The Burkini Saga: A tale of research and bigotry

This blog post started out as a simple exploration of the cultural differences in modesty as exemplified by the striking contrast of the burkini vs the bikini, but the research for it took me on quite a journey.

In my research I read a blog post about a Muslim mother arguing with her daughter over what constitutes "modest" and how hard it is for the mother to combat the influences of Lady Gaga and Rihanna. It got really interesting in the comments section though, where ignorant and small-minded people posted things like, "So putting a bikini on your daughter is unthinkable, but strapping a bomb to her is ok?", and "Muslims hate all of God’s creation. That’s why they cover their women". I was shocked. I have never come across such blatant hatred and bigotry. I knew the article had been reposted on a right wing conservative site, but I had some faith that people would still be civil or at least informed...

So I created an account to post a reply to remind what I hesitate to call "fellow" conservatives that our country was founded on religious freedom, which extends to all beliefs even Muslims, and also to commend the user who reposted it as a fantastic insight into the struggles of assimilation in America. Within two minutes of posting I received an email saying my posting privileges had been revoked because, "This is not a liberal debating society. We are conservative activists dedicated to defending our rights, defending our constitution, defending our republic and defending our traditional American way of life". That's right, I'm not allowed to post anymore because they think I am...a liberal. Wow, that one got me laughing.

I then searched for the original blog post so that I could hopefully find a more informed discussion and less hatred, but to my utter disappointed I found more hatred. Instead I found a weird mixture of ultra-feminist and anti-Muslim sentiments. She felt that, "muslims are obsessed with sex, that's why they sexualize everything. that's why muslims think a woman who shows her hair is asking for it. muslim men are the most out of control men in the world".

Again, I was floored. I had no idea people actually thought like this. The ignorance hurts me on a deep and personal level. Where does all this hatred and anger come from? Why have millions of innocent people had to take the blame for the actions of a small group of extremists?

And to think, I stumbled upon all this hatred by simply searching "Burkini vs Bikini" on Google.

The Mormon vs The Adulterer

I was inspired to write this post by this article from this Yahoo News article. For myself the choice seems clear if you were to vote solely on morality, you would choose the pious Mormon over a Roman Catholic adulterer, but for many Americans it is just as terrifying to consider a Mormon as it is an adulterer as president.

As made painfully clear by the results of the South Carolina primary, Romney does not have a strong base among the heavily Evangelical south. Taking a look at the chart below one can see Gingrich clearly had the advantage with Evangelicals while Romney clearly had the advantage with all other beliefs. This would suggest a strong correlation between a voter's religious background and their choice in GOP candidates.

Most Americans would sum up Mormonism with: polygamy, Utah, and BYU. Some do not believe they are Christians, in fact according to a Pew Research study 48% believe they are not or don't know, and 25% are less likely to for a candidate if they identify as a Mormon. They only groups who ranked lower in public opinions were Muslims and Atheists. It continues to amaze me though that Americans are less trusting of a pious man still on his first wife (despite polygamist stereotypes) than an adulterous man who married his mistress. Clearly one has a history of lying and dishonesty, but based solely on his religious background the American public perceive him as more trustworthy. 

There is a misperception about Mormons in this country, and it's proving to be a dangerous one. Obama is a beatable candidate this election cycle with many Americans finding his promises for change unfulfilled, but beating him will be no easy task. The GOP needs a strong candidate and no dissension among the party to win. It is highly unlikely that the heavily evangelical states will go blue, but many Republican still fear a third party run by Rick Perry which could very well take key votes from the GOP nominee. 

This simple ignorance of religious beliefs could potentially determine an election. 

Book Review: Public Enemies

Over winter break I had some time to read for fun, so I picked up Bryan Burrough's Public Enemies. A book that has since been turned into a major movie courtesy of Universal Pictures.


The book is a historical account of the crime wave of 1933-34 and the consequential rise of the FBI. Instead of a dry history text book feel, it reads like a novel jumping between different "characters", like John Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly, to paint a picture of the simultaneous crime sprees. While chronicling the endeavors of America's most beloved criminals, it also documents the efforts made to apprehend them, which were laughable at best. It's long, 552 pages in total, but well worth it if you have any interest in the depression-era bank robbers, the FBI, or just American History.


