Tuesday Hezbollah Blogging

Lord knows I'm just the sort of liberal appeaser who thinks we should be trying to promote engagement with Hezbollah, but even I think it's a bit odd for The Washington Post to invite their leader to post in their "on faith" blog. Be that as it may, I don't quite get his sense of humor:

I would like to add, jokingly, that all men in the world, especially civil servants and high officials, are committed to the veil, since they cover all their bodies except their heads, where as the women also veil their breasts and their sexual organs, depending on the concept of sexual excitation that is broader in the Islamic view than the western one.

What? On a more serious note, he allows that "there is a juristic opinion that allows the woman to be a judge. And it is a ruling I am in favor of." And good for him, but he should be warned that it's a slippery slope from woman judges to woman senators and presidential candidates.

Comments

Isn't the point of his "joke" just that there's no reason for Westerners to object to the veil, since we are just as insistent on our own rules for what parts off men's and women's bodies must be covered?

Posted by lemuel pitkin | July 24, 2007 5:13 PM

I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, it seems despicable to give this guy a voice in a mainstream publication. He's as awful as they come. On the other hand, it may be better than the well intentioned but dishonest approach of just highlighting columns from moderate Muslim leaders who will say what we want to hear on violence and Islam. There's no denying that Hezbollah's leading cleric and other extremists are extremely popular and influential and that their views have adherents around the world. Maybe it's best to deal with the issue openly by acknowledging their influence rather than seeking to hide it in the sake of promoting some strained "enlightenment."

Posted by Benjy Sarlin | July 24, 2007 5:17 PM

He's right though. Its considered unseemly at work for a man to have anything uncovered other than head, hands/foramrs, and possibly shins.

Posted by yoyo | July 24, 2007 5:18 PM

I would like to add, jokingly, that all men in the world, especially civil servants and high officials, are committed to the veil, since they cover all their bodies except their heads, where as the women also veil their breasts and their sexual organs, depending on the concept of sexual excitation that is broader in the Islamic view than the western one.

Oh yes, and death to America.

Posted by SoCalJustice | July 24, 2007 5:23 PM

Well, he's right in that we also have dress codes. But the difference is in the motivation. We have dress codes to insure a standard of decency. The veil could be described as enforcing a standard of decency, but with respect to women, you have to know what underscores that standard. Its about limiting what can be seen b/c she is owned by her male relatives and nothing is more important than this perogative. A woman's face can certainly lead to physical attraction in western society, but we do not require women to cover their face b/c this limits their involvement in public discourse. Its all about where your priorities are.

Posted by mpowell | July 24, 2007 5:26 PM

Right, but the appropriate level of discourse is deeper than "omg teh arabs cover up their wominz!!!?11" that mostly is used to describe the situation. its about figuring out equivalent standards for dissimilar bodies.

Posted by yoyo | July 24, 2007 5:29 PM

For example, if you could convince me that we need to see women's breasts for them to be taken seriously in the business world, then I would advocate a change in dress codes. But this is obviously absurd. For various reasons, some of which have been proven scientifically, participation and communication are affected by the wearing of a veil. I imagine that this guy does not appreciate the difference.

Posted by mpowell | July 24, 2007 5:31 PM

I didn't wade through his whole essay, and I don't have an opinion yet about whether inviting him to write was a good or bad idea. I do have two observations on Matt's specific points, though:

Matt says "And good for him, but he should be warned that it's a slippery slope from woman judges to woman senators and presidential candidates." What does he need to be warned about? He specifically says "She also has the right to hold any legislative or administrative post regardless of how high it is. If some jurists have certain reservations about her legal right of being the head of state, there are also some juristic judgments that question this line of thought." That last bit I take to be an acknowledgement that some Muslims disagree with him, but that there's evidence to support his claim that a woman can be the head of state.

The "joke," while not particularly funny, makes a certain amount of sense. Men and women in western culture are expected to cover themselves and be modest according the our own standards of modesty -- in the Muslim world, he's saying, they have a different opinion of which parts of a woman are provocative and that's why they're expected to cover more of their bodies. The thing that I think is supposed to be "funny" is that in the West our standards of modesty and appropriate dress dictate that men cover more of their bodies than women do, and in fact almost as much as the Muslim women do, but we don't notice that our men voluntarily do the same thing that we object to Muslim women being expected to do. And he's right. But he needs to work on his delivery. . .

