Personally I think the Iranians should stop taunting us with their oil, the vile harlots.

If they get invaded, it's all their fault. Well, 90% anyway.

It's not surprising that some backwater shaykh made these remarks - it's surprising that it created such a media storm.

How did it get fed into Australian public and media debate, why is it seen as something of wider public import than, say, a bunch of Mennonites in the US distributing pamphlets and chanting slogans about chastity and women obeying morally-superior men, and how homosexuality will bring the wrath of god on you etc (which they often do in American cities)?

Is this because of tensions with immigrants in Australia? What's going on - anyone know?

Well, he is theoretically important due to being declared "Mufti of Australia" by some group. Of course, knowing how fractious and regionalized Muslim communities are in Western countries, it's a stretch to say he represents Australian Muslims.

BBC also mentions a high-profile gang rape case with Lebanese perpetrators some years back.

Holy crap - there's a Mufti of Australia?! And they had to get him on the cheap, straight from the Said I suppose?

A propos, I got an email recently about a proposal to open up an English-language section at al-Azhar; though English-Azharis probably still couldn't fill the niche of a religious guide for Western Muslims.

If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem.

Ergo, men are alleycats.

Oddly enough, today's Dilbert has the perfect riposte.

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20061026.html

Ah, Dilbert is brilliant.

I think it's getting attention largely because of the vileness of the imagery. It's a common feminist talking point that misogynists regard women as meat, so it struck a dissonant chord.

Also, he is not some crazy backwater hobo, he is an influential cleric, a man of cloth. Not the bleedin 'Grand Mufti of Oz', but VIP nonetheless. I assure you if a minister had compared scantily clad women to 'uncovered meat', there would be a similar fallout. The question remains how this will affect community relations. Doubtless there will be racist attacks and angry letters. Perhaps it will also rally the various Muslim organisations against this line of thinking, which would be good. People are mostly governed by what they oppose, after all.

It further confirms the idea in the minds of Westerners that the hijab divides women into whores and saints, as evidenced by al-Halili's apology that he was only trying to 'defend the honour of women'. Hijab sexually objectifying females as much as the thong.

And finally, the subtext is the islamification of Western societies, the Fifth Column, the demographic attack from within. That these are the values imported (and not at all present in the first place).

From what I've read in passing, a number of Muslim groups/leaders have been quick to condemn, but I believe the Leb Muslim Association (who runs the mosque where he preaches) told a radio station that his comments were misinterpreted. Not a terribly smart PR move.

What I want to know is, how stupid are we really? Don't apologise and make some weak, lame excuse about context, the remarks are there. Stick by your guns at least and don't be a coward as well as a bigoted twat.
I would hate to make a comparison with The Pope's kerfuffle but I couldn't resist as this, this really is hilarious..

'In a statement released on Thursday, Sheikh Hilali said he had been quoting another, unnamed, source and did not mean his words to condone rape.'

Ahem, deja vu anyone? At least the Pope has his notecards and citations ready, this is just slipshod.

Re assault/fidelity ah well that's just fine, how could one have confused the two. It is perfectly acceptable to claim that infidelity is the uncovered meat's fault. Ties into that perpetual conventional wisdom that men are just the happless victims in some collosal universal honey trap. Of course infidelity does occur in places like Saudi Arabia where women are covered from head to toe but you just know how alluring those abayas are. Why only today I almost tempted a man into straying when he caught sight of my seductively unmanicured knobbly toes.

What I want to know is, where are the Offenderati?? All those hotblooded men so proud of their heritage and identity. If someone compared me to a hungry cat I'd want to burn some embassies frankly, I don't think Muslim men have ever been so insulted.

I must also add Australia does have some rather draconian infidelity laws. 65 years seems a bit harsh. See that's what we've been saying all along, stoning is much more merciful than 65 years, just puts you out of your misery and spares you the incarceration.

The more unmaskings the merrier I say, so one can deal once and for all with the absurdity, isolate it and alienate it rather than have it lurking underneath in some diasporic disguise forever eliminating any possibility of integration. However, as long Muslims save their offence for non-Muslims and do not develop a healthy sense of comprehensive pride as opposed to selective pride, they will become the proverbial uncovered meat at the mercy of all who want a bite.

He's Egyptian and his views sound typical Egyptian. Of course, I recall when I was living in the Montreal area some 15 years ago, there was a gang rape case in the farthest reaches of northern New York where the rapists got off scot free on similar logic.

There is perhaps then a universality in idiocy.

As to Bint supra.... I believe I followed the opening, but perhaps my attention deficit disorder impairs me from following the entirity. Or maybe slinky abayas do.

(Ah you laugh, well...)

The "she's asking for it" excuse is certainly cross-cultural.

I recall drawing quite a bit of harassment in Egypt because so many people thought I was a local parading around unveiled in Western clothing.

Oh my dear Lounsbury, I did not know you had a toe festish mon petit chat

I do NOT understand the foot fetish. Of all fetishes, that one escapes me the most.

Anyhoo...have a distant memory of an article about Hazedi men who confessed to ejaculating at the mere touch of a woman's hand. Also, how bare ankles were so very very sexy in Victorian Britain...oh, yeah. My favourite example is African tribes whose women did not cover their breasts. While Europeans were flabbergasted at their inmodesty, they didn't see the problem at all. Yes, the bra is the Western hijab, and we want to see nipples, by god.

So it's relative. And al-Halili comes from a different world.

