Leno – “They seem the most like us.”

Note Leno’s language when speaking to Amanpour about Iran. Cringe-worthiness seeped in Huntingtonisms.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/04/christiane-amanpour-axis_n_148465.html

De Niro catches the “Soft Power” bug…

Just came across “Robert De Niro Hits TriBecQatar” (cute) in the Intelligencer. At the weekend-long opening festivities for I.M. Oei’s Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar (see two posts below), Robert De Niro was apparently seated with the nation’s royal family at the Saturday-night opening ceremony. The chuminess doesn’t stop there: De Niro is bringing the Tribeca Film Festival to the museum next November. Why? Well, for one, the emir’s daughter landed an internship at the festival a few summers ago. In true intern fashion, she says her job was to pick up breakfast pastries). Seheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani cooked up the arrangement. But also, De Niro has high hopes for this new power partnership.

New Yorkers’ “stereotypical misconceptions” about Muslims have escalated in our post 9/11 word and he said with the festival, “we have a chance to start altering prejudices.”

Liberation by the Veil?

When researching Islam and feminism (the crossection of the two is the most interesting to me), I came across Sehmina Jaffer Chopra’s ”Liberation by the Veil.” The veil continues to be a flashpoint for many western feminists who see its very existence as testimony to the oppression of Muslim women. As I mentioned in a previous post, Mustafa Bayoumi brilliantly highlighted the difference between the Muslim American female experience and that of the male: Muslim women are to be pitied and sympathized with (of course Haifa never really comes to mind when we think “Muslim woman,” though some may pity her for several other reasons), whereas Muslim men are to be feared. This pity easily morphs into condescension, if not ignorance. One of my favorite blogs is “Feministing.com.” It does a great job in discussing feminism and viewing all aspects of culture through that lense. It, however, falls short when exploring the existence of Muslim women (though the site did a thorough job in highlighting the travesty of Turkey’s banning the hijab in schools).

Chopra speaks to this complexity. Modesty and chastity, very important ideologies with Islam, are achieved by prescribing standards on behavior and the dress of a Muslim. A woman who adheres to the tenets of Islam is required to follow the dress code called Hijab, other synonyms are Veil, Purdah, or just Covering. It is an act of faith and establishes a Muslim’s life with honor, respect and dignity. The Hijab is viewed as a liberation for women, in that the covering brings about “an aura of respect” and women are recognized as individuals who are admired for their mind and personality, “not for their beauty or lack of it” ( Mustafa ) and not as sex objects.

Contrary to popular belief, the covering of the Muslim woman is not then oppression, for Chopra and so many others, but a liberation from the “shackles of male scrutiny and the standards of attractiveness. In Islam, a woman is free to be who she is inside, and immune from being portrayed as sex symbol and lusted after.” Chopra maintains that Islam exalts the status of a woman by commanding that she “enjoys equal rights to those of man in everything, she stands on an equal footing with man “and both share mutual rights and obligations in all aspects of life. Chopra recognizes though that uslim women are alienated , isolated from social life, and are oppressed by Muslim men and rulers who use the name of religion for their injustices. In this instance, the Hijab is used as a means of keeping many Muslim women away from society, with the misconception that it signifies isolation and weakness. But as many Muslim women come back into the fold of the untainted and true Islam, they are able to recognize the injustice of men who have for so long stripped them of their rights to be an integral part of society and “deserving the same dignity, honor, progress and prosperity as the men.” Women regaining their true identity and role in society, are now wearing Hijab and embracing its concept of liberation for women, and are taking their rightful places that Islam had endowed upon them fourteen hundred years ago.

I remain torn on the issue. The veil doesn’t seem to give men enough credit, effectually pitting them as pigs. Is “hiding” beauty really addressing the inescapable issues that arise from the age-old lust? If women wish to observe hijab (though we can never really deconstruct one’s “choice” to detect how much personal agency she really does have), they should be able to (Turkey’s ban is then completely oppressive). I take issue however with such dress being compulsory.

 

 

How powerful is “Soft Power?”

