Hijab Hijinks

Jack Straw writes that "wearing the full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult".

A British education minister says he supports universities that ban Islamic students from wearing veils.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on Tuesday that Muslim immigrant women should not be completely “hidden” behind full veils if they want to integrate and become part of Italy’s future.

Tony Blair said the full face veils by Muslim women is a "mark of separation" and made some "outside the community feel uncomfortable".

Allahpundit notes that the latest opposition to the veil comes from...Egypt:

Saleh, known in Egypt as “the women’s mufti” for her numerous fatwas, or religious edicts relating to women, rebutted on daily al-Sharq Al-Awsat, that hers was “a personal comment on an increasingly common phenomenon but which was not meant in any way to offend women.”

“There is a significant difference between the hijab, a simple veil which frames the face, and the niqab, which leaves only the eyes visible” she added. “The first is a religious duty, but the second is a sheer cultural convention, which has no raison d’etre in Islamic sources” she said.

Saleh seems to be echoing something more controversial that Amir Taheri wrote back in 2004:

The headgear in question has nothing to do with Islam as a religion. It is not sanctioned anywhere in the Koran, the fundamental text of Islam, or the hadith (traditions) attributed to the Prophet.

This headgear was invented in the early 1970s by Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had won the leadership of the Lebanese Shi'ite community.

In an interview in 1975 in Beirut, Sadr told this writer that the hijab he had invented was inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic nuns, itself inspired by that of Christian women in classical Western paintings. (A casual visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or the Louvres in Paris, would reveal the original of the neo-Islamist hijab in numerous paintings depicting Virgin Mary and other female figures from the Old and New Testament.)

Sadr's idea was that, by wearing the headgear, Shi'ite women would be clearly marked out, and thus spared sexual harassment, and rape, by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian gunmen who at the time controlled southern Lebanon.

Sadr's neo-hijab made its first appearance in Iran in 1977 as a symbol of Islamist-Marxist opposition to the Shah's regime. When the mullahs seized power in Tehran in 1979, the number of women wearing the hijab exploded into tens of thousands.

In 1981, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of the Islamic Republic, announced that "scientific research had shown that women's hair emitted rays that drove men insane." To protect the public, the new Islamist regime passed a law in 1982 making the hijab mandatory for females aged above six, regardless of religious faith. Violating the hijab code was made punishable by 100 lashes of the cane and six months imprisonment.

By the mid 1980s, a form of hijab never seen in Islam before the 1970s had become standard gear for millions of women all over the world, including Europe and America.

But the bottom line is, just what does Europe think they are doing?

Of all the ways to confront the growing problem of Islamist violence in Europe, why tackle an issue that is more likely to encourage moderates to join the extremists in protesting what they interpret as an assault on their religion?

Europe is going after veils while failing to go after those who in speech and action encourage the Islamist extremists.

They are likely to fail in the former while losing the war against the latter.

Technorati Tag: Hijab and Blair and Amir Taheri.

European Reacting To Islamists: This Is The Easy Part

From Reuters:

Pope Benedict said on Wednesday Christians could not allow their beliefs and identity to be diluted for the sake of dialogue with other religions.

"We have to remember that this identity of ours calls for strength, clarity, and courage in the world in which we live," he told pilgrims and tourists at his weekly general audience.

Since he made controversial comments on Islam a month ago, the question of how much dialogue Catholics should have with other religions has become a point of debate in the Church.

..."But this path of dialogue that is so necessary must not lead us to forget the duty to firmly underscore the tenets and identity of our Christian faith that cannot be renounced."

...The leader of more than one billion Catholics has several times expressed regret for the reaction to the speech, saying his words were misunderstood. But he has stopped short of the unequivocal apology wanted by Muslims.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that Europe may be re-evaluating its approach:

Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line regarding its Muslim minorities: more people in the political mainstream are arguing that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values.

...[a worry] shared by centrists across Europe angry at terror attacks in the name of religion on a continent that has largely abandoned it, and disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats of violence.

For years those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians — are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits.

So you have Christians on the one side taking a stronger stand for their religion even while leaving the possibility of dialog open. On the other side you have the Europeans, who have decided that there are limits, even to tolerance.

Jack Straw writes that "wearing the full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult".

Meanwhile, A British education minister says he supports universities that ban Islamic students from wearing veils.

