Month: July 2013

Confessions of a Former Holocaust Denier

Eli Heina, , , 8 Comments

Note: More than once, I’ve actually heard anti-Jewish Arabs argue that there’s no way they could be “anti-Semitic” since they don’t hate themselves; I grew up with the understanding that “Semite” is not a synonym for “Jew.” For the sake of my own clarity in writing this and to avoid that sort of semantic nit-picking, I will refer to hostility towards Jews as anti-Jewish sentiment rather than as anti-Semitism. Again, that is for my own clarity of thought and is in no way in support of those who derail discussions anti-Semitism with semantic charges.

Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Garden, Australia
Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Garden, Australia

I have a confession to make: I used to believe that the Holocaust was exaggerated at best and a fabrication at worst.

I know, I know. I usually write to combat stereotypes and humanize Muslims, but that is what I thought. You know how almost every family has a resident bigot uncle and/or grandpa? Mine is no exception. From a young age, certain relatives of mine used to encourage the young people in my family to be “skeptical” of claims related to the Holocaust. I remember a cousin of mine being praised for telling his history teacher that the Holocaust is “a load of crap.” In my early adolescent years, during my protesting in favor of the Second Intifada, I absorbed claims that veered from pro-Palestinian to anti-Israeli/anti-Zionist and then into very anti-Jewish territory.

The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

Thankfully, I attended a public school in an area with a significant Jewish population. Between my befriending of a classmate whose grandfather survived the Holocaust and attending a field trip to the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance, my hard-core Holocaust denial phase was short-lived. However, the residual guilt for once having been one of those assholes hasn’t quite left me.

Which is why, when I first heard about FFRF’s decision to oppose the use of the Star of David on a publicly-funded Holocaust memorial, my initial reaction was to feel more than a little chagrin. After all, wasn’t the most prominently-stated goals of the Holocaust to wipe out the Jewish people? Why not allow that to be expressed in the memorial?

Holocaust Memorial, New Orleans
Holocaust Memorial, New Orleans

Knee-jerk reasoning, whether it’s to atone for youthful hatred or otherwise, rarely leads to the best conclusions. Indeed, my conclusions changed after I found out, thanks to the Friendly Atheist as well as Dave Silverman of American Atheists, that designs for the monument that would’t have used a Star of David were rejected, that the chair of the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board resigned over the matter, and that the monument is intended to honor all victims of the Holocaust, not only the Jewish ones.

It makes little sense to inscribe an unarguably Jewish (although whether it’s more religious or cultural is somewhat up for debate) symbol above an inscription that is supposed to honor all the victims of the Holocaust. It makes even less sense to do so on public property and, at least partially, on the public dime. To do so seems to relegate the inscription to the level of lip service as opposed to a genuine move to be inclusive of every group that was targeted and killed in Nazi Germany.

Confessions of a Former Holocaust Denier
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Baby Genitalia Inspires Assholes

Eli Heina, , , , 15 Comments

[Update: After Jessica Wakeman of The Frisky covered my piece and tweeted her coverage tagging in STFU Parents, Blair Koenig aka STFU Parents clarified what was meant (and not meant) by the tweet. We conversed via Twitter (see the conversation). Basically, Koenig says that she considers herself pro-LGBT and pro-trans* and intended the RT to reflect on social media trends, not to imply that the trans* opinions contained in the compilation were absurd. In other words, she did not tweet with malicious intent although she found some elements of the compilation “amusing.”

While the intentions were not malicious, I do not personally believe that intention is what matters here. Therefore, on my end, the conversation has not changed my initial assessment that the posting of the compilation is problematic. Whatever the personal intentions of its founder, STFU Parents is a blog dedicated to mocking people’s social media entries. In light of that, an account called the exact same thing re-tweeting a compilation of people’s social media entries feels dismissive regardless of personal intention. This is especially true when the compilation lumps together trans* people’s pain with Monty Python jokes. YMMV, naturally.]

All the plebes are talking about it while all the cool kids are talking about not knowing, caring, or talking about it. I’m talking, of course, about the bonny new baby born to the British royal family.

Popularly gossipped-about news items are often used as opportunities for people to converse about topics that are of interest of them. While this can be considered in poor taste in the case of tragic events, this one certainly was no such downer of a story.

