Archive for July 2010
Palin triggers NY mosque Twitter fray
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By: Maggie Haberman
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Sarah Palin, who waded into a New York political fight by endorsing Ann Marie Buerkle in NY-25, is drifting into a decidedly higher-charged battle: The fray over a planned mosque near Ground Zero. “Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing,” she tweeted Sunday. The building’s planners, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, have said it’s modeled on religious and community centers such as the YMCA, and that the 13-story, $100 million building would also include an arts center, gym and a swimming pool, as well as a mosque. It would be two blocks away from Ground Zero. The project, which has become an increasingly partisan issue in New York, received a renewed burst of national attention when CBS and NBC rejected an ad from the National Republican Trust PAC that crosscut footage of the 9/11 attacks with the sounds of Muslim prayer. |
Spanish parliament to debate ban on public burqas
By HAROLD HECKLE (AP) – 7 hours ago
MADRID — Spanish lawmakers will debate barring burqas in public, joining other European countries considering similar moves on the grounds that the body-covering garments are degrading to women, the leading opposition party said Sunday.
Top officials of the ruling Socialist Party have indicated they will support the proposal by the opposition Popular Party, making a ban likely unless the country’s highest court rules it unconstitutional.
A debate in Spain’s lower house has been set by the Popular Party for Tuesday or Wednesday, the party said.
No vote will be scheduled until after the debate, and Spain’s Parliament usually goes on vacation for a month starting in late July or early August.
Justice Minister Francisco Caamano said on June 15 that garments like the burqa are “hardly compatible with human dignity.” Read the rest of this entry »
Some Gaza women smolder over Hamas’ water-pipe ban
By DIAA HADID and IBRAHIM BARZAK (AP) – 8 hours ago
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — There are few pleasures left for Gaza’s 1.5 million people, squeezed by both a blockade and Hamas efforts to impose its strict Muslim lifestyle. And women here just lost another one.
Gaza’s Hamas rulers have banned women from smoking water pipes in cafes, sending plainclothes agents through popular beachside spots Sunday to enforce the edict. Some women in the Palestinian territory are grumbling.
“This is silly,” said Haya Ahmed, a 29-year-old accountant who said she has smoked water pipes for 10 years. “We are not smoking in the streets but in restaurants, where only a few people can enter.”
She predicted the ban would actually make water pipes more tempting for rebellious young women. “Everything forbidden becomes desirable. The decision will lead to more smokers,” Ahmed said.
Many Gazans pile into beach cafes in the evenings to puff on water pipes well into the wee hours of the morning. Islamic law does not ban women from smoking the traditional tobacco-infused pipes, but many frown upon the practice. Read the rest of this entry »
The Porn Myth
In the end, porn doesn’t whet men’s appetites—it turns them off the real thing.
By Naomi Wolf
http://nymag.com/print/?/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/
At a benefit the other night, I saw Andrea Dworkin, the anti-porn activist most famous in the eighties for her conviction that opening the floodgates of pornography would lead men to see real women in sexually debased ways. If we did not limit pornography, she argued—before Internet technology made that prospect a technical impossibility—most men would come to objectify women as they objectified porn stars, and treat them accordingly. In a kind of domino theory, she predicted, rape and other kinds of sexual mayhem would surely follow.
The feminist warrior looked gentle and almost frail. The world she had, Cassandra-like, warned us about so passionately was truly here: Porn is, as David Amsden says, the “wallpaper” of our lives now. So was she right or wrong?
She was right about the warning, wrong about the outcome. As she foretold, pornography did breach the dike that separated a marginal, adult, private pursuit from the mainstream public arena. The whole world, post-Internet, did become pornographized. Young men and women are indeed being taught what sex is, how it looks, what its etiquette and expectations are, by pornographic training—and this is having a huge effect on how they interact. Read the rest of this entry »
Malaysian TV show to pick imam with youth appeal
Young men dressed in sharp suits and Muslim prayer hats stand on a brightly lit stage, arms linked.
The chief judge of a new reality TV show calls out one of the contestants’ names.
“I regret to announce that young leader Syakir has reached the end of the road.”
Dramatic music plays as all the contestants hug.
Imam Muda, or young leader, is the first show of its kind.
The winner gets a full scholarship to study in Saudi Arabia, a car, and a job as an imam at one of the main mosques in Kuala Lumpur.
Contestants, all under the age of 28, are tested on their Islamic knowledge. Each week they face challenges, from counselling troubled teens to preparing the dead.
The TV format may be familiar. But it is one that Astro Oasis, a Muslim lifestyle satellite channel, hopes will breathe new life into its Islamic programming.
The show, which first aired on 28 May, is made by Astro Oasis in collaboration with the Malaysian government’s Islamic affairs department. Read the rest of this entry »