This is the easy part.
Now let's see what happens after the riots begin.

Technorati Tag: Pope Benedict and Jack Straw and Islam.

Howard Dean Has The Answers, Forgot The Question

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean was speaking at San Diego State University and offered the following:

"If you think what's going on in the Middle East today would be going on if the Democrats were in control, it wouldn't, because we would have worked day after day after day to make sure we didn't get where we are today. We would have had the moral authority that Bill Clinton had when he brought together the Northern Irish and the IRA, when he brought together the Israelis and the Palestinians."

Let's put aside the poll taken in 2000 when:

58 experts on the US presidency were asked which of the 41 occupants of the White House held the greatest moral authority. Clinton finished 41st, one place below Richard Nixon, who, following the Watergate scandal, was the only president ever to resign.

Instead, let's go to a joint press conference featuring Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Secretary of State of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jack Straw.

Powell described the process that led to the resolution of the conflict with the IRA in Northern Ireland:

I hope what we have seen in Northern Ireland in the last 24 hours, which culminates a process that took many, many years long to get to this point, is an example of what can be achieved when people of good will come together, recognize they have strong differences, differences that they have fought over for years, but it's time to put those differences aside in order to move forward and to provide a better life for the children of Northern Ireland.

And then Straw just completely undercut him:

Could I just add one thing to that, if I may? Of course, negotiation is far, far better -- infinitely better -- than military action. As far as Northern Ireland is concerned, we welcome hugely the progress that has been made following the Good Friday Agreement. It also has to be said that before that happened, there had to be a change of approach by those who saw terrorism as the answer. And that approach partly changed because of the firmness of the military and police response to that terrorism. And if there had not been that firm response by successive British governments and others to the terrorist threat that was posed on both sides, we would not have been able to get some of those people into negotiations. We would not be marking what is a satisfactory day in the history of Northern Ireland today. [emphasis added]

In essence, Howard Dean simply gave an exquisite example of how the Democrats would have--and some day might--botch the situation in Middle East, unless they develop a completely different approach.

Something Bush should consider doing as well.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Howard Dean and Bush and Ireland and IRA.

Cartoon Irony

Zion Report--from his new address at zionreport.com--joins the discussion of the Danish cartoons and adds his opinion:

The one bit of irony in this entire episode is the hypocrisy that consistently defines the Arab and Muslim world.

In one such example, Mohamed Mestiri, head of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, warned that Islam would not tolerate criticism. And he had to tell us this? This is no doubt obvious after the hostage taking, riots, and threats of violence that they have responded with. What ever happened to “Islam is the religion of peace”?

I mean, G-d forbid that a sacred Muslim demagogue be insulted, but as for the consecrated items of Judaism and Christianity, the Muslims see this as open game. They find it to be perfectly acceptable to burn our flags, behead our citizens, insult our religious practices, and murder our children. And why? Because according to them, “Allah wills it.”

To fully appreciate the irony you can check out Caricatures politiques at Radio Islam or Tom Gross's Cartoons from the Arab World.
There is also a book: Peace: The Arabian Caricature of Anti-Semitic Imagery, by Arieh Stav.

See also Honest Reporting on Offensive Cartoons

Update: The irony also works in the other direction. There is apparently a long history of depictions of Mohammed.

Andrew Stuttaford writes

The blogosphere is filled with pictures of demonstrations against the cartoons, and the all-too-often repellent slogans that have accompanied them, but Charles Moore (writing in the Daily Telegraph) makes this important (and frequently neglected) point:

"It is assumed that Muslims have a common, almost always bristling, view about their faith, which must be respected. Of course it is right that people's deeply held beliefs should be treated courteously, but it is a great mistake - made out of ignorance - to assume that those who shout the loudest are the most representative. This was the error in the case in Luton, where a schoolgirl's desire to wear the jilbab was upheld in the erroneous belief that this is what Islam demands. In fact, the girl was backed by an extremist group, and most of the other Muslims at the school showed no inclination to dress in full-length gowns like her. It's as if the Muslim world decided that the views of the Rev Ian Paisley represented the whole of authentic Christianity. There is no reason to doubt that Muslims worry very much about depictions of Mohammed. Like many, chiefly Protestant, Christians, they fear idolatry. But, as I write, I have beside me a learned book about Islamic art and architecture which shows numerous Muslim paintings from Turkey, Persia, Arabia and so on. These depict the Prophet preaching, having visions, being fed by his wet nurse, going on his Night-Journey to heaven, etc. The truth is that in Islam, as in Christianity, not everyone agrees about what is permissible. "

