the Middle East have been demanding political equality and while we await their democratic freedoms to expand, newspapers are reporting rapes from Libya, sexual assaults in Egypt and deaths in Syria. Sexism is not the least bit a phenomenon in the Middle East; however, the utilization of religion as a tool of war against women is becoming a trend. Religion, which was once implemented with care and knowledge, is now used in most political conflicts.

In Yemen, the political war between the Houthis and the government has become about religious ideology. Underneath the religious facade, it is mostly about power to rule. This war even invited unwanted political involvement from Iran and Saudi, threatening the security of the nation with a proxy war; all in the name of religious authenticity. This July, the United States Department of State released the International Religious Freedom Report for Yemen and declared that religious freedom in Yemen is not ideal yet not too problematic. The report focused on religious pluralism and sectarian violence, but it failed to recognize Yemeni women as victims of religious partiality.

Should Yemeni women be fearful? Perhaps, if they are to choose to have a voice and challenge Yemeni culture. Case in point, Bushra Al-Maqtari, a 31 year-old divorcee from Taizz. Bushra, a journalist, wrote an article about the revolution. In this article, she expressed her thoughts about the bloody battle of Khidar (Dec. 2011) between the demonstrators and pro-Saleh forces. She shared her feelings by saying that she questioned whether God was witnessing everything. While some may agree and many may disagree, religious extremists in the country declared Bushra an infidel who questioned the existence of God. In response, Bushra clarified that she is believing Muslim and that she did not question the existence of God but rather his presence in all situations. Regardless, what Bushra wrote may be a reason for many people to dislike her, but what happened after that made this about all women. Continue reading A New War on Women? →

Hell to Pay?

Anthropology/Sociology, Gender and Sexuality, Islam in America, Islamophobia


It as heartening to note that several prominent Republican politicians, especially John McCain, immediately repudiated the offensive letter that Michele Bachmann and several of her tea-party ilk sent on official House letterhead to government agencies asking for an investigation of Huma Abedin, a well-respected professional aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. When the news first unfolded, I was pleased to applaud the range of reaction in a previous post. Then on July 24, Tarek Fateh published a commentary in the neocon tabloid Toronto Sun called “Beating Up on Bachman.” My initial thought was to ignore the piece altogether, but then it was picked up, in a longer version no less, by the Huffington Post, which generally does not promote neocon causes. But I suppose Huff Post and the Toronto Sun do share something in common: the Toronto Sun‘s daily sunshine-drenched pin-up girls and Huff Post’s penchant to dwell on the arousing apparel of superstar actresses.

Tarek Fateh is a prolific op-ed writer of the kind that rarely provides edification and almost always proffers conspiratorial rumors. He is, in effect, the Fouad Ajami of Canada. I will pass on his argument, which is innuendo in defense of offensive innuendo, and focus on one statement, which is a gem:

To put this in context, imagine a political aide to Henry Kissinger being the daughter of two members of the Soviet communist party politburo. There would have been hell to pay.

Hell to pay? This is a helluva stretch. Continue reading Hell to Pay? →

A Salacious Salafi

Bible and Holy Land, Egypt, Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Islam and Christianity


Sheikh Wanis and his fellow adulterers

Al-Ahram has published an account of a salacious encounter of an Egyptian Salafi who is a former MP.

Egyptian authorities have decided to put on trial a Salafist ex-MP who was caught allegedly performing an “indecent” sexual act with a woman in public, a judicial source said on Thursday.

Ali Wanis’s trial is set for Sunday and will take place on time although he has gone missing since police found him last month engaged in a sexual act with a 22-year-old woman in a car parked on a highway.

The woman, a university student, is behind bars and the public prosecutor’s office has ordered the arrest of Wanis, a cleric and former MP for the ultra-conservative Al-Nour party.

After the incident in early June, Wanis denied any wrongdoing and said in a video posted on his website that he had parked along the side of the road because his passenger “became sick.”

But the pair have been accused of performing an “indecent” sexual act in public.

Al-Nour party, won the second largest number of seats in parliamentary elections last winter after the Muslim Brotherhood.

It was hit with a scandal in March when another lawmaker was forced to resign from parliament and from his party after claiming he was injured in a carjacking — to explain bandages on his face — when in fact he had had a nose job.

Wow — a blow job and a nose job and the appeal of Salafism takes a nose dive. Continue reading A Salacious Salafi →