Posted on 06/25/2006 9:22:26 AM PDT by WestTexasWend
KOTA BARU, Malaysia - In a softly lit, wood-paneled spa, the personal beauticians of a Malaysian queen are training a new generation of Muslims in the art of feminine grooming as part of a royal effort to save young women from vice.
The project has drawn attention as much for its objective as for its location - Malaysia's most backward state, Kelantan, and the only one governed by the opposition Islamic fundamentalist party that recommends keeping the female form under wrap.
With the motto "Beauty Is Women's Top Asset," the salon set up in 2004 by Kelantan Queen Tengku Anis Tengku Abdul Hamid teaches underprivileged girls the art of grooming - bridal makeup, massage techniques, facial and hair care, spa and salon management.
"Many girls from rural areas migrate to Kuala Lumpur to look for jobs and end up working in bars or nightclubs. Our queen wants to teach these girls a trade so they can earn a living and avoid being caught in vice," project manager Tengku Zarina Tengku Din told The Associated Press. "We want to train a new generation of Muslim beauticians," said Zarina, a relative of the queen, who is the wife of Kelantan's constitutional king.
Nine of Malaysia's 13 states are ruled by sultans or kings, each of whom takes over as the country's constitutional monarch on a rotation basis.
The queen's project has received a guarded welcome by the ruling Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party, which has imposed strict Islamic rules in Kelantan, including a prohibition on mixing of sexes in public and a ban on liquor.
Lo'Lo Ghazali, a senior leader of Islamic party known as PAS from its initials in Malay, said there is nothing wrong in Muslim women wanting to look beautiful for their husbands, but added it is important to balance physical beauty with spiritual values.
"I hope they instill some spiritual aspects into the course," she said.
The courses are conducted at the Beauty Spa Center, on the top floor of a two-story building in downtown Kota Baru, Kelantan's capital. Designed with a royal touch, it has two massage chambers, identical to the queen's own, equipped with bathtub and a portable steam sauna machine.
"Beauty is important for a woman," said Wan Rohani Wan Hussain, a 20-year-old trainee wearing the uniform of all the students and instructors - a white medical coat and a headscarf.
The PAS government in Kelantan requires all Muslim women to wear a headscarf, but in the rest of the country Muslim women have a choice whether to cover their heads. Many do, with colorful headgear worn with equally bright sarongs and loose shirts.
"Muslim women in headscarf can still look beautiful. There is nothing wrong in wearing makeup because it's for personal satisfaction," said Tengku Zarina. "Beauty is a gift from God, so it's important for women to take care of their physical appearance."
In one section of the salon, a row of mannequin heads with wigs are worked on by the young women who try various hair styles including the traditional Malay bun.
After the hair lesson, the trainees huddle in another corner of the center and watch an instructor demonstrate a facial treatment. The course is conducted by the queen's personal team of five beauticians, including experts from Indonesia and Thailand.
During lessons on weekdays, trainees do not wear makeup but a number of them say they practice their new skills when they return home over the weekend.
Every six months, the center chooses 10 students from poor families, mostly school dropouts or orphans aged 18 to 31. One is picked from each of the 10 districts in Kelantan.
Tengku Zarina says the trainees are exposed to a gamut of beauty techniques, from the Indonesian traditional "lulur" or body scrub and cream bath to the ancient Thai art of kneading and treading as well as Malay beauty rituals.
I hope no one sees anything wrong with this.
You have to register...
Registration form at the link.
Do they discuss Female Genital Mutilation also which goes along with all this "prettying up"????
Oh - I see these woman have long since past that "right of femalehood" - they are much older.
Since you bring it up: FGM is parcitce in this countury now too. I know some east African muslims who send their little girls back to get it done cheaply and with no one asking those "hard questions"
Read and weep:
http://www.4woman.gov/faq/fgc.htm
Also a state which offers such opportunities to rural girls that they take off to be bar girls in the city.
Purely coincidental.
Mrs VS
Back in the 70's or 80's there was a (white, american) doctor in Ohio that was doing this. He called it "love surgery" and said that it enhanced a woman's sexual experience. BS!!!!
It's worth noting - although it should not be necessary to mention it - that, for a Muslim, the word "vice" refers to a woman donning makeup and Western clothing, but does NOT refer to a woman donning a bomb belt, walking into a crowded shopping area, and committing suicide while murdering scores of innocents in a rain of blood and body parts. Indeed, the latter would be characterized as virtue by those willing to speak of it, and thought of as virtue by countless others unwilling to speak for the record. This is, quite plainly, a perverse form of death cult idiocy akin to those followers of the "Reverend" Jim Jones who drank Kool Aid laced with cyanide. Worse, in fact, since the followers of Jim Jones killed only themselves and their neighbors. Moslems seek out large numbers of innocents to slaughter with their Death Cult suicides.
If Muslim women are truly interested in avoiding vice, they should disavow all relationship to this moronic Cult of Death called Islam.
I would hope all the United States eventually outlaw this barbaric practice totally - how it could be linked to religion and worship demonstrates how primitive Islam is (if it can be termed a religion at all - I prefer to think of it as a cult).
Any doctor seeing a woman who has been so malformed after the fact should be obligated to report it as well - we must stop this in our country.
Because people desire it for their children (who have no say) I link it up there with child abuse, pedophilia and battering.
Worry not ;-)
http://www.bugmenot.com/view/www.lubbockonline.com
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