Sometimes, I laugh so hard, I cry

I hope Mehboba Ahdyar wins her gold medal for Afghanistan. She will need to run as fast as she can, just to get away from all the menfolk who are threatening to kill her. SUCH an uppity lass. Doesn't she realize that a woman's place is in the tent, and not outside? In fact, the men, being so much smarter than women, who could never in a million years come up with this idea, themselves, actually invented a portable tent for women to be under at all times! Such innovation. Silly girl! What ever got into her head, I wonder. Too bad she didn't have a subscription to Muslim Girl Magazine to set her straight.

Perhaps I was confusing all those burqa-clad lumps of female flesh as the norm in the Muslim world. How wrong I was! Clearly, as you can see on the cover of this magazine, Muslim girls are just like the rest of us, with the same dreams, hopes and aspirations that girls everywhere have. Look at the articles a young Muslima can read: All about self-image, beauty, Olympic DREAMS! And Boot camp basics. WHO KNEW? I mean, if you listen to prattlers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Wafa Sultan, you would think women had it bad in Dar el Islam , but you would be wrong.
Maybe some Muslim lasses like Sarah and Yamina Sa'id, should have been reading Muslim Girl Magazine, too, so that they could see all their self-potential actualized, as they say in psychobabble.

But no, they had "American dreams, which probably never had anything to do with Muslim Girl themes like: self-image, beauty, careers, sports....you know, just the stuff only Muslim Girls think about. They were just wasting all their time with BOYS.


This whole thing reminds me of a story told by Hedrick Smith in his book The Russians
(during the Cold War Era)
He was eating in his hotel restaurant, and two waiters, taking a break, were laughing and reading from an English-Russian traveller's phrasebook. One waiter would say a word in English, while the other would feign surprise that there was actually a word in Russian for it, since he'd never seen that particular object in Russia. And then both men would laugh hysterically.
After a few moments, two other men approached them, and warned them, and confiscated the phrasebook. Afraid, both men returned to work. Happy Hour was over.
Such is the same bitter punchline for girls who dare to have dreams. Who dare to show beauty. Who dare to want anything more than what is allowable under Shari'ah. I am still looking for the article about Shari'ah in Muslim Girl Magazine. At least the Russian waiters got a warning. That is more than Sarah and Yamina Sa'id got...or Aqsa Parvez, or an endless, heartbreaking list of young women slaughtered in the name of some man's honor. Pamela wrote about this in more detail back in January, and it is worth visiting again...if only to add names to this already too long list.
(Cross-posted at Tasty Infidelicacies)