Dreamer Easy

Some parts of Elizabeth Moon's Park51 posting are more difficult to address than others. For example:

"The same with other points of Islam that I find appalling (especially as a free woman) and totally against those basic principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution...I feel that I personally (and many others) lean over backwards to put up with these things, to let Muslims believe stuff that unfits them for citizenship, on the grounds of their personal freedom."

Because Ms Moon doesn't specify what these "points of Islam" are, it's pretty much impossible to discuss them, except in the most general terms. It can be said that American Muslims are very typically American in their views. For example, most believe life is better for women in the US than in many Muslim countries.

Waleed Aly (and many, many others) point out the maddening tendency of politicians and commentators in the West to accuse Muslims of disrespecting, oppressing, and mistreating women - while Islamic politicians and commentators accuse Westerners of exactly the same thing. Caught in the cultural crossfire (often physically) are Muslim women, whether in the West or the Islamic world: they are spoken about, rather than being given a chance to speak.

Because of that, rather than add the voice of yet another slenderly informed white Western feminist to the noise, I'd like to link to some online commentary from Muslim women. I'll add more links to this list as I come across them. Here goes:

Muslim Women Don't See Themselves as Oppressed, Survey Finds

On 9/11, Listening to Muslim Women's Voices

Muslimah Media Watch

Loving and Leaving the Head Scarf

ETA: In Ms Moon's home state, the Texas Muslim Women's Foundation engage in various good works, including providing a domestic violence shelter for women of all faiths, and collaborate with other organisations.

She Who Disputes: Muslim Women Shape the Debate. A very readable 2006 report from the Muslim Women's Network, giving British Muslimah's views on numerous issues, from violence and safety to civic participation.

(btw, I've said that I'm not going to go and look for online responses to Ms Moon's posting, because of the slim chance of finding light rather than heat. However, I'll read anything that's recced to me - and if there are responses from Muslim women, I'm especially interested in seeing them.)

PS From July this year, the findings of a global survey on attitudes to gender equality.

A discussion of British identity on GB promptly disintegrated into chav-bashing. For a start, they dress flashily and show off their expensive cars, violating middle class standards of taste. What's more, they're "violent feral animals vomiting kids", "collecting ASBOs like trading cards". In fact, "They are a 'cultural' section of british society that chooses to alienate itself from the rest of the nation by preying upon it, making its life miserable, robbing, mugging, and vomiting out more kids when they want a bigger house or more benefits."

Now. When someone's merely making a mouth like a cat's bum, you can't exactly quantify it, but crime and birthrates are a different cup of tea. How well do UK statistics match this picture?

Firstly, there's the huge gap between how much crime is actually going on, and how much people think it's going on. Crime in Britain has dropped steadily since the mid-90s; violent crime has dropped by a half. But our perceptions of crime are shaped not by studying statistics, but (quite naturally) by our personal experience and the media. In the British Crime Survey, about 1 in 6 people surveyed thought it was likely they'd be victims of burglary or violence; their actual risk was about 1 in 20. Almost everyone said there was an increase in knife attacks nationally, but less than a third thought there was an increase in the area where they lived. Half of people surveyed said they personally lived in a low crime area. And so on. Obviously, if there's all this crime in the papers, but we can't actually see it in our own neighbourhood, then it must be happening somewhere else!

More on this later. I'm particularly interested in seeing how much crime committed by young people is committed against other young people; and what the birthrates are for different sections of British society. (If anyone can quantify how many children one has to bear in order to qualify as "vomiting" them out, I'd be obliged.)

But before I go: if I'm honest, I think ASBOs are a joke. "Anti-social behaviour" covers not just actual crimes like drug dealing, but incredibly minor annoyances like noisy parties, abandoned cars, and littering. These are real problems that have to be dealt with somehow, but how on earth did they end up in the crime statistics?!

Paul Collins. Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books.
Erica Jong. Fear of Flying.

( Books bought and borrowed )

Christine Pevitt Algrant. Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France.
Pierre Bayard. How to talk about books you haven't read.
Kate Fox. Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour.
Kiriko Nananan. Blue.
Francine Patterson and Eugene Linden. The Education of Koko.
Osamu Tezuka. Buddha, volumes 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.
Diane Yapko. Understanding Autism Spectrum Disorders.

( Books borrowed - ISTG I'm not buying any this month )