1. Slutty costumes (I just had to say it)
2. Slutty “ethnic” costumes: Native American girl, geisha, etc.

In particular:

1. Harem girl costumes
2. Belly dancer costumes
3. Genie costumes
4. Cleopatra costumes
5. Arab sheikh costumes

These costumes reinforce the eroticized and/or dangerous stereotypes associated with Muslim and Middle Eastern men and women. Plus, it’s doubly insulting because (usually) non-Middle Eastern and/or non-Muslim people will “play dress-up” in these costumes, to supposedly “live like we do” for one night. The only missing detail is: none of the institutional oppression that we face as Muslims and Middle Easterners comes with the costume.

Just looking at the names of the costumes is informative enough: “Exotic Belly Dancer Costume” and “Sheik of Persia Arabian Costume” can tell you that these people have no idea about the culture they think they’re appropriating. (History lesson: Persia didn’t have sheikhs, they had shahs. And Persia and Arabia were two different places! AKH!)

Look at the women’s costumes: all are revealing and hypersexual. How many Middle Eastern women prance around in sheer pants and face veils? None. These costumes scream sexist Orientalism!

Don’t worry, guys! There are plenty of racist costumes for you, too! Take this “Arab Sheik” costume: of course he has a knife! All Middle Eastern men are dangerous, didn’t you know? You can even tell by his face: he’s pissed, and he’s going to take it out on some infidels!

And, if you’d like to pass on your racist Orientalist fantasies to your children, there are belly dancer costumes for little girls! That’s right! Make sure that your daughter learns that her self worth comes from how much her coin-bedazzled bra reveals and how pleasing her dancing is to a man! You can start as soon as she’s a toddler!

Ick. Enjoy your free candy! I hope you get sick from it.

The Fourth Annual Brass Crescent Awards are here, loyal readers! According to their website, the Brass Crescent Awards are “an annual awards ceremony that honors the best writers and thinkers of the emerging Muslim blogosphere … Nominations are taken from blog readers, who then vote for the winners."

Please show us some love by nominating us--for whatever! We appreciate your votes and support! Also, take a look at our links to get ideas for other categories; we have links to some great blogs, so check them out!

If not simply in poor taste, the caption also raises the question of sexism: if the newspaper was investigating a man, would the word “booty” have been used?

• The first Pakistani woman astronaut gets ready to blast off!

• Ed Husain from U.K.’s The Guardian explores Women Without Borders in Vienna, and the platform they have given to Muslim women.

• Lilith Attack explores the racist backlash from a bus incident in which the bus driver wore a headscarf.

• A Spanish film about the discrimination that Muslim women who wear hejab face in Spain.

• Why Ayaan Hirsi Ali isn’t a good spokesperson for Islam.

• Police detain dozens of Muslim Kashmiri women for protesting the U.N.’s failure to resolve the Kashmir dispute.

• Queen Rania comes to California and kicks ass!

• Haleh Afshar takes up a seat in the British House of Lords, just for being one smart lady.

• Why Islamo-Facism Awareness Week is full of crap (and lots of hate,too).

• Kabul has a fashion show for policewomen. This is supposed to build moral among female policewomen how? With all the fashion shows it's had lately, you'd think Kabul would be the world's next fashion capital.
  

• An American professor wears niqab to teach students a lesson about perceptions and prejudice.

• A Saudi woman makes the case that niqab is a cultural garment, not a religious one.

In case you haven’t heard, it’s Islamo-Facism awareness week: David Horowitz and some other conservatives have decided that they’re going to pretend to take on the cause of the “poor, defenseless Muslim woman.” What garbage!

On Monday, Nonie Darwish (pictured here on the cover of her book) spoke at Wellesley College. Darwish is the founder of Arabs for Israel, and was a guest of Wellesley’s Jewish Hillel group. She was interviewed by Phyllis Chesler for Chesler’s blog, and the resulting article is ridiculously biased, painting Darwish as some type of blameless saint, bullied by the evil Muslim girls on Wellesley’s campus. Perhaps the title can illustrate my point: “The Heroic Nonie Darwish Faces Muslim ‘Mean Girl’ Power at Wellesley.”

The article, which I will critique fully in a minute, describes Darwish’s “heroic” speech, the “hostile” groups of Muslim women wearing headscarves that attended, and these same women’s “goon squad” behavior.

