Blog


About


Books

 Latest Post: Flash!

Agnostic
A Spirited Manifesto
Available April 4, 2016

   Who is the AT?   Books by LH
  • Agnostic

  • The First Muslim

  • After The Prophet

  • Jezebel

  • Mary

  • More from LH

     

Let’s Ban Sunglasses!

Posted May 5th, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

If the Islamic veil needs to be banned for security reasons — if the full niqab is indeed a form of criminal concealment, foiling identification by security personnel — then let’s be logical:

let’s ban sunglasses

and big floppy sunhats

and tinted contact lenses.

let’s ban wigs

and hair extensions

and make-up.

let’s ban beards

and clowns’ faces

and cosmetic surgery

and mustaches

and baseball caps

and hair dye

and skin lighteners

and spray-on tans.

let’s ban and ban and ban

until there’s nothing left to ban any more

and then we’ll be….

safe?

Share this post:  Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
File under: Islam | Tagged: Tags: accidental theologist, banning the veil, Islamic veil, niqab, veil, women in Islam | 1 Comment
  1. Tea-mahm says:
    May 10, 2010 at 1:20 pm

    Ah, yes! Safe at last! It seems to be forgotten that “Islam” from the root – SaLaMa– means: peaceful surrender to Unity, it also has to do with feeling safe.
    Good poem.
    T’m

Just How Kosher Does a Muslim Intellectual Have To Be?

Posted May 3rd, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

A bonfire of vanities is breaking out in the American political punditry about one single Muslim.   Not a terrorist, but a European intellectual — scholar and activist Tariq Ramadan, the Oxford professor who argues that Islam has a positive, ethical contribution to make to Western culture, and who was named one of the top innovators of the 21st century on the impeccably non-radical Time.com.

Fresh fuel for the fire comes from The Flight of the Intellectuals, a new book accusing American and European intellectuals of pandering to Islam, specifically to Ramadan, while ignoring signs of his extremism.

It will appear to be a splendidly principled debate, with everyone taking impassioned positions in defense of liberte, egalite, and if not fraternite, certainly sororite.   Women in Islam, that is.   As usual, male Western intellectuals get most worked up about “the question of women” in Islamic societies, thus presenting themselves as comfortably situated white knights in shining armor, armchair warriors protecting the innocent from barbarism.

It will also be a peculiarly sophomoric debate, essentially asking “who’s our Muslim intellectual?”  Is it Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose book Infidel rejected Islam outright and led to her flight for safety to the US, where she’s now at the American Enterprise Institute?  Or is it Tariq Ramadan, who has consistently argued for a “third way” blending traditional Islamic values with western democratic ones?

In books like What I Believe, Ramadan advocates greater democratic political involvement by western Muslims.  This may seem reasonable enough, but reason, for his critics, is just a mask.   His hidden agenda is an extremist one, they say;  see how he refuses to outright condemn punishing women for adultery (he only says he opposes it)  or antisemitism (oops, strike that one, he did).

In fact the language used about Ramadan has a distinctly antisemitic tint.   He’s shifty, they say;  he’s two-faced;  he hides his true loyalties — all the sort of things said about Jews in 1930s Germany.   They point to Ramadan’s “connections” (his grandfather founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, so obviously the grandson is carrying out the grandfather’s program).   So what if Ramadan is a charming and sophisticated European intellectual?  That very charm and sophistication make him suspicious.   (There’s a strong tint here of “who does he think he is?  he’s just a Muslim putting on airs”).  He has to be a fifth columnist in the ranks of naive post-Enlightenment scholars who have no idea of the treacherous and devious depths of Islamic thinking.

The ultimate insult for such critics seems to be that Ramadan is a religious man.   A pious Muslim, as they see it, cannot possibly be a liberal intellectual;  his whole argument that Islam and social democracy are not necessarily opposed can thus, ipso facto, only be false.

What they’re really saying is that the only kind of Muslim intellectual who’s acceptable is one who’s absolutely kosher.  One who, like Hirsi Ali, has renounced all ties with the demon Islam.  One who has repented, seen the error of his/her ways, and accepted the superiority of the secular.

Perhaps that’s why the bonfire:  the language, attitudes, and assumptions behind this debate all seem to me to bear the distinctly pious fervor of  Inquisition.

Share this post:  Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
File under: Islam, US politics | Tagged: Tags: accidental theologist, antisemitism, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Muslim intellectuals, Tariq Ramadan, women in Islam | 2 Comments
  1. Kitty Hoffman says:
    May 3, 2010 at 5:02 pm

    Here’s who would get my vote: Irshad Manji, young brilliant progressive intellectual Muslim…also happens to be lesbian, which led to a few death threats, or perhaps it was the combination of Muslim and feminist…
    Her very traditional Ugandan Moslem mother is one of her staunchest supporters.
    Canadian (of course, Canadians are good at combining the seemingly un-combine-able), now lives and works in the US.
    If you don’t yet know the name, you will soon; check out her writing.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 4, 2010 at 8:48 am

      Thanks Kitty. Yes, Manji’s book “The Trouble With Islam Today,” conversationally written and subtitled “a Muslim’s call for reform in her faith,” is wonderfully spirited. Ditto her website, http://www.muslim-refusenik.com. I see her as part of a western Muslim movement to liberalize Islam — one that includes, on a different level, people like Tariq Ramadan. Meanwhile very interesting work is being done by several feminist Muslim scholars, including the amazing Fatima Mernissi (“The Veil and the Male Elite”) in Morocco. Am reading Mernissi again right now, and will post on her soon.

Order the Book

Available online from:
  • Amazon.com
  • Barnes & Noble
  • IndieBound
  • Powell's
Or from your favorite bookseller.

Tag Cloud

absurd agnosticism art atheism Christianity ecology existence feminism fundamentalism Islam Judaism light Middle East sanity science technology ugliness US politics war women

Recent Posts

  • Flash! September 1, 2019
  • “What’s Wrong With Dying?” February 9, 2017
  • The Poem That Stopped Me Crying December 30, 2016
  • Talking About Soul at TED December 5, 2016
  • ‘Healing’? No Way. November 10, 2016
  • Psychopath, Defined August 2, 2016
  • Lovely NYT Review of ‘Agnostic’! July 14, 2016
  • Playing With Stillness June 22, 2016
  • Inside Palestine June 20, 2016
  • Virtual Unreality June 6, 2016
  • The Free-Speech Challenge May 23, 2016
  • Category-Free April 20, 2016
  • Staring At The Void April 13, 2016
  • Sherlock And Me April 3, 2016
  • Hard-Wired? Really? March 22, 2016
  • A Quantum Novel March 9, 2016
  • This Pre-Order Thing March 4, 2016
  • The Agnostic Celebration February 29, 2016
  • The First Two Pages February 23, 2016
  • Two Thumbs-Up For “Agnostic” February 10, 2016
Skip to toolbar
  • About WordPress
    • WordPress.org
    • Documentation
    • Support Forums
    • Feedback