The last week or so has seen yet another falling-out in the Muslim blogging community after Muslim Matters carried a guest column by a sister who said she couldn’t cheer for Rima Fakih, the recent winner of the Miss USA beauty contest, who is of Lebanese origin. Exception was taken by some women I know on Twitter who took it personally that the author attacked one of their fellow contributors to Muslimah Media Watch, who had written this on the subject. Two other responses worth reading are this one at MMW and this one by Digital Nomad (one of two sisters who blog at Digital Niqabi).
As Yusra (the author of the second MMW piece I linked) points out, there are those in the American establishment who simply hate to see a Muslim, or anyone who even looks like one or has a name that sounds like a Muslim name, advance in any way in American society, and the objections came from the usual suspects such as Daniel Pipes and the Jewish Internet Defence Force. (This has been the case and it’s not just Muslims who are affected; rather anyone from a mainly Muslim, particularly Arab, country other than a handful of loud-mouthed native informers.) However, the fact that these elements exist and will object when it appears that a Muslim has been successful doesn’t mean we ought to celebrate when the field is one a Muslim shouldn’t be in. Take this passage from Fatemeh Fakhraie’s article:
But I am incredibly excited that there is another female face of Islam in the mainstream media. Rima Fakih is another representation: she doesn’t look like the headscarf-wearing Muslim women usually profiled in human interest stories (the ones who open their own businesses or are fired from Abercrombie & Fitch stores). She doesn’t look like the war-torn women of Iraq of Afghanistan–representations in the media that Americans are used to seeing.
I can’t see why a Muslim would be more inspired by the story of a Muslim woman winning a beauty contest than one running her own business, to be honest. Only a certain type of woman can win a beauty pageant; one who isn’t a certain idea of “perfect” in their body shape and size with a stereotypically “pretty” face, one who isn’t in apparently perfect health, one who doesn’t have an outgoing personality and one who isn’t willing to wear skimpy clothes won’t get close. Running a business, even if in a classically “female” occupation, is a good life skill to have and surely such people make better role models than someone who is judged more beautiful than another woman.
It’s not the first time that Muslims have cheered on Muslims for “excelling” in things Muslims shouldn’t be doing. I have often said that we shouldn’t be watching, let alone participating in, league football as the men who play it wear less than what a man should wear in Islam — and these same brothers cheering on Chelsea or Liverpool or whoever, shouting at the screen as they watch the overpaid players run around with their thighs bared, would not dream of letting their wives out with a hair on their head showing. Worst of all are the Muslim boxers whose knock-outs are celebrated even though they involve punching the opponent in the face, which is forbidden in Islam. The whole culture of boxing is something I have despised since I was a teenager and saw both the Benn-Maclellan and Eubank-Watson fights, in which both of the second fighters mentioned suffered severe brain damage. I have heard the term “knock-out” used to mean a decisive win and a “win on points” to mean a win on technicalities, when in fact a “win on points” in boxing means a round has been won without anyone ending up unconscious.
Rima Fakih’s “success” may be a cut above boxing as she hasn’t damaged anyone’s brain as far as is known, and I found it interested that someone suggested, in a comment on the Muslim Matters article, that her suggestion that she was an Arab-American rather than a Muslim was to disassociate her immoral activity from Islam out of respect for Islam. Why do we consider modelling such an immoral activity that we consider it incompatible with being Muslim when a guy who smashes people’s brains out for a living is celebrated, and even those who criticise them wouldn’t dream of suggesting that they weren’t really Muslims, or wish they weren’t?
Still, we shouldn’t be afraid of saying that this activity is against our religion and that it doesn’t matter if a Muslim wins. Given that they are an outmoded fringe activity even here nowadays and that hardly anyone will be watching, it makes it even less significant. I also find somewhat depressing the recent trend of Muslims attacking other Muslims simply because they find the words on their blogs bitter, even though (or perhaps because) they know them to be true, and long-standing friendships being torn up and blogs going “friends only” with the person who annoyed the author excluded. This is what happened when I posted my defence of Muslim polygamy last month, leading someone to say that I clearly wasn’t as woman-friendly as she thought despite having known me for years and surely having read other things I’d written about the issue in the past, which were generally critical of men who abuse their rights.
This isn’t the only example, and it seems that we are getting much less tolerant of people who annoy us. I’ve noticed two incidents recently (one of them just a few hours ago) where people unfollowed others on Twitter because of really quite petty arguments. Admittedly, these people weren’t exactly the closest of friends; while I’m the first to admit that an online friendship can be deep and meaningful, particularly if it’s the only type of friendship you can have, many are simply casual and peripheral acquaintances and their loss is sad but no big deal. Still, if many more of our friendships and acquaintances break down, there won’t be much left of the Muslim blogging community and certainly not much of an independent Muslim blogging community (outside the Muslimah Media Watch and Muslim Matters groupings). Given that we are not meant to shun people for more than three days and not hold grudges, it is depressing that ties are being cut so easily and for such trivial reasons.
