Tragedy in Pakistan is a post from: Kiran

I’d like to share my personal view on the burqa (face mask) controversy. My views are not based on the black-and-white, binary, false dichotomy presented too often by both supporters of the face-mask ban and those who wish to defend the garb.

Put simply: I support *regulation* of the Burqa/Niqab (the FACE covering part), not a “ban” on it.

Why? The key here is to understand the difference between regulating and banning something. Can we walk around naked in society? Besides in nudist beaches, at private gatherings, and a few special events in a few places, like some pride parades, is there legal and social regulation in place to stop people from walking around buck naked? Is that an encroachment of people’s right to be buck naked? Why is that regulation okay? If a cult started walking around buck naked and saying it was their religious duty, would we have to argue on their behalf too?

People who defend the right to wear a face-mask sometimes say that it is wrong to assume that anyone is ever speaking from an “objective” stance, and they are quite right. Yes, we are all socially programmed by many things in the worlds we live in; we all follow some normalization codes or other, whether we are aware of our own programmed behaviours or not; what we consider “normal” is a combination of what the societies we grew up in tell us is normal, and our own views on what we find natural for each of us. The question is not whether we are all programmed with different ways of thinking about things, but which of those ways of thinking is worthy of widespread support; which of those memes is something that supports the human rights and well-being of the maximum number of people.

Yes, freedom of expression needs to be preserved, however, it is not to be given completely free reign, otherwise we could all walk around naked anywhere in the public sphere. The fact that we can’t, the fact that strangers hanging about on the grounds of schools are looked upon with suspicion, the fact that we are not supposed to swear or smoke around kids, the fact that restaurants deny service to those not wearing shirts or shoes, the fact that your driver’s license and passport photos have to show your face, the fact that banks and airports have cameras to catch the faces of would-be criminals and of witnesses; these and many more social and legal regulations are in place to try to create a somewhat level playing field, at least in public spaces, where one’s identity is always at stake, should one try to break the law or cause trouble. Why should niqabis (and those who would don the niqab to commit crimes, or hurt people in public spaces) be exempt from these and other regulations? Because “God” told them to? The burqa / face mask is not even Islamic! Where does the Quran say a woman’s face must be kept hidden? It’s actually a sin, bida’h, if you consider the Islamic rule to not say that God said something he didn’t (according to Islam’s own rules!).

As far as women’s choices, sure some women want to wear the burqa, but can we deduce – given the nature of violent patriarchy – how many more are forced or compelled into wearing it? Of course there are no hard and fast statistics, like there usually aren’t when there is socio-culturally accepted oppression going on. What about those women’s rights? Is it “white guilt”, or Cultural Relativism as it’s known in Anthropological circles, that makes some otherwise lucid feminists lose sight of the fact that there are severe human rights abuses happening within Muslim cultures too, just like within all human social groups? Why do some feminists and liberals refuse to accept that there exist widely differing views within Muslims, and that certain segments of Muslims (like segments of virtually any other peoples on Earth) really do oppress women, gays, apostates, dissidents, religious and ethnic minorities, etc.; and that being liberal, progressive or left-wing in the west does not have to mean one has to align one’s self with right-wing, conservative, traditionalist, anti-liberals among Muslims, just to prove a point to the right-wingers of the west?

Proving a point should not be more important than defending the human rights of individuals, no matter what culture they happen to be from. If liberal feminists ignore them, who among progressives will speak up about those women oppressed by patriarchy in “other” cultures, while we are busy defending the patriarchal structures that exist inside those countries and cultures? Why has it been left up to right-wing think tanks to challenge the most right-wing branches of Islam? Why is it fine and dandy if a Muslim woman is oppressed by Muslims, but not okay if she is told she has to show her face to confirm her identity, to communicate etc.?

Women do bad things and wrong things too. I’m the type of feminist who believes in COMPLETE equality of both potential good and potential harm by both men and women. Women perpetuate male and female genital mutilation, as much or more than men. Women put their daughters into beauty contests, women treat their sons and daughters unequally too. Women participate in anti-choice rallies, women are as liable as men to be homophobes, including many members of the Westboro Church and the governer of Hawaii, and Sarah Palin and perhaps millions of other women who remain silently homophobic, and vote in homophobic laws with the right to vote their grandmothers fought tooth and nail for them to have. Women betray women’s rights, just look up Phyllis Schlafly. Just because a woman is doing something or saying something, does not automatically make it correct, right, good, humane or the best, most reasonable idea to listen to. Women can be very wrong about things too. Ann Coulter, anyone? Michelle Malkin? Especially when the women have internalized patriarchal values – when they believe in the deepest recesses of their socialized brains that they have no existence or value in the world unless men are owning them or using them or heckling them or treating them like their personal stash of pearls.