Posted by Galen | July 24, 2007 5:32 PM

Well, it is possible that if we let women expose their breasts in public, new forms of social interaction involving the breasts would arise, and later we'd wonder how we ever got along without them.

I'm really not sure what those new forms of social interaction are, but just saying.

Posted by Neil the Ethical Werewolf | July 24, 2007 5:34 PM

mpowell: I would love to hear about these scientific experiments you're referring to - can you direct me to them? I know that there has been a huge boom recently in the amount of scientific research into the role varying forms of dress can play enabling/disabling workplace communication but can you be a little more specific?
Far from delimiting women as property the rationale behind the hijab (etc.) is actually quite the opposite. This whole discussion really turns on what you define decency as; this is no small question to be sure but you can see what this "humor" is getting at.

Posted by berger | July 24, 2007 5:42 PM

That man needs to hire a better translator.

Posted by ostap | July 24, 2007 5:44 PM

When you talk to a surgeon, he takes off his surgical mask so you can understand what he's saying. It's one thing to wear a hijab or veil that doesn't cover the mouth, only the hair, but it's another thing to have the mouth covered and try to communicate. Check out the video of the Muslim teacher in Britain who claimed that covering herself didn't affect her ability to teach but at the same time she kept on having to make adjustments so that her mouth wasn't covered and she could be heard. Really, this is somewhat akin to Kim Jong-il responding to criticisms that his laws are too restrictive with "but the US has laws too!"

Besides standards of decency, which are fluid over time and space, the best rationale for clothing in a liberal society is an issue of public health. Remember that Alanis Morrisette video where she rode the NYC subway naked? Would you like to sit down after her in the same seat? How about if a thousand other people had the same day and you had to do it naked as well? Think how many weirdos don't wipe. There is also the paradox of that the only people who go to nude beaches are the only people you don't want to see nude, which is a paradox we don't need to deal with at Starbucks.

Posted by Reality Man | July 24, 2007 6:08 PM

Berger, the simple, short answer is: non-verbal cues. I can't point you to any studies b/c my college days with the occasional psych class are long past me, but I don't think there's any debate that communication in person is better than via phone or email. Some of these physical cues have to do with your facial expressions. I suppose you could make the argument that even with a veil, if you're physically present, you might be able to make up for deficiencies that the veil introduces. So I suppose I should have been more circumspect in my claim: I'm not aware of any research on this issue in particular.

"Far from delimiting women as property the rationale behind the hijab (etc.) is actually quite the opposite."

I've heard this from time to time, but my experience with feminist theory makes me very dubious. You can come up with any story you want about why Islamic women choose to wear the veil, but the fact of the matter is that Islam, as it is practiced, holds women as inferior and subservient to men. In a society where it is argued that the veil represents an enlarged view of 'sexual excitation' and where a woman is presumed to be guilty of infidelity if she is raped, I think there is an enormous burden of proof resting on anyone who wishes to argue that the veil does not represent a clear symbol of this perspective of women as inferior and untrustworthy. I say this from the perspective of someone who does not claim to be an expert on the culture, but is very well informed compared to most westerners. That is why I acknowledge the possibility of a good argument being made even though I find it unlikely.

And this goes back to the first issue. If the veil is attached to a woman's inferior role in Islamic society, even if Islamic women are culturally trained to want to wear the veil, we should regard the wearing of the veil as an odious practice. We should also be highly suspicious of any claim that the practice does not encourage men to look down on women in public interaction- in a corporate boardroom or a court of justice, for example.

So I repeat, this is not a question of differing standards of decency. If it were simply that, the man would be absolutely correct. As it is, his point is well taken, but the rejoinder has been given and I believe the greater burden of proof lies with Hezbollah.

Posted by mpowell | July 24, 2007 6:24 PM

A few points:

I might add that in call kinds of Western commentary on female Islamic dress, there is a lot of confusion between "headscarf" and "veil"; In Turkey, Islamic dress means a scarf on your head and a long skirt; in Saudi Arabia and Taliban Afghanistan it is a complete shroud with a little opening for the eyes. I have the feeling that Fadlallah is not advocating the latter but merely the former, which is as close to a consensus view on Islamic dress as you are likely to find among strongly religious Muslims -- outside of Saudi Arabia and other backwaters. He uses the term "veil" but he makes it clear that the face should be exposed.

