Harry’s Place

David, I know Sunny is a friend of yours but he is clearly losing the plot. Some of the recent stuff he wrote about the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Islam Expo was bizarre. There was a time when he was reliably hostile to the prumptions of Islamism but recently he seems to have become some kind of anti-anti-Islamist, preferring to focus his energy on attacking anyone who dares to point out the danger.

Any insights into what’s going on?

No, I really don’t know.

All I can say is that this isn’t the perspective of all the Pickled Politics bloggers at all.

The same adverts occur on the Haaretz website.

Reminds me of that old joke: Woman carrying placard on lwhich is written ‘Free Women Now’. Man says ‘Can I have one please?’. What’s all this in the article about ‘homocidal tendancies’? Isn’t civilization about controlling the id and primeval instincts?

errrr….Isn’t the ad sidebar at HP always on about Muslim marriage partners or trips to Damasus?

Indeed. Beside this comment I can currently see The International Muslim Matrimonial Site. BROWSE NOW!

Indeed. Beside this comment I can currently see The International Muslim Matrimonial Site. BROWSE NOW!

Time to tweak those adsense filters, DavidT.

How do you do that?

Anyhow, we don’t get breasts.

I think they always use the same model. And yes, she does.

@DavidT:

I’ve no idea - I just know that Google allows you to specify to some extent what kinds of ads are fed to your pages. According to their blurb they have “competitor” and “contextual” filters and an editorial review service that states that:
All Google ads are reviewed and approved before being served on your pages

Worth a shot, I would think.

those Google ads can be a bit funny if you try and associate one with an HP poster. “Live and work in Israel” - that’s Zin sorted. “How to Convert and become a Muslim with Live Help by chat” - Alcuin and Morgoth there.
“Global Jihad” by Patrick Soohkdeo - David T, Gene, basically all HP reg bloggers

This one though…
“Meet Muslim women & Muslim girl Video chat. Date Muslim woman now!”

That sounds suspect. (The use of “women” and “girl” in the same breath)

The Hijab Shop Wide range of Hijabs from £1.99 Free UK delivery http://www.TheHijabShop.com

You can even buy a nice Hijab for your Muslim babe. Harry’s Place really does supply the lot!

You can filter your Google Adsense by opting out of ads from organisations you don’t want to help.

Not common knowledge - hence a minor panic last year on the UCU activist list when somebody became suspicious that Google had actively infiltrated an e-book ‘critical’ of Israel with… adverts from Stop The Boycott! A letter-writing campaign to Google was proposed.

On women (not a subject I understand well enough to my shame) interestingly, I heard Sander Gilman speak on islamophobia and antisemitism recently and he made an interesting observation. He said of religious conservative women that make-up and, particularly, sheitels (Jewish women’s wigs worn as head-covering) - things I found difficult to understand - can be read as attempts to resolve the conflict between secularism and religiosity without entirely dumping the cultural trappings which actually communicate modesty.

Why’s she got her tits dangling out anyway? I didn’t think they were allowed to do that. All the women and girls round this way are swathed from head to toe in cloaks with an extra shawl laid over their bosoms, so I don’t think this tarty bit can be a very good Muslim.

I would’ve thought an championing the cause of luscious, doey, almond-eyed sexpots a la Nancy Ajram, Haifa Wahabi and brrrrr..Maryam Fares ought to be an HP cause celebre…

Isn’t it time Europeans were given the chance to sample the sweet pastries of the Arab world?

I say, isn’t it time?

A few hours watching Mazzika or Musicbox will attract suspicious prigs to the cause…

And what about those the simply delightful Israeli girls…just demobbed, freshly pressed combats…

There are plenty of luscious Egyptian Copts, Lebanese Maronites and Druze (witness Nancy) and precariously populated Chaldean community, popular emigrants from Iraq…they must be on the lookout for European talent…

Sue R, what do you mean, “they”? Arab has never been the same as devout Muslim…

Gaon, nothing’s stopping you, if you can persuade them.

