Each comedian profiled has their own angle on both the entertainment business and the experiences of Muslims in the United States. Maysoon Zayid talks about being a Palestinian-American Muslim woman who doesn’t cover her hair, a virgin, and a disabled person aspiring to become an actress.

Dean Obeidallah shares the story of how he initially stopped using his Arab last name when performing in the aftermath of 9/11, then had a change of heart and a change of direction.

Azhar Usman, who is shown praying in his dressing room at one point, discusses going through a conservative phase before realizing that his path in life ultimately lay elsewhere.

Many viewers will relate to Ahmed Ahmed’s anxiety in regards to air travel, except that in Ahmed Ahmed’s case there is the added “bonus” of traveling while Muslim and enduring extreme suspicion. And Tissa Hami’s account of enduring prejudice both from non-Muslims and Muslims (some of whom have told her that she is “going to hell”) is not exactly a laughing matter.

Yet, staying true to its subject matter, the special manages to be light-hearted as well. The featured jokes could probably make even David Horowitz laugh, or so I’d like to believe.

Prior to the premiere, I was given an opportunity to interview several of the comedians, and here is what we talked about:

Natalia: Can you tell me more about the PBS special?

Dean Obeidallah: The one-hour special is the brainchild of producer Glenn Baker who first approached us almost four years ago with the idea of shooting a documentary about Muslim and Arab-American comedians. The documentary begins with us performing before any of us had appeared on any major US TV networks. However, by the end of the documentary many of us had appeared on Comedy Central, ABC, CNN, NBC and on numerous other TV networks, so viewers get a chance to watch us move up the entertainment ladder.

Maysoon Zayid: I am so blessed to be involved in this project with such extraordinary talent, including my brother from another mother, Dean Obeidallah. Glen and Omar [Naim - the co-director] were invisible. They made it so easy for us. I’m amazed with the end product. Omar is truly genius. It’s funny. And no one gets shot. AND you get to see my Dad. That alone is worth TiVo-ing.

Natalia: What’s it like to be a Muslim American working in the entertainment industry in the year 2008?

Dean Obeidallah: The entertainment industry is very competitive and is a struggle for everyone, regardless of race or religion. [Being] an Arab-American comedian who talks about my heritage in my act, has set me apart from many other typical comedians because I have a point of view that has not been heard from too often in the past. In the last few years, the entertainment industry has increasingly been supportive of our comedy.

Maysoon Zayid: I don’t know. No, just kidding, I do. I find it very difficult not only being a Muslim but a disabled female Muslim who doesn’t fit the stereotype shown by mainstream media of what a Muslim woman should look and sound like. Nearly all of my experience comes from the entertainment side and I found that, once someone takes a chance on casting me, its been a great opportunity for people who know very little about my culture to learn. In those instances I’ve had a wonderful reception from the majority of my colleagues as well as the Muslim community itself. Oh and the Italian Christians love me too.

Natalia: What are your audiences like nowadays, do lots of Muslims come to see your shows? Are there Jews in the audience?

Dean Obeidallah: When I’m not traveling for shows, I’m in NYC performing nightly at the major comedy clubs so the audiences are a cross section of every race and religion. When we do the Middle Eastern themed shows then the audience is probably 60% Middle Eastern. I am fortunate to have supporters of all different backgrounds

Maysoon Zayid: I don’t make it a policy to check what religion my audience members are, so I cant answer that. Because its not really something I think about nor do I care. Religion is personal. It doesn’t matter to me what religion anyone in my audience is.

I do know for a fact however that I’ve had a Mormon in the audience because she happened to be my best friend.

Natalia: This is just a stab in the dark, but, as an American, I get the impression that there is this sense of discomfort between Muslim Americans and Jewish Americans, and I see comedy as something that has the long-term potential to repair this situation. Am I naive to think this way?

Maysoon Zayid: Please don’t use the word “stab” in the same sentence as “Muslim Americans” and “Jewish Americans.”

Dean Obeidallah: I truly believe that comedy can be used to foster understating between Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and [people of] all different backgrounds. In fact, I have toured colleges for four years in a show I co-created called “Stand up for Peace” with Jewish comedian Scott Blakeman. Our shows are generally co-sponsored by Arab, Jewish, and Muslim student groups.

The goal is to bring together people of different backgrounds and religions (especially Arabs/Muslims and Jewish-Americans), to foster understanding through laughter as well as to attract support for a peaceful, negotiated resolution to the Middle East conflict. I can promise you that our show is much more fun than the events featuring speakers on the extreme right who appear on college campuses with the goal of dividing people through their hate-filled rhetoric.

Natalia: “Axis of Evil” was a success in the Middle East . Would you say that this success is indicative of the way that Muslim American comedians are perceived in Muslim majority nations overall?

Dean Obeidallah: I actually didn’t go with the Axis guys for that tour. However, I have performed in the Middle East before on my own and am returning for shows in late May/early June with Ahmed Ahmed and Maz Jobrani.

Comedy does not have geographic barriers. The Internet, TV shows and films have brought the world closer together. I can also tell you that I learned that we have one big thing in common: Jokes about President Bush get big laughs both in the US and in the Middle East!

Maysoon Zayid: Whether you’re part of the Muslim community or not, if you appreciate good comedy, you’re gonna love our shows. I’ve done shows in Beirut, and I’ve done shows in Tennessee, and I can honestly say the audiences I’ve encountered have been equally enthusiastic on both sides of the globe. Masha’allah.

Natalia: I recently interviewed a Muslim American author, Dilara Hafiz, and one of the most interesting things we talked about was her idea that Islam has a great future in the United States, because it can thrive more alongside democracy. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Maysoon Zayid: First of all, I want to give respect to Dilara Hafiz. I think what she did is such a cool idea and I love the fact that she collaborated on it with her own children. That being said, I heartily disagree.

Being Muslim in America, I feel put in jeopardy. Growing up in Cliffside Park, New Jersey I never felt as if I was an “other,” and I definitely was never attacked for my religious beliefs. But, during the George W. Bush Presidency, I, as well as my nieces and nephews, started to feel overwhelmed by the pushing of his distortion of Christianity on our daily lives. I started feeling a lot less comfortable in my own country, because of this.

If, by the grace of God and the Diebold machines, we get a Democrat in office, Islam may have a slim chance of thriving, but if we end up with that dude McCain, I got two words for my fellow Muslims: “Move to Canada”. OK, sorry, that’s three words.

Natalia: Would you like to share more thoughts on this year’s election?

