Now, look - I chastise my father whenever he calls me anything remotely close to sweetie, and he’s used a whole bunch of those terms (let me be brutally honest since my mother reads this blog but my father doesn’t: I hate it when my father uses alleged terms of endearment like “doll” “babe” or “baby” - but I don’t like it when anyone calls me those things either - never have).
And after watching the clip, I believe Barack Obama when he says it’s a bad habit, as here in the Detroit Free Press:
Sen. Barack Obama, who is edging toward the Democratic presidential nomination, offhandedly called a Detroit television reporter “sweetie” during a tour Wednesday of Chrysler’s Sterling Stamping Plant in Sterling Heights after she hurled a question at him: “Senator, what are you going to do to help American autoworkers?” The incident got picked up by the national news media, and the video, which shows Obama saying, “Hold on one second, sweetie, we’ll do a press avail,” to WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) reporter Peggy Agar, is playing on YouTube.com.
Several hours later, Obama left a message on Agar’s cell phone, apologizing.
“It’s a bad habit of mine,” he said in the voice mail, which is on the TV station’s Web site. “I mean no disrespect, so I am duly chastened on that front.”
Agar said in a televised report that she was more upset that Obama didn’t answer her question.
But you know what? That not answering the question, that’s exactly right. Enough readers have seen how I get when I don’t get my questions answer. And the “sweetie” spin is a very, very common way of trying to say, in what too many people find to be an acceptable tactic, “now calm down there - I’ll get to you when I’m ready - you little woman you” kind of thing.
It is a bad habit, and a lot of people do use it, men and women - I use it with my kids to put them off or cool their jets.
So you better believe Obama had an intention, even if unconscious, that when he is soothing with sweetie, the tough question can be finessed away. Calm down, now - I’ll get to you when I’m ready, don’t you worry now.
But he never did get to the question.
So why doesn’t this rise to the level of a macaca moment? Because a lot of politicians use similar techniques with the media, and private citizens use it too. It’s too common a bad habit to make it a macaca moment, which was really quite outrageous and mean-spirited.
However, the good senator would be very wise to work on undoing that bad habit because at its base? It was an avoidance tool that got turned at a female reporter. I understand it in context, but a lot of people, particularly men and women of voting age - may not.
See also The Moderate Voice’s Joe Windish’s post on the incident. T-Steel leaves a comment mentioning that the sweetie involved is a “good reporter” whom he sees all the time on the Detroit news (that’s very helpful commentary - thank you btw).
Later, the station said Obama had left an apology on the reporter’s phone, admitting he had a problem calling women “sweetie” and saying he intended no disrespect.
If there’s no disrespect intended, why wouldn’t he have used it during, say, one of his debates against Sen. Hillary Clinton? “Now, Sweetie, you’re not describing my health care plan accurately.” How would that go over?
*Chris Crain at first saw a gender slight in that endorsement but returns in an update to conclude that he saw, instead, “a subtle hint to Hillaryland and her supporters that his heart isn’t in it.”
That’s a bad habit of mine. I do it sometimes with all kinds of people. I mean no disrespect and so I am duly chastened on that front. Feel free to call me back.
The emailer who forwarded the statement is generously forgiving, “for someone who is the father of two girls, it’s probably a word as natural as ‘Hello.’”
On the 492nd day of Hillary Clinton’s quest to become the first woman president, one inevitability was rudely replaced by another.
That was the number of days that elapsed from January 20, 2007 when Clinton (photo) announced that “I’m in. And I’m in it to win,” something that few observers could seriously doubt, and Tuesday past when voters in North Carolina and Indiana delivered another message: Her defeat at the hands of Barack Obama in the political cage match of the young millennium was no longer a probability but an inevitability.
Sure signs of this seismic shift are the uproar from the hardest of Clinton’s hardcore supporters and flurry of kamikazee analogies from pundits shaking their heads over her stubborn refusal to bow to that inevitability.
These supporters declare that Obama is unelectable although more Americans may vote for him in November than any presidential candidate in history. And that Clinton should be gifted the Democratic nomination although she trails Obama in popular votes, pledged delegate votes, opinion-poll positives, contributions and endorsements, and any second in superdelegates, as well.
The hardcore ranges from big-time bloggers like Taylor Marsh, who will now have to return that lovely dress she bought months ago to wear to the inaugural balls (but at least is making noises about possibly embracing Obama) to some really pissed-off feminists (who are demonizing Marsh for seeing the light).