I'm so cool that I don't even know what this picture is supposed to be.
I’m so cool that I don’t even know what this picture is supposed to be.

I noticed that many news outlets used the word “gender” in place of the word “sex” to describe the baby being assigned male at birth. Now, I am far more a descriptivist than a prescriptivist. I understand that people use the word “gender” in the place of the word “sex” for various reasons ranging from squeamishness (ew, teh sex) to ambiguity (i.e. the fact that “sex” can refer to genitals). The latter, however, reveals exactly the point: what we know is that the doctors in question examined the baby’s genitalia and determined that they think that the little one is a boy.

This is not a judgmental or political statement, it states the facts — unless you consider CNN to be a bastion of gender radicalism:

Using the information gathered from these tests, your doctor may suggest an appropriate gender for the baby. The suggestion will be based on the genetic sex, anatomy, and future reproductive and sexual potential. Usually, a family can make a decision within a few days after the birth. Parents should be aware that as the child grows up, he or she may make a different decision about gender identification.

CNN might have been talking specifically about babies whose genitalia don’t readily conform to what is considered definitely male or female by social and/or medical standards. Ultimately, however, this is what is done to all babies, just with less examination and consideration in the case of babies whose genitals aren’t considered “ambiguous” (and those babies aren’t exactly uncommon).

In this case, descriptivism and practicality are somewhat at odds. It’s useful to be able to talk about the concepts encapsulated within each of the terms “sex” and “gender” when those words are distinct rather than interchangeable.

Based on that reasoning, I tweeted…

…to the great amusement, apparently, of someone whose followers await his RTs of silly post-modern liberals in the hopes of pouncing on us. According to a friend who mods r/LGBT, someone parodied the tweet in such a way that the offender was banned from that particular subreddit. In responding to my tweet, people took the most issue with my use of all-caps (fair), my alleged attribution of malice to the doctors in question (citation needed), and my daring dictionary-thumping attitude towards the words “sex” and “gender.”

The assholes of the Internet didn’t stop their fun with a dictionary-thumping, capslock-using cis girl, though, and that’s where it gets really ugly.


[TW for transphobia in the replies to this tweet]

All of the people in that tweet compilation aren’t necessarily parents. More importantly, some of them are trans* and spoke up and out about their pain and struggles. This, apparently, renders them just plain hilarious in the eyes of STFU Parents and its readers. The last time I checked STFU Parents, it was filled with people complaining about TMI status updates from parents regarding the bowel movements produced by their precious bundle of joy, not a bastion of transphobia. Another formerly adored humor page bites the dust.

Though it might annoy some, it’s not reprehensible to take a popular gossip item and use it to talk about serious issues that affect you and/or other human beings (though it might be to use all-caps). Using people’s disclosures of the pain of their lived experiences to mock and deride them, on the other hand?

STFU, STFU Parents.

Baby Genitalia Inspires Assholes

On Being “One of the Good Ones”

Eli Heina, 8 Comments

So it’s come to this: I must express the most bizarrely meta think I’ve ever thought.

One’s openness to engagement with hostile and/or contentious individuals is not necessarily a sign of superior strength, intellect, moral fortitude, or anything at all like that. It’s generally a function of many, many other mitigating factors.

Some of these relevant factors include, but are not limited, to

  • Relative notoriety: Is the name the sort that has a dedicated contingent of individuals who insist on heaping blame onto the holder of said name no matter what the topic at hand might be? Is every word written and/or uttered by the individual scrutinized by those who are against them? Does this person deal with large amounts of people coming at them every day on various media?
  • Timing: Is the person in question among the first to speak up and out about a topic, smoothing the way for subsequent individuals?
  • Context: Are they making statements that only make total sense within a specific framework or subculture?
  • Interpretation: Is their statement aspirational or descriptive? Resigned or excited?

To my knowledge, no one but me has a Google alert for my name and all variations of it thereof; my name alone is not a lightening rod in the first place. I’m generally rather flattered when people tell me that they read something that I wrote. I say things that are contentious, radical, and at least a little off-putting fairly often. People coming at me online still are few enough to be amusing rather than a life-altering nuisance to me (although Monday did give me a taste of what it’s like to be piled-upon by the Twitter troll patrol). I follow in the footsteps of the initial bad-asses rather than count myself among the first to speak up. I often speak within and for particular subcultures and rarely speak aspirationally.