I definitely think ALL gender role socializations are bullshit and can and should be challenged and confronted and mocked and changed as needed. That includes the gender role that says that women are pearls and candy and rosebuds and princesses; fragile, helpless damsels to be saved and whisked away by a Prince Charming or Prince Alladin. And that includes the gender role that says that men have to be stoic and macho, and never show any emotion that isn’t anger or jealousy. That also includes the gender role that people are, by default, exclusively heterosexual, and any variation is thus a deviation.

But the Burqa/Niqab does not liberate anyone from anything. It only deflects the issues of gender role socializations, patriarchy and women’s self-worth. What are the similarities between a burqa-clad woman walking down the street like a Dementor from Harry Potter movies, and an anorexic, breast-implanted, botox-filled woman walking down the street in a halter top and short shorts? They have both accepted and internalized the notion that they exist to satisfy men. The niqabi woman (who is doing it out of “choice”) wants to be owned by particular men, her father, husband, brother – she wants to be private property. The halter-top woman wants to be desired, admired, and have her existence affirmed by the maximum number of men – she wants to be  public property. But both only see themselves and all other women as men’s property. How is it liberating to be on one extreme or the other?

I wonder what it would be like for more women to learn their own self-worth and not define or dress themselves purely for the benefit of men. What irks me about those feminists and otherwise liberal westerners who would disregard the ethical implications of too much cultural relativism, and who look the other way at any mention of Muslim-on-Muslim oppression, besides the fact that they are subscribing to the “noble savage” cliche of the exoticized “other”, is that they are also still playing by the same rules that patriarchy has outlined for millenia: “Women, you were created for men. Your only choices are: either be a virgin or a whore, your womb is the only thing that matters. The rest of you, your brain, your heart, your talents, your ambitions, your words, your voice, don’t matter, unless some man somewhere finds you worthy of being his property.”

There’s a middle ground in this oh-so-controversial debate, that’s a lot more reasonable and not based on demagoguery, but based on an honest examination of the deepest assumptions of people on both sides. This is all why I support regulation and not a ban, on the face masks in public spaces. At home, at private get-togethers, at designated events, I couldn’t give a damn how many tents a woman, or a man, wears or doesn’t wear. I don’t care if it’s religious belief causing a person to want to mask their identity in a public space, or simply a political fuck-you to the people he or she resents due to an ingrained sense of supremacism to the rest of society. If you’re going to be in a public space, you have to abide by certain regulations – you can’t go around flashing your genitals at strangers, and you can’t hide your basic identification from everyone around you either. Religious piety is no excuse to bypass the social regulations in a secular society.

I don’t support a ban because (a) bans polarize debates and create strong resistance movements that often make the debate more heated and dialogue and compromise less possible, (b) bans can’t be easily enforced without a society turning into a police state, (c) the women who are being forced to wear a face-mask may genuinely be cut-off from the rest of society if their male owners just outright lock them up rather than let them go outside showing their faces. For these reasons I can not and will not support a full out ban, though if it’s regulation in public spaces we’re talking about, and it’s presented with an eye towards, and education about, the gender role socializations that we all are subject to, no matter what we wear or don’t wear, then I could support such regulation.

Ultimately, what’s needed is a hearty discussion of what women’s and men’s roles are, have been and could be, within both Muslim and non-Muslim cultures.

Also, if our governments could just y’know stop fuckin’ with the lives of people in other countries, while telling them it’s for their own benefit, maybe there’d be less of a backlash against the freedoms and education many of us value. Something to think about.

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Update [July 20, 2010]: This article has been reprinted in the progressive news magazine Online Journal.

The Burqa/Niqab ban controversy is a post from: Kiran

and a *MUST WATCH* interview with her from AlJazeera English:

Nazanin – “Someday” is a post from: Kiran

Aafia Siddiqui VS (Jews, Zarina Mari, Shazia Khalid and others) by Anas Abbas

The best analysis of the Aafia Siddiqui case. is a post from: Kiran

The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year.

“Many dolphin brains are larger than our own and second in mass only to the human brain when corrected for body size,” said Lori Marino, a zoologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who has used magnetic resonance imaging scans to map the brains of dolphin species and compare them with those of primates.

<snip>

In one study, Diana Reiss, professor of psychology at Hunter College, City University of New York, showed that bottlenose dolphins could recognise themselves in a mirror and use it to inspect various parts of their bodies, an ability that had been thought limited to humans and great apes.

