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Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Has Islam Failed? Not By Western Standards..

Imam Zaid quoted this article in the CD set Rise and Fall of the Ummah.

"We hear over and over again that Islam has failed, that it is in crisis. The claims always involve comparing Islam to something else, though to what is often unclear. If 'failed' just means 'hasn't kept up with the West', Islam has indeed failed. So has every other culture, except to the extent it has Westernized. And if a culture fails whenever it falls behind the economic or technological front runners, Italian culture has failed in relation to Japanese or American culture............................"

Monday, November 28, 2005

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Can Fulla save Muslim girls from Barbie?

I wonder how much influence dolls have on kids? I remember I used to play with action figures a bit back in the day. G.I. Joe, Luke Skywalker and all ( yeah a lot of these were my brothers younger days in Canada ) which I re-used since I could only get cheap plastic"jumaa Bazaar" toys in Pakistan. LOL!

Anyways here is an interesting piece about dolls and Muslim girls . I am not sure what to think of it since obviously I do not have much experience with dolls from my youth. Hence I would like some comments!


"Currently, little girls from Iraq to Morocco are crazy for Fulla, a
creation of Syria's NewBoy Design Studio. A Barbie in a black hijab, with a
smaller bust, and far more modest clothing, Fulla was created out of concern
that Barbie would corrupt traditional values, turning Muslim girls into
high-heeled wonders with vacant smiles. And while sloe-eyed, darkhaired Fulla
does have a vacant smile, she also has abayas (traditional Muslim overdress),
head scarves, a prayer mat, and outdoor (modest) versus indoor (anything where
her plastic flesh shows) fashion.

...................................................................................

Barbie, Fulla, and American Girls are dolls, not role models or political symbols. I loved my Barbie dolls. But I never thought I had to be like them any more than I thought I had to look like Raggedy Ann. Surely girls are not so tractable, or
unable to ask questions, as some appear to think. It's hard to believe a doll
could have a more profound impact on a girl than her family. If parents in Syria
would prefer their daughter not dress scantily, they will set the example. If
parents in North America wish self-confidence for their daughter, they can help
her find the way, rather than enlisting her dolls.If only girls were so
governable by plastic playthings. We could create an "Invests-Well Barbie."
Better still, we could branch out, and get those people at NewBoy to create a
"Discourages-Her-Son-From-Strapping-Dynamite-to-His-
Body-and-Walking-Into-a-Crowded-Market Fulla." Unfortunately, influencing young minds isn't such child's play."


I did some more research on the topic and did find differing views:

Barbie dolls were pervasive in the experiences of both the young adolescent girls and boys surveyed. While girls generally reported imaginative play with Barbie dolls, boys tended to report destructive play and the disfiguring of Barbie dolls. The girls' reported experiences support the notion that play with Barbie dolls entails enacting adult social scripts, and perhaps shaping girls' developing self-concept through the internalize of stereotyped feminine scripts (Kline, 1993; Koste, 1995).

The girls in these studies reported that during late childhood and early adolescence, imaginative play with Barbie dolls became less appealing, and many reported disfiguring and damaging the dolls. Destructive play has been posited as a means of expressing anger and fantasy deemed inappropriate for public expression (Turkel, 1998). The disfigured Barbie doll may represent girls' views about their developing feminine self. Just as the girls leave behind and ignore their Barbie dolls for other play activities (or outright disfigure the dolls), so too may they forsake or damage their own feminine identity. The devaluation of Barbie dolls may symbolize girls' loss of voice and self, or their "silencing" (Freedman, 1986; Taylor, Gilligan, & Sullivan, 1995; Turkel, 1998).


and some more research:

"Toys do not embody violence or sexism or occult meanings. People must assign toys their meanings." Barbie is whoever we make her out to be. Barbie grabs a hold of our imaginations and lets us go wild."

Friday, November 25, 2005

People and Puzzles

BlockquoteSome people are hard to understand. It's hard to crack them open and even if you do, there are so many pieces it's hard to put the puzzle together. " By a good friend

The Guesthouse

End of the term..A time when things get rough for us undergrads....Reading this poem is always refreshing in such circumstances:


The Guesthouse

Mevlânâ Jelal-uddin Rumi

This being human is a guesthouse
every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,

Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Me and the Mosque

I watched this documentry on Vision TV today ( There will be a repeat tomorrow night at 11 PM). The doucmentry featureed mainstream Muslim Scholars like Sh. Abdullah Adhami among others.

The focus of the documentry was on the exclusion of women from the mosque ( Barriers, No Women Board mmembers , etc.). I liked it because I think it is important that we have critisism of our Cultural Practices ( which are confused with Religon in many cases) from within the mainstream cicrles of Islam rathar than the fringes ( read Progressives). Our lack of self critisim makes it easy for progressives to catograize "us" as one group. I am also sure that some Muslims will be not happy that issues like these are being externalized. However I feel that by making such doucmentries you are not giving Islam a bad name , you are actually drawing the lines between Islam and Cultural Practices. Anyways I hope you all watch it!!

“I pray in a room where there is a one-way mirror so the men cannot see me. I'm told [women] are a distraction.”

Like millions of Muslim women around the world, journalist and filmmaker Zarqa Nawaz cherishes Islam's emphasis on social justice and spiritual equality between the sexes. So it came as a terrible blow when her Regina, Sask. mosque forced women to pray in a separate room, away from the men.

“The mosque was the most important part of my life, and now I didn't feel welcome,” she says. “I felt a strong sense of spiritual loneliness.”

In her National Film Board of Canada (NFB) documentary Me and the Mosque , Nawaz asks why so many Muslim places of worship in 21st century Canada enforce the strict separation of men and women. The search for answers takes her to mosques all over North America, and deep into the history and traditions of Islam.

VisionTV presents the national television premiere of Me and the Mosque on Wednesday, Nov. 23 at 10 p.m. ET. The broadcast repeats on Thursday, Nov. 24 at 11 p.m. ET.

An insightful and often amusing look at the past and present role of women in Islam, Me and the Mosque features both whimsical animation and in-depth interviews with people on all sides of the issue. The film was produced through the NFB's Reel Diversity program, a national, annual competition for emerging filmmakers of colour.

As Islamic scholars reveal to Nawaz, early Muslim society was egalitarian: both sexes prayed together, and women played prominent roles in the community. However, over the last two centuries in particular, women have been increasingly segregated.

Today, more than 90 percent of Muslims in Canada come from Muslim countries where men and women never pray together, and mosques here naturally cater to these expectations. Of the approximately 140 mosques in this country, an estimated two-thirds require women to pray behind barriers, partitions or curtains. Frustrated by their exclusion, many young women of Nawaz's generation have turned away from organized worship altogether.

In the course of her odyssey, Nawaz speaks to men with traditional views on the separation of the sexes, and women yearning to play an equal part in worship. She meets the architect of a new mosque in Surrey, B.C., interviews an American writer who fought publicly for the right to pray alongside men at her mosque in West Virginia, and hosts an eye-opening panel discussion on this issue at a gathering in Gimli, Man.

As one female activist tells her: “Every woman who has the courage of her convictions has to get up and say no. You can ignore me as long as you want, but here I am to stay.”

Me and the Mosque was written and directed by Zarqa Nawaz, and produced for the National Film Board of Canada by Joe MacDonald. The executive producers are Graydon McCrea and Michael Scot