If any of the above were to shift, change, or even be slightly tweaked, my approach would likely do the same, i.e. be altered. I do not deserve praise for not usually blocking (and sometimes interacting with) dedicated trolls, assholes, individuals of ill repute, purveyors of haterade, even the simply unrelentingly contentious, on Twitter and elsewhere. Not having people fixate on my every word as they lick their lips and salivate in anticipation of tearing apart, misconstruing, and decontextualizing everything I express — how is that a reason to consider me praiseworthy? Save the dubious praise for said individuals for collectively not targeting me very much. It’s no feather in my fedora.

As it is with almost everything else ever, any judgment of someone’s approach should be based on an informed assessment of their individual situation, not on some idealistic principle so far removed from reality that it practically denies reality. Engagement with the hostile is best left to those of us who’ve only done this a hundred, rather than a thousand, times before. Expecting everyone to be open to every conversation at all times is a recipe for activism burn-out — and I’m not there yet. Not even close.

Many thanks to Zinnia for talking to me about this and helping me to get my thoughts together about it last week.

On Being “One of the Good Ones”

There’s a Wrong Way to Talk About Trayvon

Eli Heina, , , , 52 Comments

Saturday night was a heartbreaking, if not surprising, one for many of us, when George Zimmerman walked away to a legally consequence-free life after having killed an unarmed teenage boy. He currently fears the same vigilante justice he so unceremoniously doled out. As of right now, the NRA has made no calls for young black men to arm themselves in self-defense against vigilantes.

Zimmerman, on the other hand, got to take his gun home.
Zimmerman, on the other hand, got to take his gun home.

If you take issue with my use of the term “vigilantes,” let me fix it for you. I meant “Neighborhood Watch” types who violate their own rules and, if I might venture to suggest, have personal histories that render them terrible candidates for gun ownership.

Others have covered the case better than I can. Bitch has covered six different perspectives on the matter and there are countless other excellent ones. Not among those excellent ones are articles with completely clueless, insensitive titles — titles and content that folks have gone out of their way to defend on the grounds that the title and content of the piece are “factual.”

I repeat: not only is there an article with a title like “The George Zimmerman jury reached the right verdict” on an atheist website, but there exist people who are invested in defending it because it is made of facts.

On the face of it, sure. To say that the verdict reached was legally sound, correct as per the law, in accordance with Stand Your Ground in Florida — that’s all fine. Ta-Nehisi Coates, an incredibly well-known writer and activist on matters including race, knows that the law was followed in the verdict and explains the whys and hows very well. Avicenna at Freethought Blogs wrote all about how the verdict was legally correct, as did Think Progress.

There is a way to talk about how Zimmerman’s verdict was legally sound that doesn’t utterly disregard and disrespect people of color. People of color, like the ones I’ve mentioned above, have been doing so. Indeed, so have those white people who have been paying attention to how the “justice” system serves certain people in certain ways and is far from the neutral(ish) body many would love to imagine it to be.

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The difference is in the approach and the context. A context where the Stand Your Ground law is applied in a racially-biased fashion, where memes like this horrendously racist one make the rounds in the wake of the acquittal of a killer, where reality tells us that race matters whether we like it or not.

The approach of titling a piece that way, especially with its usage of the word “right” (a term that has moral implications), then, is clueless given the context in which it exists. Whether the author intended it to provoke or not, it hit all the wrong notes. On a day when the country was in mourning for a young honor student whose life was taken from him in cold blood, the author approached the matter in a way that utterly disregarded context.

A Utah vigil for Trayvon.
A Utah vigil for Trayvon.

There’s nothing “factual” about writing in a vacuum. The last time I checked, there was no requirement to check in one’s ability to grasp nuance and context at the door when entering into the hallowed halls of (dis)organized atheism.

Why am I fixating on this piece? Because it represents exactly what is wrong with the conversation around racism in general society — a wrongness that seems, to me at least, to be amplified in the white-dominated spaces of skepticism and atheism. Think Atheist carried the piece I’m addressing. The notoriously atheist-dominated Reddit failed to impress, as usual. Those atheist, humanist, and/or skeptical activists and laypeople with whom I am connected on Facebook had to do Racism 101 over and over again, sometimes to the point of un-friending. Too many of us tired on Twitter trying to explain, over and over again, that racism is A Thing, and one that is not the exclusive province of the KKK.