Now, sisters, I’ve got to say something here. If Ms. Darwish is correct, and some of the women were making faces and causing disruptions, then this is not cool. Ms. Darwish has a right to believe whatever she believes and speak as an invited guest, and it shows poor character to go to her lecture just to be a douchebag (plus, it makes Muslims look bad). If you don’t agree with her, don’t go to the lecture! Write an editorial to the school paper about how Islamo-Facism Awareness Week is bigoted instead. Or organize a countering “Islam Awareness Week” that has positive lectures about Islam and fun stuff to do—this is a lot more effective than disrupting a lecture. Or, go to the lecture, behave respectfully while taking notes, and then write a measured rebuttal for the school paper or a magazine.

Now, to the article. Chesler’s bias drips through the lines. She writes about Darwish’s lecture and paints the Muslim attendees as intimidating gangsters, and Darwish agrees with her: “They [the Muslim girls] quadruple-teamed Darwish and did not stop until Darwish ended her lecture. Twenty to thirty minutes of soft-core, well-choreographed, goon squad behavior. ‘They are Hamas-trained,’ says Darwish.” Hamas-trained? So because a bunch of people leave the lecture for whatever reason, they’re Hamas-trained? Ridiculous.

Just in case Chesler’s readers don’t get the point, Chesler exaggerates the idea that these Muslim women present a threat: Darwish says that the Jewish students were cringing, afraid “that the Muslims might physically hurt them afterwards. According to Darwish, one Jewish student told her that she ‘was locking her door. I am scared’).” Really? So because some Muslim students left the lecture, these students think that they’re going to get physically harmed? Do they think that the Muslim students left the lecture to go look up the Jewish students’ addresses and then stalk them for listening to Darwish’s lecture? Really?

I’m not disagreeing with the face that Hillel invited her, that she spoke, or that many in the Muslim community disagree with what she’s saying. I’m disagreeing with the negative portrait that Chesler paints of Muslim women. Calling us gangsters and implying that we’re going to hurt people who disagree with us? Please.

I’m also disagreeing with the fact that Ms. Chesler deifies Darwish as some sort of whistle-blower on Islam, without critiquing Darwish’s views or credentials. The article itself says that Darwish was born into a privileged military family in Egypt and now lives in America. Living in a privileged Egyptian family in the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s gives someone a radically different perspective on Islam, Israel, and Egypt’s current political state. Egypt was very Westernized in these decades: Nasser and Sadat both clamped down very hard on religious institutions, alternately made war and peace with Israel, and Egyptian women rarely wore hejab back then. Growing up in that kind of Egypt could produce viewpoints that synchronize well with Western ideas about the Middle East and Islam.

So why is she a mouthpiece for Islamo-Facism awareness week? Perhaps it’s because she agrees with what they’re saying. Or perhaps it’s because Horowitz couldn’t book Ayaan Hirsi Ali to spew their organization’s Islamophobic crap. Either way, it the lecture provides us with an idea to how Islamo-Facism Awareness week will play out.

Here’s a brief news story about an Iranian-American Muslim comedian Tissa Hami. In it, Hami describes her comedy as her way of helping combat stereotypes against Muslims. “‘Why aren't we speaking out for ourselves?’ she said she would ask herself. ‘Why aren't we doing something? To me this is something I could do. I know it’s comedy. I know it's this much. But, if we all do this much, it's something.’”

Hami’s comedy is meant to encourage viewers to look beyond appearances. She dresses in all black, from her shoes to her hejab, and then comes out with lines like: “I'll be honest with you. I should have worn a long coat, but I was feeling kind of slutty tonight.”

Female Muslim comedians are few and far between, but slowly, they’re becoming more visible. Hami’s comedy reminds me of Shazia Mirza (pictured here), a Pakistani-British Muslim woman who has gained a fair amount of popularity ever since she appeared at a comedy club dressed in hejab and said, “My name is Shazia Mirza. At least, that's what it says on my pilot's license.” Since then, Mirza has been on tours in both Britain and the U.S., and won several awards for her comedy.

Unfortunately, there are a fair amount of people who disagree with this comedy, many of them Muslims. However, in my view, laughter is a good way to break boundaries. Obviously, it can’t be the only thing; we run the risk of becoming the stereotypes we poke fun at. But laughter is a great place to start, and though there are fewer female Muslim comedians than there are male Muslim comedians, enshallah all our funny sisters out there will stand up sooner or later.

Personally, I love a good laugh. There is a saying attributed to both the Holy Qur’an and the Prophet (pbuh), even though I can’t find the location: “Blessed is [she] who makes [her] companions laugh.” And if we can’t laugh at ourselves, we’re taking ourselves too seriously.

P.S. Remember to wear a pink scarf on Friday, Oct. 26th to create awareness for breast cancer!

