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General Forum: Religion | | A Jihad of Laughter - Shabana Rehman | |
| Courtesy: http://blog.bearstrong.net/000717.html
A Jihad of Laughter
By Shabana Rehman
A reply to critics.
Rarely have I seen such underestimation of freethinkers and of freedom loving Muslims as that accomplished by some critics of my mullah-lift. I've had many good laughs since the lifting took place on Smuget, and, to my great joy, the symbolicism of the event is spreading like a wind of freedom over the world. I hope it reaches the madrasas, and all other dark corners where people are held as slaves by authorities who by their titles, religious or not, rule with the aid of superstition, fear and prejudice.
Most of the critics can be found where feminism meets anti-racism. They supply some of the most misguided anti-racist analysis of all time. [Social anthropologist] Unni Wikan feels sorry for Krekar. Did you hear what his family had to say afterwards, Unni? Krekar's wife said: "It was the wrong time and place." In other words: It wouldn't have been so bad in a different setting. Krekar's brother went from wanting to sue and demonize me, over of a joke about the infallibility of mosques, to saying that he himself wants to be lifted, and that he "supports Shaban's struggle for women". Wikan, you underestimate the Krekar family so much that I suggest you either do some urban field studies or go into retirement.
An imam is bound by duty to protect the honor of all imams. This is a respect based on title and age, not on having a good heart or a rational and free intellect. That is why the World Islamic Mission [a mosque in Oslo] have come out in defense of a mullah who's more a political than a religious Islamist. For the first time in history they have chosen to shut out a named woman. They have no second thoughts about strangling freedom of speech, diversity or an open and critical debate. Is this what [religious historian] Torkel Brekke and [teacher of journalism] Nazneen Khan calls a peaceful multiethnic society? Do you really believe that just because your anti-racist dialogue depends on women keeping their mouths shut, 30 years of silence about the struggle of immigrant women must continue? Because that is the silence it rests upon!
In Sweden, men put up posters where they condemn liberated Kurdish women, and call them whores who should be beaten up. In Copenhagen a fundamentalist group recently handed out flyers that called for the murder of Jews. This week, there were more than 1000 people present at a fundamentalist Islamic hate meeting arranged by the same group. In England, the mullahs seek to gain power over Muslim youth by inciting them to violence. Muslims must struggle against this upgrowth of anti-human, anti-freedom fascism, Muslims who are free from the coercion of their community. That is why it's so blind of left-populists when they choose to despise precisely these people, and to violate their integrity by denouncing them as token immigrants.
My dear critics, who act more like drunken bar flies than alert democratic citizens, I ask you: What is so wrong about lifting a mullah, joyfully and without prejudice? A playful test that made Krekar forget his role as a patriarch for a few tenths of a second? Did we lose something when I performed that test? No, but he was shown something of value. Something he was ready for, even though it made him angry. He asked for it himself by taking those steps to a bar scene on Smuget, joking around while trying to sell his fundamentalist message. It was the right time and place to demonstrate the strength of a woman who owns her own freedom. Why should I treat Krekar any differently? Because he is different, or because I am? Isn't that an extremely racist, sexist and discriminating interpretation of a small lifting?
And all you who praise or criticize me for having become a good Norwegian girl! Neither the Taliban nor human rights are Norwegian inventions. I am proud of living in a free country, but I see myself neither as Norwegian nor Pakistani. I live in both cultures. You who ask if Muslims can't stomach Norwegian humor: Where do you have it from that this is "Norwegian" humor? The Norwegian humorist establishment has officially done little else but whine and say: She's only an immigrant comedian. And our esteemed intellectuals, who supposedly were to analyze this, think as if we live in South Africa in the 50's. I know Norwegian immigrant culture very well. I know what roles immigrants play for each other, for tradition, for religion and for the majority. And I refuse to play the suffocating role of the "immigrant" woman, or the "integrated" woman. I refuse to pick sides. That is why I don't aim my project towards one particular group, I aim it towards moving borders in those places where inter-human freedoms and communication is restricted. I do not accept ghettoes, cultural prisons or mullahs who put away their religion long enough to promote a book, but return to it as if it were a cannon they can shoot with the moment someone challenge their masculine role, or undress the authority of their fearsome personalities.
Multiethnicity can not exist without freedom. Too many have failed to realize this. Freedom to believe, dress, marry and live with the one you want. That requires struggle. A struggle against dogmas, violence, narrow upbringings, sexual apartheid, envy, pettiness, censorship and discrimination. A struggle against self-satisfied and ethnocentric producers of academic knowledge. This means a fully open society, where the truth about the causes of fascism and chauvinism is stripped naked. This condescension towards my sex because I lifted a man was first delivered by Krekar himself - and then by a number of people exposing their own intellectual hypocrisy.
This isn't political correctness, an old-fashioned and idiotic buzzword used by among others Norwegian comedians to appear cool while they wipe themselves with yet another toilet paper substitute. It is left-populist arrogance against coloured intellectuals, artists and freethinkers, used by a number of pompous men and women on the left to maintain their power of terminology over those who they choose to pity. The consequence: Another generation grows up speaking poor Norwegian, and bow their heads to false prophets, whether they go by the titles of imams or anti-racists.
To all minorities in this country, I say this: Screw them. Don't accept that your freedoms get wrapped away in a colourful and diverse ghettoship. You are not cocoanuts. You will not turn white on the inside. You are red of blood like any other human. Remember that and teach your children. Freedom is not a Norwegian invention, never, ever accept that anyone tries to remove your skin colour, your identity, your leanings or your brain just because you worship freedom.
Mullah Krekar has used his freedom to make his debut. Now the work begins on the difficult second book.
Posted by: Ms. Prasanthi Uppalapati At: 12, Jul 2005 2:54:56 PM IST
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