Where Sensitivity Is Needed and Where It Isn't

The gang-rape case in Karachi's upmarket Defence area - where two women were driven off the road by men in another car and one of them was abducted and then raped - has already received plenty of media and blog attention, unfortunately for all the wrong reasons.

In particular, some parts of the media and the Sindh government adviser Sharmila Farooqui have been quite rightly castigated by many for their criminally cavalier attitude in commenting on the serious crime. It seems there is still a long way to go for some to understand that nothing, and we mean nothing, justifies rape: not the 'character' of a woman, not the clothes she wears, not her past, not her 'activities', not anything she says or does, not anything. A lit bit of sensitivity to the trauma of a rape survivor may be too much to ask from some people but what is shocking is that parts of the media - which had voluntarily stopped naming victims many years ago in a positive move - seem to have unlearnt years of gender sensitization and reverted to their callous previous ways.

The best commentary on the whole issue so far has been provided by Pakistan Media Watch. I would urge you all to read it. There is nothing more that I wish to add.

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In other news, I wanted to share the following recent story from Australia, which reader Umar Anjum shared with us. It raises some rather interesting questions about multiculturalism to say the least, but also about the knee-jerk way religion (or rather, a warped concept of religion) and cultural sensitivity have come to be used to justify the worst excesses.

I am thankful to @MyPplWannaJump for finding me an embeddable video. It is not of the highest quality however. If you wish to see a better quality version of the same clip, you can go here.





Regardless of the undoubted Islamophobic bigotry that sometimes accompanies the paranoia about the veil in the 'West', one must acknowledge the serious issues of security and recognizability that it gives rise to. In fact, this issue of the niqab (note, not the burqa) is hardly an issue limited only to the 'West.' This is increasingly an issue in Pakistan that impinges on security as well, let alone what it indicates about social dynamics over the last 30-odd years. I also know of a very well-respected university professor in Karachi who refuses to teach students wearing a face veil in his class. His contention is that he can neither tell, through visual clues, if the students are understanding what he is saying, nor can he be sure that the veiled students are in fact his students at all. I have to say, I completely sympathize with him.

The ABC of BBC

Last month newspapers across the world carried stories about Lauren Booth’s conversion to Islam. For anyone who isn’t British and doesn’t really care, Ms. Booth is a broadcast journalist and half sister to Cheri Blair, wife of former British PM Tony Blair, whose contribution to the world as we know it can be aptly summarized by his role in this George Michael video.

Had it not been for that connection, it is doubtful the story would have received as much attention as it did and continues to do. So somebody converted to Islam. Big deal. But in a Star Wars universe, a considerable proportion of the western press seems to think, this would be the equivalent of Chewie’s mate’s brother from another mother becoming a Stormtrooper.

But Lauren Booth is not a Wookiee, and Islam is not the evil Empire. Someone at the BBC might wish to make a note of that before sharing gems like the following with us, in which Ms. Booth and three presenters – two of whom are huddled together at one end of a sofa wearing expressions I recognize from the wrong end of a parent teacher meeting and who apparently only have one name between them - spend five minutes discussing all the really important things about conversion and Islam, like whether wearing a hijab will help women make men take them more or less seriously.

The video opens with her walking around a bookstore in a farangi city talking to the camera, thereby alienating all the kuffar bibliophiles in range (for God’s sake BBC, have you no respect for sacred spaces?) and telling the world she converted after a spiritual experience in the Iranian city of Qom. “I now wear the scarf”, she says, "to remind me of the path I’m on." This is really excellent logic, I think, and a much better idea than tying a knot around her finger, leaving yellow Post-it notes around the house (Whoosa liddle Muslim now then? Who? Who? Me!) or getting a tattoo of a crescent and sickle on her forehead. But on to the video.





In fairness to the BBC, it is Ms. Booth who chooses to take the conversation down the hackneyed ‘women in Islam’ line, thus ensuring any subsequent debate would be hijacked by the inevitable ‘rights (or not) of women in contemporary Muslim societies’ angle. Of course it probably seemed a safer road to take than that offered by the anchor's first two questions ('were people shocked', 'some say this is a publicity stunt'), which told us all we need to know about how open his mind is to the notion of someone finding spiritual resonance in a religion that has over a billion followers. Almost up there with McDonald’s and football, that is.

She doesn’t endear herself to millions of non-hijab wearing Muslim women either, by subtly, ceaselessly implying all of them wear one, or to any woman really, by saying at one point that most women don’t spend enough time thinking about "their spirituality, their lives or their children." No wonder she works for an Iranian news agency. Cue the intelligent question about her experience of the difference between being a journalist in a notoriously censored society and being a journalist in a hideously market-led one…

Nope, lets just talk about women in Muslim societies some more.

In criticism of the BBC, this kind of pointless, superficial, gossipy, playing to the gallery discourse doesn’t do anything other than suggest Islamophobia remains an acceptable lifestyle choice, and the conversion of a minor celebrity is just another excuse to indulge it. If, tomorrow, Laura Bush’s first cousin decides she is actually a garden gnome, will the world be subjected to five minutes of insightless prattling about the pros and cons of wearing of a little red conical hat? Will it be considered appropriate to quiz her, in private or public conversations, about her position on the element of genital mutilation inherent in the practice of sculpting boy garden gnome penis fountains?

Addendum: Ms. Booth's personal take on Islamophobia, published today, can be read here.

"It's Not The Fact That They Are Muslims That Makes Them Terrorists, It's The Fact That They Are Terrorists That Makes Them Terrorists"

About bloody time somebody said this in the US media!

The programme is Morning Joe on MSNBC. The rant is by MSNBC staffer Dylan Ratigan.

Pakistani Protesters, Raise Your Game?

Some of you might already have seen this but, for me, the protest of the day award goes to…The NiqaBitches, two French students whose take on France’s decision to ban the burqa was unveiled in this story in The Telegraph.



What I liked about this provocative piece of visual drama is the fact that, unlike most protests, it made me think. My thoughts were, in chronological order, I’d really like to tan their hides (no seriously, these ladies need some sun) and those are SO the wrong shoes.

Relax, Don't Do It?

So, um, Mosharraf Zaidi had recently written an article in Foreign Policy called "The Talibanization of America", which is certainly worth reading for his intelligent recasting of the debate over Islam and Islamophobia in the US, though I have serious issues with his implication that the only valid debate is one between religiously-inspired identities. And with an English speaking Pakistani-American schooled at the Karachi American School who is more than a little fond of heavy metal and rap, sneeringly referring to governments in Pakistan as being run by "culturally dislocated Muslims." It's the sort of essentialism Mosharraf's otherwise well argued writing can do without.

But I bring that up only as a by-the-way talking point because what I really want to share today is the 1996 video below. It is of Christine O' Donnell, a Tea Party Express candidate and right-wing activist who defeated the favoured Republican candidate today in the party's Delaware primaries. As you may recall, the Tea Party is sort of the extreme right of the Republican spectrum whose members have been in the forefront of casting Barrack Obama as a (OMG!) Muslim communist and leading the fight against the New York Muslim Cultural Centre to be known as Cordoba House. According to analysts, the win for her has put a rather large stumbling block in the GOP's (Republican Party's) hopes of winning the Senate in the November elections, since they do not believe O' Donnell has a chance of winning the face-off against her Democratic rival.

In any case, here is the video from MTV that one TV programme dug up. It's O' Donnell's campaign against, um, well, you know...





The Taliban just get a bad rap sometimes, I tell you.

CNN Tells the Truth, Inadvertently

Thanks to Ali K. Chishti for sending us this...