In a NYT article  ”World Falls for American Media, Even as It Sours on America,” Tim Arango describes how shortly after the attacks on 9/11, a delegation of high-level media executives, including the heads of every major studio, met several times with White House officials (including at least once with Rove) to discuss ways that the entertainment industry could play a part in improving the image of the United States overseas. One of the central ideas was using “soft power” by spreading American television and movies to foreign audiences help sway public opinion. Interestingly enough – and ever so predictable – Arango notes that this was/is especially the case in the Muslim world.

But perhaps in another retort to the naive reliance on media effects, the media companies have gotten what they wanted, but the White House has not. Arango observes in the last eight years, American pop culture, already popular, has boomed around the globe while opinions of America itself have actually soured. The hypodermic needle theory that the delegation may have relied upon fall short of translating cultural popularity into new friends. Oprah might be popular, as might be MBC 2 (Saudi-finananced as we know, carries Americans movies), but Amahl Bishara, who recently spent two years in the West Bank studying the media there makes a very necessary distinction: “There’s an acute understanding of the difference between the U.S. government and the American people,” she said. “And they look at U.S. entertainment as just that, entertainment.”

How important is it to wield our “Soft Power?” When media is used as a mere band-aid, it comes as no surprise that broadcasting“8 Simple Rules” and  gossip shows “The Insider” and “Inside Edition” on MBC 4, is no cure-all.

Qatar’s Museum of Islamic Art

The Gulf states are each vying to be the new cultural center of the Middle East, the Economist explains in a review of Qatar’s Museum of Islamic Art, “Smart Art Mart”:

“Having stashed away more than a trillion dollars as a result of high oil prices, the region’s ruling families are racing to see who can embellish their realm with the best museums, the coolest art fairs, the flashiest festivals. The sudden recent fall in the oil price from its midsummer record may yet trim ambitions. But the scale and number of projects under way is already transforming the Gulf’s string of Arab city-states into increasingly important stops on the international culture circuit.”

Qatar is, according to the IMF, the world’s richest country on a per-head basis. But Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich anchor among the seven statelets that make up the United Arab Emirates, has built up a “far bigger cash pile.” More discreetly than Qatar’s, its royals are busy kitting out “several even more ambitious projected museums.” But apparently Abu Dhabi’s ambition is not limited to building signature monuments. It also plans to be the region’s creative hub. It is sponsoring a project to translate 1,000 of the world’s great books into Arabic, launching a film-production company that plans to inject $1 billion into joint ventures with big Hollywood studios, and creating what is described as an “ecosystem for media content creation” that offers incentives to publishers, television studios and other packagers of culture.

For whom are these museums built? Well, I have a hunch – one that was only solidified by the last sentence of this piece. The Economist concludes, “They are already important tourist destinations. Building great museums to showcase their treasures should only increase their appeal.” The inevitable questions emerge: what makes a great museum; to what/whose standards is the displayed art set against. It’s like some silly, albeit obscenely expensive, game of show and tell. What worth do these states really gain by possessing “treasures”?

Saudi Girl Groups Rocks Out

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/world/tmiddleeast/24saudi.html?ref=world

Robert Worth profiles Saudi Arabia’s first all-girl rock band, the Accolade, who “dare to rock out” as “taboos ease.” For fear of offending the religious authorities in the “ultraconservative” kingdom, they cannot pose for album cover photographs and must hold secret concerts. The band’s first single has become an underground hit in Saudia Arabia, with hundreds of young Saudis downloading the song from the group’s MySpace page (yes…young Saudi’s have MySpacce pages, too!) “In Saudi, yes, it’s a challenge,” said the group’s lead singer, Lamia, who has piercings on her left eyebrow and beneath her bottom lip. Worth’s deeming SA “ultraconservative” comes as no surprise. This is, after all, a city where women are not allowed to drive and rarely appear in public without their faces covered, the band is very different, so the image of female rockers clutching guitars and belting out angry lyrics about a failed relationship seems a bit discordant. Worth notes however that the country’s ”harsh code of public morals” has possible thawed. Such is the case especially in Jidda (the kingdom’s ”most cosmopolitan city.”)  