I spend a lot of time on search engines, trying to get our readers the latest on Muslim women (still, tips are oh-so appreciated!). So if you search for “Muslim women” on Google, you’re likely to find The Muslim Woman, a blog that reports news and culture concerning Muslim women. It’s not all negative, but it’s not a happy-go-lucky picnic, either.

My beef with this blog is the biased language used. Something tells me they’re not Muslim by the way they talk about us. When referring to the horrible incident of Shi’a women killing Sunni women in Iraq, the poster mandira13aug claimed:

“Despite becoming victims of permanent threat of shooting, bomb attacks, kidnappings and rape...how a group of Muslim women in Iraq could even think to kill another group of Muslim women? But this is a harsh reality and slowly becoming common practice in Iraq.”

So because a group of women belonging to one sect reprehensibly attacked women of another sect in one instance, it’s becoming “common practice”? I thought common practice was something that happened all the time, not just once.

The author also seems to think that “becoming victims of permanent threat of shooting, bomb attacks, kidnappings and rape” wouldn’t make anybody crack. How could a group of Muslim women even think to kill another group of Muslim women? I’ll tell you how. It’s a horrible thought, but it’s a truth: they are in an extremely unstable country! Living in fear, instability, and uncertainty will psychologically ruin anyone—so why is the author so shocked? Why isn’t the author shocked that groups of Muslim men are killing each other in Iraq?

And the title of this post is “When Women Losses [sic] Kindness, Lovingness…?” So because these women have participated in a horrible act that Allah will judge them for, they’ve lost all their “kindness” and “lovingness”? Does the author think that these women don’t love their children? Does the author think that these women don’t care for their elderly parents or their siblings? When someone picks up a gun, they don’t necessarily lose their humanity.

This isn’t the only post that uses language that ruffles my feathers. Take a look at other melodramatically-titled posts, like Pooja’s “Yemen: Women are being repeatedly assaulted by their husbands or fathers.” I guess Pooja thinks that Yemen’s national pastime is beating down the nearest female. Even though family abuse occurs in every nation in the world.

Another article, entitled “21^st Century Veiled Phenomenon: Women Jihadist” by Himadree starts out with this sentence: “Women might be narcissist [sic], yet they can be a venomous threat if circumstances call for it.” I guess unlike mandira13aug, who doesn’t believe that Muslim women are capable of being women and using guns, Himadree thinks that women are both narcissists and dangerous snakes: “Muslim women are no longer hiding behind the veil but becoming a menacing threat to the society as a whole.”

With a statement like that, one can’t help but question these bloggers’ motives. Their profiles all reveal that they live in India. In a country that doesn’t always treat women like maharanis (and that has documented racism against Muslim women), wouldn’t it be more productive to blog against injustices against your own sisters? Poster mandira13aug doesn’t seem to think so: she also writes for We The Women, with similarly pseudo-news covered in opinion. On all of these blogs, I’ve only seen one post about women in India. And you can bet it was dripping with hope and inspiration

More current posts are positive and respectful (for example: “Bangladesh: Not an exception to the scourge of female subordination”; an intimidating title, but a good post). The appearance of positive news about Muslim (and other) women on these blogs leads me to conclude that they may not be purposefully malicious in their postings…perhaps they’re just really ill-informed or unaware of their bias. I appreciate their attempt at balanced news. But being ignorant and being racist are just shades of the same hateful color.

• The world’s First Muslim Skydiving Center open in Tehran, equipped with special programs just for women.

• Scary. White supremacists demonstrate against niqabis’ rights to vote.

• A great post on exactly why all this political uproar about niqab in Canada is racist.

• Unique Muslimah talks about the sly marginalization of Muslim women on Yahoo!

• Australia kicks around the ridiculous idea of banning hejab in airports. Is Australia still a democracy?

• Tunisia’s courts rule a ban on hejab unconstitutional. Enshallah this will prevent future harassment of hejabis in Tunisia.

• Iranian girls demonstrate against poverty—and there’s lots of adorable pictures!

• A review of AlSanea’s Girls of Riyadh: Just another neo-Orientalist book?

• Science isn’t always objective: James Watson links sunlight to libido, and suggests that Muslim women who cover the majority of their skin are frigid. I think he’s just mad because no Muslim woman in her right mind would want to have sex with him.

• Nirali magazine discusses the fact that people still just don’t get the idea of purdah (or hejab).

• Barikallah! The United Kingdom gets its first Muslim woman in Parliament.

So why name it The Hijabi Monologues? I think it would be much more inclusive if it was termed The Muslimah Monologues. But Rehman says,

“The name is a play on the 'Vagina Monologues.' And we think whereas the 'Vagina Monologues' took something that's very private, and brought it out to the public sphere, open for public discussion, we took the kind of public conception that people have of Muslim women which is the hijab, but then what we really seek to do is delve into the deeper, more substantial experience of Muslim women beyond what is on their head or what they wear.”

