NYC Letter: "Uncovered Meat"

UPDATE 10.28.06:

'RAPE' CLERIC REFUSES TO STEP DOWN

SYDNEY October 28, 2006 (Telegraph) - Last night, the board of Sydney's Lakemba Mosque Association agreed to accept Sheikh Taj el-Din Al Hilali's public apology - and his excuse that the comments about women and rape had been taken out of context - but suspended him from preaching at the mosque for up to three months.

... When asked by reporters whether he would resign his post, the self-styled Mufti of Australia replied: "After we clean the world of the White House first."

His spokesman, Keysar Trad, later said al-Hilali was making a point that US President George W Bush's foreign policy and invasion of Iraq were more deserving of criticism than a sermon.

"He says he's just a frail old cleric, not the president of the United States, and the media should not be so pedantic about his words," Trad said.

... Outside the mosque his anti-American rhetoric was greeted by cheers and applause from dozens of supporters.

So, if you didn't quite follow the above tendered rational, here it is in a nutshell: During a sermon, a Muslim cleric equates women who fall short of Muslim modesty with "uncovered meat". "Uncovered meat" placed among Muslim tomcats is an incitement to rape with the meat to blame. The cleric publicly apologized for his trope out of its context, the context being a sermon equating women who fall short of Muslim modesty with "uncovered meat" who incite rape. America is evil.

It's always good to get the important things correct.

The original story follows below.

OUTRAGE AS CLERIC BLAMES WOMEN FOR RAPE
SYDNEY October 27, 2006 (Scotsman)

We don't know what to make of this story. Yes, the cleric, Sheik Taj Aldin al Hilali, clearly believes that the defective comportment of a woman is to blame for sexual assault and rape. But read the offending passage first:

In the Nation newspaper, Sheik al Hilali was quoted as saying: "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside ... and the cats come to eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's?

"The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred."

Now what is wrong with this? Well, the uncovered meat in his analogy has no agency. It doesn't take itself out and situate itself among sexually peckish Musulman cats. You, the listener, the reader, has been recruited to put the meat at hazard. Mr. Hilali may think the uncovered meat the problem, but the fault lies with you, the reader.

How does someone like Mr. Hilali, a top-drawer Muslim deep-thinker, charged with sorting out these ethical thickets for the jama'ah, how does someone like this make such a hash of his simple trope?

Ah, but again you, dear skimmer, are to blame for freighting Islamic thinking with Western notions. Women have no effective agency in Islam. They are chattel, like furniture or in Mr. Hilali's example, prime rib. They are to be stored or devoured or beaten or tossed -- depending on your trope -- properly by their proper owners. Of course Mr. Hilali deplores rape -- he has condemned it -- but he deplores it as a property owner deplores vandalism, as damage to his property, a depreciation of an asset, a dimunition of his net worth.

Which brings us round to Western ideas about uncovered meat.

FRENCH PM GLAD TO SEE BRITAIN DEBATING MUSLIM [SIC] VEIL

PARIS October 26, 2006 (Reuters) - French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin welcomed Britain's debate about limiting Muslim veils, saying on Thursday he was glad to see London come around to a view that Paris has held for a long time.

Villepin recalled that France was widely criticised in Britain two years ago when it banned the Muslim headscarf and other religious garb from its state schools as an unacceptable intrusion of faith into the public sphere.

The debate in Britain is about limiting the full facial veil, or niqab, and not the headscarf. But Villepin saw a parallel in the way both societies were setting standards to which immigrant communities would have to conform.

"I'm glad to see France's secular demands are now being discussed seriously abroad," Villepin said at his monthly news conference.

"British personalities often lectured me about this, (asking) why a country should pass a secular law about religious garb at school," he said.

"I'm glad to see they're now asking themselves the questions we've been asking ourselves for quite a long time. Being a country means respecting rules, and especially respecting authority. It means respecting principles and values, and that's France's strength."

Yes, well, displays of that French cultural strength in her banlieues aside, the French love nothing better than to implicate others in failed ideas to which France is committed. And before we continue it will be helpful to keep clear what Dom here tries to muddy.