I’m going to focus on the Hell Hath No Fury Like a Feminist Scorned crowd, which is shaping up to be a bunch of especially poor losers.
BOB GARFIELD: The FLDS community has been described as something like a tribe in Papua, New Guinea, that is untouched by the modern world. Are they really living in the middle of the 18th century?
BROOKE ADAMS: I think that’s a false perception of this group. They have a number of people who have been to college. They are quite Internet-savvy, as the world now knows with the websites that they have put up to spread their view of what’s happened to them in Texas. So I think the idea that they’re totally isolated is false.
BOB GARFIELD: I want to ask you about the websites that have popped up amid all of the uproar. Are they coming from within the Yearning for Zion compound itself?
BROOKE ADAMS: Yes and no. The FLDS that are there at the ranch have put up, as far as I know, two websites on which they have posted a number of the pictures they took during the initial days of the raid there at the ranch. But there are a number of other websites that have been put up related to the actions in Texas. […]
BOB GARFIELD: There is another issue, apart from the welfare of the children, that has emerged in all of this, and that is the women in the community, who have been occasionally portrayed as essentially being slaves, having to be utterly submissive to the men in the household. Read the rest of this entry »
Rather than signaling the onset of a post-racial society, does Obama’s success herald the dawn of a new American ‘ethnopolitics’? Mirko Lauer of the Peruvian newspaper La Republica writes, ‘Governor Kenneth Blackwell, an Ohio politician who has won many victories said in 2006: ‘We’re at a historic moment, and in a position to win nominations and break stereotypes.’ He’s implying that it’s precisely Blackness that is beginning to win elections.’ Lauer goes on to point out, ‘the real change in U.S. politics will be an extension of ethnopolitics as long practiced by Whites to their own advantage.’
By Mirko Lauer.
Translated By Halszka Czarnocka
February 28, 2008
Peru - La Republica - Original Article (Spanish)
As Barack Obama inches closer to the Democratic nomination (this morning’s betting gives him an 82 percent chance), the question of whether a Black candidate can win a United States presidential election comes into sharper focus. Hillary Clinton’s people, believe it or not, have begun to disseminate photos of Obama in ethnic garb, something between African and Muslim.
[Editor’s Note: In the photo (right), Senator Obama donned the garb of a Somali elder during a visit near the Somali border, on diplomatic mission to Kenya in 2006.]
The Blacks now constitute 11 percent of the electorate, and it’s unlikely that they’ll all vote for Obama. Among other reasons, this is because people of color are very diverse in terms of class, culture, ideology and political affiliation. There are Blacks for Hillary, and some are even with Republicans. If Obama wins the nomination, in this regard he may end up quite alone.
Strangely, in the tea leaves of the moment, it’s not the White vote that is perceived as the biggest stumbling block for Obama, but the Latino vote. Indeed, Latinos have a very competitive relationship with African-Americans, have a political agenda of their own, and a distrust for progressivism common to nearly all immigrants.
The progressive analysis posits that this election is very different in terms of race and gender. The idea is that many voters will be willing to elect a Black or a woman solely on the basis of political image or the merit of their proposals. Yet this same electorate has consistently elected conservatives of all kinds.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the U.S. elections.
Charlotte Allen has unleashed a spitstorm with publication in the Washington Post of an op-ed piece in which she asserts that women are . . . well, dummies.
While the piece itself is amazingly dumb, I was struck by the reaction of the feminist bloggers whom I sampled who to a woman didn’t bother to offer intelligent point-counterpoint responses to the piece but instead engaged in name calling.
Zuzu, for example, said that the “mainstream media hates women,” while Jessica grumped that the WaPo responded to the hundreds of negative comments it got by changing the headline on the op-ed “from overtly misogynist to questioningly sexist.”
Now maybe this isn’t an ideal teaching moment, but I had hoped that these two bloggers, who are among my faves, and their sisters would not resort to the ever reliable rant.
Is this also amazingly dumb? Or am I missing something?
UPDATE: WaPo Outlook section editor John Pomfret now claims that the piece was “tongue-in-cheek.” This strikes me as incredibly lame given that aspect seems to have been lost on virtually everyone who read it. Besides which, what the hell was it doing in a news and review section if it wasn’t serious?
