Boing Boing » islam

CC-licensed Muslim sf anthology

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 03:50:34 +0000

Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad sez, "I am the editor of Islam and Science Fiction which has been previously featured on Boing Boing. Back in 2007 I co-edited "A Mosque Among the Stars, an anthology of muslims in sci-fi. We are now releasing it for free under a Creative Commons license."

Snapshots from Benghazi

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 15:20:01 +0000

Bassam Tariq of 30 Days Ramadan points us to a series of images making the rounds on Facebook, Twitter, and the like today. The snapshots are ostensibly reactions to the recent violence related to a weird, anti-Islam YouTube trailer for a film produced by a mysterious character with a shady past.

The whole story behind that video and the attacks linked to it is perplexing, and the more that comes to light, the more it feels like a strange disinfo job. But I have no idea by whom, and to what end.

More images here. I don't know who shot them, and am unable to verify that they are what they appear to be as I post.

More: Boing Boing news archive for "Innocence of Muslims."

Crappy YouTube trailer leads to death of US diplomat and others in Mideast

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 14:36:09 +0000

Update: The whole thing sounds like a weird disinfo job. But, by whom and to what end? The AP has outed "Sam Bacile" as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, a Coptic Christian who claims the film supports the concerns of Christian Copts about their treatment by Muslims. On The Media notes that there's something fishy about the film dialogue. And Gawker has spoken to one of the actresses in the film, who says she had no idea what the film was really about.

The Associated Press identifies Sam Bacile as an Israeli filmmaker based in California who made an independently produced and financed anti-Muslim movie that's sort of "Birth of a Nation" meets "Bed Intruder." The YouTube trailer is embedded above, and it unapologetically attacks Islam’s prophet Muhammad. Bacile has no known prior history as a filmmaker.

His D-grade web trailer inspired (or, alternately, was used as cover for) attacks by ultra-conservative Muslims on U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya. J Christopher Stevens, America's ambassador to Libya, and three American members of his staff were killed today in resulting violence.

From the Associated Press:

Speaking by phone Tuesday from an undisclosed location, writer and director Sam Bacile remained defiant, saying Islam is a cancer and that the 56-year-old intended his film to be a provocative political statement condemning the religion. Protesters angered over Bacile’s film opened fire on and burned down the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. Libyan officials said Wednesday that Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed Tuesday night when he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff as the building came under attack by a mob firing machine guns and rocket propelled grenades.

Bacile is a real estate developer in California who identifies himself as an Israeli Jew. “Islam is a cancer, period,” he told the AP. The video above is a trailer for his two-hour movie, “Innocence of Muslims,” which cost $5 million to produce and was, according to the director, backed by funding from 100 Jewish donors. There's an English version and an Arabic-dubbed version of the trailer here. Bacile reports that the entire film has been shown "once, to a mostly empty theater in Hollywood earlier this year."

Here is a list of other ambassadors who have died in the line of duty. Here is a Reuters slideshow of protesters outside the embassy in Libya.

Here, a longtime real-life and internet-space friend of Sean Smith, an officer in the U.S. Foreign Service stationed at the consulate writes about his life, legacy, and loss. Sean Smith was an EVE player and Something Awful forums moderator.

I’m clearly in shock as I write this as everything is buzzing around my head funnily and I feel kind of dead inside. I’m not sure if this is how I’m supposed to react to my friend being killed by a mob in a post-revolutionary Libya, but it’s pretty awful and Sean was a great guy and he was a goddamned master at this game we all play, even though a lot of people may not realize how significant an influence he had. It seems kind of trivial to praise a husband, father, and overall badass for his skills in an internet spaceship game but that's how most of us know him, so there you go.

Here's a thread at Something Awful that chronicles the live board reaction as news of Smith's death in the attack spread.

Below, via the Atlantic, a video of Ambassador Stevens at work

More: Boing Boing news archive for "Innocence of Muslims."

The First Knight of Ramadan: A Muslim Nerd's Dilemma (video)

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:50:53 +0000

[Video Link] Aman Ali, one of the guys behind "30 Mosques," tells Boing Boing, "Instead of doing a roadtrip this year, we're releasing short films."