"a bunch of Mennonites in the US distributing pamphlets and chanting slogans about chastity and women obeying morally-superior men, and how homosexuality will bring the wrath of god on you etc (which they often do in American cities)?"

I always thought the Mennonites were rather mellow, if often oddly dressed.

Meanwhile, nothing justifies something so patently rational as an anti-Muslim pogrom as a sexist cleric, given that only Muslims have these.

Egyptian? Now there's a shock.

ya klaus,

fetishes are not there to be explained. if a woman you want has a specific one - then you just play along. case closed.

as for "bra = western hijab" - when was the last time you heard a western cleric/politician/mediaperson hold lengthy sermons on how it's god's/nature's/etc. will to wear them, or scream that all women who don't wear them will go to hell, or that all women who don't wear them are themselves to blame when (not if) they get raped?

...

yeah. thought so.

--raf*

sort of was a joke.

I thought it was funny, the "by god" was a nice touch.

and anyway, when was the last time you saw French politicians banning the covering-up of breasts?

This analogy has sit-com potential.

raf, I think Klaus meant that where a society draws the line between what must be covered up and what can be shown off is entirely arbitrary. Thus, if it became a social fad in the west for women to go around topless(copying dominant African styles), you're damn right western clerics/politicians/mediapeople would be bitching up a storm about it and calling it ungodly, immoral, and tempting rape.

Tops, rather than bras, are the western hijab.

On a side note, I do think that Muslim immigrant populations have trouble talking publicly about sexual topics, even while they live in the permissive west. A classmate of mine in college insisted that homosexuality just didn't exist in Muslim countries, that it was just a western thing. She was very smart and indistinguishable from an American cheerleader-type in accent and mannerisms, but refused to listen to reason when it came to questions of sex in society.

Bint - I am as appalled by these stupid sexist backward remarks as anybody - I'm just used to hearing this sort of thing occasionally from neanderthals no-one takes very seriously (in the Middle East, South Asia and in the US - one particularly memorable Turkish fellow who had grown up in Saudi and imbibed their nonsense, was dismissed as an asshole by all the women of the university Islamic Students Association), so I'm surprised that this was a big deal. Didn't realize this chap was an influential cleric. Yet another reason why government-recognized religious authority is a lousy idea, makes it much harder to dismiss loonies as loonies.

Re: Mennonites - yeah, they distributed those pamphlets on the day of the Gay Pride parade in the city I lived. I saved a bunch of them too, because they were so damn fundie (and amusing to compare with Islamist fundies).

Djuha's point about the top being the Western hijab is a good one; I sometimes use the comparison of the midriff-revealing sari blouse to get Westerners to think about the relative arbitrariness of norms about modesty. But the kind of misogynistic "she asked for it" argument discussed above seems to go beyond considerations about social norms of decent dress. Rationalizing rape is qualitatively different.

Offenderati and insults to Muslim manhood - good point. Sexist and evangelical as they are, one of the things I have to give the Promise Keepers is that they at least take male responsibilities to women and families seriously. When will Muslim fundies start to harp on the duties of men to women(isn't there an injunction about giving your wife sexual pleasure)?

Djuha - not entirely arbitrary. I don't play for that team. The niqab might make good sense in a desert, but be very annoying to wear elsewhere. Also, uncovered breasts are a bad idea in colder countries, and so forth. This becomes habit becomes tradition becomes dogma. As in: Marriage is promoted as moral, and arranged for horny young people, and children born outside of marriage frowned upon, because it makes sense for the community to have someone raise the bloody brats. Adultery is immoral while prostitutes are tacitly accepted, for the sake of stability. Women should stay home and tend to the children while men get stuff done, hence liberated women are immoral and a danger to society. Etcetera, etcetera. The social conventions mould themselves around reality and engage with it, to make society work.

So it got me thinking how human society would be if women went into heat once a year, instead of being fertile constantly. Can't figure it out.

Sheikh Hillali has an unfortunate history of making these and other incendiary remarks.

We have a detailed analysis of it here:

http://austrolabe.com/2006/10/25/guilty-meat-but-innocent-cats/

Nice blog. That Wiki link on the Sydney gang rapes is particularly helpful re context.

Oh my dear Lounsbury, I did not know you had a toe festish mon petit chat

No, an abaya fetish.

Particularly damning is that the '65 years' apparently is a direct reference to the gang rapes. He can't honestly maintain he talked about adultery. So he's lying as well.

Indeed, Klaus. 65 years is too close to the gang rape sentence to be coincidence, particularly when considers his remarks immediately before/after.

Precisely, the Egyptian hick is lying; I expect nothing less. he's got a comfy position, his play is to the hicks and the lost.

The hicks and the lost are a problem, a challenge to avoid 7 july people.

I do NOT understand the foot fetish. Of all fetishes, that one escapes me the most.

I once read an interview with a foot fetishist (a man - nearly all paraphiliacs, particularly feet, seem to be men, don't they?) and he said it was because a foot with toes was like "five tiny penises".

Of course in the good mullah's eyes they would be five tiny sausages, and probably pork ones at that.

Thank god its only abayas then.

(no offense intended if we actually have foot-fetishist readers)

So this is Egypt, then? Link courtesy of Tom. Hilali was just being Egyptian, like L said.

Just to extend the isnad a bit, I saw the link on the Aardvark's sidebar.

Rather captures my first impression of Cairo, yes.

The graveness of the incident also stems from the fact that by comparing women to meat, the Mufti is partaking in making women in objects.