A message board I post on gets non-stop adverts for log cabins and other outdoors articles. This is because of the “log-in” button at the top. Google is making billions with this crap, go figure… (Also if you have a Gmail account, guess what gets advertised on your spam page. Go on just guess…)

Anyway… back to Chris. I’d say Sunny’s descent into idiocy was first seen with the chimp remark. David had a brief daliance with irrationality last year, but nothing like this.

And what’s this about the inevitability of homicidal violence? Most humans have to suppress panic attacks with confronted by it. Is the author suggesting the Algerian Jihad was part of a natural cycle?

I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t want to oppress my partner in a £1.99 hijab I’m a much more expensive kind of misogynist.

Sue R

You say a lot of good stuff but some of your comments are just bizarre and a little stupid. Is it really beyond your comprehension that not every Arab or Muslim is a foaming at the mouth fanatic? Is it really beyond your comprehension that most Arab or Muslim women don’t dress in a burqa? Is it really beyond your comprehension that despite there being in a section of the Muslim populace a generation of jostling going on between reactionaries and modernisers, that there does exist a middle class, integrated Muslim / Arab / South Asian (take your pick, delete at will) populace in Britain that has a life and culture just like anyone elses?

Sometimes I despair at the level of dehumanisation that there is, even in a space like this, which is at least free of the racism that surrounds criticisms of Islamism and sectarianism that you see on other message boards. I really do despair sometimes.

Great Gaon of Vilna, you just come across as a sexual predator and a creep.

Dear Suzy, Thank you for your analysis of my failings. I will try harder. Yours Sue R

Seriously, Suzy, I can only speak as I see around me. I live in a very middleclass area and all the Islamic females in this area(Somalian, Pakistani, Middle Eastern, African) are dressed in enveloping gowns with shawls over their bosoms. Some, a very few and I think they are Yemani do wear burquas or niqabs, even gloves and black socks. The only Islamic women who do not wear identifiable clothing are the Turkish and Kurdish women. I know that exile communitites often hang onto traditions longer than the people in their countries of origin, so are you telling me that the exile communities in England are a foment of political change and radicalisation, especially over womens’ dress? If so, I would say, fine. Are there moves afoot to allow women in Islamic countries to wear Western style clothing?

Are there moves afoot to allow women in Islamic countries to wear Western style clothing?

They used to, in the sixties and seventies - right up to the late nineties in some places. This hijab nonsense is very recent, which doesn’t stop many clerics stating that it is “required by Islam”, and many women from believing them. And then peer pressure takes over, until it can be very difficult for a woman in a Muslim country (or even in some Muslim communities in this country) NOT to wear a hijab.

I suspect that the hijab contributes at least as much as terrorism, or possibly more so, to ruining Islam’s image in the wider world. Forget government-sponsored Sharia councils: what Islam really needs is an image makeover. Seeing more openly Muslim bikini babes would be an effective way of achieving it.

Sue R — many women who wear ‘traditional’ clothes are first generation immigrants. A Bangladeshi woman wearing a sari is not in the same category as a Somalian woman wearing a burqa in deference to her salafi bully of a father. Or a hyper keen teenage hijabi with an identity crisis who decides to wear it as a badge of pride in reaction to being called a Paki by some horrible racist on the street.

And anyway, these are in flux, change rapidly over the course of a generation, and in some cases, are overstated in persistence and percentage. Most Muslim women don’t wear the hijab. And it’s amazing that people still have to have pointed out to them that there is a jostling between reactionaries and modernisers within the various Muslim groups of Britain. Who do you think the reactionaries are reacting against? It’s primarily the middle class integrated and mellow Muslims who don’t need to be constantly reminded of their religious identity, who they fear ‘leaving the flock’. And they exist in large numbers, much to the disbelief of many readers of Harry’s Place.

But to be honest I was just generally reacting to your confusion about a picture of an attractive Arab woman advertising a social networking site. It’s more the outrage in your voice and tone that such people could even exist. I’d imagine you’d faint if you met a Muslim lady or gentleman who didn’t conform to your narrow conception of how Muslim men and women actually live in Britain today. Keep some smelling salts in your pocket for when you do come across them.

Sue, Sue, Sue, Sue, Sue…couldn’t you just change your name to Maryam and be done with it!

