Our children's TV opiate, Sesame Street, has just unveiled ... or should I say veiled ... a hijab-wearing Afghani puppet named Zari who will teach our munchkins about "girl empowerment, social and emotional wellbeing" as experienced by Muslim girls ... see: Breitbart Article.
A few small problems Zari ... number one, hijab wearers are not allowed to show any of their hair if they are devout Muslims (nor be without a burqa, a face veil) ... and, number two, Muslim girls in Afghanistan are often not empowered or living well ... particularly if they reside in an area controlled by the Taliban. There they cannot attend school ... they cannot have a job or be seen outside without a male relative as a companion ... they must be submissive to males ... they must be completely covered in traditional Islam garments ... and the punishments for disobeying these strict Muslim doctrines is often lashings or death ... see: The Afghan Web.
I wonder if Sesame Street will show any of these downsides to Zari's life? Or will it keep up this saccharin flacking for its romantic vision of Islam ... slavishly hoping this religion will become something that it is often not.
George, that is not hair that is a weave of yarn, so the yarn you weave is out of character.
ReplyDelete"Zari will first appear in season five of Baghch-e-Simsim, which is the Afghan version of Sesame Street " so it is not our munchkins that will get (or need) that this message. The comments on this Breitbart topic are so sweet and supportive of everything Obama and Muslim. The girls of Afghanistan need to grow up to overturn those that make the Draconian rules. And you do not need to portray the downside to anyone... they already know about it. Check out http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Baghch-e-Simsim to see that they are simply trying to make a difference. That's a better tactic than all the nattering nabobs of negativism at Breitbart.
ReplyDeleteYou know that Zari will be appearing here in the U.S. ... it's part of the meme. The real long-term problem is that the Afghanistan government is almost as corrupt as ours.
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