Published 18 May 201021 January 2013 · Main Posts Pathological anti-Islam Jeff Sparrow For the last few weeks, we’ve learned, over and over again, why the burqa must be banned. A visible face is, apparently, central to Western modernity (which is why, one imagines, that new-fangled device known as the telephone will never catch on). Besides, outlawing the burqa is a feminist cause – to preserve women’s right to wear what they want, we must legislate so they can’t wear what they want. Or something. You’d think that that the anti-burqa crowd would cheer the victory of Lebanese born Rima Fakih in the Miss USA contest. That pageant requires entrants to parade in swimsuits as well as evenings gowns. Fakih is a Muslim woman prepared to show rather more than her face. Good news, right? Well, not so much. Today, the wingnut blogs are abristle with outrage. Take it away, Debbie Schussel. It’s a sad day in America but a very predictable one, given the politically correct, Islamo-pandering climate in which we’re mired. The Hezbollah-supporting Shi’ite Muslim, Miss Michigan Rima Fakih–whose bid for the pageant was financed by an Islamic terrorist and immigration fraud perpetrator–won the Miss USA contest. Say what? Schussel (a kind of low-rent Ann Coulter) links Fakih to Hezbollah largely on the basis that she was born in the ‘Hezbollah stronghold of Srifa in South Lebanon, which Israel was forced to attack in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war because it was a site of Hezbollah weaponry’. But she has also found a broader Muslim conspiracy, through which Hezbollah seeks to conquer the world, one beauty contest at a time. Hezbollah has the chief USA bimbo. And they’ll use it. I don’t just wonder if this whole contest is rigged. I have a feeling that it is. Clearly, there is affirmative action for Muslim women in beauty pageants and other such “contests”. Clearly, Schussel’s due for the jumper with wraparound sleeves. But she’s not alone. Compare Daniel Pipes, one of the mostly widely quoted conservative writers on Islam, a regular columnist for the Australian, and someone who sees the burka as ‘doing immense damage to male/female and Muslim/non-Muslim relations’. He, too, sniffs a Miss USA plot. [T]his surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants makes me suspect an odd form of affirmative action. Pipes, in some respects, goes further than Schussel, for in an addendum to his original post, he suggests that – wait for it! – the Nobel Prize might have suffered similar corruption. This outbreak of craziness is trivial in itself, except that it illustrates the ongoing pathologisation of Islamophobia. Read Schussel’s piece again. If Muslims cover themselves entirely, they affront Western values. If they assimilate sufficiently to dance in strip clubs, they’re hiding their real agenda. Muslims’ politics can be determined from their relatives, with Islam now a biological rather than religious category; Muslims are clannish conspirators, who behind the scenes secretly control everything, pulling the strings to shape beauty contests and scientific awards alike. Any of this seem familiar? What we are witnessing is the birth of an anti-Islam rhetoric that mimics, depressingly closely, the key tropes of twentieth-century anti-Semitism. It will not end well. Jeff Sparrow Jeff Sparrow is a Walkley Award-winning writer, broadcaster and former editor of Overland. More by Jeff Sparrow › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 28 March 20249 April 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.