Rima Fakih is a Lebanese born Michigan raised Shi'ite Muslim who has been crowned the new Miss Murka, or whatever. This has sent Debbie Schlussel into a frothing panic of insane stupidity. Schlussel is only less detached from reality than the rather more moderate responses to her insane raving by degrees. E.g. Steven L. Taylor:
I am not an expert on Sharia law, but I am pretty sure that posing in public in a skimpy two-piece bathing suit is pretty much forbidden. ... Actually, rather than (as Schussel claims) "Hezbollah [...] laughing at us" it seems far more likely that this will inflame the rage of some radical Islamists who will see this as further evidence of the corrupting influence of the West.
Anybody who paid the slightest attention to Hezbollah's protests over the years - like, anybody who might watch the news on occasion - knows there's been no imposition of the veil or head covering or hijabs or burkas or whatever in Lebanon or even within their own community. Lebanese Shi'ite women, Hezbollah members or not, can parade around the streets hair unfurled.
And anybody who knows the slightest thing about the ideologies of radical Islamist groups - like, say, "Schlussel's unique expertise on radical Islam/Islamic terrorism" - also knows that Hezbollah is, so far as it goes, probably the least chauvinist and least inimical to women's rights of the lot. The most one could say is that internally they practice affirmative action for women who cover their heads, as like any other religious organization they respond well to outward expressions of their faith. Schlussel has to delve deep into the paranoid playbook to come up with a way to describe how this accommodation of exposed midriffs and feminist currents in Islam is actually just more evidence of Hezbollah's unmitigated evil:
My intelligence sources laugh at the overwhelming praise and bragging over Fakih on several Lebanese Hezbollah Arabic language blogs. After all, she will be parading around on-stage–as all Miss USA contestants do–in a bikini, a complete no-no according to Hezbollah’s strict Muslim rules about covering women up. But, as we all know, and as one source confirms, Muslims frequently go against Islam in this way for propaganda purposes. It’s a form of taqiyyah, the Muslim concept of deceiving infidels.
Hezbollah doesn't force anybody to adhere to a dress code, so they don't really have to practice taqiyyah to express happiness that a member of their confessional community has won a bikini contest.
It wasn't Hezbollah that scared this former Miss Lebanon (they even enter bikini contests there, to complete the taqiyyah illusion!) out of her native country:
That's what southern Lebanon born, Shia practicing, Hezbollah-supporting pop stardom looks like. She's only, like, world famous, and on her second US tour. Debbie Schlussel would have you believe that she is practicing "a form of taqiyyah" and spreading Sharia law with her hips. Steven Taylor would instead worry that she is enraging reactionary thugs with them, and that by allowing her to swing them at US venues we may be inviting terrorist blowback. Clearly, we are doomed.
:: posted by buermann @ 2010-05-17 13:40:15 CST |
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