Muslim Fashionistas

Posted on November 23rd, 2006 by .
Categories: Gender, Kinship & Marriage Issues, Youth culture (as a practice).

While in several European countries there is a debate going on about the practice of veiling, the issue of Muslim attire in general is a very interesting one. Islam and fashion, or for women being a Muslim and a model, seems to be at odds with eachother now and then, this does not prevent Muslim women to become real fashionistas. In following the lastest fashion trends and combining it with so called traditional female Muslim dress, we can see the emergence of some kind of new trend (although I doubt if this is really new actually). And of course female designers are also busy taking part in the global fashion industry in a way that shows the relation with islam is completely absent.
The magazine Marie Claire has an issue called Mecca Stars out now.

marieclairehijab.jpgThe pictures are taken in Dubai:

First off, why Dubai? “It’s all over the media right now as it tries to put itself on the map as the ultimate travel and shopping destination,” explains senior fashion editor Eric Nicholson. “It seems a very culturally relevant place for a fashion shoot.”
Dubai2
After two days of location scouting, the first day of shooting came with a 5:30 a.m. call time. Once on the streets of Dubai, Eric was happy to see his vision for the shoot become reality. “I was concerned that the mixing of traditional dress and luxury fashion would seem odd, but when we arrived, I discovered that it is extremely normal and accepted,” he says. Three days—and a few hundred snaps—later, he and photographer Neil Kirk knew they had captured just the right look and feel. “It was hard to explain to the models that women in abayas toting Louis Vuitton is an unusual sight in the States.”

This causes some controversy in certain circles, accusing Marie Claire of collaborating with ‘islamofascists‘. Recent research depicts a more nuanced and more positive picture of that.

For some of the pictures, so you can judge them yourself: (more…)

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Dutch Elections – The day after

Posted on November 23rd, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

Four people have send me an email, asking me what did I vote. Well, I’m not going to tell you.

For a nice summary of the election result see the Washington Post. As expected, no party won enough seats for a majority in the lower house of parliament. The patterns shifted significant numbers of seats to parties with extremist views and robbed moderate parties of influence — a result that stunned government officials and political analysts. Of course this shift receives most of the attention, nevertheless the traditional social-democrats and christian democrats remain the largest parties in this country, with the christian democrats of PM Balkenende on top. I don’t think this points to a great change but I think it is evidence of a great divide in society. Between people who focus on bourgeois values and want to maintain peace and social harmony (even with Muslims) and others who want to seek confrontation. This latter group can be divided into two subsections. The first group (people who voted for Wilders) want to seek confrontation with, in their perception, intolerant (radical) Muslims. The other group wants to seek confrontation with, again in their perception, the growing intolerance towards migrants by people like Wilders and Verdonk.

UPDATE

The biggest winners in the election are Wilders’ party Party for Freedom, the Christian Union and the Socialist Party. All three parties promote a very idealized form of communitarianism: inward oriented, trying to uphold a sense of gemeinschaft/community and social cohesion among the people. The Party for Freedom does that by stressing the importance of being Dutch, Dutch culture, Dutch values and norms:

[…]to preserve our common heritage. The struggle for the survival of our traditional values is not limited to one country.

It is not very clear what that common heritage exactly is, but since Islam and Muslims play the role of the ultimate other in their program, it is clear what that common heritage is not. The Christian Union also focuses on social cohesion:

For a Sustainable and Relational Society

The ChristianUnion frames its political views on current political issues in obedience to the Word of God. […] Starting point for this election program is that people come to their right in relation with other people. People should never be shut out; that is our motivation to invest in opportunities at the labour market for everyone.

And the same goes for the SP:

The social divide has grown, health care and education have deteriorated. The soul has been torn from our society, by which I mean the mutual understanding. Recently someone said to me, “What belongs to all of us has been lost.” And this is also the case. Public space has disappeared and the public sector has fallen into decline. I adhere to the dialectical idea that the more intensely something becomes itself, the more likely it is, ultimately, to cancel itself out.. I am convinced that in the next few years the indifference and superficiality will give way to a greater involvement and engagement.

The other party that has claimed victory, the Christian Democrats, have lost votes but are still the largest. The parties mentioned above, PVV,CU and SP, have campaigned against the European Constitution. Not really in the sense that they are anti-international or anti-globalization but in a sense that they don’t want globalization at the expense of the Dutch people. The same sense of inward looking and more or less the same communitarianism can be found at the Christian Democrats (no quotation: they don’t have an english language section…..).