As WORLDMEETS.US regularly demonstrates, the U.S. election race is dazzling the rest of the planet. The U.S. correspondent for Portugal’s Jornal de Negocios finds America’s capacity to remake itself after the ‘reactionary’ George W. Bush to be ‘remarkable.’ Leonel Moura writes in part, ‘Just as in the person of George Bush, America has given us one of the most reactionary presidents ever; it now electrifies the planet with the possibility of electing a woman or a Black … For those familiar with American society - which is very advanced technologically and rather backward in terms of moralism - nothing could be more revolutionary than seeing a Black man in the White House - a house that has always belonged to the White man.’ He goes on to observe, ‘this society, rather savage in its pursuit of capitalism, also has the capacity for absolutely remarkable regeneration.’
By Leonel Moura
Translated By Brandi Miller
February 27, 2008
Portugal - Jornal de Negocios - Original Article (Portuguese)
Just as in the person of George Bush, America has given us one of the most reactionary presidents ever; it now electrifies the planet with the possibility of electing a woman or a Black. A fact that just about everyone would have labeled a subversive fantasy just a few years ago is now a matter of great excitement in the world at large and in the United States, where there is talk of nothing else.
This is not to be taken lightly. For those familiar with American society - which is very advanced technologically and rather backward in terms of moralism - nothing could be more revolutionary than seeing a Black man in the White House - a house that has always belonged to the White man. And yet they are increasingly supportive of this scenario. Read the rest of this entry »
As has already been well-established, the level of global interest in America’s 2008 presidential race is unprecedented. In this analysis from Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza, Tomasz Lis sums up the revolutionary nature of this year’s candidates this way, “Obama has undoubtedly already revolutionalized American politics, and if he wins in November it may presage revolution on a global scale. … Even if Hillary doesn’t win, it won’t be because of her sex. So here again we are facing a revolution in the once testosterone-driven world of American politics. … A John McCain victory would also be a breakthrough: A politician who speaks his mind openly and, seemingly naively, supports an absolutely unpopular war, could become a President!”
By Tomasz Lis
Translated By Halszka Czarnocka
February 7, 2008
Poland - Gazeta Wyborcza - Original Article (Polish)
After seven years of the George Bush administration, the United States has lost quite a bit of its sex appeal. But thanks to American politics and a fascinating presidential campaign, it is quickly regaining it. However it ends, the campaign has already shown that this time around, rules that have been in force for upwards of 230 years will soon be broken. It’s still a long way to the finish line, but one can already say that this campaign is eliminating the most obstinate barriers: those of skin color, sex and party doctrine. America wants a change, but a great change has already occurred.
Here we are dealing with a great horse race during which candidates have plenty of difficult obstacles to overcome. But the most treacherous have already been crossed. This campaign is like a beacon of hope for non-whites, women, and for those who took entering into one’s seventies as a signal to retire into an often unwanted withdrawal from active life.
In his Super Tuesday speech, Senator Barack Obama suggested with great conviction that “our time has come.” That remains to be seen, but Obama has undoubtedly already revolutionalized American politics, and if he wins in November it may presage revolution on a global scale.
America has had young presidents before (such as Theodore Roosevelt or John Kennedy) and inexperienced presidents (like Kennedy and Jimmy Carter), but it has never has a Black candidate, and a young, relatively inexperienced one to boot, who lacks the support of his own party establishment and had such a good chance of winning. It seems that someone who can embody CHANGE can actually bring change just by just trying.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign may give hope to many women, even those who consider Mrs. Clinton an embodiment of aggressive feminism. Read the rest of this entry »
In the Middle East, the issue of women’s rights is increasingly taking hold in public discourse and, according to The Economist, there is some tangible progress being made. Most prominently, in Saudi Arabia, a country with some of the must discriminatory gender practices, the monarchy is beginning to seriously reconsider its treatment of women.
Laws forbidding violence against women are now being drafted. Women are now allowed to stay in hotels unaccompanied. The government has given initial approval for the establishment of the first Saudi women’s rights body. And the first women’s football match was played in the eastern province earlier this month, with men excluded from the stadium entirely. There are even suggestions that an infamous ban on women drivers may be lifted later this year. Such improvements are slight, but welcome. And they reflect marginal improvements elsewhere in the Middle East.
As the region’s most conservative state, Saudi reforms are prompting changes beyond its borders as well. In Kuwait and Qatar, for example, over half of college students are now women and large numbers are also active participants in the workforce. Meanwhile, women can vote in nearly all Arab countries. These are substantial changes from a few years ago, and the trend provides a reason for optimism. Read the rest of this entry »
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are bringing to the fore the neglected demographic in more than half a century of empowerment of minorities.