I would also like to question any of those commenters who think that the scarf (let's call it that instead) symbolizes some kind of ownership by the man over the woman. If you speak to any scarf-wearing Muslim woman, in the US or abroad, they will tell you otherwise; it can signify modesty, or submission to God, or a kind of spiritual seriousness, a variety of things... but never have I met someone who referred to their scarf-wearing as an act of deference to the males in their life. Indeed, in Turkey, wearing the scarf has sometimes come to take a kind of feminist meaning (in a limited sense), as religious women strive to exercise their right to cover their heads in the universities of the Kemalist establishment.

So, Fadlallah's "joke" was just a way to say this: In most of the Muslim world, excepting much of Turkey and Lebanon, Cairo, and a few other places, the covering of the legs and the hair IS decency. It is not a qualitatively different phenomenon than our insistence that womens' breasts are covered, and that pants must be worn at all times. In that, I think he is correct -- we don't call mandatory breast-covering a symbol of man's dominance over woman.

Posted by CG | July 24, 2007 6:29 PM

"I would also like to question any of those commenters who think that the scarf (let's call it that instead) symbolizes some kind of ownership by the man over the woman. If you speak to any scarf-wearing Muslim woman, in the US or abroad, they will tell you otherwise"

I'm guessing Azar Nafisi and Azadeh Moaveni would disagree with you a bit on this. I've talked to female Muslim friends of mine about this. Some like the scarf, while others feel it degrades them. One of my friends begged her father for months to let her not wear her hijab in college. He finally said she could choose not to wear it on campus but would have to wear it off campus (she ended up just not wearing it anywhere). You bring up Turkey, but some of the most militant secularists I know are Turkish feminists who like the fact that the Turkish military has carried out a coup in the face of almost all but the most recent potential rises of political Islam in Turkey because they don't want the state to cover them. It really comes down to a question of choice.

As a side note, the first time I ever saw a woman wear a full-blown burqa was at Les Galeries Lafayette, Paris's home of unbridled materialist consumerist capitalism.

Posted by Reality Man | July 24, 2007 6:41 PM

It should also be noted that at the time of the French ban, a plurality of French Muslim women supported the ban. Women in Eastern Turkey, where the scarf is more common, tend to have less a trouble with things like domestic abuse than women in the Western part of the country, especially near Istanbul.

Posted by Reality Man | July 24, 2007 6:44 PM

CG,
Well, I'm willing to cut a lot more slack for advocacy of a hair-covering scarf as opposed to face-covering veil because a face-covering veil has practical significance itself, but I still think you're missing the point. As a society it is acceptable that we pass laws and have social standards of conduct for purposes of decency and cleanliness. For example: at the beach men are required to wear shorts while women are also required to cover their breasts. So here penis=breast in terms of decency. You might argue that this is unfair to women, but it is at least reasonable. But when the standards of decency are grossly unequal in a grossly unequal society, the standards are generally part of the problem. So women wear the head-scarf as a sign of modesty. But why must they do so much to be modest and why is modesty so important to them? When the penalty for immodesty is rape and then the death penalty because you cannot find a male witness to testify that it was rape, then we should regard a woman's claim that she is just doing it to be modest quite differently.

Posted by mpowell | July 24, 2007 6:47 PM

mpowell: You are wrong in your crucial premise when you say "Islam, as it is practiced, holds women as inferior and subservient to men." This is not actually true in any way. It is true in some places but not so in just as many others. 65% of university students in Iran are women. Turkey and Pakistan have both had women prime ministers and in Turkey women play a VERY prominent role in national politics. And I can't forget Indonesia or Bangladesh... well just go look it up. Islamic feminists are play an important role in the national dialogue in both Turkey and Iran and possibly other places that I am not familiar with...

Women of course have it worse off in most of those places than in the US. But it's probably worse in rural south India, or Angola, Bolivia or Cambodia. It's an old comeback to say "Islam is practiced badly, but the bad things aren't intrinsic to Islam", but in this case, they're not even practiced badly.

Oh yeah, and there's Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and Afghanistan/Pakistan. Sunni Islam in the Peninsula and in Pakistan has had some wierd stuff going on for the last few decades. I'm not gonna try to defend that.

Posted by CG | July 24, 2007 6:51 PM

Yes Matt, it's not like Muslim countries ever have female senators or judges (see Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, India, even Afghanistan)

Posted by Jokbu | July 24, 2007 6:53 PM

"Yes Matt, it's not like Muslim countries ever have female senators or judges (see Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, India, even Afghanistan)"

I think he was being sarcastic.

