“I drink wine and do not lie about that …
“I drink wine and do not lie about that, unlike so many other “good” Muslims,” Yasmin Alibi-Brain declares in her latest measured and perspicacious analysis of “reactionary Muslim men and their asinine female followers.”
Muse, 
Ali Abdullah 6:51 am on May 4, 2009 Permalink
I cant tell if this comment was intended as snark or serious. If the latter, then Mr Abdullah will be banned the next time he peddles his sectarian fitna here. If the former, then I advise him to learn some tact before engaging on a public website. — Admin
aziz 7:01 am on May 4, 2009 Permalink
I actually thought it was a pretty damn good article. I’m going to plug it at COB.
do we really need to invent little names for people now? if only to facilitate searches, I think we shoudl use people’s full names, regardless of whether we disagree or agree with their message.
plimfix 8:38 am on May 4, 2009 Permalink
Yasmin is a grown up. She can take a bit of ribbing. I exchange the odd email with her, actually. I like some of her stuff, but I thought piece a pile of nonsense.
Willow 8:49 am on May 4, 2009 Permalink
The author seems intelligent enough, but this piece is distractingly self-congratulatory. It’s the sort of thing you’d write if you were low on ideas but needed a high-hit-count article.
Muse 9:53 am on May 4, 2009 Permalink
I thought her tone was asinine. Ooh look at me, I’m so progressive that I drink wine and hug men. Good for you, do you want a cookie for your achievements? Give me a break.
I hate the condescenion towards women that wear hijab and burkas. There’s no room in her black and white analysis for someone like me who chooses to wear hijab and is quite well-adjusted in the western framework, thank you very much. The difference is I don’t flaunt who I am while denigrating the choices of others. To me, the legitimate points she makes about the treatment of women in the Muslim world are overshadowed by her superiority complex.
aziz 10:03 am on May 4, 2009 Permalink
i agree that her delivery is off. But thats to be expected – shes a leftist, so shes suspicious of religion in general. The trick for religious liberals is to meld the determination to pursue universal human rights and also maintain our assertion that religion brings more value and a framework for achieving it. Unfortunately, the European left, for all their solid work on being pro-rights, are implacably hostile to faith, and American leftists matc their Euo counterparts in that hostility and cant even muster interest in the human rights part as well. their interest in human rights ends at the water’s edge – civil rights, not human rights, is their sole focus.
aziz 10:04 am on May 4, 2009 Permalink
plimfix – can you fwd me her email? id love to send her a heads up about my article at COB for tomorrow.
plimfix 11:20 am on May 4, 2009 Permalink
Aziz – So where do I forward it to? I can’t even find yer email on CoB. It’s only her email on the independent, but I don’t want to post it here if this post is garnering Ismaili bashing.
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee 11:29 am on May 4, 2009 Permalink
Muse,
Excellent comments.
aziz 11:37 am on May 4, 2009 Permalink
ah, send to me at apoonawa dash blog at yahoo dot com.
Muse 12:27 pm on May 4, 2009 Permalink
Oh, and her closing is a gem, where she compares herself to Raniah Al-Baz because like Al-Baz, she “gives women ideas.” In the case of Al-Baz, that statement is wholly applicable. But what has Ms. Alibhai-Brown done to give women ideas? I don’t understand.
Its a shame because I find myself on the same side as her in wanting to see change in how women are often mistreated in muslim communities and countries. I just can’t abide self-importance.
Willow 12:52 pm on May 4, 2009 Permalink
Perhaps this is cynical, but I question whether people who’ve made careers out of pointing to the atrocities in the Muslim world genuinely want to see progress there. After all, if things get better they’re out of a job. There are a lot of embattled women’s rights NGOs in the Muslim world, but you don’t see the Hue-and-Cry types rallying support for them. That to me is very telling.
thabet 1:23 pm on May 4, 2009 Permalink
YAB isn’t a leftist. She’s a middle class liberal.
aziz 1:36 pm on May 4, 2009 Permalink
from an american perspective, same thing
(I didnt mean to use leftist in a perjorative sense this time)
Lawrence of Arabia 1:39 pm on May 4, 2009 Permalink
And, to follow up on thabet’s comment….I read this whole article as…
“Middle Class Liberals are Muslims Too” [In fact, I like my title better; I found the most obnoxious thing about her article to be the title itself.]