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I don’t always agree with you brother, but I’m not shunning you and I try to be as inclusive as I can, insha’Allah. And I’m blogging again. alhamdulillah
I do support Liverpool. No excuses. Shahid´s last blog ..Pride vs. Martyrdom
Yes, people are taking it far too personally, even though as a “feeler” myself, I have been guilty of that too.
I would like to add that Fatemah was inaccurate that the piece was written by Hena “of” MuslimMatters, almost implying that it represent MM. Sr. Hena submitted a guest piece and after much discussion and disputes, we decided to let her air her opinions and let the readers make their own mind. Most writers on MM preferred to stay out of the discussion because of the various traps it sets up… even when discussing the issue in the realm of role-models, Sr. Hena was attacked for making it personal with Rima (even though she didn’t) and what writers were afraid of. I hope Fatemah can correct the attribution as MM carries many articles from many authors and it does not represent the opinions of all writers.
I say this not because I am being defensive (I thought the article was quite good, a lot-not all- of which I agreed with), but rather because many writers on MM didn’t agree so they do not want to carry the burden of any writer (even a regular MM writer, let alone a guest-writer). amad´s last blog ..Arizona’s New Immigration Law=Legalized Harassment & Racial Profiling: A Muslim Matter
Salaam Alaikum,
Read the MM comments again. Someone has pasted a link to an Arabic interview where she clearly states she is Muslim:
http://muslimmatters.org/2010/.....ment-67515
This is the second time you’ve stated that someone isn’t Muslim when they are. Please be more careful. Safiya Outlines´s last blog ..Girl you know it’s true – Updated
Safiya Outlines, I do not think brother Matthew made takfir on anybody in this article. Perhaps you misunderstood what he was saying?
Zay: I didn’t actually make takfir of her, but said originally that she wasn’t Muslim because I had read that she had said this herself. When I read the comment Safiya referred to I removed that from the original article.
Salam!
@ Amad—thanks for the correction—I will update the piece (if you promise to spell my name correctly next time! ;). It wasn’t my intention to point fingers at MM, and I hope it hasn’t caused problems for you.
@ Indigo—I feel that you misread why Fakih’s win excited me. Muslim women owning businesses IS inspiring and downright awesome (and definitely preferable to beauty-queening). But, as someone who combs through international news every single week for our Friday Links, I see stories like this ALL THE TIME. And usually, they make it seem like the Muslim woman in question is doing something super-duper amazing in spite of being Muslim, or that her owning her own business is super special because she is Muslim. Neither of these is particularly complimentary to Muslim women who own businesses, and the backhanded-compliment story itself is told over and over again.
What I haven’t seen before is a Muslim woman winning a beauty contest. From my point of view, this is just going to be more interesting. My personal feelings about beauty contests are not positive, but I wrote my articles to bring positivity to the discussions around her win. Muslim communities do a fair amount of complaining (most of which, in fairness, I believe is warranted. Not to mention that the basic premise of MMW is to be critical), so this time I wanted to take a positive angle. That’s it.
I don’t feel I’ve cut ties with anyone, nor do I feel this is a productive endeavor. We’re a zillion people—we’re not all going to agree all the time. And—provided that we can respect each other’s opinions—that’s the beauty of it.
assalmu alaikum,
yes, i think we should remeber that the blogospphere is the real world..and that we should interact with others as we would if that person was there with us.
Assalaam alaykum.
The state of the Muslim blogging community isn’t due to the intolerance of those we disagree with. It’s the lack of adab and hikmah I’m finding in a lot of the blog writing & commenting nowadays. I’ve stop reading a lot of blogs (MuslimMatters included), and stopped following a lot of people on Twitter, and unfriended a few on FB because I found them lacking adab & hikmah, which causes me to lose my adab & hikmah, which causes all of us to fall into sin. It’s basically a trick of Satan. And if it’s a choice of keeping a friendship that causes me to fall into sin, or keeping to God, I’m sticking with God. So no, I don’t think ties are being cut trivially. I think it’s extremely dangerous to trivialize people’s feelings like that. If more and more people are cutting ties because of your writing, then maybe you should re-evaluate your writing style, see if it’s lacking hikmah & adab.
Salam alaikoum- +1 on what Africana and Pam said. I sent you the rest in an email. It is very dangerous, like Pam said, to trivialize people’s feelings.
