From: fedora@fea.st   
      
   On Fri, 6 Mar 2026 12:57:05 -0800, Dude  wrote:   
      
   >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   
      
   Depends on what those right are.  Right to be ceo running a company   
   that exploits.  You bet.   
      
   >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.   
   >>>>>   
      
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