From: punditster@gmail.com   
      
   On 3/6/2026 11:24 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
   > On Fri, 6 Mar 2026 19:21:47 -0000 (UTC), Tara  wrote:   
   >   
   >> Noah Sombrero  wrote:   
   >>> On Fri, 6 Mar 2026 16:48:31 +0000, Julian    
   >>> wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> When the ghastly Lynda Snell of The Archers ?did? fasting last year at   
   >>>> Ramadan to suck up to the new Muslim family in town, I thought this kind   
   >>>> of thing had got about as silly as it was possible to be. But reading   
   >>>> about what happened last week at London Fashion Week took the   
   >>>> gluten-free cake.   
   >>>   
   >>> And thus it is that people who are not like you are impossibly silly,   
   >>> crazy and absently muddy minded.   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> How else can people learn to laugh at themselves.   
   >   
   > Those  rabid right wingers?  Never.   
   >   
   It kind of looks like the right wingers are in favor of human rights and   
   the left wingers are going for the Islam sharia. Talk about confused!   
    >   
      
   >>   
   >>   
   >>   
   >>   
   >>   
   >>>   
   >>>> Non-Muslims either choosing or being compelled to celebrate Muslim   
   >>>> holidays has been going on for some time. Understandably if   
   >>>> disagreeably, with its Muslim mayor, London splurges on the celebration   
   >>>> of Ramadan, decorating Piccadilly ? the heart of the city ? with 30,000   
   >>>> (sustainable) lights. In the unlikely setting of Carinthia, Austria, an   
   >>>> ?open iftar? invites all citizens to break the Ramadan fast and eat   
   >>>> together ? even if, as non-Muslims, they?haven?t fasted, which seems to   
   >>>> be missing the point a bit.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> In fact, you could say that Ramadan has become fashionable, with quite a   
   >>>> few non-Muslim public figures observing it, often getting around the   
   >>>> fact that they generally have no time for religion by adding a   
   >>>> ?self-care? spin, banging on about gratitude, self-discipline or ? even   
   >>>> worse ? ?solidarity? with Muslim communities. One doesn?t expect   
   >>>> rigorous thinking from TikTok influencers but it?s interesting that   
   >>>> they?d never dream of doing the same with the poor beleaguered British   
   >>>> Jewish community, who have seen anti-Semitic speech and violence rise to   
   >>>> unprecedented levels since the Hamas pogrom took place in Israel three   
   >>>> years ago. They could always start with the Jewish festival of Purim,   
   >>>> when you have to dress up to make yourself look ridiculous ? second   
   >>>> nature for many social media show-offs.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> Talking of which, it may seem strange that fashion ? by the nature of   
   >>>> which everything is loved for a few months and then derided as   
   >>>> so-last-week ? is the latest branch of public life to find Ramadan hip.   
   >>>> Panted the Guardian excitably: ?British-Yemeni designer Kazna Asker   
   >>>> deliberately paused her presentation at sunset to share iftar with the   
   >>>> models, who were also fasting, as were the interns and many of the   
   >>>> staff? Programming this pause into one of the fashion industry?s most   
   >>>> tightly scheduled weeks was deliberate.?   
   >>>>   
   >>>> As a student, Asker was the first to put hijab-clad models on the   
   >>>> catwalk in 2022; she says this was inspired by her upbringing in   
   >>>> Sheffield and not seeing ?modest fashion? reflected in a ?cool way.?   
   >>>> Maybe because it?s simply not very ?cool? to showcase at one?s leisure ?   
   >>>> having grown up a free woman in a Western country ? a garment which   
   >>>> millions of women the world over are literally forced into?   
   >>>>   
   >>>> I do remember gushing features about ?modesty dressing? a few years   
   >>>> back, during which the then-editor of Cosmopolitan, Farrah Storr,   
   >>>> enthused about the fashion for covering up. She was especially pleased   
   >>>> because she felt that she would no longer be expected to get her   
   >>>> ?bingo-wings? out when the sun shone. It was around this time that the   
   >>>> likes of Emma Watson and Victoria Beckham were seen sporting   
   >>>> floor-skimming numbers covering every inch of their bodies; I must say   
   >>>> that I cynically saw this, like the clean-eating craze, as a way for   
   >>>> stars whose skeletal frames have been savagely dissected on social media   
   >>>> to hide from accusations of anorexia.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> So perhaps the idea of Islam and the covering-up it demands of women   
   >>>> partnering with fashion ? where eating disorders are rife ? isn?t so   
   >>>> nutty after all. Or maybe Asker is a high-profile example of those   
   >>>> clowns who believe that The Religion Of Peace (in which what men and   
   >>>> women are allowed to do is far more binary than in any other belief   
   >>>> system) and gender fluidity are natural allies. The Guardian could   
   >>>> hardly contain its excitement that ?Asker disrupted traditional gender   
   >>>> codes. One female model wore a jambiya ? the Yemeni dagger belt   
   >>>> historically reserved for men ? integrated into a structured power   
   >>>> suit.? I was taken by the photograph of one of her male models, very   
   >>>> pretty, hand on hip, wearing a head-wrap with a huge bunch of flowers   
   >>>> attached, like he?d just had his first look at Morrissey on Top of the   
   >>>> Pops waving a load of gladioli around. Try walking down the street like   
   >>>> that in a Muslim-majority country, mate!   
   >>>>   
   >>>> This kind of thing having its moment because of a combination of   
   >>>> cowardly cultural cringe and the ceaseless desire of the fashion   
   >>>> industry to find new ways of making women look ludicrous while paying   
   >>>> handsomely for it. There?s also the matter of huge amounts of money   
   >>>> which women from the filthy rich Gulf states ? forbidden as they are   
   >>>> from expressing themselves in any other way ? spend on clothes to be   
   >>>> taken into consideration.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> As with the unspeakably stupid Swedish female MPs ? Sweden?s   
   >>>> self-declared ?first feminist government in the world? ? who chose to   
   >>>> wear the hijab when they visited Iran some years back, the woman-hating   
   >>>> imams of mosques worldwide must be wetting themselves with glee that   
   >>>> certain sections of free-born Western women are doing their disgusting   
   >>>> work for them by willingly taking on the mantle in a world where the   
   >>>> brave women of My Stealthy Freedom risk their lives in order to feel the   
   >>>> sun on their faces. Or look at the laughing young mini-skirted women in   
   >>>> photographs of Iranian universities with no inkling that the slavery of   
   >>>> the compulsory hijab was just around the corner ? though hopefully, that   
   >>>> will soon be history, too.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> There?s a poignant social media meme showing the national dress of women   
   >>>> before and after their countries were conquered by Islam; the beauty,   
   >>>> colour and diversity of the former, including Yemen, are replaced by   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)