Sounds good to me!

What I like about The Hijabi Monologues as opposed to The Veiled Monologues is that THM was created by a Muslim woman, unlike TVM, which was created by a Dutch woman. Also, the title “The Veiled Monologues” is kind of a sensationalist one, don’t you agree? Also, TVM focuses on the sexuality of Muslim women, while THM focuses on normalizing Muslim women. I think a possible underlying premise for TVM is that Muslim women’s sexuality is so different from other women’s that we need our own Vagina Monologues. And I don’t care for that premise at all! We’re already sexualized; let’s get normalized, already!

The article didn’t give any details on where this is being shown. If you have the details, share them with us! And if you’ve seen it, we’d love to hear what you thought of it!

Shahadeh Abu Arrar is looking for wife #9. He’s 58, a member of Israel’s Bedouin community, and already has 67 children by several wives (currently, he only has eight wives; he has others in the West Bank and he has divorced some, too).

Two months ago, CNN and Secret Dubai Diary did a similar story on a similar character: this one “Daad Mohammed Murad Abdul Rahman, 60, has already had 15 brides although he has to divorce them as he goes along to remain within the legal limit of four wives at a time.” Oh, well, at least he’s legal.

What both these stories are missing is the women’s side. Why would they marry this guy? What happens to the women that these men divorce? How do all of them feel about their husband?

The Associated Press started going in the proper direction at the end of their story: the real news here is that these women are most likely getting shafted.

Abdul Rahman and Abu Arrar use their wives as a means to an end (making lots of babies). Abdul Rahman plans to have something like 100 children by 2015. His initiatives are “to ‘remove the demographic imbalance’ of Asian expatriates [in the U.A. E.]- despite the fact that eight out of his first eleven wives are Asian.” Also, “Daad relies on his wives to do much of the housework, so he says he needs to replace them when they get too old. When one woman became weak, another strong one had to be brought in to manage the home.”

Abu Arrar has similar sentiments about his “useless” older wives: “My first wife is my age, and today I hardly spend any time with her. Her children are big, and I leave her alone. I have younger wives to spend time with. Every night I decide which wife to be with,” he says.

What? These women aren’t oxen! They’re not a new pair of shoes! These guys treat their wives like baby machines or new hobbies. Maybe they treat their children that way, too?

It seems like Abu Arrar and Abdul Rahman simply view all their offspring as a hilarious past-time (not to mention a circus show with a racist agenda, in Abdul Rahman’s case) that propels them into the news.

Well, the chickens will come home to roost: a man cannot be a good husband equally to four (or eight) wives. Allah will judge him for that. But also, it is impossible to be a good father to 67 children or 78 children or however many they have now. How can a family of 78 children be close? Children of a certain age group will be closer to those who are in their immediate age groups and those who take care of them (their mothers, older siblings, etc.). But a child can’t have a good relationship with her/his father when there are 77 other children vying for that old man’s attention! And what does a child of five years have in common with a sibling of 36 years? Nothing but the same horny old man for a father!

What worries me most is the message that this sends to these men’s daughters. These girls might see their mothers get cast off and will grow up thinking that women are only good for producing offspring and cleaning the house. And when they get old and weak, they need to be replaced.

Arab News reported that a new DVD entitled Gurlz vs. Guyz will be on sale over Eid. Gurlz vs. Guyz is a 12-minute long video that was based on a year-long survey on young Saudi men and their views on dating the opposite sex. The DVD is being released by Izzaty Islamy, which is a women’s social club in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Dating as we think of it in the West isn’t allowed in Saudi Arabia, so “dates” are usually secretive meals or coffee. The Arab News article states that:

“Perhaps because of the Saudi notion that “good girls” stay away from boys until they go through the social and religious customs that typically culminates with marriage, the boys in the video speak with distain about the girls they know, even denigrating them and generally saying they would never consider marrying these girls.”

The idea that “good girls” don’t date isn’t just confined to Saudi society, of course. The patriarchal notion that there are “good girls” and “bad girls” is prevalent in most societies, and it’s definitely not confined to Muslim circles. However, despite the negative associations with dating, there are Muslim men and women who do date, whether they’re looking to marry or not.

It’s important to talk about this—no matter what we think of dating, “halal” dating, or just being “friends” with the opposite sex, there will always be people that participate in these activities. And it’s important to talk about it freely without judging their behavior so that if people choose to date, they can do so wisely and without false impressions. Do these women think that their boyfriends plan to marry them later? Or are they just having fun?

