From: Youssef Fawaz <@mcl2mac.berkeley.edu>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.lebanon
Subject: Mourad and "dirty laundry" (was Re: reward)
Date: 12 Nov 1992 18:03:18 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley
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>In article  <1992Nov11.201936.18173@njitgw.njit.edu> Elie Mourad writes:
>
> Two :-) and one heheheh.  ...[rest of an eloquent rebuttal deleted]

Bravo Elie! you outdid yourself again, many thanks for a thought
provoking reply.

Oh!  and thanks for the right sprinkle of your usual ":-)" and
"heheheh".  I realize that they are essential in conveying your deep
thoughts, and it warms one's heart to see how astute you have become
at placing them in strategic locations.  At least you stopped using them
as Line Feed characters.

Just so there is no misunderstanding, my reply was meant to underline my
exasperation at yet another one of  your obnoxious and puerile posts.  I
apologize for that outburst, for I should have known better.  With a
past as rich in inane posts and racist drivel as yours, it was foolish
to expect a constructive dialogue.  In all the years I have read your
replies, I have rarely (if ever) come across one in which you even try 
to approach an intelligent (let alone polite) debate with anyone.

A couple of comments though.  If you think that snikering at anyone who
challenges your not so subtle inuendos about Arabs, Syrians or Islam
will actually educate some of us, you better think (if the concept is
not too alien to you) again.  If the purpose of your posts is to
illuminate rather than preach to the converted who already worship the
ground a certain dim witted general walks on, you might seriously
consider a change of tone.  But something tells me from previous
experience that this might be more wishful thinking.

One last note.  Little anecdotes (or what you call "dirty laundry") and
postcards of 1920s are not the proper way either to understand or
educate oneself about Muslim (or any) societies.  I do not expect you to
learn anything or change your opinion, but I hope that there are others
on s.c.l. who might be more open minded.  To those I post the following
rather elegant statement (which a remarkable gentleman posted a couple
of years ago) of a critique that I have tried to level in this group on
a number of occasions.

"The fetishism of the concept, Islam, in particular, obscures the living
reality of the women and men subsumed under it. North African and Middle
Eastern societies are more complex and more diverse than is admitted,
and cannot be understood in terms of monolithic, unitary concepts.
Religion cannot be detached from the socioeconomic and political context
within which it unfolds.  And religion can not be seen as having an
existence independent of human activity. As the product of human
activity, it is subject to change, if not in content at least in
function.  To understand the role of religion in women's [and men's]
lives, we must identify the conditions under which it emerges as a
significant factor, as well as those that limit its scope.  In addition,
we must address the ways in which religious symbols are manipulated by
both women and men in everyday life as well as in institutional
settings. Finally, we should refrain from thinking in terms of a "Middle
East" and realize that what is useful to geopolitics is not necessarily
so to sociology.  Concrete women (like men) live in concrete societies
and _not_ in an ideologically uniform space.  There are Turkish women
and Egyptian women and Algerian women.  Subsuming some under others
results in obscuring, rather than improving, our understanding of gender
relations [and indeed of the rest of society]."

(Marnia Lazreg, "Feminism and Difference: The Perils of Writing as a
Woman on Women in Algeria," _Feminist Studies_, 14, 1 (Spring
1988),p.95.


Youssef Fawaz