In another, she found that captive animals also had the ability to learn a rudimentary symbol-based language.

Other research has shown dolphins can solve difficult problems, while those living in the wild co-operate in ways that imply complex social structures and a high level of emotional sophistication.

<snip>

Researchers have found that brain size varies hugely from around 7oz for smaller cetacean species such as the Ganges River dolphin to more than 19lb for sperm whales, whose brains are the largest on the planet. Human brains, by contrast, range from 2lb-4lb, while a chimp’s brain is about 12oz.When it comes to intelligence, however, brain size is less important than its size relative to the body.

What Marino and her colleagues found was that the cerebral cortex and neocortex of bottlenose dolphins were so large that “the anatomical ratios that assess cognitive capacity place it second only to the human brain”. They also found that the brain cortex of dolphins such as the bottlenose had the same convoluted folds that are strongly linked with human intelligence.

Such folds increase the volume of the cortex and the ability of brain cells to interconnect with each other. “Despite evolving along a different neuroanatomical trajectory to humans, cetacean brains have several features that are correlated with complex intelligence,” Marino said.

There was a time when women, black people, mentally ill people, children, were all in various ways regarded as “sub human”, as inanimate objects, to be used, abused, and discarded. Today, we still have some segments of populations arguing for the lack of any rights of non-human animals. This will change, in time, and our current practices of cruel factory farming, animal testing, breeding for entertainment, etc., will, I can say with a some confidence and a lot of hope for the sake of humanity, become more obsolete, and become as illegal and socially unacceptable as slavery, child labour, pederasty, misogyny and eugenics are now.

Scientists think dolphins deserve “non-human person” status is a post from: Kiran

He said: “I think most people would rather be profiled than blown up. It wouldn’t be victimisation of an entire community.

What I like is that Muslim organizations and Muslims with influence are starting to finally speak up in mainstream society, bringing up important issues like the fact that many of the terrorist attacks happening in the world today are being committed by Muslims, and in the name of Islam.

What I don’t like is firstly that things have actually come to this, and secondly that profiling based on race or religion could really backfire. First of all, this opens a whole can of worms in terms of who is Muslim and who isn’t. Is it based on name? On one’s parents’ religion? What’s next? Requiring people to put their religion or religious background on their passports? Like what was done to Jews in Soviet Russia? And how hard would it be for someone to bypass such a superficial system of checks: a change of name, a change of outfit?

I do think that people of certain names, backgrounds, looks and ages will, and it could be easily argued, should, be scrutinized more than the mostly superficial checks that airline passengers are subject to. However, I think the issue needs to be approached intelligently, to find efficient solutions (and there have to be many complementary solutions, there really is no one simple magic answer), that precisely and successfully help identify and quarantine those who intend to use public spaces as personal, fatal soap boxes. We could start by hiring people of higher and more sophisticated educational backgrounds to screen passengers, and we could invest in providing training to airport personnel to better understand things like body signals, psychology, etc.

All of which leads me to wonder if perhaps we’re headed for this.

Your thoughts?

Profiling: Pros and Cons? is a post from: Kiran

“Using unusual mannequins exposing body curves and with heads without hijabs [Muslim veils] are prohibited to be used in the shops,” police said in a statement carried by Irna.

Correspondents say that in the past such campaigns usually only lasted throughout the summer, but last year’s crackdown, including on tight trousers for women, was still continuing in the winter.

Oh woman, how many more religions have to be made up before you will realize your place: a degree below men?

It is time… is a post from: Kiran

From Funny Or Die!

Gus Porter gets mauled by a bear, but he won’t let the socialist Canadian health care fix him up, so he’ll hike back to America.

A true American Hero is a post from: Kiran

That state is not too bothered about what you believe, as long as it does not thwart the right of others to their beliefs.

<snip>

There should be laissez-faire in the realm of belief, just as there should be in the marketplace.

So nice of a person coming from white, western privilege to allow for such cultural relativism for us lowly colonial subjects. It’s a good thing he’s not, say a woman in Swat, or a young girl in Mississauga, who are being flogged and even killed for not following the beliefs of their parents and their communities.

So nice that he doesn’t have to live in Muslim ghettoes even in the middle of a Western city and has to follow a script made up for his life by everyone except himself.

So nice of him to allow for the subjugation of people like me because he’s too afraid of not appearing “liberal” enough to his dead, white, male mentors.

Solipsism becomes him.

Cultural Relativism = White Man’s Privilege. is a post from: Kiran

Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on Aug. 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent the night in the city. He then returned to his hometown of Nagasaki just in time for the second attack, city officials said.

