Eloïse Lagrenée has posted on her Facebook page a picture by Yemeni photographer Bushra Almutawakel, illustrating how women could vanish into darkness and invisibility, step by step, under fundamentalist pressure and the full niqab. It has been shared over 1,500 times.
Now do one where the women vanish into darkness and invisibility, step by step, under non-fundamentalist pressure.
Even the most impassioned boycottista would have to acknowledge that clearing a Brooklyn store’s shelves of a few items would be a symbolic act and would hardly put a dent in Israel’s economy or sway its leaders to sign a peace agreement. But, the boycottistas suggest, even if banishing Israeli marshmallows from West Brooklyn will not shake things up in the West Bank, the important thing is that the co-op could make a collective statement against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.In fact, boycott supporters were primarily making a statement about themselves. Because, these days, being Against Israel and Caring About Palestine have become moral markers in some Western circles. In places like Park Slope, boycotting Israeli products is now a lifestyle choice, much like using canvas bags and shunning plastic, eating organic and avoiding “junk” foods, or recycling instead of just throwing away your trash.”
Arab views of the United States improved over the past year, but still have a long way to go according to the 2011 edition of the annual survey of six Arab countries conducted by Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland this October. And Arab publics remain broadly supportive of uprisings around the region, and guardedly optimistic about the future.
The Obama administration’s efforts to grapple with the Arab spring seem to have improved Arab views of the United States to some extent, but the survey shows the steep obstacles to such engagement. America’s image rebounded from 10% favorable in 2010 to 26% favorable, largely among those who see that it has played a positive role in responding to the Arab uprisings. That compares to 12% favorable in 2006 and 15% in 2008. The jump to 26% is a significant increase, but it’s obviously still a very low number. - Foreign Policy
This year’s poll surveyed 3,000 people in Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates in October 2011, assessing attitudes toward the United States and the Obama administration, prospects for Arab-Israeli peace, the impact of the Arab awakening, the outlook for the Egyptian elections, and opinions on where the region is headed politically. - Brookings
Interesting stats but as always, proceed with caution.
A glimmer of hope for Arabs via Arab Attitudes: 2011, a report from the Arab American Institute.
Read the rest of the report at the link.
When commentators, politicians, and journalists pose questions as to the potentially dangerous aspect of regime change in the Arab world, they are pointing to the possibility that Islamist governments may be formed in Tunisia, Egypt, or Syria. American and European fears of Islamists are certainly not because they represent a threat to personal freedoms (just look at the record of personal freedoms in Saudi Arabia, America’s strongest Arab ally) but because Western powers are afraid of what an Islamist-inspired foreign policy might look like. Simply put, the fear is that Islamist governments may realign themselves against the US/Israel camp, although, looking again to Saudi Arabia, there is little evidence to suggest that Islamism is inherently at odds with the foreign policy objectives of the United States and of Israel. In this way, gay Arabs are only the latest fodder used to fan the flames of Islamophobia in political, media, and public discourse. The idea is that Islamist governments are inherently intolerant of non-normative sexual behavior, and that that intolerance is unacceptable to the international community today. This statement, in turn, rests upon several assumptions: 1) Secular authoritarian regimes have been the protectors of women and gays in the Arab world, and 2) The international community, via the discourse of human rights, can cherry pick injustices and politicize them within a liberal discourse of tolerance. Under the twinned discourses of “tolerance” and “Islamophobia”, a state’s treatment of its gays and its women is used as a marker for “backwardness” or “civilization”. As Wendy Brown reminds us, the use of human rights abuses to justify the War on Terror speaks this violent logic; that those who are intolerant do not deserve to be tolerated [by those who both set the standard and are tasked with upholding it, when it suits them]. Homophobia within Palestine, for example, which is bizarrely presented as unique and exceptional, becomes a justification for why Palestinians are less deserving of justice, equality and a state than the liberal, tolerant and democratic Israelis.It is significant that populations such as gays, women, and Christians are being harnessed to promote fear of what will emerge post Assad, for example. In part, we should not be surprised; if the pinkwashing campaign has taught us anything, it is that Israel, by promoting itself as the protector of gay Palestinians, successfully cleaves human rights from political engagement and uses the ideological capital of “tolerance” to promote itself as a protector of freedom in a sea of intolerant, backwards, and dangerous Arabs/Palestinians. One could ask, as one Palestinian queer activist is fond of saying, is there a secret doorway in the apartheid wall visible only to gay Palestinians? In the context of the Arab Spring, this separation of human and political rights accomplishes many of the same objectives. It posits the Assad, Mubarak, or Ben Ali regime as preferable in terms of human and minority rights to the Islamist governments that may follow them. And it renders the political rights and will of all Arabs, gay and straight, male and female, old and young, citizens and non-citizens, Christian and Muslim and Jewish, a prospect that we, the secular and the liberal, should be weary of.