I mean, isn’t that really the message behind the opening paragraphs?
…which seems fair enough since there are people on both sides who would like to deny that there is such an animal as the Middle-Class Liberal Muslim.
Lawrence of Arabia 1:41 pm on May 4, 2009 Permalink
ooooooh…please don’t collapse leftists and liberals.
Willow 1:49 pm on May 4, 2009 Permalink
…which seems fair enough since there are people on both sides who would like to deny that there is such an animal as the Middle-Class Liberal Muslim.
An excellent point. I think if she realized that was the thrust of her argument, we’d be having a different discussion.
plimfix 2:43 pm on May 4, 2009 Permalink
It’s a dreadful DREADFUL article. It’s a proclamation of sanctimony, a ludicrous assault on the Muslim world (and clearly, in YAB’s view, ‘unreformed’ Islam is to blame – whatever that is), followed by a list of human rights violations Yasmin has been busy thrashing herself with. Oh dear, the Muslim world is in a terrible shape, thank heavens for people like me, she coos. Well, whoopee bleedin doo, Yas. Lucky us!
In the meantime, may I offer a minor correction. The WORLD is in a terrible shape. Moreover, it’s a complicated mess, to which liberal modernity has historically and contemporaneously made a significant negative contribution, and your article adds little to our understanding and arguably plenty to our confusion. Precisely why, these days, I spend more time reading academic texts than I do media comment.
But at least YAB provokes discussion! Bless her, she writes quite perceptive articles when gets off her overwrought soap box, IMHO, particularly on issues of race/ethnicity. But this one is ardent tosh.
Muse 3:19 pm on May 4, 2009 Permalink
I thought I was a middle-class liberal Muslim, but if this kind of attitude is a pre-req, I’ll bow out. Guess I’ll have to start my own movement (isn’t that our secret power anyway? starting movements?), with sole membership of me myself and i.
Willow 3:47 pm on May 4, 2009 Permalink
Ah, but see, you’re a middle-class liberal Muslim. She’s a middle-class Muslim liberal. A fine but important distinction.
Lawrence of Arabia 10:31 pm on May 4, 2009 Permalink
there is nothing more satisfying than the ability to make a refined and accurate distinction (yes I have been reading Husserl tonight. Why do you ask?).
Nicely done.
Pretty Pink Unicorns 1:37 pm on May 9, 2009 Permalink
Is Ms Alibhai-Brown a Nizari? I am a Nizari and I can assure you we do not drink or eat pork.
And btw I’m a liberal; while I am suspicious of organised religion, this viewpoint is not limited to liberals. So often organised religion is not a “community” but rather a severe hierarchy and peer pressure with any real discussion limited to inane banter over tiny details of wudhu and how much a woman must be covered in centimeters and when she can leave her house rather than about actual issues of belief, faith, inspiration etc.
Example: we Nizari do have a fiqh for salaat (despite what most people think) and I attend jumu3ah at the local university, but the local masjid kicked me when they discovered I didn’t think veiling was compulsory & support gay rights. This was unrelated to my attempt to attend services there as I covered myself when at the masjid; it came about in private conversations. After this was discovered, I was asked not to return. TO A PUBLIC MASJID.
Idiotic. I wasn’t preaching or wearing signs or anything; it was my PRESENCE that was objected to.
It is that kind of behaviour that I object to – and that is not limited in scope to “liberal thought”.
Muse 1:59 pm on May 9, 2009 Permalink
PPU, the masjid’s behavior in your case was abhorrent. Behavior like this is why, although I consider myself fairly traditional in many regards, stay on the periphery of mosque communities.
PI.info 6:18 pm on May 9, 2009 Permalink
It is that kind of behaviour that I object to
I just want to note here how arbitrary and selective it is to criticize liberals and/or progressives for lacking adab when you look at how many places in the Muslim community where adab has never been extended to them, or immediately withdrawn when they are ‘discovered.’
Talk about a double standard…