People of color do not have the luxury of ignoring the context from which emerged the verdict that allowed a man to walk after stalking and killing an unarmed minor. White people might often escape this awareness, but that’s where education comes in. Anyone writing on the Internet has access to a wealth of information, perspectives, and resources at their fingertips.

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Here are your tools. For the love of all that is noodly and delicious, use them.

And until more people do, I’m going to retreat to a corner and cringe until someone tells my face and my palm to get a room.

There’s a Wrong Way to Talk About Trayvon

Breaking News: Saudi Arabia is a Thing

Eli Heina, , , 17 Comments

No really. It’s a thing. I had no idea.

Never mind that I’ve been to Saudi Arabia. That, even though I should have been way too young to understand, I picked up on the fact that my mother was being treated like a piece of meat by Saudi men for daring to expose her face while accompanied only by my younger sister and me (i.e. not a man). That, recently, I refused a free trip to that particular Gulf nation because I knew that going there would essentially make me legal property of my father, not to mention would put into harm’s way as an apostate. That I not only know what Wahhabism is, but that it touched and warped my upbringing.

It's actually just for men. Women aren't allowed to be out alone.
It’s actually just for men. Women aren’t allowed to be out alone.

Nope. I, like all the other privileged Western feminists, used to walk around wholly unaware that there is mistreatment of women in Saudi Arabia. Thanks to a truly brave hero at CONvergence this past weekend, this grand oversight has been fully rectified. I now am fully cognizant of the fact that bad things happen to women in Saudi Arabia (though I’m still not sure what a defeated Mormon presidential candidate has to do with it).

Now that I know that women in Saudi Arabia have it bad, what am I supposed to do about it? Again, I look to only the bravest of the brave heroes to tell me exactly what I am supposed to do about the fact that women are mistreated in Saudi Arabia. I thought that I would hear more about what I could do for those poor Saudi women if I kept up my disguise as an ignorant, whiny, Westernized feminist. I mean, they wouldn’t just mention Saudi Arabia to feminists for no reason, right? There must be some purpose.

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As it turns out, they mention Saudi Arabia as a counterpoint to the criticisms of sexism in the United States. I was mistaken — it isn’t about helping out women worldwide, it’s about making us uppity Western feminists realize that our concerns are trivial and meaningless compared to those of women in Saudi Arabia.

Consider this my official thank you to Western men for not behaving as badly as they tend to in Saudi Arabia. I am incredibly grateful that you choose to so mercifully allow me to do things like drive and walk around showing my face. I should really count my blessings and not expect any more or better out of you. My mistake for assuming that you were capable of more above and beyond simply not treating me the way women are treated in Saudi Arabia.

Breaking News: Saudi Arabia is a Thing

The Problem with Sex-Positivity

Eli Heina, , 84 Comments

In case you haven’t noticed yet, I am a feminist. Among the many other labels that I occasionally affix upon my person is “slut” (only in contexts where the word is recognized for its reclaimed value). I believe in full reproductive rights and agency, comprehensive sex ed, the valuing of sex for pleasure, the destigmatization and full legalization of all forms of sex work, and the end of STI-shaming.

So you’d think that I’d be against the notion of sex-negativity in feminism. Sex-positivity a good thing for people like me, right?

Sex-positivity might mean something different in an academic and/or political sense, but I will address the ways in which self-identified sex-positive people manifest that particular ideology. In other words, I’m exclusively dealing with sex-positivity as it exists, not as we hope it exists. I intend to reflect lived realities, not to straw-man sex-positivity. The attitude that we cannot ever judge anyone for consensual sex acts (or even judge the acts themselves outside of the individuals participating in them) has become the de facto one among the sex-positive types I’ve met, read, and otherwise encountered.

I find the notion that all sex is awesome as long as there was consent to be more than a little troubling.

On the surface, it does seem awesome. We live in a society that pathologizes mere sexual attraction when it falls outside a very narrow set of norms (let alone acting on those attractions) as well as de-prioritizes consent. Not being judgmental about anything and emphasizing consent appears to be a great counter to all that — and it can be. The problem is that we should be able to express criticism of consensual acts, especially when considering their greater context. At the very least, we should feel okay with expressing our discomfort about them. Sex-positivity can be used as a bludgeon by which to silence criticism of anything sex-related.