This trend of looking inwards and turning against globalization and European unification can also be discovered in the latest election campaign: migration, the war against terror, development aid and Europe were never a real issue. Parties like the Green Left, D66 and VVD, that have campaigned in favor of the European constitution, have a more international oriented perception (although one could not really discover this during the campaign), have lost big time.

Important to note is also the significant contribution of the migrants in this election. 69,7% of the migrants have voted: the highest number ever which results in 13 seats in Parlaiment. Ten out of 13 have gone to left wing parties:  PvdA receives 6 (35,8% of the Turkish migrants have voted for the social democrats), SP 3 (17% of the Moroccan migrants have voted for SP) and Green Left 1. Christian Democrats and D66 both one seat.
But I could be wrong of course.

3 comments.

AEI – Hirsi Ali: Setting Themselves Apart

Posted on November 23rd, 2006 by .
Categories: Gender, Kinship & Marriage Issues.

AEI – Hirsi Ali: Setting Themselves Apart
British Prime Minister Tony Blair says the Muslim veil is a mark of separation, which makes the integration of Muslim women into society more difficult. He’s right. Those who wear the veil deliberately set themselves apart.

(more…)

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The Dutch Elections 2006

Posted on November 23rd, 2006 by .
Categories: Multiculti Issues.

So, today were the elections in the Netherlands and as i write this (yes of course I have voted) the votes are still counted. As Crooked Timber notes these elections might not be extremely important for the rest of the world, but there are some interesting aspects. Remarkable is that the theme of integration and religion (read Islam) was almost completely absent in the campaign. Nevermind the plans for banning the burqa, the tsunami of islamization and the comparison of the islamization with the emergence of the nazi-threat before WW II; these were just incidents and certainly not a sign of a consistent thread in the campaign.

At that after years in which the sense of self- identity clashed with the hardest edge of its Muslim population than in any other country in Europe. After 9/11, the Netherlands has lived through a populist revolt against the perceived problems caused by Islamic immigration led by Pim Fortuyn, (murdered by an animal rights activist); the murder of the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, accused of blasphemy by a homegrown Muslim fundamentalist killer; and the departure from the Netherlands of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali woman who became a member of Parliament before being marked for death for her criticism of radical Islam.

The true change in this period is not that the the Dutch paradigm on the integration of its Arab and Turkish immigrant population (about 6 percent of a total of 16 million) has gone from one of accommodation to an emphasis on requiring compatibility from resident Muslims. There has always been discussion about that and it was certainly the main theme in government policies since 1994. Already in the 1980s it was established that the basis for living in the Netherlands has been defined as accepting the primacy of the Constitution, practical standards of engagement in society such as Dutch language competence, and the plain old cohesive value of work. Already in 1989 the government and several advisory boards maintained that there were limits with regard to social cohesion when it comes to allowing ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. The paradigm of integration with keeping your own culture and identity was abandoned in 1989 and 1994. However at the local level most of the old multicultural policies remained with all their positive points but also with its flaws and also it proved to be very difficult the tackle several issues that involved migrants in the public sphere. The Fortuyn revolt certainly has changed that and after his death the mainstream political parties (in particular the christian-democrats with PM Balkenende and the liberals with Hirsi Ali and Verdonk) have adopted several of his ideas. This probably means that issues concerning migration and islam are now part of the Dutch consensus and power structures; adressing this problem does no longer affect the consensus and power structures.

This is no reason however to sit back and relax. The extraordinary achievement of Wilders in these elections proves that for many people issues with regard to Islam are certainly not solved. Combined with the even more extradordinary result of the SP, socialists, that has become the third party of the country (after the christian-democrats and the social-democrats) also shows that the anti-establishment revolt of Fortuyn has not completely faded. The confusing aspect is then that the christian-democrats still are the largest in this country. This might reflect the attitude of some people that although they may agree with many points of Wilders and/or the SP, they don’t want populists and people they regard as extremists.

And indeed many issues are not solved but will only become more important in the coming years. Many of the Muslim youth see the traditional Muslim organizations as institutions that have sold themselves to the Dutch, professional-migrants and so on. This are people that are born and raised in the Netherlands and have gained public and political awareness in a time that Islam in the public sphere was in the center of everyones attention. The growing assertiveness, also evidenced by increasing numbers of migrants who vote, will increase their visibility in public life. Also the theme of religion, in general, in the public sphere in a country that increasingly sees secularism as the norm, will most likely remain in the coming years. This means that the themes that are hardly debated in the campaign, are the most interesting for other countries.
More blogs on the Dutch Elections: Peaktalk, OneWayStreet, KleinVerzet, Wis[s]e Words: ceci n’est past un blog, Sierra le oli, The Moderate Voice and European Tribune.

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