Still working on the Edwards piece. Should be out tomorrow.

In the meantime, I noticed a story today about the Olympics.

Sad, really.

CENSORING THE OLYMPICS
by Amir Taheri
New York Post

August 14, 2004 -- THE Greek organizers of this summer's Olympics, which began in Athens yesterday, claim that more women athletes are competing than ever before. Women are also playing a high-profile role in making the whole enterprise, the biggest of its kind in Greek history, run as smoothly as possible. Seen from the Muslim world, however, the Athens game will look like a male-dominated spectacle in which women play an incidental part.

According to officials in Athens, the number of Muslim women participating in this year's game is the lowest since 1960. Several Muslim countries have sent no women athletes at all; others, such as Iran, are taking part with only one, in full hijab.

What are the odds the American media conglomerates will put HER on television, hmm?

About the same as their deciding that educating their children without resorting to crude anti-Semitic rants in school textbooks.

And state-owned TV networks in many Muslim countries, including Iran and Egypt, have received instructions to limit coverage of events featuring women athletes at Athens to a minimum.

Because Allah does not approve of women showing up their men and succeeding. Heck, we're talking about a culture that condoned allowing schoolgirls to burn to death rather than letting them flee a fiery dormitory without covering all of their skin.

A circular from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture in Tehran asks TV editors to make sure that women's games are not televised live: "Images of women engaged in contests [sic] must be carefully vetted," says the letter, leaked in Tehran. "Editors must take care to prevent viewers from being confronted [sic] with uncovered parts of the female anatomy in contests."

Like faces, arms, hands, ankles, etc., etc. You know, if those wacky Islamic men see a bare ankle, they might just go crazy with lust.

Women athletes in Athens are unlikely to wear the Islamic hijab or full-length manteaux that cover their legs to the ankle and their arms to the wrist. The ministry's order thus could mean a blanket ban on images of female athletics.

Fear of Muslim viewers seeing bare female legs and arms on television is also shared by theologians in several Arab states. Sheik Yussuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian theologian based in Qatar, claims that female sport is exploited as a means of undermining "divine morality."

Oh really? How about enslaving your women, treating them as property in the eyes of the law, as LESS THAN A HUMAN BEING in court (where a woman's testimony is only worth half that of a man, making it difficult to defend against rape charges --- if the man says it one consensual adultery, the woman might well be put to death as her testimony does not have the legal weight of that offered by her attacker!).

Ayatollah Emami Kashani, one of Iran's ruling mullahs, goes further. In a recent sermon, he claimed that allowing women to compete in the Olympics was a "sign of voyeurism" on the part of the male organizers.

Right. It couldn't be your narrow-minded bigotry, could it? I mean, let's set aside the fact that you folks make Archie Bunker look positively enlightened.

"The question how much of a woman's body could be seen in public is one of the two or three most important issues that have dominated theological debate in Islam for decades," says Mohsen Sahabi, a Muslim historian. "More time and energy is devoted to this issue than to economic development or scientific research. "

You know, this could be an area of agreement between these 8th century throwbacks and modern America. We too spend a lot of time discussing how much of a woman's body should be seen in public . . . wait, no we don't. We just leave that question up to the individual.

Sorry. I got a little excited there.

Islamist theologians are divided on how much of a woman's body can be exposed in public. The most radical, the Sitris, insist that women should be entirely covered from head to toe, including their faces and fingers. The less radical Hanbalis say a woman should be covered all over, but recommend a mask with apertures for the eyes and the mouth. (A version of this, known as the burqa, was imposed on Afghan women by the Taliban).

Okay, so the liberal Islamic theologians think THIS is permissible:



while the conservatives think even that is TOO MUCH SKIN!

Wow. I am at a loss here. The scary thing is, this is accepted as literal truth by these folks.

The Khomeinist version of the hijab, invented in the 1970s and now popular in many countries, including the United States, covers a woman's entire body but allows her face and hands to be exposed.

One more thing we can thank that wacky Ayatollah for. Strict Islam views this crap as a virtue!

Hijab theoreticians agree on one claim: a woman's hair emanates dangerous rays that could drive men wild with sexual lust and thus undermine social peace.

Are you guys serious about this? "Dangerous rays" emanating form women's hair?

To what ends will these fascists go to justify their intrusion into every aspect of their slave/citizen's lives?

But the problem of women athletes goes deeper. Some theologians claim that any form of sporting activity by women produces "sinful consequences." In 2000, for example, the Khomeinist authorities in Tehran announced a ban on women riding bicycles or motorcycles. The rationale? Riding bicycles or motorcycles would activate a woman's thighs and legs, thus arousing "uncontrollable lustful drives" in her. And men watching women on their bikes in the streets could be "led towards dangerous urges."

Bike riding makes women horny? And makes men watching the horny female bike riders horny, too? News to me -- but I suppose that if I lived in such a medieval, repressive society, I might get excited at the most mundane thing imaginable, too.

What really gets me, though, is the implicit claim that these rules "protect women" from rape. I mean, if the law doesn't let them make those poor, out of control Muslim men get all hot and bothered, then the men won't be driven to rape the women (which, as we learned earlier, could mean the death sentence for adultery).

The problems don't end there. According to some theologians, a woman should not be allowed to venture out of her home without a "raqib" or male guardian. But that guardian must be either her husband or her father, brother, grandfather, uncle or son.

Even if a woman is accompanied by such a "raqib" at a sporting event, the problem isn't solved. One woman's "raqib" will be a stranger to the other women playing, say, a game of volleyball. Thus any sport involving more than one woman produces complex chaperonage problems.

Reminds me of the stories I've read about the segregated south. "Hey nigger! That's the White Folk's bathroom! Y'all's bathroom is on the fifth floor."

"But the fifth floor is closed!"

"Don't talk back to me, boy!"

Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, have tried to avoid these by imposing a blanket ban on physical education and sports for women. Some Saudi women resent this and have been trying to persuade the government to change its mind.

In June, the kingdom's appointed parliament passed a bill legalizing physical education for girls. But last week the Ministry of Education announced that it would take no notice of the act of parliament because there has been no decision by the Council of Ministers, which is headed by the king (who also acts as prime minister).

"Coming on the eve of the Athens Olympics, this is a big disappointment," says Fa'ezah Ahmad, a Saudi women's right campaigner.

And a brave woman to stand up for something so small. I seriously mean that. She risks her safety and even her life (should her husband treat her activism as a threat to his control) for something as simple as going to gym class (an activity most Americans learned to hate by fifth grade).

"The place would look like a lepers' colony," says Soheila Karimi, a women-rights campaigner. "These people live on another planet and in a different epoch."

Well put. We are dealing with an anachronistic, medieval, and brutally repressive culture that does not value individual freedoms and liberties. Stories like this confirm that analysis.

Let us not forget that they would want to impose this bizarre, misogynistic social order on the rest of the world, if they but could.

Steve

- posted by MrSpkr @ 22:50