Maysoon Zayid: I am super-proud to say that I am actually going to be ATTENDING the Democratic National Convention, as both a delegate from the great state of New Jersey and a performer with my arab-boy-comic-harem, aka “Axis of Evil” and Dean Obeidallah.

I am so excited for this election because it means no more Dick and Bush (forgive me for not being halal, but those are their names), and I’m thrilled at the prospect of having either Hilary or Barack Obama for president (as long as Hilary shuts it about obliterating Iran).

Ideally I’d like to see them on the same ticket. But more than anything else, I want Bill back! I know he’s itchin’ to get back in the Middle East peace process/ circus. The one other thing I will say, is Michele Obama is frickin’ awesome.

Dean Obeidallah: This election has both inspired and distressed me. I have been inspired by that fact both a woman and an African-American have a realistic chance of being the next President. I am personally supporting Senator Obama, but I am confident that Senator Clinton would still be a far better president that John McCain.

I have been distressed by some people’s use of Barack Obama’s middle name “Hussein” and the word Muslim as a slur in this campaign. I believe strongly that most Americans will reject these attacks – which I view as not anti-Muslim, but as anti-American, since our country was founded on the principles of religious tolerance. Let’s hope that these haters’ voices will be drowned out by the voices of mainstream America.

Natalia: I have to ask, what’s the most ridiculous thing that’s anybody ever said to you in regards to your brand of comedy?

Tissa Hami: “Are you only doing this to get a husband?”

Dean Obeidallah: I have been asked several times: “Are you really Arab?” As if I’m going to make up an ethnic background.

Maysoon Zayid: People call me anti-Semitic all the time which is completely ludicrous, because first and foremost I am a Semite and definitely not self-hating. Also, of you look at my catalog of work I defy anyone to find an anti-Jewish comment. They don’t exist.

A funnier misconception that always shocks me is when people accuse me of pretending to be disabled. All I can think is wow. I must be the best actor ever, because I have never broken character, EVER. I always get a kick out of that one.

Natalia: And what’s the best thing?

Maysoon Zayid: The best comment I’ve ever gotten was when a really well known actress came up to me at the end of my show, and said “I never knew Palestinians had children!”… In that moment, I had introduced humanity to a people who often see Palestinians as being very far from human. So that moment really validated me.

I also absolutely love it when [people with cerebral palsy] come up to me and are like, this is dope. I can totally do whatever it is they were dreaming of, that they didn’t think they could do. That gives me the warm fuzzies except for when I remember that 98% of them wont make it.

Dean Obeidallah: By far the best comment I have heard is from people – and it’s usually from Middle Eastern-Americans and Muslim-Americans – who after a show, or in an email, say: “Thank you for doing the type of comedy that you do.” I like this so much because it means they appreciate that my comedy is not just intended to make people laugh, but also intended to challenge the way we are often defined in mainstream media and present us in a positive, likable, and accurate light. The support of our community has inspired all of us to continue talking about these issues.

Tissa Hami: When a young boy came up to me after a show and said, “You were the best comedian on the show, by far.” He didn’t tell me that I was the best female comedian on the show, or the best ethnic comedian, or the best female ethnic comedian, if you see what I mean. He just saw me as a comedian.

On a related note, check out my interview with “The Axis of Evil” comedians in Dubai. For more, please read the interview with Maysoon Zayid and Tissa Hami at Muslimah Media Watch.

If anyone could deduce anything from the previous Uglification articles (exposing and denouncing the stranglehold that the treacherous cult of Wahabism has tightened around the neck of Islam today), it is the conclusion that such an organized destructive movement could not have been empowered to hijack one of the world’s greatest religions and cultures – with the unprecedented financial power that this movement wields – except through a conscious conspiracy of collusion by the West to resuscitate and permanently sustain such a sect of madmen by installing them to be the official guardians of this awfully disfigured and intentionally falsified religion.

Those who went further in reading between the lines may have grasped the crucial role the Zionist movement played in justifying the barbarity of Israel, through its powerful grip on the world media, by fortifying the message that the victims of Zionism are nothing more than an irrational breed of suicidal savages who loathe every manifestation of culture, from music and architecture, down to children’s kites. In other words, the obvious fact which I may have shied away from blurting out more openly is the unmistakable existence of the “C” word, the great, but nowadays automatically discredited, conspiracy theory.

Yet, a conspiracy is not always directly implemented and constantly monitored by its creators. The conspiracy I’m talking about here is not as one imagines the word, i.e., a group of evil men sitting down in secret in a dark room to dictate the next move of the Wahabists. No, that would be a little paranoid (although on many occasions when an urgent fatwa was needed, this was exactly what happened, such as the custom-tailored fatwa in 1990 that American forces can be relied upon to wage war against fellow Muslims in Iraq).

In the annals of the ongoing Wahabist conspiracy, the wheels have been set in motion a long time ago. While they may continue to be oiled every now and then as the exigencies of empire require, external intervention can be kept to a clandestine, undetected minimum. Today, the backwardness of this Islamist scourge has assumed a life of its own. I’ll give you a live example.

As I left the house of a friend one night, I tuned in by chance to the BBC Arabic service in my car, and got a jolting reminder of how efficiently executed such Uglification scheme has been, albeit without the need for constant involvement by the conspirators.

The idiot on the radio, your typical ignorant Islamist from Egypt, was parroting the recent announcement dominating the news coming out from Al Azhar clergy these days: that a woman should not become a head of state in a Muslim country. The fascinating aspect of this discussion was not in the actual merits of such an opinion, but in the absolute and almost surreal irrelevance of the whole bloody discourse.

The question being debated was exactly akin to a heated argument being initiated about whether Egypt should send female astronauts to space, fully knowing that the closest any Arab, let alone a brain-dead Egyptian Islamist, will ever come to conquering space at the current rate is by tuning in to the naked thighs of Nancy Ajram over a TV ‘space’ channel.

Yet, Al Azhar has been making some news lately. In addition to the recent fatwas of breast-feeding at the workplace and legalized prostitutional marriages, the flow of enlightenment emanating from this Wahabist-dominated institution culminated recently in a group of Al Azhar clerics confronting the nation with a most peculiar and highly topical debate: should a woman be allowed to become the head of state of an Islamic country? Without conspirator involvement, left to their own devices, the Islamists proved that they can be relied upon to produce a wealth of pure comic genius. Egyptians in particular have been known to exhibit a unique sense of humor, and this was just another classic joke.