An interesting and insightful quote from the article caught my attention: “The young men in the DVD were judgmental about the girls they know, but not of their own behavior, which is as much a violation of Saudi social standards.” We are always quick to point the finger at others and not analyze our own behavior. I’d love to get my hands on this DVD; the DVD includes findings from the survey that show most of the boys wouldn’t marry the girls they date, many boys said they hang out with more than one girl, and most thought that the criteria for a wife is different from the criteria of a girlfriend. But is there any analysis in the DVD? Does the DVD point out the sexist outlook of these young men? Or, since the DVD is put out by a women’s social club, is it meant more as a cautionary tale: “girls, don’t date, because boys don’t marry girls they date”? Or a “Why should a man buy the cow when he can get the milk for free?” kind of thing (excuse the phrase—I really hate that saying, but it seemed most appropriate)?

I’d prefer that the DVD discusses men’s behavior with both sexes: as the article states, these young men are “sinning” or “breaking the law” just as much as the women (if not more: often it’s men who initiate contact for a date).

It’s important to discuss taboo social interactions, and so I’m glad this DVD has come out. Hopefully, it speaks to both “guyz” and “girlz,” instead of pitting them against each other.

• A Saudi woman is sentenced to lashings for being raped. What the hell?
  

• Dr. Ruqaya Al Alwani is presented with the Tunisian President Award for her publication The Role of the Muslim Women in Development

• Al-Ahram argues that the Carnegie Endowment on International Peace’s recent publication on the status of women in Islamic movements is biased.

• Some good musings about the attire of Muslim women in the media.

• An interview with ISNA’s (the Islamic Society of North America) new president, Ingrid Mattson, who I think is pretty cool. It’s telling of an accepting community when it can elect a non-Arab, non-Muslim born woman who reverted to Islam (AND kept her name) as the president of ISNA. AND she leads prayer. Damn, that’s cool.

• Culture Matters examines the role of the documentary Forbidden Lies in the New Orientalism.

• Another Muslim doll makes an appearance in Indonesia.

• In Jordan, men get educated on women's rights in Islam.

• just another angry black muslim woman? discusses what it's like to be a single Muslim woman who works.
  

As you may have noticed, we’ve changed the name and site of the blog. I just added an ‘h’. That lack of an ‘h’ was really killing me. Sorry for the confusion for our loyal readers! I know that “muslima” and “muslimah” are the same things, but I just like it better with an ‘h’!

Anyway, I decided to Google the word “Muslima.” And to my surprise, I saw that there was an UrbanDictionary.com entry for the word! Huh! I took a look, and saw some pretty decent definitions, my favorite being:

“A muslim woman who is cool and knows how to socialize. She's on her game and keeps it moving and dresses well. An educated muslim woman in her 20's who's making a difference. My homegirls.”

Some of the other definitions irked me a bit because they sounded sort of preachy and because of poor spelling (yeah, I’m one of those people). Really, the entry could have just read “A Muslim woman” and left it at that, without getting into all the religious obligations and emotional language.

And that’s what the first entry for “Muslimah” turned up: “A Muslim woman.” But the second entry was what really pissed me off:

“A woman who's supposed to be a whore for everyone in her husband's family, but has to appear very modest to outsiders, and therefore uses a a mobile tent(burka) whenever she goes out.
These women usually satisfy the urges of a great many men(considering each muslim family usually has 5 to 10 kids, depending on the extend of welfare in the country), but can't claim credit for it because if they tell about it to others they will be punished for defaming their family in a noble Islamic ritual called honor killing.”

Way to include all the negative stereotypes about Muslim women in there, jackass! The “burka” and “honor killing” links you to similarly stereotypical and Islamophobic entries on UrbanDictionary.com. The definition was given by a member named “theoneverdies.” If you read it as “Theo never dies,” we can assume they’re referring to Theo van Gogh, the director who collaborated with Ayaan Hirsi Ali on a controversial movie about Muslim women. Mr. van Gogh was murderd a few years ago by someone who defines himself as a Muslim.

Take a look at the rest of “theoneverdies’” definitions. They’re all really postitive (hint: sarcasm). S/he has given a definition for “koranimal” and “Theo van Gogh” is painted as a crusader instead of a racist.