Posted by Reality Man | July 24, 2007 7:00 PM

mpowell: I agree, and well-put. But when you refer to those laws and practices (rape, execution) you are referring to a discrete set of places, where yes, the female dress code is a crucial part of a larger structure of female subservience. I suppose that when I read Fadlallah, I saw him more as a spokesman for urban, mainstream Islam both Sunni and Shi'ite, along the lines of the ideologues of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Turkish religious establishment, or the non-Salafi scholars in Egypt or Lebanon or even Iraq, rather than for the tribal honor-world or the neo-tribal Wahhabis, which I am not interested in defending.

Posted by CG | July 24, 2007 7:01 PM

Yes, we have decency standards too. But our standards are not intended to, and don't have the effect of, utterly subjugating women. Which is the intent and effect of requiring the hijab, burqa, niqab, etc.

Not sure why this is so difficult to understand.

Posted by Al | July 24, 2007 7:40 PM

Al: You said: "Yes, we have decency standards too. But our standards are not intended to, and don't have the effect of, utterly subjugating women."

That is an elegant, almost a perfect summary of what Fadlallah said himself. Perhaps he would not have used the word "subjugating" but rather a word more related to "objectify." Obviously, "subjugation", "decency", and similar concepts are inconventiently relative in this kind of discussion.

Anyway I return to re-iterate the point that Muslim women are not "utterly subjugated" except in the Arabian Peninsula, parts of South Asia, and some rural Arab regions: a far, far smaller area (much less than half) than the area where Islamic dress -- namely, head (not face) and leg covering -- is routine.

Posted by CG | July 24, 2007 7:54 PM

So, Fadlallah's "joke" was just a way to say this: In most of the Muslim world, excepting much of Turkey and Lebanon, Cairo, and a few other places, the covering of the legs and the hair IS decency. It is It is not a qualitatively different phenomenon than our insistence that womens' breasts are covered, and that pants must be worn at all times.

In Islam, girls under a certain age are not required to cover their hair. In Islam, women are also permited to take off the hijab in front of close family members. In America, girls do not walk around with no shirt, and then after reaching "womanhood" start covering up the breasts with a top. In America, women do not take off their shirt and show their breasts to their brother, father or other close family members.

Posted by Dan the Man | July 24, 2007 9:20 PM

Re "I don't quite get his sense of humor"
----------
I think the guy was saying that Washington politicians are Dickheads --

--and that if those politicians insist women cover sexual parts with clothing, then the Washington politicans should cover their faces with a veil.

Hate to admit it, but the guy's got a point.

Posted by Don Williams | July 24, 2007 9:22 PM

Uh, calling Sheikh Fadlallah the "head of Hizbullah" is about as accurate as calling, say, James Dobson "the head of the Republican Party".

Posted by Tom Scudder | July 24, 2007 10:28 PM

In Islam, girls under a certain age are not required to cover their hair. In Islam, women are also permited to take off the hijab in front of close family members. In America, girls do not walk around with no shirt, and then after reaching "womanhood" start covering up the breasts with a top. In America, women do not take off their shirt and show their breasts to their brother, father or other close family members.

That's all cribbed from Orthodox Judaism. I notice no one ever frets too much about Frummie women, which makes me think this is less about folk like Al's deep commitment to feminism and more to do about general freaking out about Muslims.

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 24, 2007 10:58 PM

Hate to admit it, but the guy's got a point.

Don, you know, Hezbollah is full of points, right?

January 2004 UN report on racism:

During last month's Ramadan, Hizbollah's satellite TV channel Al-Manar — viewed worldwide — broadcast "Al-Shatat" ("Diaspora"), a 30-part Judeophobic / antisemitic "Syrian TV series recording the criminal history of Zionism" (as described in the Syria Times, Damascus, 11 Nov. 2003). Episode 20 depicts a rabbi teaching Jews of the perennial, spiritual need to cut a Christian child's throat and mix in his blood and then, ritually, "taste the holy Passover matzo."

You're on the same wavelength.

Posted by SoCalJustice | July 24, 2007 10:58 PM

I think we need to draw a distinction between cultural practices that are currently practiced for the sake of subjugating women and practices which derive from past subjugation of women. Consider, since it's closer to home and most of us can speak with more authority, customs of Western formal dress.

When men get dressed up they dress in ways that correlate to historical representations of power. The color coordination between the jacket and the pants of a suit are reminiscient of a military uniform. The slit in the back of the jacket is left over from the way clothing was cut to make horseback riding practical. Overall, the appearance3 of mens fashion is practical -- James Bond and other actions heroes can plausibly wear suits and formal wear for combat.