I say this because the closest any Egyptian woman is to ever becoming the President of Egypt these days is for the current President to have a sex-change operation. Yet you have a whole national debate erupting over the proper Islamic ruling over whether such an eventuality is legitimate in the eyes of God. The comedy here is in the concocted distraction from the real issues facing Egypt and the Arab world by indulging in yet more woman-bashing by a group of very disturbed individuals.

Indeed, who on earth decided that the Egyptian people should give one second of their undivided attention to the question of whether to have a woman head of state, when such prospects are as probable today as the Egyptian people reincarnating Tut Ankh Amun to life while having the Sphinx stand up and start tap-dancing? But you can understand why these debates are springing up by digging further.

In the same week that his colleagues went ahead and issued this unprovoked opinion that women should never be presidents (unprovoked in the sense that it was not related to something about to take place in Egypt), the top man at Al Azhar decreed that those who buy newspapers spreading false information about the government shall burn in hell. Aha, now it makes sense. You would have thought that Hillary Clinton was running in the Cairo Primaries, or that Argentina or Germany – or some other country with a woman chief executive – was about to annex Egypt. But there was none of that. There was just a whole lot of journalists being sent to prison for the most trivial of charges, and Al Azhar came to the rescue by posing an absurd question about women presidents while Byzantium was burning.

Such frequent obscenity about breast-feeding from female co-workers and the other gibberish about a woman ruling Egypt is definitely not a result of a fresh conspiracy. Nor for that matter was Ibn Baz’s famous fatwa that the earth is flat with the sun revolving around it, and that no one really landed on the moon. These amusing by-products of Wahabist genius are purely home-made, I believe.

On the other hand, a fatwa ordering Muslims to donate billions of dollars to American banks by refusing to receive the interest due on their huge deposits is not. The latter was a fatwa commissioned directly by the Federal Reserve, because US banks cannot legally refrain from paying interest on deposits, so they do issue the interest and receive it back from these unlikely Muslim benefactors, which the banks then record in their books as donations or unclaimed funds, boosting the US banking sector in most unexpected twists of fortune.

The point I’m making is that a conspiracy is a very convenient business. When you neuter a dog, you pay for just one operation, so that you don’t have to keep restraining the poor animal afterwards. The sterilization is complete by the initial intrusive surgery, and you can rest assured thereafter that the animal will always be shooting blanks. And the Islamists will always entertain us with their sick jokes, because ignorance breeds ignorance by itself, seldom needing outside help.

I must say that the mother of all conspiracy theories is the belief that, since conspiracies are abound in the shaping of every corner of our region, then the conspirators must have exerted every effort to flood the minds of our people with so many other ridiculous conspiracy theories in order to increase the confusion and add to the congestion of fiction with truth and the mixing of fantasy with reality. That way, the real conspiracy gets lost in the mayhem, as conspiracies become discredited before they are even articulated.

For example, if you walk the streets of downtown Amman, or any other Arab capital, the worthless literature being sold on the pavements along with the falafel sandwiches is overwhelmingly dominated by the kind of books that insist that Saddam Hussein and his sons are still alive, along with illustrated versions of the famous hoax of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In a region where reading is a foreign practice and almost an extinct habit, this is what our intellectual capacity and literary output have been reduced to.

In addition to the usual host of the prevalent Wahabist manuals on how to become the quintessential ignoramus in this life and in the one after – disguised for the masses as religious books – you have quite an array of non-illustrated books about the unattainable and forbidden joy of sexual intercourse. With so much garbage floating around, the real conspiracy to keep us feeding on superstitious nonsense gets neatly disguised.

In other words, a conspiracy to conceal a conspiracy, if you like, is underway (this is what happened after 9/11 in the US as all sorts of implausible wild theories were circulated to hide the major and scandalous flaws in the official version of events). But the original plot is too damn obvious in our case. A British army spy in the name of John Philby (father of another famous spy, Kim Philby) did more permanent damage to an entire nation in his desert trips to Wahabist villages in the early 20th century than the Mogul and Crusader armies combined could have inflicted throughout our history.

Indeed, the home-grown mutilation inflicted upon Islam by forcing us and the whole world to accept Wahabist doctrines as the real thing is an irreversible process. Thanks to Philby and his MI6 masters (whose legacy was inherited by the American empire’s long alliance with despotic Islam in the campaign to counter communism), the fundamentalist cancer today is spreading all over the place, even biting the hands of its Western inventors, and there is no cure or end in sight.

A woman called in the BBC show before I arrived near my house. Yes, I was telling this story, if you remember. The caller wiped the floor, as we say in Arabic, with the Egyptian cleric on the radio. But she became part of the plot herself. She got engaged in the tragic game and started defending the capacity of mothers and pregnant women to be effective leaders, overlooking the whole farce of the hilarious context.

I then arrived in my garage, vowing to sit behind my computer and write this article. I know I’m swimming against a sweeping tide – and it is getting near the wee hours of the morning and I have a meeting at 8.30. But I must keep saying these things. I may be a staunch enemy of the conspiracy to deform Islam, but the far more shameful exercise would be to succumb to the greater conspiracy of silence. That’s not an option right now.

Take care, and if you ride, do it safely.

And she did.

“I can’t have children,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. She looked like a child who just learned that they had lost their parent forever. I didn’t know what to say to comfort her. I’ve only heard of such personal affairs in the old Egyptian classic movies I watched as a child. In one movie, the lead actress, Amina Rizk, gives up her true love and decides to share her husband with another, Huda Sultan, in hopes that her husband’s name will be passed on.

Noha calmed down once the waiter brought our food. She explained that the doctor determined that her husband was the infertile one, not her as they initially presumed. I confess, I was shocked. In Arab culture, infertility is always blamed on the female.

Even if a woman is strong enough to challenge her society and demand that the man take a fertility test, he almost would always refuse. Noha’s husband had a different view, thus the unfortunate results of the test.

I didn’t know what to say: “should I advise her to leave him or encourage her to just accept her destiny/test from God?”

Fortunately, Noha was loyal. She wanted to stay with her husband, no matter what the future looked like. She loved her first love and wanted to be with him, childless or not. Which made me wonder, if tables were turned, would her husband do the same?

Or would he betray her the first opportunity he gets to marry a second or third? Forgive my pessimism, but what I’ve seen/heard from Arab/Muslim men has only solidified my mistrust.

Middle Eastern and Asian cultures, as well as Islamic tradition, encourages couples to raise large families. As a result, infertile men and women are viewed as worthless contributors to their community. The communities will go out of their way to let the infertile couple/individual know that they are different and unwanted.