The whole piece is well worth reading, his conclusion too:

"There is a great deal of talk about responsible journalism, gratuitous offence, multicultural sensitivities and so on. Jack Straw gibbers about the irresponsibility of the cartoons, but says nothing against the Muslims threatening death in response to them. I wish someone would mention the word that dominates Western culture in the face of militant Islam - fear. And then I wish someone would face it down."

Another source of depictions of Mohammed--some with less taste than others towards the end--can be found here.
Other posts here on the topic of the Danish cartoons:

o The Denmark Cartoons and Moslem Moderation 2/15/06
o The Danish Cartoons and the Hijacking of Islam 2/8/06
o The Timing of the Danish Cartoon Riots 2/8/06
o Comparing the Danish Cartoons to Der Sturmer? 2/7/06
o Translation of the Danish Moslem Delegation Letter 2/6/06
o The Anti-Denmark Riots: Has Pallywood Gone Global? 2/5/06
o Denmark and the Cartoon Defense 2/2/06

Technorati Tags: Mohammed and Muhammad Cartoon and Prophet and Denmark.

Straw Poll

I was going through old emails--I tend to hold on to many of them forever--and came across the following. It is from 4 years ago, a post by David Wolf to a mail list in Teaneck, when there was supposedly a tremendous breakthrough in resolving the situation in Northern Ireland.

During a press conference, then-Secretary Powell makes a point that this breakthrough is proof of the superiority of negotiations over the use of force. There is no mention of Israel, but you can pretty well assume that he had Israel and the Palestinian Arabs in mind.

Which of course makes Straw's comments at the end all the more powerful.

Poor Colin Powell--he never saw it coming.

Take a look:

Joint Press Availability with British Secretary of State of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Jack Straw
Secretary Colin L. Powell
Washington, DC
October 24, 2001

...QUESTION: Secretary Powell, does the situation in Northern Ireland not show us all that negotiations is really the only way forward in all of these situations? And just secondly, when you met Martin McGuinness yesterday, did he give you assurances that there is no link between the IRA and the FARC guerillas in Colombia?

SECRETARY POWELL: We didn't, when I met with him yesterday, we didn't discuss that. We were just sort of celebrating the progress that was achieved yesterday. And I think negotiations are always to be preferred to military conflict, and even when you have military conflict, it doesn't always result in the kind of classic military win. Very often, it sets the stage for negotiations.

And so I hope what we have seen in Northern Ireland in the last 24 hours, which culminates a process that took many, many years long to get to this point, is an example of what can be achieved when people of good will come together, recognize they have strong differences, differences that they have fought over for years, but it's time to put those differences aside in order to move forward and to provide a better life for the children of Northern Ireland.

FOREIGN MINISTER STRAW: Could I just add one thing to that, if I may? Of course, negotiation is far, far better -- infinitely better -- than military action. As far as Northern Ireland is concerned, we welcome hugely the progress that has been made following the Good Friday Agreement. It also has to be said that before that happened, there had to be a change of approach by those who saw terrorism as the answer. And that approach partly changed because of the firmness of the military and police response to that terrorism. And if there had not been that firm response by successive British governments and others to the terrorist threat that was posed on both sides, we would not have been able to get some of those people into negotiations. We would not be marking what is a satisfactory day in the history of Northern Ireland today.

Imagine if Israel would follow the advice from, of all people, Jack Straw.

Of course, there are drawbacks to having 20-20 hindsight with only one eye open. I realized later that in actuality, neither the negotiations nor the military response had the effect that way assumed back in 2001.

In reality the actual laying down of arms only took place a couple of months ago--after the London Bombing.

Putting aside the differences between England/IRA and Israel/Palestinian Arabs, what may have motivated the IRA to turn the corner may have been the fear of being associated with Moslem terrorists.

Which does not help Israel at all.

Palestinian Arabs will not 'lay down their arms' until the association with real terrorism becomes something that becomes abhorent in their eyes--something Arafat made sure will not happen in the forseeable future.

Technorati Tag: Israel