What interested me the most, was how Burrough dealt with the public images of both the criminals and the crime fighters and contrasting them with reality. He spends much of the movie debunking myths about both  parties. For starters, there was nothing glamorous about organized crime in the 1930's. If these thugs were injured in a shoot out they couldn't seek medical help unless they knew a corrupt doctor, they frequently lived out of their cars, they had all types of STD's, and they were constantly on the run. More shocking is the how the FBI used to be viewed. Before it was the omnipresent federal crime fighting force it is today, it was basically a loose confederation of law school graduates who couldn't carry guns, make arrests without local police, or pursuit fugitives across state lines. One of Hoover's biggest struggles in the early days way establishing a menacing public-image for his new bureau (I laughed out loud several times at the horrific blunders of the FBI in it's early days).


John Dillinger proves an interesting case study in appearances. He was one of the few outlaws concerned with his public image; he had some delusional sense that he was a Robin Hood-like figure and that he was stealing from only the rich to benefit the poor. He always dressed nicely for robberies, treated his hostages with respect, and in one bout of theatrics actually gave a WPA worker back his money claiming he didn't want the people's money, but the banks. Dillinger's attentiveness to public image turned him into an American anti-hero. Many people supported him in his exploits against "the banks".

Eyebrows and hair, the key to the White House?

Ron Paul.

A friend of mine posted about fashion in politics on her blog, Applying Aesthetics, and I would like to address a similar issue. In less than a month, two articles have come up in my Google Reader from the NY Times regarding the appearances of the GOP candidates. Unlike the Applying Aesthetics post, both articles were about the men. In her post, Meghana discusses how women are prone to more scrutiny when it comes to how they dress and present themselves, but I think men are not immune to this scrutiny, especially in politics.

The first article that came up was about Ron Paul's eyebrows. Basically Ron Paul used fake eyebrows and in the hot studio lights of the presidential debate at Dartmouth, and the adhesive melted causing his fake eyebrow slipped creating the awkward appearance you can see to your right. A campaign spokesperson blamed Paul's allergies and denied that Ron Paul used fake eyebrows. I believe that was the best explanation, because everyone knows that allergies cause abrnomal growth of your eyebrows. What I am really curious about though is why Paul felt that he needed bushier eyebrows? This goes back to an earlier post I did about the advantages of appearance in elections. There must be data out there to support that voters favor candidates with fuller brows.

Mitt Romney.

The second article that I stumbled upon had to do with Mitt Romney's hair. The article describes how Romney's hair has come to represent him, "many [see] in his thick locks everything they love and loathe about the Republican candidate for the White House. (Commanding, reassuring, presidential, crow fans; too stiff, too slick, too perfect, complain critics)", claims the article. I always seem to underestimate the power of appearances. Literally Mitt Romney's hair could either be the key to the White House, or his demise. I thought back to the 2008 presidential election when Mike Huckabee took a crack at Romney by saying, "I want to be a president who reminds you of the guy you work with, not the guy who laid you off". This comment killed him. His image became one of a slick, greedy business man and not a trustworthy leader. None of these critiques center around actions or ideology, but rather appearances.

An Illustration of Military Spending.

This is a really striking graphic that illustrates our military expenditures that I found on the Bold Faith Type blog:


From: MilitaryEducation.org

This graphic really puts things into perspective and makes me question what our priorities are as a nation.

Catholics, Muslims, and American History

These images were first shown to me in a presentation by a University of Chicago professor, Alex Barna, regarding historical stereotypes and their relation to the current negative Islamic stereotypes. What struck me about the two images was that they were expressing the same negative stereotype using the same symbolism, but they were created roughly 100 years apart and address two totally different groups.