If the woman is infertile, other women in the community will hurry the poor husband to marry a second wife. One of my dear friends, Ghada, recounted to me how she faced malicious commentary from a group of native women from Pakistan, about her inability to conceive children. They repeatedly, in public, requested her to see a doctor, although they very well knew she had been married for 16 happy years.

Sometimes it’s difficult for some people to understand that you can be a happy couple without children, and that having children doesn’t guarantee eternal happiness.

My friend Noha’s story is repeated millions of times all over the world. It could happen to anybody regardless of their race, gender, nationality, religion, ethnicity, political beliefs and socioeconomic status. According to Wrong Diagnosis, 1 out of 136 women in the United States is infertile.

I believe a new couple should discuss the possibility of infertility in their relationship. They should set a plan for the “what if” situation in which they can’t have children.

Most Middle Eastern and Asian cultures don’t welcome the idea of adoption. However, in Islam it’s highly recommended to support an orphan child in the community.

A couple should reflect on the possibilities and outcomes. What if all else fails? Will they remain a couple, or give up on their relationship? I believe discussing the issue prior will reduce the pain and stress that later might appear. It’s important for new couples to know, infertility doesn’t have to doom a relationship, there are many solutions that cultural practices have often made us neglect.

I am happy to report that Noha’s and her husband’s prayers were answered and they are expecting their first child early this spring.

How exhausted am I?

Imagine:

Life as a marathon.

A sweaty marathon runner with a cramp. And someone with a terrible nasal voice nagging at her shoulder, lying to her about her shoelaces. Telling her they’ve come untied.

At every mile.

The answer is yes.

Furthermore, there is no time to waste when it comes to exercising this essential right.

In “Women’s roles take divergent paths in First and Third Worlds”, Rosa Brooks quotes Francis Fukuyama’s article titled “Women and the Evolution of World Politics,” which debates that “a truly matriarchal world would be less prone to conflict and more cooperative than the one we now inhabit” although “masculine policies will still be essential even in a feminized world.”

Brooks takes Fukuyama’s point a step further to state that because of the increasing female infanticide in Asia, Asian men are in “surplus” and “unless we take the changing demographics of gender as seriously as we take other emerging global trends such as weapons proliferation and climate change the future could be as dangerous as a cage full of Fukuyama’s furious male chimpanzees.”

Interestingly, Islam in the 21st Century has been reduced to a dangerous cage full of furious men not because of demographics of gender but because of the patriarchs of our society and community, people such as Abubakar Ahmad Gada, the author of Political Irrelevance of Women in Islam.

Gada’s basic premise is the hadith in which the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) had said, “A nation which placed its affairs in the hands of a woman shall never prosper.” Sanusi wrote an informative article, “Women and Political Leadership in Muslim Thought,” which sheds light on the relevance of the hadith to preceding events and circumstances under which the Prophet (pbuh) had said that.

However, many Muslims read the hadith in isolation and insist that a nation led by a woman will not have Allah’s blessings.

History suggests otherwise. The sun never set on the British Empire under the rule of Queen Victoria; Russia flourished under Catherine the Great; and Spain was ‘Christened’ under Queen Isabella and her Spanish Inquisition. India prospered under the premiership of Indira Ghandi, and Golda Meir defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.

Where women leaders have prospered, they have failed greatly too. It is particularly the failures of Muslim female leaders that have involved men protecting patriarchal interests. A’ishah Bint Abi Bakr was the first Muslim woman to be defeated. She played an important role in the civil war, was defeated and captured in 656 and only released on the promise that she would abandon political life. It is paradoxical that when A’ishah lost the Battle of the Camel against Ali, her companion Abu Bakra opportunistically narrated the hadith spoken 25 years that “A nation which placed its affairs in the hands of a woman shall never prosper” Definitely, A’ishah’s resignation from politics served the interests of the menfolk who had started to reclaim the rights of Muslim women in Arabia. 1400 years later, women in several Muslim societies are denied their rights by men, rights which are promised by Islam. Such societies are, of course, very patriarchal.

Muslim women have appeared in history either as political leaders or as political decision-making consorts to their husbands. Some prominent Muslim consorts and leaders are: Khayzuran of Baghdad, a slave turned caliph-consort who made important political decisions for her husband; Empress Shulü Hatun of Qidan, who ruled Qidan until her son was elected as a successor; Asma Bint Shibab al-Sulayhiyya of Yemen whose husband Sultan Ali al-Sulahi delegated much of the administration of the kingdom to her; Radiyya Altamish; Kassi of Mali; Oghul Qamish; and Dudu of Janupur. Almost all of these Muslim consorts and leaders are famous for sermonising at the Friday Khutbas, waging wars, setting up health and education programmes, improving state economy, and have proved to be capable leaders.

Although they can be as dishonest or brutal as men, women usually take longer to decide whether or not to engage in wars because “violence and the coalition-building is primarily the work of males… most murderous violence is the province of males, and the nature of female alliances is different” (Fukuyama). Women are better at multitasking by nature and are “trained to be more empathetic”. These are two important leadership qualities.

Muslims believe that the Prophet (pbuh) married A’ishah so she could carry forward his traditions and she did become a prominent authority on Muslim tradition. Lately, contemporary Muslim leaders are marrying young and intelligent women that boost their political careers. Queen Rania of Jordan is one example of a bright Muslim woman leader. In 2004, the Ruler of Dubai, Mohammed Bin Rashed married Princess Haya of Jordan, who is a very prominent and popular community figure. There is also Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, the Consort of the Emir of Qatar.

There have been other winds of change lately. Last year the Kuwaiti parliament voted to give women full political rights but this amendment to the electoral law came 1400 years after Islam had declared that women had the right to vote. It is unfortunate that contemporary Muslim men have been denying women the rights that their religion had promised them so long ago.

As Amina Wadud points out, there has been a “historical absence of female voices in the interpretive process for most of our intellectual legacy. Some have erroneously taken this absence to mean irrelevance of female voices or experiences in determining meaning and application.” Wadud suggests that to “bring about a more complete human articulation of textual meaning” of the Quran it is urgent to “include women’s voices and perspectives within the interpretive process and to sustain those perspective as integral to our intellectual legacy.”

A Muslim woman’s moral excellence has been a Muslim man’s greatest excogitation and it is time that we see beyond the pale to include women in Muslim governance and the development of government. We have waited too long while Muslim men attempted to sort out our political problems and taught us how to practice our religion, sometimes failing miserably by nurturing a male chauvinistic society for years at the expense of house arrested women. If women are not given a chance, the world will soon witness more and more furious men rattling the bars of the Muslim political cage.