Didn’t feminists once disrupt Miss World? I suppose someone could argue there is the “male” equivalent to beauty contests - Mr Universe, but this is more than just being judged by your appearance, let’s face it - beauty contests judge how “shaggable” a woman looks. If some Muslims think that’s a positive way to advance in society, then they’ve have got a funny idea of positive, IMHO. Or maybe beauty contests have changed, and contestants now include people with hydrocephalus and achondroplasia. And aren’t they gender segregating?
wasalam
Thanks Fatemeh
I wanted to add more last night but my “smart” phone swallowed my comment.
I read some of the tweets on the subject and I was a bit taken back by the vitriol and hatred going around. If someone didn’t like the article because it was full of “haterade” for Rima (I disagree but let’s accept for argument’s sake), then does that excuse the same people of haterade they exhibit to not only the article’s author but the entire team of MM? What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander, shouldn’t it?
Some of the people strongest in vitriol are the same ones we worked closely with on many subjects we agreed upon, like the Gaza massacre for instance. How do we forget our past cordial relationships and then in almost a show of an online mafia, we go on binges of attacking some person and trying to “cut him off”? Did MM pick out Sr. Fatemeh, for instance, and go on a crusade against her even after her response to us? No. Hena Zuberi highlighted her disagreement with Fatemeh in a post, Fatemeh replied, and that was the end of it. No efforts were made or have ever been made to “take out a site or an author” because they weren’t compliant with our views!
I think Yusuf’s point is important. We can disagree in opinions. As long as we are not talking about statements of kufr, there is indeed a wide spectrum of POVs, and as Fatemeh said, we can express our strong disapproval of these opinions, but there’s its childish to “cut someone out” for it.
I also agree with Pam that there is a lot of intolerance out there. But we have to recognize what is behind it. A lot of people will say things online that they could never say in person. So, there’s the “hiding behind the handle” effect that makes people feel impervious to the consequences of nasty rhetoric. I know I have said a lot of bad things too that I couldn’t in real life. Secondly, people who are new to blogging want to make their mark quickly, and in their enthusiasm, they go overboard. But as commentators mature, you’ll see increasing amount of hikmah and adab. Thirdly, it does no good to simply desert people because of that, but instead to continually advise in the hope for improvement. The online world is a microcosm of the real Muslim world out there and good people need to stay involved in order to keep order. So, Sr. Pam, I hope you will get involved again, and pls feel free to email me directly when you find anything unpleasant from me or others.
In conclusion, I think everyone out there who is working on behalf of Muslims, is doing so sincerely. MM is a non-profit organization, I suspect so is MMW and other blogs. And each of us contribute a little bit to getting the Muslim voice out there. If folks think that 51% of our material is beneficial and 49% junk, then the Muslim world is still better off having us online. The same goes with other sites. amad´s last blog ..Arizona’s New Immigration Law=Legalized Harassment & Racial Profiling: A Muslim Matter
totally agree with yaqoob. beauty contests reinforce so many ideas about valuing people based on the extent to which they conforming to society’s ideas of beauty. as muslims we shoulkd be showing the world an alternative not cheering on an ignorant practice.
Assalamu alaikum,
“I also find somewhat depressing the recent trend of Muslims attacking other Muslims simply because they find the words on their blogs bitter, even though (or perhaps because) they know them to be true, and long-standing friendships being torn up and blogs going “friends only” with the person who annoyed the author excluded.”
I’m really sorry, Yusuf, that my decision to make my blog private, and to also cut ties with you has upset you so much, and that you feel the need to use an unrelated topic to take a swipe at me over it. But as I’ve said to you before, it wasn’t just about your polygamy piece. I don’t just wake up one day and decide to cut ties with people. You have made comments to me, in the past, that I’ve let go although I’ve found them to be hurtful, and I found your polygamy post to be completely dismissive of the real-life practice of polygamy in many places in the world, full stop, and I find a correlation between your public comments on polygamy and certain private comments to me regarding my chances of getting married should I choose to use a dog guide (pretty much telling me they’d be greatly reduced) among other things, to be quite uncomfortable and negative, and perhaps my reactions to some of your private comments to me weren’t just me being oversensitive and emotional at all. I think you can say the truth without making people feel like crap, especially regarding something of a sensitive nature like marriage or polygamy.
“This is what happened when I posted my defence of Muslim polygamy last month, leading someone to say that I clearly wasn’t as woman-friendly as she thought despite having known me for years and surely having read other things I’d written about the issue in the past, which were generally critical of men who abuse their rights.”
Again, I’m the one who made these comments, and again, I’m saying “perhaps”, as in perhaps I misjudged you, because based on your past posts and comments, your dismissive attitude toward women who might be suffering in polygamous marriages, in your rush to defend the “Islamicity” of the practice, was really quite shocking to me.
I had actually started questioning whether or not I should have cut ties with you, had even considered emailing you an apology, etc. However, seeing as how you’ve chosen to take two public swipes at me in one post, I’ll unfortunately need to rethink that decision.
