Take It Off, Or We’ll Make You: On Sarkozy’s Proposed Burqa Ban
For far too long—well, for at least a decade or so—we in the West have been biting our lip to let you Muslim women take care of yourselves. Well, at least some of us have. Or we feel like we have. At this historical moment, it seems that we have no choice but to enter the fray on your behalf.
We’ve been getting increasingly anxious about you allowing your men to control, dominate and subjugate you. As your allies, though we do not understand why you choose to remain in this state, we intend to assist you in getting out of this unfortunate situation, and to enable, empower, and emancipate you.
Since you have not been out in the world long enough to know what is best for you, we are going to spell out for you what is in your own best interest. More
We’ve been getting increasingly anxious about you allowing your men to control, dominate and subjugate you. As your allies, though we do not understand why you choose to remain in this state, we intend to assist you in getting out of this unfortunate situation, and to enable, empower, and emancipate you.
Since you have not been out in the world long enough to know what is best for you, we are going to spell out for you what is in your own best interest. More
“Future of Babylon” Project Preserves History to Some, Ushers in “End Times” to Others
On April 10, 2003, one day after U.S. forces established control over Iraq, a number of Iraqis took to doing, to paraphrase Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld “what a free people do”; running amok and looting whatever wasn’t permanently nailed in place. One of the hardest hit targets was Baghdad’s Iraq Museum. When asked about the looting, Rumsfeld—then enjoying matinee idol-type status—made light of the situation, saying: “the images you are seeing on television… it’s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, ‘My goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?’”
“Despite the presence of American troops nearby,” Hugh Eakin recently wrote in his review of Lawrence Rothfields’s ‘The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum,’ the looting “lasted three days and resulted in the theft of some 15,000 objects, among them some of the most extraordinary remains of the early history of world civilization.” More
“Despite the presence of American troops nearby,” Hugh Eakin recently wrote in his review of Lawrence Rothfields’s ‘The Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum,’ the looting “lasted three days and resulted in the theft of some 15,000 objects, among them some of the most extraordinary remains of the early history of world civilization.” More
Misreading Neda and Judges 19: Death of Young Iranian Woman Is Not a Rallying Cry for War
There is nothing new about the iconic display of a young woman’s final suffering. As Edgar Allen Poe said in his “Philosophy of Composition, “The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.” By “poetical” Poe meant most capable of producing emotion, thus he would not have been surprised that images of Neda Agha Soltan’s death have caused an uproar. After all, he created Lenore, the maiden of his famous poem, “The Raven” and then killed her off, for exactly this reason: to incite a melancholic and passionate response in his reader.
But in Neda’s case, where millions have watched her death on YouTube or other media, there is debate over what our response should be. Should her death be a call to action? Is Obama too slow to intervene? Should we be outraged that Neda has been dehumanized? Some feminists have even equated watching the video of her death to watching a snuff film (a planned death, filmed for the entertainment of the onlooker). But even the debate over our reaction to Neda is not particularly new. More
But in Neda’s case, where millions have watched her death on YouTube or other media, there is debate over what our response should be. Should her death be a call to action? Is Obama too slow to intervene? Should we be outraged that Neda has been dehumanized? Some feminists have even equated watching the video of her death to watching a snuff film (a planned death, filmed for the entertainment of the onlooker). But even the debate over our reaction to Neda is not particularly new. More
The Qawwali-Gospel, a Cross-Cultural Musical Experiment
The Muslim Voices Festival ended recently, and one of the last events was the Qawwali-Gospel Creation, featuring Faiz Ali Faiz and Craig Adams. As an art form, qawwali emerges from the incorporation of multiple cultural systems, and it continues to evolve by interacting with new cultures.
Bally Sagoo, a British Asian musician, succesfully marries qawwali and hip-hop, as well as qawwali and electronica. The group Fun^Da^Mental, uses qawwali extensively in their music, incorporating a wide variety of music, including gospel, electronica, South African and Tuvan music. The Dub Factory and Gaudi merge qawwali and reggae. In Pakistan, groups like Junoon give qawwali a rock make-over, demonstrating the highly flexible nature of the art form. During his life, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, perhaps the best-known qawwal in the US, worked with a wide variety of artists himself. He worked on a fusion with Gregorian Chant, with Peter Gabriel, Eddie Veder, Michael Brook, and Massive Attack. Faiz Ali Faiz, one of the performers for the concert, previously did a brilliant collaboration with flamenco musicians, appropriately titled Qawwali-Flamenco. As the old documentary Latcho Drom shows, there is at least a common musical heritage both are pulling upon, which arguably makes the connection easier. More
Bally Sagoo, a British Asian musician, succesfully marries qawwali and hip-hop, as well as qawwali and electronica. The group Fun^Da^Mental, uses qawwali extensively in their music, incorporating a wide variety of music, including gospel, electronica, South African and Tuvan music. The Dub Factory and Gaudi merge qawwali and reggae. In Pakistan, groups like Junoon give qawwali a rock make-over, demonstrating the highly flexible nature of the art form. During his life, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, perhaps the best-known qawwal in the US, worked with a wide variety of artists himself. He worked on a fusion with Gregorian Chant, with Peter Gabriel, Eddie Veder, Michael Brook, and Massive Attack. Faiz Ali Faiz, one of the performers for the concert, previously did a brilliant collaboration with flamenco musicians, appropriately titled Qawwali-Flamenco. As the old documentary Latcho Drom shows, there is at least a common musical heritage both are pulling upon, which arguably makes the connection easier. More