First, the British issue centers on the niqab, where it is treated as a cultural appurtenant, which it is, unlike the hijab, which in France is treated wholly as a religious appurtenant, which it is not. The Qu'ran does not stipulate veiling much less the fashion veiling should take. The only Islamic command for dress is that both men and women exhibit modesty [24:30-31], beyond that there is no universal dress code.

Second, the British issue has to do with assimilation into the British state, not some ginned-up threat to state secularism, a threat that arose in France only two years ago.

Third, Dom is, contrary to his press clippings and admirers, among whom he is foremost, Dom is not very bright -- though we are constrained to admit in the dark Chirac marquee, of the many dim bulbs, he is not the dimmest bulb. For a deep-thinker like Dom a superficial similarity between the French law and the very different British debate suffices to claim Britain as following France's lead.

France prescribes in law that Mr. Hilali's "meat" be "uncovered" in every state education setting and venue. We have made our argument against this bad law elsewhere (Dom De Villepin, "Mujahideen Like Me"), but quote it here to spare you the click:

Well, you can take Dom out of the colonial service (scil., Foreign Ministry), but you can't take the colonialist out of Dom.

The French interior minister, Dominique de Villepin, said yesterday that the country must urgently begin training Muslim clerics in a moderate Islam that respects human rights and the republican code. ...he said France had to "face the issue of training imams. I ask you to help the Muslim faith get organised better and more quickly so that a real 'French Islam' can emerge."

Dom looks to have the French state back in the religion business again, this time manufacturing nice French Muslims.

Whatever happened to the much bruited laïcité, the vaunted "French secular tradition"? In a nation boasting some 1,500 years of history, during most of which the French state sought to regularize religion, the "French secular tradition", dating back no further than 1905, is pretty small beer.

The problem of radical Islamic clerics preaching a message contrary to French law and values is a pressing one: government figures show 27 Muslim prayer leaders have been deported on public order or human rights grounds since 2001 - more than half of them since last July.

France clearly has a problem. But while French imams incite congregations to celebrate the Madrid bombings, instruct husbands in the proper beating of wives, while tournantes are institutionalized as a cultural recreation in the banlieues, how has the French state responded? With this.

I've detailed elsewhere my opinion of Jack's hijab ban, vid., seventh comment , third comment, first comment. Not surprisingly, the French themselves are confused by their hash:

A document on implementing the law, made public Wednesday by the Education Ministry, is so imprecise that one leading French daily, Le Figaro, wrote that bandanas would be forbidden while another, Le Monde, said that bandanas might be acceptable.

...the document leaves a small loophole. It states that signs and apparel with no religious significance "even if they can be worn in certain cases for religious motives" are not forbidden — unless they are worn "in conditions that would make them a conspicuous sign of religious affiliation."

Huh?

The document appears to exempt students in overseas French territories, like the Indian Ocean island of Reunion, where head coverings are customary.

It was not clear whether turbans worn by students from France's tiny Sikh community, not mentioned in the document, would be affected.

The text opens the doors to court cases, [Philippe Guittet, a union leader for school principals], told Le Monde. "It distinguishes between religious apparel, which is forbidden, and traditional apparel, which is acceptable. But how do you tell the difference?"

[All emphases added.]

What is more confusing is the political calculation behind this law. After pimping Dom out to the Arab world to curry French influence, Jack suddenly decides to bully Muslim schoolgirls. Of course Muslim schoolgirls aren't the problem, but the ban has given a respectable rally point to the very Islamofascists Jack needs to beat down -- a desperate task for which he lacks the courage.

The problem radical Islam poses for Western democracies is not in the persons of young unempowered Muslimahs. The French law puts young Muslim girls and women in an untenable situation. They can either stay solely within the compass of Muslim culture as chattel or they can conform to the state dress code and risk being beaten or worse as "uncovered meat" by their father or uncles or brothers or any other Muslim male to hand. Meanwhile Musulmans continue to burn down France.

Posted by Damian at October 27, 2006 12:00 PM