What’s wrong with the world

This is what is wrong with the world. (hat-tip to Jasmine).

While millions starve for the simplest meal, while millions worldwide thirst for clean water, while millions go without shelter from the elements, while millions go without safety, education, jobs, and healthcare, there are self-absorbed, warped souls in the world that would spend $1.3million for a cellphone, $1.63million for a purse and $14,000 for a mere tea-bag.

The fact that a person with over a million to spare in pocket change can throw it away on a frivolous item instead of consider the impact it could make on millions of human lives, shows how human hearts and souls can be warped into becoming almost unrecognizable as human hearts and souls.

Dude, you’re gettin’ a dud

I had my Sony VAIO for four years before I had serious problems. I just got this Dell XPS M1210 this year. It’s already crashing and freezing continuously.

For someone who is starting a new job and writing a book manuscript, this is serious trouble. When I need to get a spot of work done, when I have a moment of leisure from the 2-year old, it is essential that I get that work done. When with 2 measly programs open, the laptop freezes up and chokes, I cannot. It is another story that Vista stinks to high heaven.

I am very unhappy that the money I spent - while still unemployed - has gone to waste.

A treasure chest for Lahore-lovers

Thanks to Baraka, a fellow nostalgic Lahorite, I have found Lahore Nama. The blog is a treasure-chest of jewels for those who love the old, old and very, very modern city of Lahore. Lahore is where I spent most of my life. It is one of the largest cities in Pakistan, just on the border to India, and the capital city of Punjab province. The river Ravi runs through it (or one should use the past tense, given the state of the river), and it is the scene of tremendous academic, religious, literary and cultural activity.

I am a denizen of the city - my father, who was born and raised there, describes himself as a “Lahore ka keera” (literally, a bug of Lahore, which means one who knows the city like the back of his hand). I still yearn for it everyday, and whenever I return, I discover secrets and jewels tucked away in its dusty streets and along its willow-lined canal banks. Mughal monuments, Sufi shrines, colonial architecture, the lively world of the inner city and the oh-so-chic world of the upper-classes - Lahore has everything.

And aint I a woman?

Muse inspired me to remember Sojourner Truth today. Other events - such as being a woman in this world - also moved me, of course. So here is her speech converted to poetic format by Erlene Stetson (here is the complete speech in prose).

That man over there say
a woman needs to be helped into carriages
and lifted over ditches
and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helped me into carriages
or over mud puddles
or gives me a best place. . .

And ain’t I a woman?
Look at me
Look at my arm!
I have plowed and planted
and gathered into barns
and no man could head me. . .
And ain’t I a woman?
I could work as much
and eat as much as a man–
when I could get to it–
and bear the lash as well
and ain’t I a woman?
I have born 13 children
and seen most all sold into slavery
and when I cried out a mother’s grief
none but Jesus heard me. . .
and ain’t I a woman?
that little man in black there say
a woman can’t have as much rights as a man
cause Christ wasn’t a woman
Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with him!
If the first woman God ever made
was strong enough to turn the world
upside down, all alone
together women ought to be able to turn it
rightside up again.

“What are we going to do about American women?”

Enjoy my new (satirical! satirical!) post at Religion Dispatches.

“We have to liberate them. We have to let them know that their way of life is evil at its core. Years of subjugation and conditioning have rendered them incapable of desiring something better. We have to empower them to hate their civilization, their culture, their people, their norms of gender and sex.

“Yes, I appreciate that it is an enormous undertaking, but since what we have to offer is so much better, surely it cannot be that hard. We have to teach them that they should abandon the men they trust and obey–all of them …”

17 reasons to wear a headscarf

My latest post is up at Religion Dispatches.

Mourning Malcolm X again

Here was a man.

Here was a true man, a truthful man, a powerful man, a man of historic strength. And this man was gunned down in cold blood.

This was a death that deserves to be mourned again and again. It is doubtful to me that America has ever been granted a soul as great as this one.

Just like a submissive woman

My latest blog post “Just Like a Submissive Woman” is up at Religion Dispatches.
As a Muslim feminist who does not wear a head-cover but who fights for women’s right to do so with total honor, I am in that uncomfortable space between Muslims and non-Muslims. Many non-Muslims would not accept my feminist credentials and many Muslims would sniff at my Muslim qualifications.