Worth’s profile reads a bit, “LOOK, these crazy teens are just like the ones over here!” as he points out the  growing rock scene with dozens of bands, some of them even selling tickets to their performances. Hip-hop is also popular. And “the religious police – strictly speaking, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice — have largely retreated from the streets of Jidda and are somewhat less aggressive even in the kingdom’s desert heartland.” I was surprised to read that more than 60 percent of Saudi Arabia’s population is under 25; with many young people pushing for greater freedom, it is no wonder the cultural landscape is changing.

“The upcoming generation is different from the one before,” said Dina, the Accolade’s 21-year-old guitarist and founder. “Everything is changing. Maybe in 10 years it’s going to be O.K. to have a band with live performances.”

Rahm’s Father

A couple weeks ago, Paul J. Balles wrote a piece “Why Emanuel’s Father Can Get Away with Racism” in Al Jazeera Magazine (http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=186252). If Rahm Emanuel’s appointment as Obama’s chief of staff was bad news, Balles proclaims, the news about Emanuel’s father is even worse.

According to English-language reports in The Jerusalem Post and The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Benjamin Emanuel discussed the potential impact of his son’s new position on U.S.-Israeli relations:

“Obviously he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House,” the elder Emanuel told the Israeli daily Ma’ariv. Jane Hamsher reported, “Representative Rahm Emanuel, President-elect Barack Obama’s chief of staff, called the president of an Arab-American group to apologize for comments his father made to an Israeli newspaper.”

Of course, it’s reasonable to ask why Rahm should be held responsible for comments he didn’t make? Shouldn’t Rahm’s father be the one apologizing. After all, those were his words, not Rahm’s. Though valid questions, Balles consult Jack Shaheen. Having thoroughly studied decades of brainwashing of the American public with Hollywood’s negative portrayals of Arabs in both film and TV, he notes vigorously the press would react if the target was NOT Arabs:

“Irrespective of the colour, faith or ethnicity of the parent, if he/she had made a similar comment about blacks, Jews, Asians, Latinos, Catholics, Irish, Italians, or whomever, would not the societal outrage have been three-fold? Would not an apology be expected from the son, but also from the parent? How abhorrent would it sound if the parent had stated: ‘What is he, a black? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House;’ ‘what is he, a Mexican? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House.’ You get the point of how unacceptable such a statement would be. Yet, why the tolerance of intolerance when it comes to Arabs? Why do they count – in our media and in our country – for less?”

Shaheen’s points echo those made by Colin Powell and Campbell Brown after McCain’s “No, he (Obama) is not a Muslim, he is a good family man” townhall incident. True to his work, Shaheen goes back to the exposure of the film and TV industries’ vilification of Arabs (As we read, in his research of nearly a thousand films from 1896 to the present that included Arab characters or references, Shaheen found that only 12 gave positive depictions, 52 were neutral and some 900 were negative).

Rahm Emanuel’s father brought his son up as an Israeli-American. Apparently, Emanuel still has dual citizenship. Balles reasons that if he is to devote himself to America as a public servant, he should give up his Israeli ties, particularly since he will be in a position to have great influence on the president. The abject devotion of Americans to Israel is certainly more ubiquitious and “accepted” than devotion to, say, the Palestinian cause. For Balles though to project, “No doubt, his (father) observation about Rahm’s loyalty to Israel was an accurate picture of Emanuel family reality” is a bit harsh and even provinicial.

US Charity Found “Guilty”

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2008/11/20081124212126642596.html

A US court has convicted a Muslim charity and five of its former leaders on 108 charges in the largest “terrorism” financing trial in US history. The Texas jury reached its verdict on two weeks ago after eight days of deliberations over whether the former Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once the largest US Muslim charity, had given money to the Palestinian group Hamas.The charity, which was shut down seven years ago, was accused of giving more than $12m to support Hamas, which, like Hezbollah, has been designated a “terrorist organization” by the US government. Several relatives of those convicted wept as the verdict was read out in the Dallas courtroom, with apparently one woman shouting “my father is not a criminal.”

