Thanksgiving for not living in a predominantly Muslim country

As Thanksgiving approaches, let me add this to the list of things for which I am grateful: I do not live in a predominantly Muslim country.

And another thing: I'm grateful that I probably will not get hacked to death by machete-wielding youths for saying so. At least not today.

Newspaper columnists in other realms, notably in predominantly Muslim countries, can't mouth off with the impunity we enjoy and take for granted in this country, as one Nigerian columnist recently learned.

Isioma Daniel, who writes for ThisDay, an independent daily in Lagos, was commenting on the Miss World beauty pageant, which some ironically inclined pageant planner had located in Nigeria, where certain segments of the population think women should remain fully clothed except perhaps when they're being flogged or stoned to death by Muslim clerics.

See? You're used to me talking this way. I live in the United States, where I get to say whatever's on my mind. You do, too. People might take issue with my point of view, disagree or write me ugly e-mails, which I collect and read aloud at dinner parties, just so you know. But by and large, even the loonies go about their day without giving me much thought.

Not so in parts of Nigeria, particularly the northern 12 states where Sharia law -based on an extreme interpretation of Islam -is still practiced (read: stonings, amputations, floggings, that sort of thing).

Daniel was responding specifically to the complaints of Muslim clerics that it is immoral to spend money on scantily clad beauty queens. I can't get motivated to argue too strenuously against the clerics on the practical issues. I agree that money is wasted on scantily clad women, but fundamentally, I don't care.

Morally, I'm more concerned about floggings, stonings and amputations, such as the slated 2004 execution by stoning of Amina Lawal, a 31-year-old woman guilty of giving birth out of wedlock. Last year, the Sharia enforcers flogged a 17-year-old girl for giving birth after she was raped by three men.

Besides, if women want to parade around in bathing suits and wear crowns and fake eyelashes, have at it. I'm busy.

But what Daniel said was too much for many Muslims. To the question: What would Muhammad have to say about these risque practices among the strange womenfolk descending on Nigeria, Daniel wrote: "In all honesty he would have probably chosen a wife from one of them."

Those are killin' words, apparently. Such that thousands of Muslim youths grabbed their knives, machetes and flame-throwers and hit the streets. Soon the Christians responded and together the mobs burned and looted stores, attacked motorists, stampeded and hacked their way through the streets of Kaduna and Abuja. They also burned the Kaduna office of ThisDay, after which the newspaper issued an apology. Several bystanders were reportedly burned to death -bringing the numbers to more than 100 people killed, 500 injured and 4,500 left homeless.

Wisely, if too late, pageant sponsors have moved their aspiring beauty queens to London, dashing hopes that Nigeria would become a tourist mecca as a result of the pageant. The finale is scheduled for Dec. 7, and I, for one, intend to watch for the first time in the history of Miss World pageantry. I've got to see what all the commotion is about, and I intend to file a full, possibly insulting, and truthful report. Just because I can.

There might be an understandable reason why these people are so determined to kill themselves. I got an E-Mail from a friend who explained:

Mid-east Mystery????? Everyone seems to be wondering why Muslim terrorists are so quick to commit suicide. Lets see now...No beer, No booze, No bars, No television, No cheerleaders, No baseball, No football, No basketball, No hockey, No golf, No tailgate parties, No hooters, No pork BBQ, No hotdogs, No burgers, No lobster, shellfish, or even frozen fish sticks. Rags For clothes, towels for hats. Constant wailing from the guy next door because he is sick and there are no doctors. 24 hour wailing from a guy in the tower. No chocolate chip cookies, No Christmas, You can't shave, Your wife can't shave. You can't shower to wash off the smell of donkey cooked over burning camel dung. The women have to wear baggy dresses, and vales at all times. Your bride is picked by someone else, she smells just like your donkey, but your donkey has a better disposition. Then they tell you when you die it all gets better. NO MYSTERY HERE!

The Taliban were idiots, but sometimes their hearts were in the right place.

11:01 2002-03-27 SODOMY RETURNS TO AFGHANISTAN The Taleban gone, the tradition of sodomy returns to Kandahar. Bearded men, accompanied by their “ashna” (beloved boys) are again openly visible on the streets. The Taleban had forbidden the Pashtun tradition of “ashna”, the grooming of favourite boys for sexual pleasure. In one of his first acts in 1994, Mullah Omar freed a boy who was being fought over by two Mujaheddin warlords in Kandahar, who had started firing artillery rounds at each other’s positions, destroying part of the city. Called to mediate in other such affairs, the Taleban movement quickly implanted itself in Kandahari society. The Taleban quickly applied their medieval rules to those caught practising sodomy: they were forced to stand under a stone wall, which was felled on top of them. Eye witnesses in Kandahar speak of the change under the Taleban, and the subsequent return of the ashna. One witness is the soldier Torjan. “In the later Mujaheddin years”, he told the British newspaper The Times, “more and more soldiers would take boys by force and keep them for as long as they wished. When the Taleban came, they were very strict about the ban”. However, the streets of Kandahar are now full of bearded men (usually married with families), walking openly accompanied by 15- or 16-year-old boys. The ashna are approached in the street, in cinemas or football stadiums, and are coerced into sex by the offer of a drink, a piece of clothing, jewellery, money or a fighting pigeon, with which they can make a comfortable living. In the poverty-stricken world of Afghanistan, survival is the order of the day. In their quest to help feed their brothers and sisters, these boys are marked for life by the paedophiles who prey on them to raise their social status: a poor man seen with an ashna is considered to have increased in social level. There is a local saying that birds fly over Kandahar using only one wing, the other covering their posterior. Now the population claims “Birds flew with both wings under the Taleban…but not any more”. Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru

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