In trying to explain why the surge for Obama failed to become a tidal wave on Super Tuesday, pundits are honing in on the behavior of the largest silent segment of society–white men.
In parsing the results, Adam Nagourney of the New York Times concludes that 2008 has “cleaved the party neatly in two: the Clinton Democrats and the Obama Democrats. Age, race and gender have become the dividing lines; nothing comes close to mattering as much.
“The Obama Democratic Party is made up of younger voters (under 44), blacks, white men (to a more limited extent) and independents…The Clinton Democratic Party is the party of women, older voters, Hispanics and also some white men.”
From this point of view, of all the demographic armies marching in lockstep, only white men have failed to jump into the ranks on one side or another and stay there.
What does the emergence of a Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama as serious candidates for the U.S. presidency say about progress toward equality in American society? While it is no doubt a positive sign, according to this analysis by Patrick Jarreau of France’s Le Monde, both the tactics of the Clinton campaign and the continued relative lack of women and minorities in positions of authority show that the United States still has a very long way to go.
“Confronted with the asset posed by Obama’s negritude, which is at once assumed and transcended, Ms. Clinton and her husband have tried, each in his or her own way, to send the young politician back to his ghetto … by dividing the electorate of their party, the two candidates could cause fractures that the one who is nominated cannot repair.”
By Patrick Jarreau
Translated By Kate Davis
February 3, 2008
France - Le Monde - Original Article (French)
In nine months, the Americans could elevate to the leadership of their country a White woman or a Black man, two “minorities” in the political lexicon on the other side of the Atlantic. The Democratic candidate for the White House at the end Read the rest of this entry »
In a press release that so perfectly plays to negative feminist stereotypes that I first thought it was a fake, the New York State chapter of the National Organization for Women excoriates Senator Ted Kennedy for endorsing Barack Obama.
An excerpt:
“We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton.”
“Wow. This is completely unhinged, and frankly, mind-boggling. . . . All I can say is, NOW-NY does not speak for me. And it does not speak for all feminists.”
Why am I left with the impression that these sob sisters would back Lucrezia Borgia if she was running instead of Hillary just because . . . well, you know, she’s not a man?
Mexico - Excelsior - Original Article (Spanish)
For those who wonder about the impact on America’s image of the candidacies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, one need only read foreign press overage of the U.S. election. According to this op-ed article from Mexico’s Excelsior newspaper, ‘Today, two members of those ‘minorities’ aspire to lead the most powerful country, whose enormous influence is the fruit of a meticulously constructed capacity: A tolerance toward the other, the different, and the victims of that which has been called ‘inequality.’
The electoral competition in the United States shows the consequences of setting certain ideas in motion. How can we not exclude, discriminate or despise the other, the different, they who aren’t and don’t want to be like us? These are the minorities which put together, really are a majority. Those of different origins; women, young people and those of so-called senior-citizen age. Today, two members of those “minorities” aspire to lead the most powerful country, whose enormous influence is the fruit of a meticulously constructed capacity: A tolerance toward the other, the different, and the victims of that which has been called “inequality.”
The story is simple and requires few words. For humanity and in particular the USA, where there has been at least two hundred years of humiliation within an ocean of privilege, human beings have had to fight the phantoms of self-fulfilling prophecy. That is to say, prejudice. That condensation of popular “wisdom” which is expressed in so many sayings, and which are repeated every day and often. That “sentimental education” which says that it’s the suit that makes the man, that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and that women are just abject loose-canons, and so on.
This requires the breaking of old habits, engaging with entrenched sentiments and promoting reverse discrimination. In other words, affirmative action. How difficult it is. How important it is. How just. To rediscover everything contained in a word: Woman. Black. Native. Handicapped. Erase it. No, better yet, transform their meanings. Introduce affirmative inflections. Disrupt the scholars of language. Redefine the accuracy of syntax to avoid the suffering caused by odious inequality.
The Empire and the global economy (ie: the peace the development of all) in the hands of Obama and Hillary … This is what the women who met at Seneca Falls, New York, over a hundred years ago dreamed of . Their dream was the result of a conference in London to abolish slavery and promote the rights of Black people in the Western world [the International Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840]. It was at this same conference, in London, capital of the civilized world, that those same rights were denied to women. Who could have predicted what we are witnessing today? They dreamt the impossible and we are succeeding.