With these distressed words, art expert Zoja Finci implored the late Bosnian President, Alija Izetbegovic, to save the Islamic relics of her beautiful city from destruction, despite the fact that she is Jewish herself. This was back in 1995, soon after the end of the Bosnian war, and she was referring to the Begova Mosque in Sarajevo, the largest Islamic monument – and arguably the most ornamented – in the former Yugoslavia. The vandals she was denouncing were not Serb militias, but none other than the Wahhabist hordes who traveled all the way to Bosnia to complete the destruction they started in Mecca.

As if the desecration of the graves of the Prophet’s wife and companions, and the complete demolition of every single remaining vestige of Islam in Mecca and Medina were not enough, the Wahhabist bulldozers set their eyes on Europe. Since 1995, a post-war crime of a different nature has been ongoing to erase the beauty of Islamic architecture in the Balkans under the guise of Islamic Aid.

You wouldn’t have thought for a minute that Wahhabis were particularly concerned with architecture to bother themselves with such expensive restoration efforts in far away lands, until you discover that their aim has nothing to do with restoration and everything to do with obliteration. All across the Balkans, even the slightly damaged structures were not repaired, although it would have been the easier thing to do, but were razed to the ground to be rebuilt from scratch in the ugliest form imaginable, and as far off from the original shape and design as humanly possible.

Then came the end of the war in Kosovo in 1999, and the architectural vultures immediately went after the corpses there as well. Harvard University Fine Arts Librarian and expert on Balkan Islamic architecture, Andras Riedlmayer, goes so far in condemning the grotesque defiling of ancient mosques in the Balkans to pronouncing that “the Wahhabis, with their wealth and fanaticism, are a menace to heritage, in some ways more dangerous than the [Serb paramilitary] Chetniks, since about the latter, at least, no one harbors any illusions regarding their uncharitable intentions.”

One foreign expert described one of the architects involved whom he had interviewed (and who never practiced the profession) by saying that “his ideas for mosque design involve knockoffs of Saudi-modern shopping mall architecture with odd touches inspired by the décor of the Love Boat, including portholes! He is the very model of the modern zealot, narrow minded, arrogant, and so dumb he doesn’t even realize it.”

Centuries old Ottoman mosques, libraries, schools and graveyards were knocked down for no reason except to implement Wahabist doctrines attacking any semblance of architectural splendor by inventing sayings of the Prophet decreeing that the ornamentation of mosques or tombs is a crime in the eyes of God. Reidlmayer recalls that prior to the War in Kosovo, “when the Wahhabis took out sledgehammers and set about smashing the 17th century gravestones in the garden of Peja’s ancient Defterdar Mosque, angry local residents beat them up and chased them out of town. I was shown the damaged gravestones, beautifully carved with floral motifs and verses from Qur’an. That was in the late summer of 1998. Six months later, in the spring of 1999, Serb paramilitaries came and burned down the mosque. Unlike the fundamentalist missionaries, they were not interested in the gravestones.”

So why do these Wahhabist scavengers travel the globe to implement the uglification project, you may ask? Who ultimately benefits if our culture and civilization is made to look as ugly and primitive as possible in the eyes of the world?

The plot thickens when you enter the domain of politics and consider the urgent need to reverse a natural human emotion called sympathy. It is well known that nations across the world sympathize more and develop a closer affiliation with a people whose contribution to humanity is materially felt and seen to be one that is positive, refined and sophisticated.

Americans, for example, still revere the Japanese culture, admire their history and savor their food, despite having incinerated two of their cities with atomic bombs. So how do you make sure that Arabs and Muslims remain reduced to a barbaric, uncivilized and useless people, who deserve what comes their way in terms of occupation and dehumanization? By working very hard to ensure that the association in people’s minds is always automatically connected with ugliness. Not with Samurai or with Sushi, but with filth and depravity. For the world is less likely to be bothered if a few more ugly terrorists get killed or robbed of their land, because all what the world can see coming out of their culture is repulsive and unattractive.

When the words ‘Arab’ or ‘Muslim’ are mentioned, no one should recall anything as miraculously breathtaking as the Dome of the Rock or the Taj Mahal, lest they rethink their apathy towards these apparent savages and, God forbid, sympathize with their suffering. The world should always conjure up images of Bin Laden and other Wahhabist creations when thinking about our lot. That way, it becomes much easier to dispossess a few million ‘nomadic’ Palestinians for the sake of saving a chosen race of European achievers, scientists and artists, who have no where else to go, and who would likely turn ugly deserts into lands of milk and honey.

If all what people see are hideous images of our people, coupled with decapitation videotapes of squealing victims, then the looting of the Baghdad museum under the nose of the Marines becomes more digestible by the world community, because, at the end of the day, what could possibly be inside this building? Surely, more ugly artifacts of an ugly civilization. Mission accomplished indeed.

But there is a huge, annoying crack in the uglification project. There is a place in Europe that Wahhabis cannot touch or destroy, and it is a source of constant irritation to the uglifiers.

Indeed, how could you put on a straight face and explain to the queues of millions of tourists who visit Andalusia each year that they are walking in the footsteps of the same people who today exemplify everything crooked, violent and evil? What if these people went back home and started believing that the Arab Islamic civilization was worthy of some respect after all? Hell, what if they started to make the link with the Dome of the Rock and attempted to criticize Israel for weakening the foundations of Al Aqsa Mosque by their useless excavations in search of a non-existing temple? Houston, we have a problem.

Not to worry, you solve it by committing the most dishonest forgery in history: by changing their name to begin with, by calling them Moors, and never refer to them as Arab Muslims. But where does this strange name come from? It doesn’t matter, just make sure to repeat it, and the world would buy it. Oh, the Moors. It just sounds ancient and exotic, like the Mayans of Latin America, and is the perfect cover up for the fact that the entire 781 years of the magnificent civilization of Al Andalus was purely Arab, not even Berber, and overwhelmingly Muslim.

This falsification plan also comes complete with troubleshooting contingencies. Whenever the endless pilgrims to that region think for themselves and ask the tourist guide why the endless calligraphy on the walls is not in “Moorish” language, they immediately acknowledge the Arab element but confuse matters by introducing a man called Maimonides, the lone Jewish figure that Westerners must always associate with the beauty of Al Andalus, although he lived all his life in North Africa and wrote his books, only in Arabic, in Egypt.