The first image depicts the Statue of Liberty with a Catholic clergyman as lady liberty and he stands on a bed of skulls. The second image depicts the Statue of Liberty shrouded in a burqa. Both warn of the impending invasion and take over of American values by a certain religious group. Having grown up in Chicago where almost all my neighbors are Catholic, anti-Catholicism in the United States is completely foreign to me, but there was a time in our history when Catholicism was seen as a threat, some argued we couldn't let Catholics into the government otherwise the Pope and Rome would eventually take control of the United States. This situation is eerily similar to the current movements in 13 states to ban the use of Sharia (Islamic law) in American courts. This article is somewhat biased, but it echoes my views. Fears about Sharia overtaking the American judicial system are completely unfounded. Sharia has many different interpretations and we can rest assured that no one will be sentenced to death by stoning for committing adultery in the United States, just as they are not in many Muslim countries.

I think it helps to think about our Islamophobia in the context of the anti-Catholicism that used to be rampant in the United States. A lot of our fear and misconceptions come for a general ignorance about Islam, but having much more exposure to Catholicism, it seems absurd to me that people were ever afraid of Catholic invasion. The Pope has yet take control of the United States and I'm sure he does not plan on it. It is harder to dismiss Catholics as all a bunch of fundamentalist crazies because we know more about them. Now if we take a step back, we see that history is repeating itself, but this time people are screaming about a Muslim invasion. In this blog post by Americans for an Informed Democracy, they do a fantastic job of discussing a variety of factors that have contributed to anti-Muslim sentiment as well as a brief history of it. It cites media, politicians, and the $40 million efforts of seven anti-Islam organizations as some of the major causes for our misunderstanding of the faith and its follwers.

We seem to always have a scapegoat. What we as a society claim are their faults don't change much, and neither do the threats they pose. We merely put a new outfit on the Statue of Liberty and warn our fellow Americans of the new impending invasion.

Ignorance, a two-way street

After last week's post, I was really curious about the other side of this issue of stereotyping. People are more likely ignorant than informed, so I figured there had to be equally as inaccurate stereotypes regarding Americans. With the help of the same PBS article, and an assortment of political cartoons and blogs, I've chosen five common misconceptions to address that the rest of the world may hold about Americans.

1. All Americans are rich. I feel as though this is a stereotype that people internalize, but with a little bit of thought they know it cannot logically be true. In fact, about 15% of Americans live in poverty, but that isn't the image we try and project to the world at large because that is not part of the "American dream". The TV shows we send abroad tend to focus more on the glamorous Hollywood side of things, which fuels more negative stereotypes.
2. American women are promiscuous. Again, thank you Hollywood. This misconception seriously struck me though, because I think women are highly sexualized in American, there are many Americans who would say the same of European women. I know among my high school we would venture to make that judgement given our experiences with exchange students. European teens just seem so much more wild than us. They can drink and go to night clubs, while we have curfews until we are 18. I found it ironic that the country founded on Puritanical values now has a worldwide reputation for promiscuity.
3. Americans are hypocrites. This stereotypes has validity in regards to the American government though. Obviously when we say we stand for freedom, but prop up dictators, we are labeled as hypocrites. Take for example our part in the 1953 Iranian coup d'etat, or even our involvement in Iraq can be seen with some hypocrisy. Although we do the same, projecting the actions of a government onto the population of a country, we all need to keep in mind that there are always people who opposed the government and no one idea or belief is shared by everyone in a country.
4. Americans are lazy. This probably stems from the fact that one-third of Americans are obese, but I actually find this stereotype ironic because there is also the impression that Americans are always busy and always working. I keep playing with the idea of how you can be both lazy and incredibly over-scheduled?
5. Americans are stupid. Well my appologies President Bush, but you didn't help us out much there. As an American who does not consider herself to be particularly stupid, this is one of the most offensive stereotypes to me. And here is a study, that is cited in the book Stupid White Men that made me feel better about my fellow Americans, turns out we are not alone in our stupidity...

89% of Canadians couldn't locate Iraq on a map, a higher "ignorance rate" than that of the United States.
81% of Canadians couldn't locate Israel on a map
5% of Canadians couldn't locate Canada on a map
90% of Britons couldn't locate Iraq on a map, again a worse figure than that of the US
21% of Britons couldn't locate the USA on a map
7% of Britons couldn't locate the England on a map
Swedes scored highest in the poll -- but even there 70% couldn't find Iraq