Author: Ophelia Benson

Allow me to explain. I’m a little vague about the way the RSS feed works, on account of I don’t have it myself. I forgot (or perhaps never knew, despite having been told) that people who subscribe to the RSS feed get the whole N&C – I mistily thought they (you) got a notification, rather than the thing itself. Jeremy reminded me of how it actually works and said that it’s normal practice when making a big change to put a time on it, so that it doesn’t look as if I’m cluelessly trying to sneak a change in when the RSS makes that impossible. I deleted two paragraphs yesterday and substituted a much shorter one, saying ‘oh look, I’m sane again, that’s enough of that.’ But I knew I wasn’t doing it covertly, I knew people would have seen the previous version, and that’s fine. I almost did leave it and just add an update, but then decided that because it was so no longer true, I might as well erase it.

But it’s interesting, psychologically. So I’ll explain, because of the interest. I was half-crazy yesterday morning and most of Friday afternoon. I thought it was at least as much resentment of publisher’s faux pas as it was wanting the book – until the books arrived, and I immediately realized it wasn’t. Well not quite immediately – I spent a minute or two yowling at everyone in earshot about how relieved I was, and clawing open the package. But almost immediately, I realized that the publisher’s faux pas had shrunk to almost nothing – as of course it should have long ago. So it became instantly blindingly clear that it was the combination of the frustration of not having the book, along with the faux pas, that had been making me nuts. I spent considerable time yesterday afternoon pondering how bad for the psyche and character frustration can be, especially repeated frustration, especially repeated frustration when you expect it to go on being repeated. (Waiting for something to come by mail that doesn’t come, in short. Like being six years old and waiting for your secret decoder ring, or whatever fool matchbox thing it is you’ve sent away for.) I find that it’s very bad for the character indeed. I was a creature from hell yesterday morning – a very gargoyle.

And there was nothing I could do about it. That’s the aspect that makes me think it was quite like being genuinely mentally ill – at least a glimpse of it. I could not get my mood under my control, despite trying really hard. Especially yesterday morning, when I spent an enormous amount of energy trying to convince myself the book wasn’t coming that day or any day soon – trying to avoid that horrible moment when opening the mailbox – and just forget about it and let go and calm down – and I could not do it. Trying to do it just made me a nervous wreck. I was dreading that day’s mail delivery, and Monday’s, and the rest of the week – anticipating repeated torture for at least another week. Mad as a hatter, I was. But I was desperate to have that book. Frantic. I don’t even know why, exactly; it’s not rational; but I was. So then when it did arrive after all, and I became instantly sane again – I realized it was much more about the non-possession of the book than it was about anything anyone did. It was about impersonal matters like the slowness of the mail, so nothing to get bitter and resentful about. The return of sanity is a remarkably pleasant change.

So that meant the two paragraphs I had posted from the depths of struggle against mood were null and void, so I simply erased them. In future when I do that I’ll add a note saying I done erased them.

And your reward for following this deeply uninteresting saga is to know that I know that I am by no means always sane or rational or reasonable. I’ve always known that, but that doesn’t mean you know I know. Well now you know.

And by the way, the book is every bit as beautiful as Jeremy said it was, and furthermore, he says he’s seen it at one (1) Waterstone’s, so that means it is in at least one (1) Waterstone’s, and not hiding until March or April after all. And it’s not a bad read. It’s really not.

Oh, really; how pretty. How perfectly lovely.

A Muslim pop singer has been forced to hire bodyguards to protect her during a visit to Britain next month after she received a string of death threats from religious extremists. US-based Deeyah is due in London next month to promote a new single and video, released tomorrow. But the track “What Will It Be?” has already outraged hardline Islamists here as it promotes women’s rights.

Yes, well, you can see why that would outrage people, promoting women’s rights. Women can’t, shouldn’t, mustn’t have any rights, because the whole point, or almost the whole point, of hardline Islamism is to take rights away from women. Take that away and what’s left? Okay, there’s some fun left – executing a teenage girl because she stabbed one of three men who were intent on raping her and her teenage niece, for instance, and hand-amputation, and execution of gays – of course those are all good, but they don’t match the fun of keeping women squashed and oppressed, now do they. Use your head.

Her performances with a clutch of male dancers and revealing outfits have also deeply offended many Muslims. In one scene in her latest video, the singer drops a burqa covering her body to reveal a bikini.

‘Deeply offended’ – well we can’t have that. No no no no no – if there is anything the past few weeks have taught us, it is that ‘deeply offending’ many Muslims – no matter what footling thing ‘many Muslims’ choose to be ‘deeply offended’ by – is Forbidden. Or else dangerous. One of those – we seem to have a little trouble making up our minds which.

That has attracted vitriol from some quarters. The 28-year-old singer claims that in the past she has been spat upon in the street and told that her family would be in danger if she did not tone down her work…”I have been on the verge of a breakdown. Middle-aged men have spat at me in the street and I have had people phone me and tell me they were going to cut me up into pieces. I became this figure of hate simply because of what I do and wear.”