As an Egyptian popstar, I know that the world’s most delectable women inhabit Egypt, Lebanon and Bangladesh. With my famous music videoclips featuring a variety of doe-eyed sirens, I hope to capture a new audience in Europe…is that so wrong?

Cast of the hijab, the Khimaar, the Burqa, the Chador and all the other symbols of Islamic misogyny…being the well-versed and grounded in the Islamic sciences Egyptian popstar tha I am I’m pretty sure that there’s an equal exhortation to modety in the Qur’an…couldn’t we open those gates of ijtihad, consign primitivist nincompoop scholars like al-Ghazali to the dustbin of history and free all those delightful Muslim women…

What say you, habibti?

“Seeing more openly Muslim bikini babes would be an effective way of achieving it.”

- The inverse of a hijab wearing woman in the context of counter reaction to socially conditioned politicised hijabization is a woman who doesn’t wear a scarf on her head, ie: just a normal woman without hair covered. It is not a ‘bikini babe’.

This kind of rhetoric just extends and perpetuates the bogus binary logic that any woman who doesn’t wear a hijab is an exhibitionist, which is the line spun out by Islamists, and in a curious twist, feeds into the lame (and creepy) male fantasy of someone like you. Funny that, isn’t it? Bet you didn’t realise how much your imagination has in common with a male Islamist.

My wife is Bengali…she doesn’t wear a scarf cos she finds it demeaning. her sisters all do and most of their friends in oh-so moderate Stepney…

As an Islamic scholar, I think it is my duty to proscribe the Hijab for all Muslim girls following the Hanafi madhab in the UK…can I be on the Islamic scholars panel?

Sorry my real name is Reality Salts bin Doseof…can I be on the panel now?

Are there moves afoot to allow women in Islamic countries to wear Western style clothing?

Well, I was in Istanbul a few weeks ago and much of the time you’d be hard pressed to seperate out the women there, from the average women shopping on Oxford Street.

Nothing worse than an unfunny ‘parodist’

Suzy: The outrage in my tone was because when I was young there was a very puritanical streak in AngloAmerican feminism that would have had a heart attack to see such a picture of a semi-clad woman. We called it ’sexism’ or ’sexual exploitation’. It is saddening to see that battles we fought over thirty years ago are going to have to be refought. Difficult issue this though…freeing women from the shrouds they are forced to wear in the name of modesty to being barely covered in teh name of fashion. isn’t there a happy medium?

But why the Hijab? Its not an issue in rural Bangladesh or Mali. Girls should be able to dress however they want…which is clearly not the case for many Muslim women in the UK. I remember girls castig off their hijabs at uni…only to don them once again in time to be collected by jealous fathers and brothers…I know why they’re so jealous cos Muslim girls are really rather attractive and they’d rather they didn’t mix with ‘natives’…

SteveF…pop down to Ankara or even somewhere outside other tourist areas in Istanbul…plenty of hijabs there…would you expect to see them on the beach in Kusadasi?

SueR asked whether there were “moves afoot….to allow western dress”, I simply pointed out that there are already places where this occurs. So, I’m not really sure what your point is. Do you deny that large numbers of women in Istanbul wear western clothing. BTW, I also went to non-tourist areas in Istanbul and there were still large numbers (c 50% I’d say) of women in western dress.

Suzy: The inverse of a hijab wearing woman in the context of counter reaction to socially conditioned politicised hijabization is a woman who doesn’t wear a scarf on her head, ie: just a normal woman without hair covered. It is not a ‘bikini babe’.

Yes I know. But “normal women” wear bikinis on the beach, don’t they? “Normal women” who have the right curves get jobs as swimsuit models. Bikini babes are normal women too, you know. All I’m saying is that there’s no reason some of them shouldn’t be Muslims.

“We called it ’sexism’ or ’sexual exploitation’. It is saddening to see that battles we fought over thirty years ago are going to have to be refought. Difficult issue this though…freeing women from the shrouds they are forced to wear in the name of modesty to being barely covered in teh name of fashion. isn’t there a happy medium?”

- I might agree with some of that SueR. Just observe the comments of some of the male sexual creeps here, who in common with their Islamist male counterparts, seem to think that the inverse of a woman conditioned into wearing a hijab is a woman in a bikini.