Womens formalwear, on the other hand, is constructed on the premise that the woman's role is to look like a sexual object, and without concern for practicality. Dresses are low cut to tantalize men with the prospect of breasts. High heels are totally impractical, but emphasize the length of the leg in comparison with the torso, enhancing a particularly desirable proportion, and are cut to display the foot. Skirts hint at access to the sexual organs, and in some cases show the bare leg. Women are expected to wear makeup to enhance the facial features, and men are not.

Modern women don't put on their formalwear thinking "I'm subjugating myself" and for the most part they aren't (stiletto feminism would even suggest that these trappings of femininity can be converted into symbols of power) but the history of the clothing comes from a system where men had power and women were expected "attract a mate" and then make him look good.

I don't know much about Muslim dress, so I'm not prepared to judge what's really going on, but for the people arguing over whether the headscarf is or isn't about subjugation, consider the possibility that it used to be but isn't any more.

Posted by Galen | July 24, 2007 11:00 PM

"That's all cribbed from Orthodox Judaism. I notice no one ever frets too much about Frummie women, which makes me think this is less about folk like Al's deep commitment to feminism and more to do about general freaking out about Muslims."

From Wikipedia: "Frum (Yiddish: פֿרום; [frum | frim]), from the German fromm, meaning devout or pious, is a Yiddish word meaning committed to be observant of the mitzvot, or Jewish commandments, specifically of Orthodox Judaism. When someone is said to be frum it generally means that he/she is committed to observing three major mitzvot: Shabbat (the Sabbath), kashrut (the dietary laws), and niddah (the sexual laws)."

I usually consider myself to know a decent amount for a non-Jewish guy about European Jewish culture, yet this is the first time I've heard of the Frummie women. This isn't exactly the law of Israel that all Jewish women there must follow. There are probably a lot more women in the US, Canada and Europe whom have been hurt by having male family members force them to wear the hijab or the veil than there are Jewish women in the US, Canada and Europe whom have been hurt for being forced to conform to mitzvot. It doesn't make one anti-Islam to recognize this nor does it mean that Islam is fundamentally more anti-women than any other major religion. However, we shouldn't let a hatred of bigotry prevent us to recognizing that Muslim women today have to put up with a lot of shit from religious male chauvinist assholes over their interpretation of religious doctrine.

Posted by Reality Man | July 25, 2007 1:47 AM

" . . .calling Sheikh Fadlallah the "head of Hizbullah" is about as accurate as calling, say, James Dobson "the head of the Republican Party"."

Er . . . so, what are you saying?

Posted by Dan S. | July 25, 2007 2:19 AM

A few comments. One, I am puzzled by the reference to this guy as the head of Hezbollah. Doesn't Hezbollah have a quite prominant leader names Nasrallah or something like that. The identifier to the article does not even identify this guy as a member of Hezbollah, merely a supporter. If we are not going to engage with people who even support the other side, then we are not likely to understand a lot of situations. Is there reason to believe that contrary to the Post header, this guy is actually a leader of Hezbollah?

I am puzzled about what is so curious about the joke. Maybe it could be structured in more of a joke fashion.

"Would you ever go to work in short pants and s T-shirt?"
"Of course not, it would be indecent in a work setting"

"Would you ever go to work in a veil?"
"Of course not I am not a slave to cultural norms that restrict my behavior"
"We have already determined what you are, now we are just haggling over degree."

Also, why did commentators above hold against this the inability to see the face of a woman whose face is concealed by a veil, when he twice stated clearly that he does not think that concealing the face is an obligation?

Posted by Lon | July 25, 2007 9:24 AM

Fadlallah is NOT the head of Hizbullah, nor is he affiliated with the group in any official or unofficial capacity. He's merely a leading shia cleric and guess who many shia in the LB support politically. In fact, there have been well-publicized disputes between HA and Fadlallah.

During the 1980s, some less than astute Americans linked him to HA because he was a religious figure involved publicly in the political and social mobilization of Lebanese shia, an important aspect of which was resistance to both the Israeli occupation and the presence of Western armies in Lebanon.

Similarly, the Maronite patriarch was never a spokesman for kataeb, but offered sympathy to the political outlook of the group's followers. Similarly, Lebanon's various muftis never associate themselves with an individual Sunni party or group, although the sheer size of hariri's largesse made this a bit disingenous.