You then hit two birds with one stone by claiming that this civilization was Judeo/Islamic, despite the unanimous agreement of all historians that such claims are a load of fantastical dreaming and pure wishful thinking (along with the other embarrassing and discredited attempts to claim that Alhambra Palace was based on the design of the never-seen-before Temple of Solomon, a fantasy that fails to explain how the Arabs could borrow the designs of a temple no one has ever seen before, a temple that exists only in the imagination of the zealots who believe in its pointless excavation).

Before I go, I’ll tell to you a little story told to me by my brother about a music DVD he had bought in the Fnac store in Geneva, which shows the extent of the psychological complex suffered by the uglifiers. They cannot just relax and admit the Arabs into the league of civilized cultures. They have to always keep their vigilance, and create and employ tools from our midst, to keep us out.

The best-selling DVD he bought was of the famous Shehrezade ballet by Rimsky-Korsakov, performed by the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg. The DVD was produced in Europe by ART Haus, and although not mentioned on the DVD cover, the story of Shehrezade is otherwise known in English as “Arabian Nights”. Pay attention, not Moorish nights, not Hindu nights, not Polynesian nights, but Arabian Nights. The stories take place in Baghdad during the reign of Haroun Al Rasheed and his wife, Sit Zubaidah, who is one of the main characters of the ballet (Zubide).

Here we have a splendid performance, marvelous Baghdad decorations, outstanding colorful costumes, captivating music, and guess what? Zarqawi and Mullah Omar do not star in it, nor does any other Wahabi character. It takes the audience on a trip a thousand years back into a magical, mystical world. Indeed, nothing can be more Arab than Arabian Nights, now can it? But they cannot let go even for a bloody DVD. So you flip open the leaflet on the cover, and it reads:

“Shehrezade is a work filled with love and passion, guilt and deception, anger, pain and desperation. The anger of Shahriar, the Sultan of India and China, who suspects his wives of…..”

Did they just say “Sultan of India and China”? You bastards, even the Arabian Nights!

Take care, and if you ride, do it safely.

Rudyard Kipling, who was born and raised in India amongst Muslims who were the last Mogul kings, describes a boorka in his short story Beyond the Pale as an ‘evil-smelling’ garment ‘which cloaks a man as well as a woman.’ The main character, Trejago, dresses in a burqa to meet his Indian lover and symbolically throws it away at the end of the story.

No matter how I personally feel about the burqa, I think it is not anyone’s right to ridicule the garment and its wearers.

Two articles against the burqa have left me speechless not because they are insensitive in tone but because of their writers’ innate lack of knowledge about the religion they seem to target with their vile words. One is by the Bangladeshi ex-Muslim Taslima Nasrin titled “Let’s Burn the Burqa” and the other is “Death Before Burkas” by Kyle-Anne Shiver.

There are two popular opinions on hijab by Muslims; one is that it is required in the Quran and the other opinion is that it is not required and only modesty is emphasized. Ms. Nasrin claims that Quran requires niqab because of “an individual’s personal reasons” and “since then millions of Muslim women all over the world have had to suffer it.” Nasrin suggests that women

“should protest against this discrimination. They should proclaim a war against the wrongs and ill-treatment meted out to them for hundreds of years. They should snatch from the men their freedom and their rights. They should throw away this apparel of discrimination and burn their burqas.”

It was amusing to read Nasrin’s words because her knowledge about Islam, a religion she consciously abandoned, is extremely weak. A few examples:

She calls Hadith, “Quran Hadith.”Then she quotes from Surah Al- Ahzab and calls it “Surah Al – Hijab”! There is no Surah in the Quran called Al-Hijab.Nasrin uses a South Asian translation of the Quran and even that version never once mentions that a woman must cover her face. The emphasis is always on hiding and covering the female parts like chest. I wonder how she bases her argument on the ayahs that never say that a woman must cover her face? In her argument she says, “Frankly, covering just the hair is not Islamic purdah in the strict sense.” That is exactly it. Face veil is “strict” and therefore a vast number of Muslim women do not cover their faces. What’s the premise then?Muslims are supposed to know how hijab was prescribed for the Prophet’s wives but Nasrin does not. She writes, “Prophet Mohammed’s wife Ayesha was very beautiful. His friends were often found staring at her with fascination.” The reason behind asking Prophet’s wives to speak to strange men from behind a curtain, as we know, was the rumour that had spread about Ayesha (pbuh) and not because men used to stare at her.

Then there is Shiver who begins her hate-filled rant with the following:

‘Anyone who thinks I’ve spent the last 40 years of my life learning how to properly apply makeup and avoid bad-hair days, only to end up donning that hideous black thing at the command of some foreign guy with a severe case of Male-Chauvinist-Pig syndrome, is in for a fight. Give me death before burkas!’

Fair enough! No non-Muslim woman who has spent 40 years of her life learning how to apply makeup should be asked to hide that face, but Shiver does not stop there:

‘And in my opinion, the ultimate oppression of our age, no matter how one cares to cut it, slice it, dice it, whatever, is hands-down the subjugation of females – from birth to the grave – in places ruled by this cockamamie Sharia law. Liberals may be scared to call a spade a spade, but I’m not. So, I’ll say it again, Give me death before burkas!’

Again some people may find her words tolerable. The infamous Saudi rape case has stirred Shiver so one can understand where she’s coming from until she writes:

‘In my book, a gang-rape victim deserves a whole heck of lot more peace and blessings than the Prophet, who continues to inspire such barbarism in the name of his religion.

In 2002, again in Saudi Arabia, a mob of very “religious” followers of the Prophet surrounded a girls’ school that was engulfed in raging flames, and refused to permit firefighters to save the young girls, or even to permit the ones that could to flee the building.’

Many Muslims have already spoken out against the punishment awarded to the Saudi rape victim. The 2002 incidence disturbed not only me but many other Muslims. However, how does Muhammed (pbuh) fit in here? I never read one hadith awarding punishment to a rape victim. I cannot recall the Prophet asking any firefighter to let an uncovered woman burn to death.

Later Shiver goes on to talk about the Taliban, the Turkish Muslim immigrants in Germany, the mutawa (religious police) of Saudi Arabia, and cases of barbaric female genital mutilation. I have never liked or supported the Taliban or anyone else who abuses Muslim women in the name of Islam so I could be seen nodding, although Shivers information on the topic is flawed, once again:

‘The type of FGM specifically practiced and taught by the Prophet is the milder form, and limits mutilation to the removal of the clitoris. On the other hand, other forms practiced by Mohammed’s followers today are so grotesque and cause so much permanent damage, that only a truly monstrous God could possibly condone them.’