When I’ve expressed my discomfort regarding dominant poly men who date lots of submissive women who aren’t allowed to date anyone else (with the men often excusing their sexist behavior towards other women via their kink), I’ve been accused of being sex-negative. When I’ve brought up how sexist it is that porn, i.e. the way that most people learn about sex, primarily features fairly cis male-centric sexual acts, I’ve been told that those women consented, therefore I was being condescending towards them. When I’ve brought up the effect that depicting only a single body type as attractive might have on people’s expressed preferences, I’ve been told that I was shaming people for their sexual preferences and that I should just accept them.

Initially, all that wasn’t enough for me to abandon sex-positivity. Believe me, I wanted to stick to the sex-positive label. At first, I wanted to believe that consent was really all that mattered. Then, I wanted to believe that there was room in sex-positivity for thoughtful criticisms of consensual acts. Wanting for something to be the way you’d prefer it to be rarely transforms it, however. I felt that, especially as a woman of color, I needed to stop identifying as sex-positive.

Indeed, what ended up getting to me was an issue that almost drove me from feminism: the big r-word. Nowhere have I witnessed more open “benevolent” racism, exoticization/fetishization, and cultural appropriation than among members of the sex-positive community. While this probably has something to do with the crossover occurs with sex-positivity, New Age, kink, and so on, sex-positivity is used as an all-too-effective silencing mechanism for criticisms related to race. How dare I be upset by someone’s assumption that the Kama Sutra represents all of Indian culture? How dare I feel uncomfortable around people who mocked the renaming of the “Asian Room” at the local sex-positive space to “The Red Room?” How dare I take issue with a perfect stranger telling me that their primary source of attraction to me is my “cinnamon skin,” a phrase this perfect stranger incessantly repeated throughout the night as if it were the only means by which to identify me? Those are people’s kinks. Who was I to judge?

It’s as if “sex-positivity” has come to mean “you must instantly and without criticism accept others’ sexual preferences and choices.” When exactly did sex become the one topic that’s above reproach among feminists?

The answer, I’d wager, lies in the origins and use of the term “sex-positive.” To characterize those who aren’t sex-positive as anti-sex is similar to characterizing those who are not “pro-life” as “anti-life:” it’s a way to shut them down. Sex-positive feminism, or “pro-sex” feminism, arose in response to anti-porn feminism, not any alleged strain of “sex-negative” feminism. The way I see it, “sex-negative” is a deliberately provocative counter to the “rah rah, judge no one for nothing ever as long as they said yes before they got naked and got off” sex-positivity that is way, way more common than most feminists want to think about or admit exists.

For excellent yet brief coverage of the history of different kinds of feminism, check out Bitch’s feature.

The Problem with Sex-Positivity

A Window Into Lookism & Why Your View Matters

Eli Heina, , 20 Comments

TW for Body Image Issues

When you change your clothes, take a shower, or otherwise do things in the nude in a private space, and that space has a publicly-facing window (i.e. a hole in your wall where the only thing separating your bare flesh from the outside world is clear glass), do you close the blinds or draw the curtain?

If you don’t for whatever reason, this isn’t for you. Also, I hope you don’t get arrested, since exhibitionism is genearally frowned upon in the eyes (or should it be the mouth) of the law in most places.

If you do obscure the world’s view of your body, why do you do so?

If you’ve never thought about it, this might be for you. If your answer is something along the lines of “peeping Toms” or “creepers,” then this is definitely for you. You assume that someone who hopes to do so might catch a glimpse of your flesh.

 

Some people don’t expose their bodies for general consumption not because they fear others’ arousal in response to our exposed flesh, but because they fear something else. They fear the viewer(s) may become disgusted.

There are certain body types that are demonized and stigmatized in society. Bodies that are hardly, if ever, depicted as delicious, enticing, inviting, and/or beautiful. Bodies that are hardly represented in the visual media that we consume. Bodies, in the rare instances that they are depicted, as portrayed as ugly, smelly, disgusting, awkward, horrible, even monstrous. Any individual’s personal feelings on the attractiveness of those body types doesn’t invalidate how the majority (or perceived majority) of society doesn’t feel that way — and isn’t exactly shy about letting people with those body types know how gross they are.