Whether calculated or not, Hillary Clinton’s comments while appearing to fight away the tears has incited a global debate. According to this editorial from Switzerland’s Le Temps newspaper, ‘for a female politician, it may also prove a persistent difficulty to prove that her expression of emotion is not a measure of her incompetence.’
By Stéphane Bussard
Translated By Kate Davis
January 10, 2008
Switzerland - Le Temps - Original Article (French)
Will the sudden outpouring of emotion from Hillary Clinton be a turning point in the American presidential campaign? Under the bright lights a few hours before the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, the senator from New York expressed her commitment to America with a tremor in her voice and eyes on the verge of tears WATCH . The country’s media has dissected this moment in the battle for the Democratic nomination, since up to that point, Hillary Clinton was perceived as a cold and calculating politician - an attitude that contrasted with those of Barack Obama or John Edwards, who don’t hesitate to talk openly of their family woes. Now Hillary has broken with the image of an American Iron Lady, stoic in the face of her health care reform failure or the scandal of the Lewinsky affair. This radical change in style, whether spontaneous or calculated, played a role in the candidate’s victory, which contradicted very unfavorable polls. But it doesn’t explain everything.
Fascinated by Obama, who in comparison to George Bush most fundamentally reflects a new beginning, we too-hastily brushed aside the aspects related to race and gender. According to Gloria Steinem, America’s leading feminist figure, Hillary Clinton could never have been able to adopt the public style of Obama - or of her husband Bill - without provoking the ire of the Washington establishment. When a woman cries in public, it’s a sign of weakness. For a man, it is a sign of courage.
Hillary’s toughness could perhaps be a result of a pathological thirst for power. All indications are that after her defeat in Iowa, she seems to have cracked. But for a female politician, it may also prove a persistent difficulty to prove that her expression of emotion is not a measure of her incompetence. Her support for the Iraq War is, according to some, is a way to prove her “masculinity.”
I’m not going to bother looking up the research but will speak from personal experience. Anger is often perceived differently in men and women. The same anger seen as an asset in a male candidate may be seen as a liability in a female candidate. I know this because I have often been perceived as an angry woman (and therefore dangerous and unstable) rather than a rightfully angry person.
November 5th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
I had a night dream long ago about how hard it was to get to earth. For those of us who get pregnant when just passing through a room where a man is reading a newspaper and no more, it has sometimes seemed as though women becoming pregnant, carrying to term, and laboring to bring a living baby into this world is easy, common, like falling out of a ground floor window.
But, it isn’t. It is hard to get to earth, more than a one in a million odds, I think with certainty. Those souls who make it to earth have made a long trek with many perils along the way.
In my dream, I saw that getting to earth was like running an obstacle course of timing: making love timing, who what where when timing, physical timing, time of life timing, money timing, right lover timing, right this that and the other timing.
If little souls sit on clouds gambling on a body being made for each one, they’d lose their bets more often than win.
That’s why I think being born, no matter how a person came to be conceived, is like winning the lottery. Most of us were not planned. Some of us were not ‘wanted.’ Some of us arrived through a loveless act or a perfunctory one. Some of us came by accident. Some of us are called ‘the ooopsie baby.’ Some of us came from unsanctioned moments and are called ‘love child.’ Some of us were sick in utero, even sick unto death, but somehow recovered. And some of us, well…
Listen…
When doctors found that Gabriel was weaker than his brother, with an enlarged heart,and believed he was going to die in the womb, his mother Rebecca Jones had to make a heartbreaking decision.
Doctors told her his death could cause his twin brother to die too before they were born, and that it would be better to end Gabriel’s suffering sooner rather than later.
Mrs Jones decided to let doctors operate to terminate Gabriel’s life.
Firstly they tried to sever his umbilical cord to cut off his blood supply, but the cord was too strong.
They then cut Mrs Jones’s placenta in half so that when Gabriel died, it would not affect his twin brother.
But after the operation which was meant to end his life, tiny Gabriel had other ideas.
Although he weighed less than a pound, he put up such a fight for survival that doctors called him Rocky.
Astonishingly, he managed to carry on living in his mother’s womb for another five weeks - until the babies were delivered by caesarean section.
The children are home now. The doctor’s thinking was that one child seemed half the size of the other, not getting enough nutrients. The doctors said his heart was 3x normal size and it was likely the tiny baby in distress would die from a heart attack or stroke in utero.