First, the hadith on female circumcision is a weak one and second even in that weak hadith the Prophet (pbuh) is said to have supported trimming of the clitoris and not its removal. Majority of Muslims do not accept the hadith as genuine which is why female circumcision (which has its roots in Pharaonic times) remains today a culture-specific practice.

Also, just for record, there is no Muslim God. The God of the Jews is the God of the Christians who is the God of the Muslims. And no “the God” is not monstrous, thank you very much. I am a Muslim woman and I am not “mutilated.”

Somehow somewhere down the line Shiver loses it again and begins lashing out at Islam:

‘Whenever I see a woman wearing one of those hideous symbols of oppression — the burka — I just wonder how many beating scars or bruises or disfigurements she is covering. I don’t blame her for being brainwashed into submission, or even for identifying with her oppressors. She is, in my view, to be pitied, not scorned.’

Let’s be honest, I am no fan of the burqa, and I am a Muslim living in a Muslim country so I know exactly what all can happen to a woman (unlike Shiver who reports gossip) but I would never be stupid enough to claim that Muslim women who choose to wear the burka do so to hide a black eye. Save yourself further disgrace, Shiver, majority of Muslim women who wear the burka are not “brainwashed into submission.”

After another crazy story of domestic abuse in a Muslim family (as if domestic abuse only takes place in Muslim households!) Shiver issues some truly classic statements:

If a Jewish or Christian man beats his wife, or otherwise abuses her, he does so against his religion, and his worship community. When a Muslim man does likewise, he does so in full obedience to the Prophet himself. It’s in the Koran. (There is enough woman-bashing fodder in the Koran for many future columns, but one of the specific admonitions to men to beat their wives is 4:34) … As an American woman, blessed by God and the Constitution, that is all I need to know about Islam. [Emphasis mine]

This just tells any reader that Shiver is just as poor at Christian and Judaist theology as she is at Islamic theology. For the interpretation of the Quranic verse 4:34, read this. As for the Bible – one may be interested in reading Deuteronomy 25:11 or Numbers: 511-21.

To conclude, I’m not arguing here whether or not hijab or niqaab is required by the Quran. This is not my place to argue that. My argument and criticism is that if a person decides to write on a topic and worse argue on a topic on a public forum then s/he should do their homework.

I am also not trying to prove Islam’s superiority over the other two Abrahamic religions. I have deep respect for all religions and special love for Abrahamic religions. All I am trying to say is that in essence many religions are not different from each other. Several years of interpretations and filtering has given rise to modern Christianity and Judaism. While Muslims cannot dare to re-write the Quran, we are trying to reinterpret it, do ijtihad, and fit traditional theological concepts in the modern world.

Give Muslims a chance. One can wish death before the burka for all I care, but please leave Islamic theology out of your rants because you clearly do not know what you are talking about.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is tragic. There can be no doubt about that. But what shocks me today, as I am shocked on a daily basis with the stream of murders and suicides in Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, and so many other countries is this nagging question: Where on earth do they find them?? Where on earth do the plotters and schemers find so many willing men and women of young age to mould into their insane vision of the world? How did those who planned this latest act of violence stumble upon this latest specimen of misguided fervour and convince him (at least it seems to be a him at the time of writing) to go and end his life by assassinating a mother of three children. How did they get through to this guy? And more importantly, why is it so goddamn easy to find self-terminating assassins in our region?

(To read this article in full, please visit GlobalComment)

This brave young girl was allegedly killed at the hands of the man that should have been protecting her: her own father. Canadian media has reported that the 16 year old argued with her father about wearing the hijab, or traditional Islamic headscarf. Friends said she would leave the house in traditional dress and change into western-style clothing when she arrived at school.

Her father, Muhammad Parvez, called 911 to report that he had killed his daughter on Monday, December 11th. She died from her injuries only hours later. Her 26 year old brother has been charged with obstruction of justice for failing to cooperate with police. To me, Aqsa is a martyr for the freedom of individual choice.

I am especially distraught that this alleged murder happened in Canada, home of “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” a TV sitcom produced by a brilliant Canadian Muslim director, Zarqa Nawaz. In the episode, “The Barrier,” first aired earlier this year; the teenage girl, Layla and her very conservative father, Baber, disagreed about her attire. She was an active girl and didn’t want to be restricted by her garments. She hid the fact that she had had her period—a traditional moment when girls are encouraged to begin covering their hair–for fear that her father would want her to wear a headscarf. While the two fundamentally disagreed about the issue, as is the case in most civilized families (Muslim or not), violence was never an option.

To some zealots, there is no place in heaven for a Muslim woman who doesn’t cover her hair. For some, it is an ancient patriarchal tradition that should be abolished. But American Muslim teens themselves are embracing the autonomy that Islam and America afford individuals. In recently released The American Muslim Teenager’s Handbook, Yasmine Hafiz, her brother, Imran Hafiz, and their mother, Dilara Hafiz, of Phoenix, Arizona, advise teens (and parents): “According to the Quran, as long as Muslims are dressed modestly and behave respectably, no specific dress code is required… modest behavior is also encouraged, therefore ogling the cute boy in Chemistry class or leering at the cheerleaders is definitely out! …Each person must read the Quran for herself and form her own opinion.”

Teens and others are turning to interpretations of Islam that assert that there isn’t one way to look if you’re a Muslim girl or woman. According to the distinguished Islamic scholar, Reza Aslan, “The veil was neither compulsory, nor for that matter, widely adopted until generations after Muhammad’s death, when a large body of male scriptural and legal scholars began using their religious and political authority to regain the dominance they had lost in society as a result of the Prophet’s egalitarian reforms.”

Some so-called “traditional” Muslims argue that ‘Western’ women are oppressed because they must derive their self-worth from the gaze of men. However, it is also true that within some Islamic communities a woman who does not cover is not afforded the same respect as one who does. The expectations are different but the result is the same; a woman’s worth is still determined by others, including men.

While living in Yemen, my friend, Kelly Wentworth, who is also a convert to Islam, experienced pressure to cover herself that did not stem from a religious mandate but a cultural one. As the wife of a Yemeni man, if she chose not to cover, the society would consider it a dishonor to her husband’s family.

It is essential that men and women make their own choices about dress for internal reasons rather than succumbing to external pressures. This is only possible when individuals have the freedom to choose. Personally, by wearing hijab, I experience a sense of autonomy, confidence and femininity I did not before. Yet, for those who have been forced to wear it, I believe it is a very physical barrier to connection with the Divine. Perhaps it is because of her belief in this freedom of choice that Aqsa Parvez was so viciously murdered.