Finally, a walk through the southern suburbs in beirut would suffice to convince anyone that neither HA nor anyone else "requires" women to wear the veil.

His comments should be placed in this context. Do we ask the Pope to be less Catholic? And yes, here, I am thinking of why catholic priests of the roman rite cannot be married or be, horror of horrors, women.

Posted by david | July 25, 2007 10:20 AM

It all comes down to power and history. When
people don't have any actual power to impose
their kooky views on you, its all very well to
engage in chin-scratching debates about who's
to decide whether a view is kooky and to each
his own etc.

When there's a decent chance that these gentle
prescriptions might be backed up with the
nightstick, people rightfully get more emotional.

> Finally, a walk through the southern suburbs in
> beirut would suffice to convince anyone that
> neither HA nor anyone else "requires" women to
> wear the veil.

This would be a lot more convincing if HA already
held absolute power in Lebanon and wasn't constrained by political realities.

Posted by DJ | July 25, 2007 11:05 AM

Not to get overly academic, but political organizations are a product of "power and history" so to suggest that HA is constrained by political realities is to ignore that HA is very much a product of those realities, i.e. those realities are constitutive. It is not for nothing that the lebanese cast their opponents in terms of alienage (syrian agents, zionist agents, iranian agents, etc.).

My point is that some who are ready to die for HA or the resistance would not be happy if there was a religious police in any area under HA control. It just does not work that way in lebanon. The I love life billboards face similar difficulties. There is no absolute power in Lebanon, only haggling over consensus that sometimes includes absolutist claims. Indeed, one might conclude that the bark is loudest when and where the bite is impossible. In other words, one should not confuse political rhetoric with political economy.

Rhetoric about what a good muslim or good christian should do or support is mostly a reality of intra-sectarian feuding, e.g. a Christian pol in LB will play on Christian fears not to attack muslim groupings, but rather to denigrate the leadership of his christian rivals ('i can better defend christian interests'). Shia and sunni groups do the same thing. But one should not take these political tactics as ideology. In Lebanon and elsewhere, it is all about power/money. Moreover, even the sectarian color of Lebanese political discourse is a bit of a distortion of the almost feudal reality of the political game there.

Posted by david | July 25, 2007 11:45 AM

CG,
Your point is well taken. As I admitted before, I don't consider myself to be an expert on the whole of the muslim world. I know what the practice or law is in some places, and it is pretty odious. But if you claim that there are notable parts of the muslim world where the status of women is not that bad or even reasonable, I won't argue with you. I will just note that the presence of female politicians does not always imply gender equality, India being the prime example here. But whatever the case, I think we are in agreement on the important concerns regarding this issue.

Posted by mpowell | July 25, 2007 12:15 PM

> so to suggest that HA is constrained by political > realities is to ignore that HA is very much a
> product of those realities,

Agreed, and your point is certainly applicable
when it comes to judging HA itself. However,
when it comes to judging the ideology of the veil,
which was the topic of discussion, the reality in
Lebanon is irrelevant since the Lebanese political
environment is the exception.

My point is simply that its somewhat naive and/or
disingenuous to pretend the veil issue is about
different dress standards. Its emotional because
of the history of coercion. If you ignore that
history, then, of course, it all comes down to
a meaningless discussion on cultural differences
and "funny" observations like Fadlallah's.

Posted by DJ | July 25, 2007 12:36 PM

I agree DJ. My response was in part directed toward some of the commenters. I am not a fan of the implicit and explicit assumptions that gird that nonsensical, completeley imaginary space called multiculturalism. Indeed, I dont believe in culture at all, unless it is located historically according to precise economic and political conditions. My problem with the veil discussion is that it is used by proponents and opponents (whether they be the fadlallahs of the world or the purported western liberators of muslim women) alike to totalize socieies according to some man-made ideological precept. So I guess all i am offering is a warning about willful distortions of complex social realities, but I do not intend to deny some of the coercive aspects of the veil as a social practice, although I would aver that unpacking the whole story would make it difficult for anyone to score simple-minded political points. Anyway, I think we mostly agree.

Finally, I would say I dont think there is anything wrong with a lot of chin-scratching. I am an American and my country spends a lot of time and resources in developing smart bombs. Why not spend an equal amount of time trying to understand precisely the potential targets of those munitions? Again, I think I am moving off topic, but I would guess you know what I mean.

Posted by david | July 25, 2007 1:44 PM