Mrs Jones said: “They told us that if he died, it could be life threatening for his brother.
“We had to decide whether to end his life and let his brother live, or risk them both.”
At Birmingham Women’s Hospital, when Mrs Jones was 25 weeks pregnant, doctors tried to sever Gabriel’s umbilical cord to cut off his blood supply and allow him to die.
But the cord was too thick, and they could not cut through it.
As a last resort they divided Mrs Jones’s placenta so that when Gabriel died, it would allow Ieuan to survive. Mrs Jones said: “I put my hands on my stomach thinking of Gabriel. It was devastating. I had said my goodbyes.”
But the next morning Mrs Jones felt Gabriel kicking. A scan showed his heart was still beating. She said: “No one could quite believe it.”
Gabriel hung on, and his enlarged heart started to reduce in size. He also gained weight.
Mrs Jones said: “They thought it may be because the placenta had been divided. Inadvertently, it had evened out the distribution of nutrition between them, allowing Gabriel to survive.’
Like I said, it’s really something to make it to earth. If you’re reading this, you’re one of the very few lucky ones. I know with an earth burgeoning with over 6 billion people that sounds like an overstatement. It isn’t. Given all other matters, that you and I are here, is amazing.
I hope I can say this right without it being misunderstood; I hope I can adequately express the way this all sits in my heart, in my bones: I’m not pro-abortion. I’m not anti-abortion except for myself, my daughters and grandchildren: we consider a pregnancy, no matter how unexpected, no matter how it comes about, a gift of a soul trying to come to earth.
It makes me cringe when I hear references to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. An ex-Muslim, a former Dutch parliamentarian, and a feminist, Hirsi Ali is often trotted out as some sort of spokeswoman for moderate Islam. A few years back, she wrote a book (”Infidel”) and produced a movie (”Submission”) that condemn harsh treatment associated with Islam; since then, she’s been a celebrity. As blogger Shadi Hamid notes, “people seem intent on treating her as some kind of anointed spokeswoman for oppressed Muslim women, a reformer from within the faith or, worse, a kind of pseudo-Muslim Martin Luther.”
But Hirsi Ali is no Martin Luther. She’s condescending, elitist, and inspires no respect amongst Muslims. Hamid points out that he has “yet to meet even one Muslim on the planet, secular or conservative, liberal or illiberal, who actually thinks that Hirsi Ali is helping the cause of internal Muslim reform.” Maybe, just maybe, Muslims don’t take to her because of comments like this one: the Koran, she has said, is “brutal, bigoted, fixated on controlling women, and harsh in war.” Or perhaps Muslims don’t like her because of interviews, like the recent one conducted by Reason Magazine, in which she argues that Islam must be “defeated”:
Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?
Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.
Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam�
Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.†There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.
Go back and read that last line again. Is it not laughable to suggest that someone who believes that Islam must be ‘crushed’ can somehow be a spokeswoman for liberal Islam? Hirsi Ali then goes on, when asked for more clarification, to argue that there is no room for co-existence with her former religion:
Reason: So when even a hard-line critic of Islam such as Daniel Pipes says, “Radical Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution,†he’s wrong?
Hirsi Ali: He’s wrong.
While I have much regard for those who call for moderation in Islam, push for greater Muslim women’s rights, or who question violent or radical interpretations of the Koran, it’s hard to respect those who condemn the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims as backwards and their holy book as retarded. Eerie, over at theAqoul blog, finds Hirsi Ali’s blanket condemnations of Islam equally obnoxious. Quoting a part in the Reason Magazine interview in which Hirsi Ali calls the Muslim god “fire-breathing” and suggests that he “inspires jihadism and totalitarianism,” Eerie sarcastically responds with a smack-down:
Right, because when my dear old grannie whispers bismi-llahi ar-rahmani ar-rahimi to herself, she is in fact wishing death upon all those dirty infidel crusaders. That line, which opens almost every sura in the Quran, means “Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful” not “Allah, the Most Badass, the Biggest Asskicker.”
Sure, there are radical Muslims whose religious views condone violence. However, my grandmother and over a billion other Muslims don’t spend their days plotting the downfall of Christians and Jews.
That there is a broad diversity of interpretation and opinion in Islam is something that Hirsi Ali blatantly misses. Instead, she takes the actions of a few thugs and conflates their beliefs with an entire religion. No wonder she doesn’t get any respect in the Muslim world. Hirsi Ali is not a spokeswoman for moderates; she’s a spokeswoman for all those who despise Islam.