Well, yeah – because you’re a woman, see, and what you do and wear is not up to you to decide, because of your being a woman. See?

Deeyah, who was born in Norway of Iranian and Pakistani parentage, remains keen to return to Britain. “I miss London,” she said, adding that she wanted to inspire British Muslim women. “I receive letters and emails from women saying I am doing a good job. Putting my life at risk no longer bothers me. That so many women – Muslim women included – are abused by people in their own religion and communities does.”

Yeah. It bothers a lot of us. Go, Deeyah; good luck; peace be upon you. Not figurative peace, not in heaven peace; real peace; no harm.

The book has arrived, and the result was an immediate and dramatic improvement in the weather. So that’s the end of that tedious story, at last.

But this piece brought a little of my colour back, even before I opened the mailbox at midday (the post comes late around here).

Among those who decline to show the caricatures, only one, the Boston Phoenix, has been forthright enough to admit that its editors made the decision “out of fear of retaliation from the international brotherhood of radical and bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do. This is, frankly, our primary reason for not publishing any of the images in question. Simply stated, we are being terrorized, and as deeply as we believe in the principles of free speech and a free press, we could not in good conscience place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy.”

Well there you go. I’ve been thinking that all along. I wouldn’t mind so much all this self-censorship if the self-censorers just said ‘we won’t publish them because we’re scared’ instead of all the sinister bilge about being thenthitive. Just for one thing, with the first explanation, everybody is clear that that’s not a good situation, that no one should be pleased and happy about it, whereas with the second, all too many people are pleased – and say they are pleased, and throw little parties to prove it – that everyone is getting more thenthitive. The first situation will not persuade many people that self-censorship is a good thing; the second will.

…what’s at work here is not the Muslim street’s spontaneous revulsion against sacrilege but a calculated campaign of manipulation by European Islamists and self-interested Middle Eastern governments. If the images first published in Jyllands-Posten last September are so inherently offensive that they cannot be viewed in any context, why did Danish Muslims distribute them across an Islamic world that seldom looks at Copenhagen newspapers? As Bernard-Henri Levy wrote this week, we have here a case of “self-inflicted blasphemy.” Then there’s the question of why there was no reaction whatsoever when Al Fagr, one of Egypt’s largest newspapers, published these cartoons on its front page Oct. 17 – that’s right, four months ago – during Ramadan…Thursday, CNN broadcast a story on how common anti-Semitic caricatures are in the Arab press and illustrated it with – you guessed it – one virulently anti-Semitic cartoon after another. As the segment concluded, Wolf Blitzer looked into the camera and piously explained that while CNN had decided as a matter of policy not to broadcast any image of Muhammad, telling the story of anti-Semitism in the Arab press required showing those caricatures. He didn’t even blush.

Incoherent? Double standards? Oh, surely not! No, it’s pure sensitivity; really it is.

Aamer Ahmed Khan takes a look at some hidden meanings and agendas in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s religious parties, who had been calling for mass demonstrations against the cartoons since the controversy first flared up, have disowned the violence. But they have stopped well short of a categorical condemnation of the rioters while vowing to continue with their “peaceful protests”…Most of the vehicles set alight were motorbikes, which are owned mostly by lower middle class people. Such targets have nothing to do with the cartoons but have historically been the target of choice for religious activists whenever they have had a reason to take to the streets. Why motorbikes and cars? Because they are readily available – parked on roadsides and unprotected – burn easily and provide the media with fiery images.

Right. Same way, if you’re going to rob somebody, it’s cleverer to rob somebody small and weak who won’t hurt you, rather than somebody big and strong and heavily-armed, who will. If you’re going to rape somebody, you wait until there’s no one around to help her. It’s only sensible.

Attacking such properties makes for a powerful statement of the cultural agenda pursued by almost every Pakistani religious organisation…Pakistani observers point out that while the protests may have done little to bring the alleged blasphemers under pressure they have certainly conveyed the destructive potential of injured religious sentiment to the outside world…Pakistan’s religious leadership may not be averse to the idea of demonstrating to the world that Pakistanis remain a deeply religious people despite Gen Musharraf’s liberal rhetoric. And if demonstrating this requires arson and looting, it may be a small price in the mind of the country’s religious leadership for emphasising an orthodox cultural agenda which has been under consistent pressure since the September 2001 attacks on the US.

Which should remind the sensitive types, yet again, that Muslims (excuse me, ‘the Muslim community’) don’t all think alike, and that religious zealots don’t speak for all Muslims, much less all people who live in majority-Muslim countries such as Pakistan or Indonesia. They don’t speak for everyone any more than Pat Robertson speaks for me just because we’re both part of the US community. The sensitive types need to realize that religious zealots scare the hell out of a lot of people, including people who are also Muslim, but not so conservative about it as the motorbike-burners. Pay attention, now, sensitives. Take notes.