Anyway, I couldn’t find anywhere to report this, because UrbanDictionary.com is a dictionary made up of slang provided by members. The best I could do was click on the “thumbs down” sign to express my disapproval. (sigh)

But before going on to totally ignore which kind of boundaries are being broken, Reuters is haughty enough to paint a quick Orientalist picture of Afghan women: “almost all women in deeply conservative Afghanistan still only appear in public wafting past in the burqa’s pale blue, their dark eyes only occasionally visible behind the bars of its grille” (my emphasis). Using words like “wafting” and commenting on “their dark eyes,” Reuters eroticizes Afghan women, making it seem like just going out to get the day’s groceries is an act full of sensuality! Apparently, in Afghanistan, there’s always somebody cute in the grocery store.

But don’t forget! Reuter’s use of the phrase “behind the bars of its [the burqa’s] grille” reminds us that these poor, sexy women are unfortunate prisoners of their brutal man-folk or their terribly oppressive religion! These women can’t possibly be making the choice to wear a burqa (or, as it’s really known in Afghanistan, the chaadari—again, good job, Reuters).

I have to apologize for my zealous sarcasm. But, come on! It’s been six years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, and we’re still hearing Orientalist crap like this? We can’t get past the myths that all Muslim men are all savagely controlling or Islam is totally oppressive to women? Really? Even the title “Afghan models reveal the beauty under the burqa” makes it seem like the burqa is imprisoning these women.

Anyway, back to Afghan’s next top model. Reuters feeds its readers the idea that, by simply participating in this show, Afghan women are changing the entire country (despite the fact that this show is only aired in one liberal city). But they don’t illustrate how this could change anything. The article talks of all the boundaries the show breaks and all the opportunities these girls have—but they don’t go into any detail. What opportunities is this show really going to give Afghan women? The chance to illustrate the idea that Westernization doesn’t necessarily equate to liberation or liberalization? Will the winner of the contest actually get a modeling contract?

The author also quickly breezes over the fact that there is opposition to the show by some Afghans, making it seem like any outrage over Afghan women wearing camouflage combat trousers is totally unjustified. But in a country that is currently occupied by a foreign military presence that a large part of the population has a problem with, camouflage doesn’t seem like a sensitive choice.

Reuters also has a quote by Afghan Muslim cleric Abdul Raouf, just to reinforce the idea that Afghan men are threateningly oppressive: “According to Sharia law, Islam is absolutely against this. Not only is it banned by Islamic Sharia law, but if we apply Sharia law and to take this issue to justice, these girls should be punished.” But Hemming doesn’t press him on why this is against shari’a law. What part is Islam against? Television? Women on television? Women wearing military clothes on television? None of that sounds familiar to me.

And what does shari’a specifically ban? Reuters doesn’t press him for definitive answers, so readers may just assume he’s right, and that Islam really does ban women from television, or whatever it is that he thinks Islam is against. He also says that the girls should be punished. For doing what? How? Leaving the statement at “these girls should be punished” is really menacing and just bolsters the idea of an aggressive Afghan guy.

Wait a minute! Further in the story, a young Afghan man totally contradicts the cleric: “It [the show] also complies with Afghan culture, so it’s fine.” But again we’re left hanging: readers still have no idea how the show is or isn’t okay with Afghans.

I’m glad to see that women are taking a larger place for themselves in public society: for example, the 18-year-old producer of the show is an Afghan woman. I just wish that Jon Hemming and Reuters weren’t so obliviously optimistic.

Posted as appeared on Racialicious.com.

Gender segregation is NOT a long-term solution to harassment, stares, or rape. It’s a tidy short-term solution, but it will not solve the reasons that men harass women; in fact, segregation may make harassment worse. Men of any race, religion, or nationality will harass a woman because they view women as acceptable targets—if men are taught from an early age to take into account women’s feelings, experiences, and humanity, and they are taught and shown that harassment is not acceptable (I.e., if someone harasses a woman, everyone pounces on him)—then they will not harass women. But since men are allowed to get away with harassing women (on all levels: governmental, legal, and social), they continue to do so, in every nation in the world.

However, women in Egypt are jumping on the women-only bandwagon as a solution to this harassment. Al-Ahram reports on this phenomenon, but perhaps the editor should rethink the selection of these reporters: their bias melts from between the lines of the article. Reporters Salonaz Sami and Injy El-Naggar show no mercy to women who don’t want to mingle with men—and who don’t fit their idea of upper-class, Westernized Egyptian womanhood.

The authors’ snarky side comments don’t give their sisters any mercy. They hint at these women-only clubs being lesbian dens of iniquity and imply that a woman who they interview is so anti-man that no man would want to touch her—making it a wonder “how she ever managed to have children”. The worst of these comments is downright insensitive: when a woman they interview states that she doesn’t like to go out because she is harassed, the authors pounce on her (warranted) paranoia: “How many rape incidents did Rasha and her friends suffer?” As any woman knows, you don’t need to suffer rape to be terrified of it, especially in a social setting where harassment is bad enough to make women stop leaving their homes.

