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DOES MY HEAD LOOK SHOT IN THIS?
An Australian children’s book (Does My Head Look Big In This?, by Randa Abdel-Fattah) receives a positive review in the Montreal Gazette:
Being a teenager isn’t easy at the best of times, but 16-year-old Amal has decided to do something that will complicate things further: wear a hijab full time.
Her parents and teacher try to talk her out of it - she was born and raised in Australia - but she’s made up her mind, and she doesn’t want to back down.
It’s not easy. First, there are the nasty girls at her new school. And there’s her crush on a non-Muslim boy. Then there’s her best friends: one’s obsessed with her weight and the other has a bossy family.
This debut novel is funny, smart, serious, and fun.
It’s for anyone who’s ever felt like they didn’t belong.
Sure; all alienated teens can relate to oppressive religious strictures. As it happens, I’m working on a similar novel, with a feel-good ending tailored for the Middle Eastern market:
Being a teenager isn’t easy at the best of times, but 16-year-old Amal has decided to do something that will complicate things further: stop wearing her hijab.
Her parents and brothers try to talk her out of it - she was born and raised under fundamentalist Islam - but she’s made up her mind, and she doesn’t want to back down.
So they kill her.
She has a crush on a non-muslim boy? Does the story end with her honor killing?
I hope so. Everyone loves a happy ending! BTW, does this make me look Fatah?
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 06 17 at 01:41 PM • permalinkLOL, Rob. I hope that they don’t get stoned on their first date.
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 06 17 at 04:25 PM • permalinkI hope Abdel-Fattah is aware that the directive to wear headscarves comes from the Hadiths, whereas the directives not to let your daughters get it on with infidels comes from the Qu’ran.
The Hadiths are of questionable authenticity (ok, more like no authenticity) and are not accepted by all muslims.
The Qu’ran is accepted by all muslims as the word of God, and hence a cornerstone to the faith.
So yeah, there’s no theological justification for her to do the former and not the latter.
Smorgasboard religion. I love it, but it does leave you open to accusations of hypocrisy.
Posted by Quentin George on 2007 06 17 at 05:15 PM • permalink“Does my bomb look big in this”.
Does any one else think of Cousin Itt from the Addams family whenever they see these women in the full gear? Especially when they wear sunnies across the eyeslit.
They really look ridiculous. How anybody can look at them and not laugh is beyond me. No beast in the kingdom is forced to cover themselves like this - it is very unnatural.
Posted by Effing & Blinding on 2007 06 17 at 06:05 PM • permalinkThey just have to use a weaker sunscreen under there, cuckoo.
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 06 17 at 06:59 PM • permalinkWon’t you need to have the ‘non-Muslim’ boy get beaten seriously by the girls male relatives?
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2007 06 17 at 07:05 PM • permalinkDid anyone catch this on the Oz ABC last night? I only caught a few minutes of “When the Moors Ruled Europe” but it was strikingly similar to “When Sadaam Ruled Iraq” - you know, children flying kites under rainbows etc.
It’s amazing how many Christians in Andalucia converted to Islam voluntarily - for the superior health care and universal literacy I guess. Jizya anyone?
Nothing washes whiter than the ABC.
Funny I saw this book selling in Big W on the weekend. She looked stupid in pink. She looked like a garden gnome.
I purchased a very good DVD called The Seige starring Honey Bunny Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis. The Siege is a 1998 film about a fictional situation where terrorist cells have made several attacks on New York City. It’s a very good film, and a must watch inrelation to Terrorism in America. ***** star.
America, protect yourselves before you protect Iraq!
One doubts the poor woman from Muzzie Zapper’s link on that horribly depressing thread yesterday would be in a hurry to purchase a copy. I wonder, should she ever learn of such a book (ha, ha, good one), would she beat her fists in frustration or cry herself to sleep?
#15.
It’s curious, though. The laudable features of Moorish Spain (religious tolerance, flowering of art, music, culture, science and medicine) all occured in Frankish Outremer as well. In fact, even Muslims actually had more freedom in the Crusader kingdoms than they had in their own lands. (Notably, they were able to change their religion without being killed).
Do you think we’ll see a documentary named
“When the Franks ruled Palestine”
?
Posted by Quentin George on 2007 06 17 at 11:47 PM • permalinkYou’d think the ABC would’ve found it counterproductive to loudly praise this cultural science & medicine they speak of.
Posted by stahlblume on 2007 06 18 at 12:07 AM • permalinkAfter the Arabs discovered Aristotle and the rest of Greek history, they did have a civilization that was superior to that of Europe during the same time period. It was through the crusades that the West rediscovered Aristotle, et al, which led to the reawakening in Europe. However, while Europe was discovering its heritage, the Caliphate began its slow decent back into its own Dark Ages.