Still, when certain strands of feminism put on their French blinders - “Le foulard? Patriarchy! Sexism!” it’s hard to resist.

Excerpt:

White feminists need to establish that their solidarity with all women is not contingent upon these women becoming replicas of White Western women. Women should not be excluded from the benefits of global sisterhood because of a shalwar kameez, or a business suit, or a kaffiyeh, or a sari, or a headscarf, or a face-veil. Or because of Islam.

The price of freedom

Lynndie England “apologizes” for the scandal in Abu Ghraib, but lashes out at the media:

Look, she half-snarls like an angry teenager in trouble, I’m kind of sorry I took those pictures. Those pictures with me holding a naked Iraqi by a leash and posing with a pile of naked Iraqis, where I’m pointing at a naked prisoner’s genitals. Yes, I’m sorry I took those pictures.

But if the MEDIA hadn’t PUBLISHED them, no one would have found out about them. And it wouldn’t have created such a scandal. And everything would have been okay! Except for the naked Iraqi in the leash, maybe, but whatever.

I mean, if we’d just kept it quiet, and circulated the photographs for private entertainment — well, of course we took the photos because we thought they were entertaining and because we wanted to preserve that amusement for others and for future merriment. Of course. We don’t get cable out there in Baghdad, you know. And Gawd, this stuff was FUNNY. I mean, did you see that guy’s penis? I just wanted to pose next to that thing because it was cool. And one of these was actually kind of like a family photo.

But the worst thing is, when the pictures came out, the Iraqis got an excuse to get really mad and to shoot at us, and so a whole LOT of people got killed — and whose fault was that? THE MEDIA. For publishing the pictures.I’m so angry that those people got killed. Lives were lost, American lives, all because … of the media. Big picture, people.

Because let’s get real - these things happen in war. Face up to it. Except this time, when they published the photos, those frigging anti-war people had their chance. And THIS war is important. Big picture, okay? Collateral damage happens. Except some kinds of collateral is okay, and other kinds is not okay. Focus, people.
It’s not like I’m the only one that did those things. Which makes it all so much better.

These things happen in war, right? Degradation, sexual humiliation, torture, dehumanization, - all this stuff happens when you’re trying to bring democracy to a people. It’s not easy importing freedom.

Strawberry Shortcake and Charlie & Lola

I picked up a DVD of Strawberry Shortcake (Strawberry Shortcake meets spring) in a moment of desperation at a Columbia, MD baby thrift store a few months ago. I regretted spending that $8, so I’d like to warn you not to. Strawberry Shortcake is not my ideal role model for Raihana. Her primary characteristic is “sweetness.” The very grownup singing is not just very grownup - it’s annoying (”That girl’s so sweet - just like her name- Strawberry Shortcake.”) Strawberry Shortcake grows strawberries. Her cat is called Custard. Her friends bake cookies and cakes and do other nurtury things, always involving a great deal of sugar. I do not need this with all my other struggles to keep Raihana eating healthy.

But the worst part of the DVD I picked up is Huck. Huck is the only boy in this DVD. He wears his baseball cap backwards. While Angel bakes cakes and Strawberry grows berries, Huck - what does he do for a vocation? He sails all over on his skateboard. And not just that: while all the girls are working together responsibly on planting berries or finding spring clues, Huck and Custard run off and (to the beat of percussion) decide that it’s more fun to indulge in some physical play. Ew.

Instead, I picked up “Charlie and Lola” at Vision Video. What a relief. Not only are they real children, with real childlike fantasies and real childlike grammar. Charlie is the nurturing, patient older brother - a responsible boy - whose happy, imaginative, playful little sister Lola (who is “small and very funny”) has an imaginary playmate called Soren Lorenson. Charlie teaches Lola that peas are really skydrops in greenland and that other food items are likewise a lot of fun. They may have cookies and cakes in there, but I don’t remember any.

And pick up the books - the show is originally a book series, and I wish I could get some of them but all I seem to find is paperback, and Raihana is in Jane the Ripper mode.

So if it’s a choice between the two, I say Charlie & Lola - skip the sugary gender stereotypes.