Victim or Survivor? is a post from: Kiran

Salman Rushdie and Irshad Manji – Moral Courage Conversations is a post from: Kiran

Thank you, Sarah Palin
for taking women – and men -
back a few notches so fast
we all got whiplash.

Thank you Sarah Palin for proving feminism right;
For showing that men and women are truly equal.
That women can be just as stupid
as the stupidest of men.
Like the men running the country
for most of the past decade.
And of course, Condi too.

Thank you Sarah Palin,
for flashing your girly smile,
and throwing back that silly Northern twang;
Your beauty queen charms warm the limp, lonely hearts
of Bill O’Reillys and Karl Roves everywhere.
Thanks for being the prettiest beard
for frustrated Republicans still in the closet.

Thanks Sarah Palin for charging rape victims
for their own rape kits, while preaching to us all
the joys of cherishing our rape babies.
Because life is precious -
until hunting season, that is.

Thank you Sarah Palin for helping intelligent women
realize they are intelligent first, women after.
Thanks for helping smart men appreciate
smart women more than ever before.

Thanks Sarah Palin for making George W. Bush
look educated by comparison.
Thanks for making Cheney look saner -
at least he shoots at things at close range and
doesn’t make couch covers from their bodies.

Thanks Sarah for not blaming us mortals for climate change -
None of us was around 6,000 years ago
when you believe the Earth was created…
How could we know what caused climate change?

Thanks Sarah.
For everything you do.
With everything you say,
you are a reminder
for every girl and every woman
of the choice inside each of us.
The choice…
to be a smart, savvy, self-aware human being
or to be
just another jackass, with lipstick.

~Kiran Mehdee, 1 October, 2008

Thank You Sarah Palin is a post from: Kiran

Here’s an interesting interview I came across with author Salman Rushdie

For the other geeks among us, you might find PC World’s list of the Top 50 Tech Visionaries inspiring.

Here, you can listen to an audio version of a Q&A between Stephen Colbert, Steve Carrell and Ann Hathaway (listen to the audio online by clicking on the link in the middle there).

Lastly, but definitely not leastly, here’s a tribute to the funniest guy who ever lived who died this past weekend, George Carlin. The world was funnier with ya, George, we’ll miss your sick, twisted, brilliant brain. Here he is, in his own words…

Long time no blog! (Or R.I.P. Hazrat George Carlin) is a post from: Kiran

Small voices calling in China is a post from: Kiran

The tank, which is 27m high, has no markings and is thought to have fallen from a ship before being washed up on the west of Benbecula.

It was discovered by a dog walker on Poll Na Crann beach – known locally as Stinky Bay – near Griminish.

Look what the catfish dragged in is a post from: Kiran

Imran Khan voices the question on many people’s minds about the lax security provided by the government.
Graham Stewart provides an insightful historical perspective on dynasties and assassinations.
Amir Taheri presents the chief reasons why religious extremists in Muslim countries despise democracy.

more to come…

Benazir Bhutto 1953-2007 is a post from: Kiran

Children play in a flooded street after rising sea levels in Penjaringan subdistrict, North Jakarta. (The Globe and Mail)

My generation grew up accepting things like AIDS, cell phones and DVDs as part of our reality. For the generations growing up today things like Climate Change will be part of their framework when they think of their world.

The Children of Climate Change is a post from: Kiran

“It is truly an honor to be named the Associated Press’ Celebrity of the Year. Best of all, this makes me the official front-runner for next year’s Drug-Fueled Downward Spiral of the year. P.S. Look for my baby bump this spring!”
—Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert and the End-Of-Year Awards is a post from: Kiran

Stephen and Jon are back! is a post from: Kiran

United in hate is a post from: Kiran

Why Writers Are Striking is a post from: Kiran

At 10:59 a.m., a cheer went up on trading room floor

Is that in Canadian or American dollars?
“It didn’t really matter,” Mr. Feig says with a laugh. “It’s the same price either way.”

USD = CAD for the 1st time in 31 years is a post from: Kiran

Accompanied by a video of this rare sort of news story.

She saw her own heart in a glass case is a post from: Kiran

Harry Potter Finale Released, The Dark Lord Ascends… Cheney Becomes President! No, I’m Serious! is a post from: Kiran

The professor had hoped to spend the afternoon listening to discourse on arcane topics. Instead, he was handcuffed to another suspect and fingerprinted in a detention centre, where his peppermints were confiscated, “presumably on the suspicion that they might be some kind of narcotic”.

Jaywalking academic assaulted by Atlanta police is a post from: Kiran