 

I think the accusation of the charity’s supporting a specially-designated “terrorist” organization is a bit problematic. Is it really possible to discern the line between funding schools, hospitals and social welfare programs controlled by the group in the Palestinian territories and funding the acts of fighters? The charity’s supporters said the government was “politicizing the case as part of its so-called war on terror and ignoring the foundation’s charitable mission in providing aid to the poverty-stricken Palestinian territories.”

 

This isn’t necessarily a new development. Government officials had raided Holy Land’s headquarters in December 2001; Bush later announced the seizure of the charity’s assets as “another step in the war on terrorism.” Al Jazeera’s Tom Ackerman, reporting from Dallas, Texas, where the court case took place, said a former US state department official testified that he was never told that Hamas directed the US charity during intelligence briefings. But an unidentified Israeli witness told the court that the aid was funnelled through Hamas channels. Obviously this has many up in arms, fulminating that they did not get a fair trial.

 

To paint a broader picture, muslim groups say the prosecution has made American Muslims more hesitant to fulfill their religious obligation of helping the needy; the foundation’s defenders accuse the government of selectively prosecuting the charity.

 

To what end is it reasonable to governmentally dictate the contributions of charitable organizations?

Muslim-Baiting and/or Witch Hunt 101

http://mideast.blogs.time.com/2008/11/02/the-new-plo-palestinians-love-obama/

HURRAH! Another, too few and far between, “SO WHAT?” proclamation. Scott MacLeod, you’re rocking my world.

“The fact that Obama and Khalidi are friends is not a mystery to be unraveled, as McCain insinuates. What he and some of the media are suggesting is that Khalidi is a disreputable character, and that Obama showed irresponsible judgement in befriending such a man. The charge against Khalidi, an American citizen who was born and raised in the U.S., is that he is an outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights, a very brash critic of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and of the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., and has links to the P.L.O. Khalidi, as far as I know, is guilty on all three counts. But, so what? He is an academic with outstanding credentials, a prolific author and energetic teacher who headed the Middle East Institute at Columbia, one of America’s most prestigious universities. He is a relatively rare prominent supporter of the Palestinian cause in the U.S., even as his voice is all but drowned out by American supporters of Israel.”

Khalidi: A Neo-Nazi?

The McCain campaign’s recent character assassination of Rashid Khalidi is an undeniable appeal to racism, and promulgates the same “Arabs are bad” mentality as witnessed in the town hall meeting. Khalidi is a highly respected scholar at Columbia. McCain’s comparing Khalidi to a neo-nazi is wholly transparent; he is spurring the idea - and of course this isn’t new – that Obama is not really American, in cahoots with terrorists and…Muslim. The evil of all evils.

How the media is choosing to cover this incident is quite interesting. Take, for instance, ABC Correspdonent Jack Tapper’s analysis:

Super-Zionist Peretz Defends Khalidi

November 01, 2008 1:21 PM

In Sen. John McCain’s last week of campaigning, he and his campaign have done all they can to attack Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi. They’ve called him anti-Semitic, they’ve falsely called him a spokesman for the PLO, they’ve mentioned him on TV as a central argument in their attacks on Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

Marty Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic and a longtime strong supporter of Israel, defended Khalidi this week.

“I assume that my Zionist credentials are not in dispute,” Peretz writes. “And I have written more appreciative words about Khalidi than Obama ever uttered. In fact, I even invited Khalidi to speak for a Jewish organization with which I work. Moreover, the Israelis are trying to live cooperatively and in peace with Palestinians whose unrelenting positions make Khalidi almost appear like a Zionist.”

—

Granted, Tapper is a reporter and can’t inject his opinion directly into the treatment, but no where does he touch the anti-Arab vitriol that is at the heart of these accusations. Instead, he employs a “Super Zionist” to buff up Khalidi’s creds, as if he we are to rest assured that Khalidi is, indeed, on the “right side.”  Barack’s connection with Khalidi as a formidable point on which to tar him goes to show that no politician can afford to be perceived as someone who will abandon our special relationship with Israel. I am not value-judging this relationship and arguing we should have or not have a special relationship with Israel. I’m merely pointing out the reality.