Posts tagged Photography

An Muslim Arab won the Miss USA contest… How should I feel as a Muslim Arab-American?

Should I celebrate and cheer from the roof tops and post everything about her on my blog, facebook, twitter, myspace and follow everything she has done as the new face of our peoples?

Should I denounce it as a shameful and horrible atrocity and the decline of our people into nothing more then bikini clad infidels?

Or is it something more?

I don’t personally know the girl so I can not speak on what she is like directly, I know just as much or even less then most of you from what we have been told in the news and have heard over the last few days. But as a Muslim, an Arab, an American and a father of a little girl who is all those I feel compelled to speak on this subject.

I would never want my daughter to be in a pageant, not only would it be unfair to all those other girls, but I would never want ANYBODY to rate or score or grade her beauty, her body AND her intelligence. As a woman, her worth is more then what she looks like in a night gown and definitely more then what she looks like in a bikini, that is why hijab is beautiful.  If the pageants only measured of pure talent and intelligence, well they wouldn’t exist they would be called the REAL WORLD.

But that is the easy stance to take, ITS HARAM!!! and she is a dirty SHARMUTA!!!

Thinking about it from a much more abstract angle, she is the best thing to happen to Arabs in America since Casey Kasem and Shakira… She puts the words Arab and American in a sentence that doesn’t include the word terrorist. Rima add the words beauty and queen to those sentences, things not commonly associated with Arabs, wrongfully so.  She makes people who otherwise wouldn’t care look up where this Lebanon place is and what it is about.  She even opens the conversation about modesty and Islam and gives our sisters an opportunity to speak about the subject in a timely manner. (I will leave that up to them)

So did we win or lose?

A draw… I congratulate Rima on her win and pray that she realizes that she represents more then just the winner of some silly beauty contest and that she has the opportunity to do something major for her misunderstood people.  I also would like to remind our people that we should aim higher… enjoy this win for whatever it is worth… but remember that we are better and bigger than this.

Let’s get the first Muslim Arab American woman elected to the White House then we’ve made progress…

But photo-shoot with Rima would be really interesting… maybe a remake of my American flag hijabi shot… hmm NOW THAT WOULD GET ATTENTION…

At least the Miss Michigan website now looks like a middle eastern pop star’s website and that makes me smile.