As a Muslim, a woman, a wife, a daughter and a citizen of the free world, I am outraged by the fact that Aqsa was taken from this earth. No human being has the right to destroy the life that God has made sacred. I am sickened that this man has shamed Islam through his very unislamic acts. There is no place in the world for this kind of intolerant, chauvinistic and bigoted thinking, no matter in what faith tradition it appears.

An important distinction difficult for fundamentalists of all faith traditions is that dress codes are a matter of choice, not religious mandate or obligation. Without choice, no act bears meaning. According to Islamic scripture, an act is judged by the intent with which it was performed. If a woman chooses to wear a scarf because she believes in its benefit to her, she has a pure motive. However, if she covers to please another person, whether that person is her husband, brother, father or mother, while not believing in its benefits, the motive is lost and the act of wearing it loses all meaning.

I believe Aqsa has found her place in Paradise. I pray that in her passing we will not miss this opportunity to take a lesson from the tragedy of her death, inspiring us to practice tolerance, love, kindness and understanding with all, however they are dressed.

When my father-in-law passed away last year, someone advised that his tombstone should not be raised above the ground. When I asked why, I was told that this is how it should be done in Islam, and that any structure erected above the earth level is forbidden.

Abu Khattab, God bless his soul, was a man whom I especially loved and admired, and of course, no amount of elaborate masonry would have done justice to his cherished memory.

But I was still furious at the prevailing presumption that Islam had wanted it to be that way, and that’s why the suggestion was swiftly overruled.

These widespread fallacies made me think again about the true rationale for this edict about inconspicuous graves. Don’t kid yourself, for it has nothing to do with austerity or any other spiritual explanation. These teachings are in fact an integral part of the larger “uglification” conspiracy and an essential tool of the concerted campaign to erase our history.

It’s a simple equation. Since Muslims have fascinated the world with their breathtaking mausoleums from India to Marrakesh, so why not hit them where it hurts the most, by decreeing that beauty and art are forbidden in such fields? And where better to start? Armed with this poisonous ideology, the Wahabist bulldozers set off to work razing to the ground the most sacred burial places in Islam, the graves of Al Baqe’e, the resting place for the companions (Sahaba) of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, leaving unmarked bricks on barren land where domed enclaves once existed. The Sahaba’s old houses in Mecca did not escape the criminal destruction either and were also completely flattened.

Like the Buddhist statues of Bamiyan were dynamited by another Wahabist creation, today there is no archaeological trace of the old Mecca in order to chronicle the origins of the existence of Islam. It is gone forever and has all been replaced by ugly hotels and shopping malls. The madmen justified their actions by the ridiculous claim that it was feared Muslims would worship the shrines themselves, and hence it would constitute a return to idolatry which Islam had wiped out.

This assumption that Muslims are such a bunch of morons that they would today relapse into worshipping edifices built of stone after 1400 years of quitting the habit because they can’t tell the difference between a brick and a God perhaps should also make us demolish Al Ka’ba while we’re at it, lest we mistake it for a dark chocolate cube and eat it. These treacherous hands have even reached the tomb of the Prophet’s beloved wife, Khadijah, the first person to embrace Islam and the staunch incubator of the new faith. When you contrast the magnificent splendor that bejeweled the different mausoleums throughout our history, and when you see the current shameful shape of Khadija’s tomb, you will understand exactly why this was done and how they want Islam to look like in the eyes of the world: hideous and plain ugly.

These clerics with bulldozers claim that this is the correct Islamic way, and this begs my question: why do these 20^th century newcomers and their forged textbooks think that they know more about our religion and what it allows or forbids than the contemporaries of Islam’s revelation and their offspring, from the Rahsideen up to the Ottomans, whose testimonial monuments have, by God’s grace and His merciful providence, escaped the ruinous claws of the “uglifiers” and still stand tall for the whole world to marvel at?

If this sect of endless prohibitions decrees burial in unmarked graves, then the surviving architectural heritage of Islamic mausoleums is the conclusive proof that these heresies have absolutely no foundations in the genius of the true Islamic civilization, and are merely a product of a lately re-installed savage culture bent on destroying every trace of elegance in its path.

The “uglification” does not start nor stop at the tombs and mausoleums. I remember when I was a kid at school during religion classes, a great deal was made of how Islam forbids the drawing of human or animal portraits, going even as far as prohibiting the photography of persons or the hanging of their pictures on our walls. Despite the innumerable gems of Islamic artifacts and paintings adorning museums throughout the world, from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg to the Louvre in Paris, these enemies of the exquisite things in life think they know better about what God wants from us.

Indeed, if this had been the divine intention all along, then generations of Muslims before us must have existed on another planet. But for these salafi gurus, it has never really been about God or His teachings. The world they want Muslims to inhabit is a dull, artless, lifeless, uninspiring world of retarded clerics and male-chauvinistic cruelty, a horribly off-tune symphony of madness where men are dumb and women are slaves.

Oh, and don’t get me started on the music. These people want us to believe that God was petty enough to ban all forms of music. Only recently, I read in the main Islamic weekly paper in Jordan an assessment of the Islamic jurisprudence on the subject of music, concluding that we are better off refraining from this whole activity since the weight of the authorities tilts towards banning it altogether, with the exception – for some weird reason – of the percussion instruments which were permitted. Actually, it is not such a weird reason after all, if you keep the “uglification” plot in mind. Music without musical instruments is the essence of primitiveness incarnate. It is in fact the ultimate reversal of evolution and the perfect hindrance to a healthy advancement of any culture.

Of course, for these muftis and sworn enemies of refinement and human progression, Ziryab and the rest of the pioneering Muslims who invented every single precursor to the orchestral instruments of today would all be considered heretics. Like jungle monkeys, we should instead restrict our audio instincts to the dry beating of unmelodious drums, lest the magic of a piano or the lamentation of a violin corrupt the harmonious rhythm of the primeval societies we have created.

It is such a sad state of affairs that words aren’t effective any longer to describe the tragedy of “uglification”. Our forefathers who left their indelible mark on all facets of human civilization apparently didn’t understand their religion as well as our bearded lot. That is why we should all take what Islam means from the mouths of the legitimate Islamic authorities of our current dark ages, such as, let me think, ah, perhaps such as those institutes chasing people with sticks in the streets, promoting virtue and preventing vice, the same people who let 15 innocent girls burn to death in a school in 2002 by forcing them back inside the inferno because these little kids were not covering their heads. Yes, perhaps that is the way to go in the 21^st century.

Until the diaries are back with a special edition about Islamic architecture and the people who want to take that away from us too, take care, and if you ride, do it safely.