The truth is that there is and can be a happy medium. Most Muslims, who reject the attempted strictures to be imposed on them by evangelical female niqabis and reactionary Islamist men, who use guilt complexes to try to create an atmosphere in which they conflate ‘burqa’ or ‘hijab’ with an essentialist Muslim identity, most of these Muslim women and men reject that and dress like you, live more or less like you too. A social networking site for young Arabs is reflective of youth culture as much as anything else. Most people do find the happy medium and live there life in that medium point. You have to see their existence as real. How else are you going to identify and defend them when they need a helping hand in their struggles or opposition to the reactionaries?

Yes I know. But “normal women” wear bikinis on the beach, don’t they? “Normal women” who have the right curves get jobs as swimsuit models. Bikini babes are normal women too, you know. All I’m saying is that there’s no reason some of them shouldn’t be Muslims.

Yeah sure you do. That’s why you instinctively posited the inverse of a woman wearing a hijab as being a woman wearing a bikini, which is actually identical to the stupid binaries and examples used by male Islamists and niqabi evangelists in delineating a difference between ‘Islamic’ paradigm (modesty represented by a dress code) and ‘Western’ paradigm (represented by near nakedness)

Both of these ‘paradigms’ are faulty and loaded with presumption.

The difference is that whilst the Islamists are simplistic and reactionary in seeing a complex world through these silly glasses, your default example is a male wank fantasy, basically saying ‘you can ‘liberate’ yourself by falling under my sexual gaze.’

Fuck that shit.

The inverse of a hijabi is a woman who does not feel the need to wear a hijab to be comfortable in her identity as a Muslim woman. End of story.

Posting for Reality Salts…

SteveF - c. 50% is hardly a ringing endorsement of Kemalism in Turkey’s largest city is it? But did you visit Anqara? Different story there…plus its the capital where all the offices of state reside isn’t it?

What are you blabbering on about? Allow me to repeat: SueR asked whether there were “moves afoot….to allow western dress”, I simply pointed out that there are already places where this occurs.

May I give a 12er fatwa? According to the flexiblity of the Jaafari dynamic fiqh continuum, I’d like to proscribe all hijab for Muslim women following the Jaafari madhab in the UK…

But at the same time I’d like to recommend it for rabid pseudofeminists who vomit out words poisononed by their own unhealthy affinity for postmodern English and put words like ‘bikini’ in people’s mouths when they have never uttered them…

Ahem…can I be on the panel?

I’m not telling women how to dress, Suzy. And I didn’t “instinctively posit” a bikini as the opposite of the burkha. I even agree with your point about binary oppositions.

The starting point of this thread was an advert which appeared to show a woman who appeared to be wearing a bikini. Or perhaps it was just a low-cut dress, it’s hard to tell. Either way, it led me to the thought that if wearing such garments were seen as no more problematic for Muslims than for other women inter-community relationships would be much healthier. It certainly wasn’t a “male wank fantasy”. I don’t expect you to believe me, but that’s the truth.

I’d like to endorse both Murtad min Islam and Nasrallah’s fatwas.

After I complete my 5 year grounding in Malaki fiqh I should be able to endorse just about anything…can I be on the panel?

SteveF you are surely aware that in Turkey, it is not just a move afoot to “allow” western dress, but the law since Attaturk that women are not allowed to wear the veil in pubic institutions; vide the row about the wife of the current president who defies this and the agitation to allow women to wear them in university.

When you get on the ferry to cross to the Asian side in Istanbulit seemed to me the majority were wearing headgear. I put on my scarf which I kept for going into mosques, because it was cold and windy, and then kept it on when I found I magically stopped being pestered to buy things by stallholders when I passed for local.

Suzy: As you appear to be well versed in the doings of teh Muslim emigre community could you please answer me a question. Although I am friendly with Hindu, Jain, Muslim and Japanese women I feel it would be impolite to ask them this question. (See, even I have some manners!). Are young Muslim women, brought up in this country, prepared to accept arranged marriages? I make no observation about the inherent value or worth of such a custom, I merely would like to know. Some of the women I know have teenage daughters who are fashionable ie Goths, nightclubbers etc, will they expect to marry a man chosen by their families or will they expect to chose their own husband? Also, what’s the thinking about polygamy among young, middleclass Muslims?

