March 28, 2005

“Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!” Part Two

Steven Vincent, in NRO, says that the call of freedom, powered by a natural response to the anti-sex, anti-love Islamofascist establishment, is being heard by the youth of the Mid-East:

The accounts were grim. One can only imagine the hell reporters witnessed last month in Tehran’s Mohseni Square.

“Women and girls in tight clothes and transparent scarves and guys dressed in Western fashion lit candles and laughed their hearts out,” wrote Ya Lesarat Weekly, organ for the vigilante group Ansar-e Hezbollah. Equally indignant, the conservative daily Jomhuri-ye Eslami reported, “In this disgraceful event, which was like a large street party, women and girls…as well as boys…mocked Muslim beliefs and sanctities in the most shameless manner…. Some long-haired guys would openly cuddle girls, creating awful and immoral scenes. Fast, provoking music…nearby gave the street party more steam.”

Worse, this depravity occurred during Ashura, holiest of Shiite holidays. But rest assured, Ansar-e Hezbollah broke up the gangs of spooning youngsters, returning the commemoration to its solemn purpose of observing the martyrdom of Imam Hussain. “Let the officials realize that the heroic and passionate people of Iran can easily deal with a handful of hoodlums and promiscuous elements that ridicule our sanctities,” Jomhuri-ye Eslami vowed.

...Meanwhile, mainstream media is taking increasing note of a phenomenon that has been percolating through the Middle East the last few years: Arab music videos. Beamed throughout the region via satellite networks such as Saudi-based ART-TV, these superbly-produced “clips,” as they’re called, showcase singers like Lebanon’s Nancy Ajram and Haifa Wahby and Egypt’s Roubi in erotically charged tableaux filled with beauty, glamour and sex appeal that owe more to The Arabian Nights than Koranic scripture. Produced primarily for entertainment and star promotion, these videos are fast becoming political as well, with many young women seeing in the exotic settings, flamboyant clothes and sensual fantasies encouragement to take control of their identities and social roles. As if that weren’t haram enough, the clips serve as electronic bulletin boards for text-messaging kids whose flirtatious messages run like a news zipper across the bottom of the screen. “Music videos,” wrote the Financial Times recently, “are now the only uncensored mass cultural form in the Arab world.”

...In Basra earlier this month, some 700 university students met for a picnic where, according to press reports, women were unveiled, music played, and the sexes intermingled — in short, kids doing what kids always do in the spring. Taking a page from their Iranian counterparts, however, men loyal to clerical firebrand Moqutada al-Sadr attacked the gathering, firing weapons into the air and beating students with sticks. The assault did not go over well with many Basrans, who held three days of demonstrations, compelling Sadr to issue an apology.

...It’s only a matter of time — if that time has not already arrived — before young people will make the Rousseauian connection between natural instinct, sex and freedom on one hand, and terrorism, sterility, and puritanical Islam on the other.

Or as the Iraqi famously put it, on greeting American troops: Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!

From our point of view, we can only say, what took so long?

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