I’m really sorry about this, firstly, because I’ve offended you, and secondly, because I’ve been made to seem like an impulsive, emotional person, who flies off the handle easily, and cuts ties with people I’ve known for years at the drop of a hat, which I am not like that at all.
My decision to take my blog private was something I’d been considering for a long time, and who I do or do not chose to invite is my business. You seem to take people’s decisions to stop blogging or make their blogs privately quiet personal, and you seem to take great offense at others’ decisions, especially when you feel slighted by those decisions, and I’m not sure what to tell you about this, except to say that I’m saddened and disappointed by this.
I’m not sure what else to say to you regarding this matter, except to tell you that my recent actions didn’t just have to do with you. And I’ve attempted to explain this more than once.
[…] I ended up on this brother’s blog amidst a fallout ? I don’t know of the history behind blog groupings, haven’t been around long […]
Salaams I feel like the kindergartener at the senior prom and I think I just spilled the punch. I did not know of any groupings or history or who is a part of which site. Please excuse any harm I have caused and chalk it up to my being a rookie. Brother Amad thank you. Sister Fatemeh , I should have disagreed with you in a wiser way-did not mean it personally at all. Sorry if it caused you trouble in your work in the bigger picture. All good was from Allah all bad was from my own nafs. Brother Indigo-Asalamalikum
Salaam Matthew/Yusuf
The ‘defence of polygamy’ post addressed a hugely sensitive and serious topic that can destroy lives. I’m not sure the stakes get much higher than that. You chose to write provocatively and responses were duly provoked, you chose to be challenging and responses were duly challenged. Passion can be provocative. I recognise it in my own writing too.
A logical sequence of events.
You are also choosing to receive differing views as an attack. There is no need to view responses in such bleak terms.
Elsewhere your writing is informative, incisive and reflective.
If people do not conform to your views it is simply a sincere, albeit passionate, difference of opinion. This post is disappointingly disingenuous. Come on. Cheer up. It’s all good.
Jzk
Well, this personal stuff between bloggers is nothing new. The problem seems to be that many people (women in particular IME) can’t accept that they can have disagreements with people over issues and not take it as personal hurt.
I haven’t followed this conflict closely and I’m not saying I have an opinion on who is right or wrong in this particular case, but in my initial reading of your post on polygamy I didn’t see anything wrong with it. Nor did I see anything wrong with Ginny’s post. Where you guys got personal over this, I don’t have time to figure out. I have a dear friend in a very successful polygamous relationship so I see things from that perspective but I also see it from the perspective that I know 99.999% of people would not be as successful as my friend’s family. We certainly should not blame the institution for the abuses of the few, as that sam logic can (and frequently is) expanded to all of religion. You know the line: “I don’t believe in organized religion because too many people commit horrible acts in the name of religion.”
In my own experience, even when I was bending over backwards to word things carefully, I was still accused of being “hurtful” for merely stating a different opinion. I was sorry when this issue broke up my own blogger-friendship years ago and I’m sorry to see it breaking up still more.
P.S. I wish more people shared your view of boxing. Thank you!
Will you please stop deleting my comments.
I can approve or delete whoever’s comments I want to. It’s my blog.
BismiLlah… as-salamu `alaykum wa rahmatuLlah…
Sidi Yusuf, don’t worry. Your sticking to the shari
ah despite hawa is what I like about this blog e.g. the fact that polygamy is permissible and the fact that you point out this "miss USA" should not be doing what she is doing as well as condemning those who support muslims in football and boxing. Our only concern is saadah al-abadiyyah - eternal happiness and this is only attained with hidayah to islam and tawfiq to follow the shariah, from Allah taala fi `ula.keep me in your duas, was-salam Suleiman b. Salim´s last blog ..Mawlid in Tarim – 03 June 2010 – Dar al-Mustafa [mp3]
There’s always the question whether blogs appeal to Muslims as a means of communication, or whether they prefer other methods - such as videos.
Has the Muslim community got any opinion on the H.264 vs WebM format war for HTML5? Which file format do Muslims prefer for their video material?
M Risbrook: in Islam there is something called a “mubah” or something which is permitted but which has no virtue, something morally neutral. The notion of which video codec is better, in and of itself, is one of these matters. The same is true of school uniform, as you asked earlier, in and of itself (as opposed to the ethics of the companies you might have to pay to license the codec and issues such as poor children being shut out of education through over-expensive uniforms).
I’m wondering which video file format will be the most popular within the Islamic world and whether it will be the same as or different from the most popular choice used by Muslims from outside the Islamic world. The software patents for H.264 do not apply in the Islamic world, with the possible exception of Iraq - unless somebody knows otherwise. Neither do they apply in Europe.