Cluecake News 8.11.08

Veiled Athletes Challenge Stereotypes in Beijing

When I was a teenager, I would often have summer visits to London. One summer we were traveling during the Olympic Games and in the London Times there was a photograph of an Iranian woman wearing chador on the Iranian National Archery Team. I saved the picture because I was so amazed by the seeming contradictions that the picture evoked. I have since lost the clipping, but I still remember it and conjure it whenever I read these sorts of articles about veiled women and remember my own feelings about the novelty of Muslim women athletes. Nowadays however, I’m more amazed by women, Muslim women included, who rise above the adversity of war, religion, and poverty to the Olympic Games. The veil? That’s secondary. The struggle? That’s primary and worth every Gold medal there is to be won.

Yemen Divided on Vice and Virtue (Policing)

Here we go again. You cannot legislate religiosity! How many times are we going to go through this before people realise that the entire notion of, “I can’t have it, thus I want it more” is a universal phenomena.

Al-Qaeda Faces Islamist Backlash

Thank G*d. Someone finally grew a brain and realised that moderation, scholarship and appropriate dialogue are the ways to get attention and make change. I wish someone had figured this out seven years ago.