And then the authors blame feminism for all of these women wanting to be left alone. Well, feminism and Islam. They assume that all of these women “[have] not transcended the incredibly narrow confines of the predominant, Wahhabi-based, middle-class understand of Islam.” Oh, and now it’s a class thing, too. And I’m sure the authors, who are so above societal interpretations of Islam, aren’t “obsessed with their bodies as objects of desire…and [aren’t] keen on such things as dieting, body toning, even make-up.”

But wait! Men get the shaft, too! On the unwanted and unasked for male attention these women receive, the authors sigh that “in the absence of both money with which to marry and legitimate privacy in which to consummate desire, such attentions will remain inevitable.” That’s right! Men are total beasts (they do actually refer to them this way in the article, even though it’s done sarcastically) who cannot control their wandering eyes and hands! Really?

The authors seem to think that men have no self-control and that women should just put up with it. Last time I checked, only animals had no self-control. And don’t all people deserve safety and freedom from harassment when they leave their homes? I guess Egyptian women don’t fall under these authors’ definition of people.

• Sisters are doin’ it for themselves: some Muslim moms open a law firm.

• What’s new in Gulf abaya fashion.

• Didn’t we tell you? Colleges look at Muslim women’s memoirs that reinforce Western stereotypes.

• Two plays about Muslim women come to the U.S. The Veiled Monologues and Is.Man: two different plays, two different directions.

Everybody’s jumping on the “Ban Hejab” bandwagon these days. For Germany and Canada, it’s done in the name of secular society and “equality." For Turkey and Tajikistan, it’s done in the name of secularism, too, but also as a distinct agenda to curtail religious influence in popular opinion and government.

The idea of banning hejab is a nasty, exclusionary, and downright ignorant political trick (especially if you read the news link for Germany). But here’s my real beef with the whole hejab ban: it’s being touted as a “religious issue” instead of a “women’s issue” or a “personal freedom issue”, where it belongs.

Filing “hejab bans” under religious discrimination isn’t fully incorrect, but neither is it fully correct. Making the hejab bans a religious issue implies that hejab is mandatory and part of Islamic belief. While many Muslim women see it as a mandatory obligation, many Muslim women do not: Islamic scholars still debate verses in the Holy Qur’an and ahadith that pertain to the idea of a woman covering herself. There are many devout Muslim women who don’t observe hejab for whatever reason, and decrying hejab bans on the pretext of religious freedom leaves these women (who are potential allies) out.

The issue of banning hejabs (or any other religious garb or symbols worn on the body) is really an issue of personal freedom, but banning the hejab specifically targets women. The reality of a hejab ban is that a government would (or does, in Turkey’s & France’s cases) not allow women to wear an item of clothing if she wants to.

Using hejab bans as a religious issue also complicates opposition. For example, the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) opposes discrimination based on hejabs, and would likely speak out on the issue if the American government ever decided to follow France’s and Turkey’s leads by banning hejab in public institutions. But would women’s groups, such as the National Organization for Women (NOW), speak out against this? If it’s touted as a “secularist/religion” issue, probably not. But if we see these bans for what they really are (taking a woman’s personal freedom of expression away), maybe women’s groups would be inclined to speak up.

Bias alert: I’m speaking from an American viewpoint here, so I’d love to hear any non-American reader’s perspective on this. But from an American standpoint, it seems silly that women can wear bikinis, mini-skirts, etc., but that people should get all riled up about a scarf on someone’s head. It’s legal for women to wear men’s clothing and for men to wear women’s clothing. It’s legal for people to wear clothing with political messages, images, or words that might offend others. And currently, it’s legal in the U.S. for women to wear scarves on their head (Muslim or not) if they choose.

But Canada and Germany have constitutions, too. And German and Canadian citizens are guaranteed freedom of expression and freedom of religion. So why isn’t anyone getting angry that these women’s freedom of expression is (or could be) being taken away? Why isn’t anyone seeing this for what it really is: the issue of women’s freedom and right to wear what she wants?

So I just barely got around to watching CNN’S God’s Warriors. I know it’s old news. In fact, I found some interesting analysis here.

But I still said to myself, “This would be great for my blog!” This might give you an idea of how short on material I’ve been lately.

Anyway, I pulled out a notepad and a pencil (very journalistically) and jotted some notes while watching the program. I know that I shouldn’t expect much from CNN, but I was surprised at how many bones I had to pick!