I love this one. In it, a Muslim nerd "is excited for the new Dark Knight movie," but it releases on the first night of Ramadan.

The short film stars Aman Ali, is directed by Musa Syeed, and was shot by Omar Mullick. Subscribe to their YouTube channel for more.

Modernizing Modesty: the Hijab and Body Image

Mariam Sobh — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:10:15 +0000

Photo: Ranoush (cc) Illo: Rob Beschizza

Recent trends in Hijab fashion modernize a form of modest dress once defined by local traditions. In seeking self-expression, however, Muslim women find themselves targeted by a media industry with its own taste for female objectification.

“It’s two-sided,” says Aisha Ahmad, 30, a health care administrator from Ft. Lauderdale. “On the one hand, it’s nice to see that we can achieve a 'high fashion' look while still wearing hijab. On the other hand, it puts you right back in the same place. ... Not all of us look like these models, nor will we ever look the way they do."

Hijab refers to modest dress in general and head-covering in particular. The Islamic requirement is to loosely cover all but the face, hands and feet, avoiding sheer angles and revealing little of the body. Across the world, local variations on this theme prevail: the long Abaya gowns of the Gulf region, the Jilbab in Syria and Jordan, and the Burqa in Afghanistan. In Iran, there is the Chador.

But as new generations of Muslim women came of age, they found ways for hijab to complement, rather than stymie, a growing desire for self-expression. And with them came a new breed of designer and entrepreneur—many of them women—whose specialization in “hijab fashion” came to prominence in the mid-2000s.

As a result, muslim women now have more to choose from, with mainstream retailers producing maxi dresses and maxi skirts which Muslim women adore: long and loose and perfectly in line with the latest trends. It's even made modestly itself fashionable: able to express themselves creatively with it, more Muslim women now say they do or want to wear hijab.

Designing and selling clothing that breaks the stereotype of drab Muslim clothing, however, has a tricky side.

Turkey, one of the first Islamic countries to have “hijab fashion shows”, fills the catwalks with models in from nearby European countries. Marketing often highlights a peculiar combination of physical attributes all-too familiar to Western fashionistas and critics alike. Advertising targets a nascent market from every glowing screen.

In an ironic twist, Hijab-wearing Muslim women are falling prey to the same thing their choice of garb ostensibly protects them from: a relentless bombar of distorted female body images.

"I feel that women may be encouraging it.,” said Inaya Shujaat, who converted to Islam more than 12 years ago. “When we have female celebrities whose only accomplishments are being hot or gorgeous, I wonder what sort of message that sends. We are living in the post Women's Liberation era, yet I feel that women are being portrayed in a more negative way today.”

Shujaat likes the idea of hijab fashion, but takes issue with the polarizing choice, between the new and the old, which has emerged.

"I don't like that it seems to be appropriate only for one particular age group and dress size,” Shujaat said. “I am a 36 year old mother of two. I do not wish to dress like a 21 year old college student, nor do I have the body of a 21 year old college student. Hijab fashion needs to be all-inclusive, bearing in mind that Muslim women come in many shapes, sizes, ages, etc. It really irritates me that I basically have two choices when it comes to hijab fashion: ethnic, or trendy. There is no in-between."

Like Ahmad, Woro Hapsari sees benefits both in hijab fashion and Muslim women flexing their marketing muscle. Moreover, Hapsari, who works for Nokia Siemens Networks in Indonesia, said she doesn't necessarily feel like she has to live up to the image set by models: “Yes it affects me, but not as much now since I wear a hijab. You can say that now those models influence me to look healthy and to dress nicely but still in modesty.”

As the whirlwind of fashion marketing grows, however, so does a new pressure to conform.

“I often struggle to find that balance in my work attire when I compare my look to what I see on TV, print ads, and in the stores,” Ahmad said. “Being pretty and thinner than I am are always on my mind. Whether I want to admit or not, I take cues from what I see in the media as what I should look like and then find myself buying accessories to look like what I see in the media.”

In particular, Muslim women say the use of tall caucasian models to market fashionable hijab is misleading: the products look amazing on the clothes horses, and less so on average women. Plus ca change.

"Instead of making women feel proud of their Muslim identity they make women feel like they should try to imitate and look like the these models,” said Sarah Gil, a 20 year-old fashion, marketing and design student in Bogota, Columbia.