In other words, Islam had its chance but blew it. As they came into contact with the West, they threw out everything that had made their Golden Age possible. They’ve done nothing since, except be a boil on the butt of the world.
As I watch what is happening to us these days, I often wonder if we have not put ourselves into the same kind of reversal as Islam did after the Crusades. Many people rue the fact that we have lost religion in the West, but I don’t think it is religion that we’ve lost, but the Renaissance and the Age of Reason—those ideas that gave mankind a period of progress unprecedented in the whole history of the species.
Since some above referred to the ABC I’m goin’ o/t to mention tonight’s ball-tearing kick to the credibles of Red Kezza by Minister For Communications, Senator Helen Coonan. The Dauphin, or at least the deux fins de siecle presenter of the 7.30 Report decided to throw a really tough one at the Minister. Now, you’ll remember (not!) that Kerry was about the only presenter who, when interviewed by Helen Fanning for her very good doco series “Crossing The Line” a couple of years back, was confident in his never having crossed the line. Proud he was, of his extraordinary fairness. Even the lovely Ms McKew, as political as they come, admitted that people of her calling had narrow and cloistered views of the community at large.
Back to the chase. Kerry put it to Coonan that the coalition had done “nothing about broadband for eleven years”. He crossed the line, and not for the first time. The Kezza doth protest too much. She nailed him. A spirited response, pointing out that the “11 years” charge was manifestly wrong and unfair, as dial up had been the only way most people could access the internet until about 2004. Kerry was shown to be spouting agitprop.
Broadband, like other new technologies, was not always there for the taking, and does take time to make it to all areas of the nation.
The current political & media storm over broadband is the equivalent of insisting that TV should have been introduced everywhere simultaneously. It was never going to happen. The same will be true for digital radio, or any other technology which has to be trialled, introduced in cities, then spread terrestrially to the more scattered populations in the regions at greater and greater expense per head.A strange Islamic inroad. Washington state, again.
(Dammit. Off to the lake for a coupla days an’ I miss all the hilarity goin’ on at Tim’s place. Gotta get wireless up there.)
I think the ending to Tim’s version isn’t so much “feel good” as “feel dead”.
Posted by Tex Lovera on 2007 06 18 at 09:41 AM • permalinkRebeccaH,
Of course, no Muslim girl will be allowed to read it.
If I may correct you: Since it is forbidden to educate women under Islam, the correct expression would be,
Of course, no Muslim girl will be able to read it.
Posted by Mark Razak on 2007 06 18 at 09:57 AM • permalink#30: You’re on to that one, Blogstrop.
Helen Coonan made interviewer Red Kerry look like a boy on a bicycle with a backpack full of junk mail.
His line of questioning about the future of broadband internet in Australia betrayed a political bias closed to clear and rational discussion of the alternatives. Yeah, it’s well cute to throw the weekly newspaper still wrapped in a rubber band on the Minister’s doorstep. But with all that stern and meaningful posturing, he pulled out nothing that admitted to genuine consideration of the best use of investor’s - and indeed, the jaggin’ nation’s - actual dollars.
Teacher: your homework tonight will be to calculate the gradient of a tangent to the curve where x equals…
Muslim girl: *interrupting* Sir, god willing, I must go to the toilet. Can I go now?
Teacher: *runs finger along blade of Saracen thoughtfully* Of course you can go, Fatima, but there are only seven minutes remaining until the end of class, so you may not!
*like any good Muslim girl, Fatima stays and goes at the same time*
splice: do you mean scimitar? I suppose you could run a finger alongside a Saracen, and he might even like it—or he might cut off your hand with his scimitar.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 06 19 at 10:03 AM • permalink#28 “Many people rue the fact that we have lost religion in the West, but I don’t think it is religion that we’ve lost, but the Renaissance and the Age of Reason—”
I call this the Scooby-doo betrayal.
Do they have Scooby-doo cartoons down under? If not, I’ll explain. See, those “dratted kids” would solve mysteries by showing that the superstition being used to control people was a hoax. The ghosts were never real. It was the young advocates of reason, and Velma’s preferences for science, against the old foggies superstition and fear. Science and reason always won.
And then they made new versions of Scooby-doo where the ghosts were real. The magic was real. The curses and superstition were real.
It’s soooo bad these days that a person has to be careful not to scoff in front of people you don’t want to offend but don’t know well enough to know if they believe in psychics and fortune telling and spirits and powers and… or even ghosts.
We’ve gone from an unemotional piety and belief that God created a rational world to crystals and energies.
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Tim, you left out a paragraph.
It’s not easy. First, there are the nasty religious police who patrol the town beating uncovered women. And there’s the fact that she has been accused of speaking with a Muslim boy who is not her relative, and is currently awaiting trial. Then there’s her best friends: one’s a fifteen-year-old mother of three and the other she has never seen, as her family does not permit her to leave her home.