What surprised me most was Christiane Amanpour’s repeated use of “Mozlem” instead of “Muslim.” Barf.

So they opened with Iran, going for a very provocative “Ahmedinejad thinks that an Islamic messiah is coming” thread. Then they focused on Iranian women. I was thrilled that they showed both Shirin Ebadi (shameless bias: Ebadi beat the Pope for the Nobel Peace Prize! Yeah!) and Shadi Ghadirian (shameless bias: I love her art). They ended the piece with a shot of a young women screaming while being taken in by Iran’s morality police.

Here’s my problem: CNN makes it seem like Ahmedinejad imposed this horribly oppressive morality force (blaming the crackdowns on “Ahmedinejad’s government,” an erroneous statement in itself*), which isn’t true. The morality police have been around ever since Ayatollah Khomeini created an Islamic republic. And though, under President Khatami, the morality police were subject to more restrictions and reforms, women were still arrested for improper hejab. Women have been arrested for improper hejab ever since Iran became and Islamic Republic. That’s almost a good 30 years, ladies and gentlemen! Yes, this summer, they had crackdowns. But guess what? Last summer they had crackdowns. And the summer before that, they had crackdowns. You get the point. So why the shoddy reporting?

When they were interviewing Rehan Seyam, the young American Muslim, Amanpour introduced her as wearing hejab, “the traditional Muslim headscarf.” That irked me. This young lady was ethnically Egyptian, and depending on her family’s background, they might not have worn headscarves “traditionally.” Also, the style in which she wore it (very sleek and close to the head) is a more recent style (yes, hejabs have different styles!), which I’ve noticed that American Muslims are more apt to wear. It seems like whenever anyone uses the word “traditional” when talking about Muslims, they’re using it as codeword for “backward.”

Also, who is this young lady? Her credentials to speak for all Muslims (CNN makes her into a posterwoman for Islam) are that she wears hejab and is Egyptian-American? She says of her decision to wear hejab: “I was making a decision I knew was permanent. You put on hejab, you don’t take it off.” I didn’t like the fact that she presented this as fact, instead of her opinion. Plenty of Muslim women have put on and taken of hejab throughout their lives, but CNN makes it seem like Muslim women practically glue scarves to their heads.

Another thing about this Ms. Seyam’s segment that really bugged me is all of the ubiquitous shots of her praying: with her husband, by herself, with other ladies… mainstream media coverage of Muslims usually revolves around men praying when the story talks about Muslims, terrorism, or anything concerning the Middle East. But why all the shots with our behinds in the air? Also, when talking about Muslim women, the media always show us doing one or all of three specific things: shopping (there were several shots of Ms. Seyam in the mall; my favorite was when they juxtaposed her to half-naked Victoria’s Secret windows…oooooooh, provocative); cooking (because a good Muslim women knows how to cook!); and, of course, praying. Showing us cooking, praying, and shopping contributes to the idea that we’re not more than our religion and/or our “traditional” ways of life (which all seem to revolve around women cooking and rearing children), all while hemming in us back into the idea that since we’re women, we love to shop.

Of course, I was incredibly irritated to see Ayaan Hirsi Ali interviewed. In case you missed it, here’s an earlier post why. I couldn’t figure out any good reason that she was featured in the program, other than to pepper in some Islamophobic remarks (which an interview with a Dutch MP did quite enough of, I thought). At one point, she actually says that Muslim men are beating or killing their sisters/wives/daughters because these women want their own educations/boyfriends/lives and that hurting these women is “part of our religion”. And…loser says what? Amanpour says nothing! She doesn’t press her for statistics or contradict her with facts in the smarty-pants way that she has (and I am sort of a fan of)! She just lets that horrific statement linger, and lets the audience soak up Hirsi Ali’s negative take on a religion she avidly dislikes. BOO!

I only saw the segment on Muslims, but I’d be very interested to see how Amanpour deals with women of the Jewish and Christian faiths versus how she deals with women featured in the Muslim segment. If any of you have seen all the segments, I’d love to hear some critiques. For each religion, what did the segment focus on when talking about women? Also, in the Muslim segment, they called in outside experts to talk about Islam. Did they do that for the Jewish and Christian faiths, or were all of the experts for the Jewish and Christian faiths of those faiths, respectively? I was sort of irked that they talked to Karen Armstrong, an ex-Catholic nun, about Islam rather than an Islamic scholar. There are plenty of Islamic scholars (male and female) she could have talked to. Why ask a non-Muslim about Muslims?

*Civics lesson: The real leader of Iran is not the president. The president is elected and is mostly a figurehead. The Supreme Leader (currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) is the one who really calls the shots.