Gil decided to wear hijab as a way to honor her Muslim identity and to escape the “scrutiny” of other women.

While encouraged by the choice and satisfied with her “hijabi skin”, she still feels critical of herself and fears that it's not enough to protect her from the relentless marketing of body images: “I think the media portrays women as nothing more than a tool to draw attention … there is nothing positive about that.”

Jana Kosaibati, hijab fashion blogger and medical student, said these companies are simply trying to live up to the standards of advertising that mainstream companies use, because they feel consumers want that.

“Even within the hijab and Islamic fashion market, there is a large variation in the type of advertising they use,” Kosaibati said. “Many will not show models' faces, and some won't even use models at all. If a company chooses to use glammed-up models, I don't think this is misleading. Most consumers are savvy enough to look beyond the adverts.”

Kosaibati added, though, that it would be refreshing to see more effective, creative advertising that did not simply look like glossy magazines with the addition of headscarves: “hijab fashion companies have a great opportunity here to showcase women of different shapes, sizes, ethnicities and ages, if they do choose to use models. … they [could] make their clothing feel a lot more accessible and wearable for all women, and this helps to counteract the negative messages that mainstream advertising may be sending out."

Whether from a secular or religious standpoint, women in Islamic culture are finding that self-expression comes hand-in-hand with how their bodies are represented in the media and by the international fashion industry. While it's good to see more options for Muslim women who want to dress modestly, I've concluded that as long as we put our beauty and bodies first, we will never be happy.

That said, it would be refreshing to see more professional models who look more like the rest of us. After all, we are the ones buying the stuff.

Interpol accused after Saudi Arabia arrests journalist over Muhammad tweet

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 04:07:18 +0000

Saudi Arabia is reported to have used Interpol's "red notice" system to locate and arrest journalist Hamza Kashgari, 23, (image at left) over tweets perceived as an insult to the Prophet Muhammad.

The international police organization denies involvement.

On the day observed as the Prophet's birthday, Kashgari published three tweets that described an imaginary meeting with the Prophet.

The one that caused all the hysteria (including "arrest him!" campaigns on Facebook and Twitter):

"I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don't understand about you … I will not pray for you."

[translation via AFP].

Kashgari later apologized, removed the tweets, then fled the country as calls for his arrest grew.

Habibi: graphic novel is blends Islamic legend, science fiction dystopia, love and loss

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:11:53 +0000

Craig Thompson's new graphic novel Habibi is an enormous and genre-busting graphic novel that blends Islamic mysticism, slave/liberation narratives and post-apocalyptic science fiction, creating a story that is erotic, grotesque, and profoundly moving.

Habibi is set in an atemporal Middle Eastern country that seems at times to be caught in classical times, but whose landscape is dotted with derelict jeeps, poisoned water awash in rotting consumer goods and other elements from out of time. Dodola, a child bride, is captured by slavers who murder her older husband, a scribe who had reared her on the stories, sutras and legends he was paid to calligraph. On the run, she rescues a younger slave boy, Zam, and the two become refugees together. They find a new home in the desert, a strangely out of place wrecked ship amid the sands, which they make into a snug home. Dodola raises Zam as her son, and to feed them both, she must prostitute herself to the caravans that pass by their hiding place.

When violence comes again -- when Dodala is enslaved to a capricious sultan's harem -- Zam is on his own, and is also soon in trouble. The story veers into Scheherazade territory as Dodola tries to charm the sultan into releasing her, but with the dark threat that usually lurks in the background in Scheherazade brought to the foreground. Zam is battered by life and circumstance, mutilated and enslaved, and still the two pine for each other.

Habibi is told in a dreamlike, non-linear, dense style, with asides for swirling Islamic legends, the theory and practice of magic squares, the hidden meanings in Arabic calligraphy, jumping from time to time and place to place, giving the book a deep, mythic resonance. The tale is epic and often horrific, but so well told that it grips you right through it's 670-odd pages.

I don't think I've ever read a book quite like this, and I expect I'll be thinking about it for a long, long time.

Habibi

Update: Mike from Mother Jones sez, " we just posted (on Monday) a cool interview I did with Thompson about Habibi."