You Go (Boom), Girl!
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Today, I received my copy, via post, of the Winter 2004 Sallyport Magazine. This is the glossy magazine the Rice University Office of Development sends quarterly to its alumni to spur donations. I would suggest a different tack than that shown on page 6. This article describes -- in what is at best a trite way -- a very disturbing trend in the Islamic world.
Above the article is a photograph of a woman in a black veil with the title, "Radical Female Muslims Redefining Islam." The article describes what sounds like solid research into the history of, and possible motivations for, women serving as ordnance for Moslems in their religious wars.
However, the title comes off as feminist boosterism and causes the rest of the article to be too easily read in that light. Furthermore, the politically correct word choices compound the impression that the we are to think of the social phenomenon being discussed as a good thing! As a result, certain passages sound as if they are extolling the great female pioneers of jihad, or conversely, praising the Moslem faith for showing the great foresight to finally allow women to blow themselves up.
For example, there is the opening paragraph, which almost comes off as a "first lady who ..." bit of fluff:
When 17-year old Sina' al-Muhayadi took part in a suicide attack against Israeli soldiers in South Lebanon in 1985, her martyrdom [emphasis added] was among the earliest reports of women fighting in jihad.
Wow! What's next? Burqa burning?
Martyrdom? How 'bout, her death?
And then there's this:
Still, [David] Cook[, assistant professor of religious studies at Rice] notes the right [emphasis added] of women to join men on the battlefield is in sharp contradistinction to classical Muslim sources and "can be seen as a radical change in Islam."
Allah be praised! We are in the very midst of the Moslem Renaissance!
The right to kill and get killed? What a privilege!
Maybe it's just me, but at the very least, that title is an awful way to describe the fact that now even women are getting into the act of blowing themselves to bits. And the word choices in the article, though almost certainly meant not to offend Moslems, were totally inappropriate. This is a religion that preaches that people like Cook, the author of the piece, and most of its readers, should be subjugated, converted, or killed. To hell with the sensibilities of anyone who buys that! Furthermore, we're talking about a society that is beginning to kill off its women. This represents a new low on its descent into barbarism
And what's more, though the article alludes to the miserable treatment of women in the Moslem world, there is no consideration given to the idea that perhaps at least some of these women might be unwilling participants. This is in a part of the world where female circumcisions are performed and how-to guides for beating wives are published! Though an ideology so benighted as to praise suicide may make forcing women to wage jihad unnecessary, it is a point that might be worth considering.
-- CAV
PS: Angry readers reply in the next issue of Sallyport!
Updates
1-13-05: Corrected typos and a sylistic gaffe.
4-26-05: Added link to original source. Added PS with a link to the update.
3 comments:
Yo, Gus, just a couple of comments. First, dunno if the article mentions the fact, but many of the female suicide bombers on the West Bank have been (well, I guess "were" is simply more appropriate for the sense here) forced into it by their families in order to salvage the family honor, for whatever reason--you just have to be thought a slut to be turned into a bomb. Second, female circumcision is not an Islamic practice so much as it is an African practice common to Christians, Jews, Muslims, and animists. The Islamic countries in which it is most commonly practiced are Sudan, Somalia, and Egypt, and to a rather lesser extent along the Arabian Sea and into the Arabian peninsula; and at least until the middle of the 20th century it was quite common in Ethiopia/Eritrea, a predominantly Christian state. (I remember coming across it in a 1941 collection of texts in Tigrinya, the language of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, closely related to Amharic, in which the informant discussed Christian customs. After a lengthy discussion of male circumcision, he gave a much shorter description of female circumcision rites, then concluded, "The Muslims do much the same thing.")
Yo 'gain, Gus, left the last comment incomplete. Apparently the practice in Africa started along the Nile (or is at least attested in Egyptian sources 4000 years ago) and spread from there in many directions, especially to the south (the Sudan and the Horn of Africa) and the west (the Maghreb). It's one of those customs that doesn't go against the precepts of Islam so it's allowed after conversion, but many Islamic cultures don't practice it (it seems to be pretty much unknown among Persians or the various Turkic peoples, for example).
Yo Gus, having thought about this entry for a while, I have to say I disagree with you on several points, especially your central one: Maybe it's just me, but at the very least, that title is an awful way to describe the fact that now even women are getting into the act of blowing themselves to bits. And the word choices in the article, though almost certainly meant not to offend Moslems, were totally inappropriate.First, according to Islam, martyrdom (shahada) is quite simply what you call it when someone dies in jihad (Holy Struggle). That doesn't just mean dying on the battlefield, but includes giving one's life in the service of Allah. Blowing up Israeli soldiers with a suicide bomb is perfectly consonant with this; just calling it her "death" is on the one hand redundant, but on the other leaves out the fact that it was carried out under religious inspiration. Ironically, by arguing against this act of calling a spade by its owner's name for it, you're actually whitewashing Islam a bit.
Second, women joining men on the battlefield certainly would be a radical change in Islam. Don't let radical feminists, Greens, and other western political types of a certain coloration claim the word "radical" as their own and debase the English language. Women are seen as having their proper spheres in Muslim societies (varying a bit from society to society), which is of course usually far more restricted than that of men, and having women join men on the battlefield would attack this division at the root--that is, radically.All in all, I don't find anything inappropriate about the word choices in any of the passages you quoted. I might take exception to "redefining" in the title, but article writers always hate headline writers' choices (I know I have when I've had letters to the editors published). You write:
Furthermore, the politically correct word choices compound the impression that the we are to think of the social phenomenon being discussed as a good thing! As a result, certain passages sound as if they are extolling the great female pioneers of jihad, or conversely, praising the Moslem faith for showing the great foresight to finally allow women to blow themselves up.On the contrary, I'd call the word choices precise, not "politically correct." And after I found a copy of the article and read it, I didn't find any passages that sounded as if they were extolling anything or praising any kind of Muslim foresight, and I'd have to think pretty damn poorly of a potential audience to imagine they'd gain such an impression from that article. Maybe some pasty-faced intellectually soft-shelled creatures who free-associate the sounds of words with their warm'n'fuzzy connotations (now choose a stereotypical figure of your choice), but anyone with a brain will be shocked by it. Don't attack the messenger for the message.
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