Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.
May 26, 2010 2 Comments
Building on this debate (which is still raging), the following clip debates why (or not) women should don the hijab:
There are good arguments for, but ultimately it is the woman’s choice.
When a woman exercises her right either way, she is enacting her rights.
And that is the best we can hope for in a world cobwebbed with patriarchy.
May 20, 2010 2 Comments
…has now admitted Pakistan into its midst, after a Facebook group called for members to ‘Draw Mohammed’.
Pakistan now joins Syria, China, Vietnam and Iran – albeit temporarily.
The group, Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!, calls on its 43,000 supporters to draw the Prophet today.
The ban, issued by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority, will last until 31 May.
However, a number of Islamic lawyers have indicated the group as sound reasoning for a comprehensive suspension.
Ironically, the group’s objective resides in free speech – though it seems to have broached the fine line between freedom and offense:
[The group] hurt us very badly, very seriously. They should have regard for sentiments of Muslims, and they should not repeat such displays. They should know that if they are going to do such activities, certainly their business will suffer. [Source]
(As an aside, when I tried to find the Facebook page it returned no results, save for a group requesting its removal – Facebook admin possibly beaten Pakistan at its own game of censorship?)
On a lighter level, Tweet theories are already running rife that it is the United States behind the blackout, as “They want to track Osama. If there’s no recent activity on his profile, they know he’s in Pakistan.”
Yup. Osama must be beating his cave walls in frustration as his Farmville plot descends into chaos and his Fishville inhabitants go belly-up.
May 14, 2010 Leave a Comment
Frantz Fanon has always captured my attention: his passion, his naked vehemence and most of all the burning veracity of his arguments renders him one of the most influential and relevant of anti-colonialist thinkers.
And the fact that the above is composed in the present tense is quite deliberate – to read the below, written in 1961, very little has changed:
Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of so-called spiritual experience.
Written from the midst of the Algerian War, Fanon provided a voice for those oppressed by colonialism.
Most striking is his identification of the autochthonous cronies: we so often forget that for every occupying force there are those on the ground who provide if not the foundations, then the sustenance.
As an anthropologist at heart I hold little love for political theory – it instill a sense of tedium that aches to the back of my eyeballs.
Fanon is the first – and perhaps only and last – thinker who resonates.
He did not shroud his anti-colonialist rage: it is bare, blistering and profound.
Fanon died at the age of 36 of leukemia.
Of the great feats he achieved in those too few years, one can only imagine how much more he could have inspired.
*Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, 1961.
May 6, 2010 Leave a Comment
The times, and domains, are a-changing:
Arab nations are leading a “historic” charge to make the world wide web live up to its name.
Net regulator Icann has switched on a system that allows full web addresses that contain no Latin characters.
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the first countries to have so-called “country codes” written in Arabic scripts.
“All three are Arabic script domains, and will enable domain names written fully right-to-left,” said Kim Davies of Icann in a blog post.
One of the first websites with a full Arabic address is the Egyptian Ministry of Communications. [Read on...]
How utterly, fabulously marvellous.
And overdue.
February 19, 2010 49 Comments
…is an honor killing, nonetheless.
Last year I posted on a spate of honor killings in Italy, which demonstrated that the act is not defined by location, but rather by ideology.
The post touched upon the murder of 17-year-old Hina Saleem, who was killed in 2006 by male relatives for ‘dishonouring the family’ while cohabiting with an Italian man, wearing jeans and working in a pizzeria.
Her father, Mohammad, confessed to the killing and along with two male relatives received a sentence of 30 years.
So far, so tragically evocative of the numerous cases of honor killings being perpetuated around the Mediterranean region.
But wait.
This was not technically an honor killing: for while dishonor is frequently linked to religion, the Assize Court of Appeal of Brescia has ruled that the murder of Hina – though classed by her father as one of (dis)honor – was in fact motivated by a “pathological and distorted parental relationship of possession“.
Further, it emphasized that her demise was not “religiously or culturally motivated”.
While her father and two cousins were duly sentenced, the reluctance of the court to openly acknowledge the act as an honor crime is unjustly peculiar.
The killing of a young woman in the name of ‘honor’ is an honor killing; by any other categorization – including relationships of possession – it is merely dressing up a dire phenomenon in psychological analyses.
January 29, 2010 Leave a Comment
For those interested in the potency of images over words (of which I am uncontrollably one) the following – tipped by Roba - is a compelling show of the evolution of Al Qaeda’s campaign via the graphic medium:
From the rudimentary:
To the nigh sophisticated laden with puns (pineapple being the symbol of paradise):
Fascinating stuff.
November 11, 2009 2 Comments
Proving the law really can be an ass:
A court in Azerbaijan has handed down prison terms to two bloggers who posted a video of a donkey seen as satirising the government.
Adnan Hajizade was given two years and Emin Milli two-and-a-half years after they were found guilty of hooliganism linked to a scuffle in a cafe.
They maintain they were arrested and convicted because of their online criticism of the authorities.
But of course:
[O]fficials deny the case was related to the bloggers’ anti-government views.
View the full story here, as well as a clip from the video in question.
November 9, 2009 Leave a Comment
A splendidly novel initiative launched by the dynamic Bekhsoos team:
Hello! You’ve probably noticed that I’ve changed my sex on Facebook. Were you surprised? Annoyed? Intrigued? Disgusted? Outraged? Did you think it was a joke? Did you perhaps think it was a mistake?
Actually, I’m glad you asked. Today is the international day of action for sexual and bodily rights across Muslim societies: “One Day, One Struggle.” To mark the occasion, I’ve changed my sex on Facebook to raise awareness around challenges facing transgender people everywhere in the world. And I’m going to keep it that way till November 20, the Transgender Day of Remembrance. [...]
My friends, there is a lot of awareness we need to raise about transgender issues. We need to break the silences and the misconceptions – starting from the ones in our own selves.
So I ask you to join me by doing the same on your Facebook. If you feel too scared about what people will say, then you can understand – if only for some fleeting seconds – what transgenders have to go through their entire lives. So please, take the bold step and stand up for a community who continue to suffer among us every day.
To find out more, click here.
Because ultimately, that’s all it takes: one click to show solidarity.
Yalla, what are you waiting for?
September 3, 2009 3 Comments
Continuing from the previous post in which it was speculated that women in the Middle East anticipated domestic abuse more than their Western counterparts, the following stats by UNICEF seem to bear out the theory:
In case the graphics are not clear, those figures are:
Similarly, recent figures from the British Home Office reveal that:
11% of people think it okay to beat if the wife or girlfriend doesn’t treat the man with respect;
36% think a woman should be held co-responsible for being raped if she is drunk;
26% if she is wearing revealing or sexy clothing;
and 49% if she does not clearly say ‘no’.
It is a dark day indeed for humankind when such figures and opinions emerge.
August 26, 2009 Leave a Comment
The following articles on life in Afghanistan were published in a recent edition of New Statesman; though tardily posted, they are insightful reads nonetheless.
Andrea Busfield provides a vivid account of everyday life in Kabul as a female journalist, while Nesrine Malik argues that the war in Afghanistan is failing on one crucial aspect: the future of women in the country.
The country might become “liberated,” but it would be far from egalitarian if the necessary foundations for women’s rights are not established.
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