Suzy have you considered the following position:

Feminism and postconceptualist structural theory
Dr Lyndsay Lohan

Department of Sapphism, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Postconceptualist structural theory and cultural socialism

“Culture is part of the rubicon of consciousness,” says Sontag; however, according to Prinn[1] , it is not so much culture that is part of the rubicon of consciousness, but rather the defining characteristic, and hence the paradigm, of culture. Lacan uses the term ‘cultural appropriation’ to denote not theory, as Marx would have it, but neotheory. Thus, a number of discourses concerning the bridge between society and sexual identity exist.

“Society is used in the service of outmoded perceptions of class,” says Sartre. The subject is contextualised into a that includes narrativity as a whole. Therefore, several theories concerning postconceptualist structural theory may be found.

If feminism holds, we have to choose between prematerialist feminism and textual conceptualism. However, the subject is interpolated into a that includes language as a paradox.

The primary theme of Pickett’s[2] model of feminism is not theory, but subtheory. Thus, many deconstructions concerning the rubicon, and eventually the meaninglessness, of neocapitalist culture exist.

Lacan uses the term ‘dialectic nationalism’ to denote the common ground between sexual identity and class. But the characteristic theme of the works of Gaiman is the role of the writer as artist.

The subject is contextualised into a that includes reality as a reality. However, Brophy[3] holds that we have to choose between Foucaultist power relations and subdialectic nihilism.

2. Realities of dialectic
The primary theme of Long’s[4] critique of cultural socialism is a textual totality. The characteristic theme of the works of Gaiman is the role of the reader as poet. But Baudrillard uses the term ‘postconceptualist structural theory’ to denote a self-sufficient whole.

“Narrativity is intrinsically unattainable,” says Debord; however, according to Dahmus[5] , it is not so much narrativity that is intrinsically unattainable, but rather the failure of narrativity. A number of narratives concerning feminism may be discovered. In a sense, the main theme of Parry’s[6] essay on postconceptualist structural theory is the difference between class and society.

Marx uses the term ‘feminism’ to denote a structuralist paradox. However, subcapitalist cultural theory states that the goal of the observer is significant form.

Bataille promotes the use of cultural socialism to modify sexual identity. Therefore, the primary theme of the works of Stone is the bridge between class and sexual identity.

Several situationisms concerning the role of the poet as artist exist. However, in Heaven and Earth, Stone denies postconceptualist structural theory; in Natural Born Killers, although, he examines neodialectic narrative.

——————————————————————————–

1. Prinn, L. (1975) The Vermillion Sky: Postconceptualist structural theory and feminism. University of Oregon Press

2. Pickett, R. B. ed. (1981) Postconceptualist structural theory in the works of Gaiman. Panic Button Books

3. Brophy, Y. (1975) Deconstructing Sontag: Feminism and postconceptualist structural theory. And/Or Press

4. Long, K. V. ed. (1982) Feminism in the works of Mapplethorpe. Oxford University Press

5. Dahmus, O. S. L. (1993) The Meaninglessness of Society: Postconceptualist structural theory in the works of Stone. O’Reilly & Associates

6. Parry, R. O. ed. (1989) Postconceptualist structural theory and feminism. And/Or Press

What would your position be, let’s say a propos Yemeni women who choose carry a janbiyyah underneath their jilbabs, but whose post-modern feminist instincts are curbed by an ossified patriarchal class.

Are you Lyndsey Lohan?

No, I’m Lyndsay with an ‘e’…we’re often mistake for one another

or is that with an ‘a’

Apologies for any offence I’ve caused…

Best wishes and god bless

á propos of nothing the latin for bra is ‘fascia pectoralis’. Christ wears one in Rev 1, 13. This fact provided more than one church father with substance for exegesis.

Zakaria I didn’t know that Saint Paul wrote in Latin?

“stopped being pestered to buy things by stallholders when I passed for local”

Some of my colleagues at work were having a discussion about that in a very different context. It seems that shopworkers in Barbados have assumptions about tourists with money to spend that doesn’t seem to include a black person.

Another said “It’s worse in Antigua.”