The words ‘feminism’ and ‘Middle East’ are not often used in the same sentence. But, increasingly, women in the Arab world are beginning to demand greater authority for themselves in their societies. Interestingly, it’s not secular or liberal groups that are effectively leading the way in pushing forward on women’s rights issues; instead, it is Muslim women, involved in conservative Islamist organizations like Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, who are starting to raise their voices and question their status in society.
The failure of secular groups to take the lead in pushing for women’s rights has to do, in large part, with the popular perception that they espouse elitist and condescending views. Wafa Sultan, for instance, one of the most prominent Arab secularists, is a darling of West, but is poorly received in the Arab world. A liberal and an atheist, Sultan blames Islam — and not just isolated extremists — for terrorism, a view that undoubtedly doesn’t sit well with her largely-Muslim audience. It’s no surprise, therefore, that calls by Sultan and other secular activists for greater women’s rights have been received with skepticism.
Indeed, rather than being propelled by secular and liberal groups, this new interest in feminism is actually occurring within more conservative circles; namely, Islamist groups. There’s a reason for this: as Islamist organizations like Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood have been given a greater role in democratic politics over the past few decades, they’ve had to pitch to a broader constituency. The result has been that more women have been given leadership roles in these organizations in order that they might reach out to other female voters, provide input on political strategy, and even run for office themselves. Imbued with newfound authority, many Muslim women have begun to raise broader questions about their role in society. (For more on this, check out my earlier post or, for a much more in-depth look at this phenomenon, take a look at this Carnegie report.)
I’ve written about this subject before, so I wasn’t planning on just re-writing my earlier post, but a recent Al Ahram article caught my attention. Omayma Abdel-Latif, the author, discusses an interesting case of Muslim female empowerment: that of Ghazwa Farahat, a Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese woman who won a position in the Al-Ghobeiry municipality in southern Beirut.
She was the first female candidate the Islamic resistance movement nominated on its electoral list. Indeed, the party fought hard to convince Farahat’s family of her nomination. “My family was divided,” said Farahat at her office in Al-Ghobeiry. “They asked Hizbullah officials why they wanted to nominate a woman when there were men in the family,” she explained.
If anything, Farahat’s story reflects how the Islamic movement has frequently proven more progressive in its stand on the role of women in society than the society it operates within. That Hizbullah stood by its nomination and overcame social and cultural pressures suggests that the movement has been paying serious attention to the role women can play in expanding its social and political base.
Farahat’s case and that of others also sheds light on one of the most striking features in Islamist politics today. Farahat along with hundreds of women activists represent the core of Hizbullah’s women’s organisations, or Al-Hayat Al-Nisaaya, the framework through which women activists advance their social and political agenda within the party. As more and more educated women joined the ranks of Islamist movements during the past two decades, they also found in those movements a space where they could press to better the status of women without risking being stigmatised as Western stooges or rendered social outcasts.
Farahat’s situation is not an anomaly. As the Al Ahram article notes, women are playing a greater role in Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as well.
In 2000, the movement nominated its first female candidate for its electoral list in Alexandria. By the time of the 2005 parliamentary elections, women were at the heart of the movement’s electoral machine, participating through all stages of the elections, from nomination to campaigning, vote counting and monitoring.
Abdel-Latif goes on to point out that examples such as these confound “the long-held view that the rise of Islamist movements across the Middle East is responsible both for socially restrictive climates for women and a rolling back of past gains made by women.”
On the 492nd day of Hillary Clinton’s quest to become the first woman president, one inevitability was rudely replaced by another.![The Telegraph, U.K.]](http://worldmeets.us/images/hillaryobamagon_telegraph.gif)
Charlotte Allen has unleashed a spitstorm with publication in the Washington Post of an op-ed piece in which she asserts that women are . . . well, dummies.
![[Het Parool, The Netherlands]](http://www.parool.nl/columnisten/joep_bertrams/beeld/021108-joep.jpg)
![[The Times, U.K.]](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00277/TTM041711CC385_277385a.jpg)
In a press release that so perfectly plays to negative feminist stereotypes that I first thought it was a fake, the New York State chapter of the National Organization for Women excoriates Senator Ted Kennedy for endorsing Barack Obama.
![[Excelsior, Mexico]](http://worldmeets.us/images/hillaryobama_excelsior.gif)