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Disgust and arousal aren’t mutually exclusive, either. If a woman’s body is outside society’s widely-accepted norms and yet found be attractive by a man looking at her, he might take his disgust at being attracted to her and project it onto her. That sort of resentment is, at best, distasteful, as when men refuse to be seen in public with certain types of women with whom they have sex. At worst, it can be a dangerous thing.

Women who can, most of the time, safely assume that their bodies will be considered desirable rather than disgusting lead different lives from those for whom such is not the case. Much of what is described by Men’s Rights Activists as “female privilege,” like paid-for dates, free drinks, and other preferential treatment, would more accurately be called “ways in which certain types of women are treated favorably by men.” Both men and conventionally attractive women often fall into the trap of assuming that conventionally attractive women’s experiences apply to all women, effectively erasing the lived reality of women who aren’t conventionally attractive.

It can be very difficult for conventionally attractive women to acknowledge that they have looks-based privilege. Part of this is the social training that makes women feel that they must deny any compliments they receive. As difficult as it can be to do so, being sensitive and cognizant of these differences is key to ensuring better and more accurate communication and understanding. In already-fraught conversations about gender, sexism, and harassment, avoiding the assumption that what applies to conventionally attractive women applies to all women is key in ensuring that women who aren’t conventionally attractive aren’t further devalued

In a world where calling a woman unattractive is considered an expected, if not quite valid, rebuttal to her ideas, it’s accurate to acknowledge lookism. In a world where all women, hot or not, are subjected to misogyny, it’s critical in ensuring that we see problems in an intersectional, rather than reductive, fashion.

A Window Into Lookism & Why Your View Matters

When the “Experiment” Never Ends

Eli Heina, , , , 6 Comments

Tonight (or last night, depending on whom you ask, as the whole Hijri calendar thing is very complicated) marks the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. Too many people think that Ramadan is Muslim Christmas. It isn’t: Eid ul-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, is. Ramadan is more like Lent or Yom Kippur, except longer and involving less in the way of the permission to drink water during the day.

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There are those who misconstrue Ramadan, and then there are those who see only part of it and decide that it would be fun to try it out. Similarly, there are non-Muslim women who try out their own versions of Islamic “modesty” for set time periods (it’s a little played at this point). Lacking a Muslim background means that such people get to waltz into and then out of their own personalized versions of Islamic practices. Invariably, they are praised for their open-mindedness by fellow non-Muslims and by Muslims alike . They adopt the most showy (read: Other) aspects of Islam, like “modesty” or fasting, abandon them, and then write about it to the applause of the audience.

How brave. How novel.

Except that there’s nothing novel about it. Plenty of people engage in Islamic practices that they later stop doing, and then start again, and then stop again. They’re called “Muslims” and they’re far from an insignificant portion of the world population. As for the alleged bravery, some people leave Islamic practices behind not to the praise of all, but to severe consequences. My personal “modesty experiment” lasted for about a decade and a half. It was my life. I couldn’t walk blithely away from it when I was done, Salon feature in hand. Due to filial pressure and its accompanying personal guilt, I wore a headscarf and dressed according to Islamic law for quite a while after becoming an atheist.

The difference between the experimenters and me is that I actually belong to the community from which such practices originate. When I was a Muslim, taking up a religious habit and then abandoning it meant experiencing a great deal of shaming and even threatening behavior from the community. As an apostate of Islam, while I do not personally subject myself to Islamic rules, I still have to adhere to them to some extent in order to interact with the Muslims in my family and my community. When I don’t, it’s painfully obvious that I am a pariah.

No time is this more true than during Ramadan. I can’t say that I miss the fasting, but I do miss the sense of solidarity, of collective ritual. I could pretend to fast but that might give the Muslims who love me some unfair and totally unrealistic hopes regarding my converting back to my former faith.

My “experiment” with Islam wasn’t chosen by me, lacked in cherry-picking, lasted for 18 years, and hasn’t ended even though, more than seven years ago, I publicly declared myself to be an atheist.

There isn’t necessarily something inherently unethical with trying out different things, even if those things are originally sourced from another culture and/or religion. Visiting another place doesn’t instantly make you a bad person. That said, there is a reason tourists haven’t exactly the best of reputations among natives — and that they are especially maligned for cluelessness.

When the “Experiment” Never Ends

Scam Alert: Bacon Bullets

Eli Heina, , 77 Comments

Revised to add in the information about the Sepoys.

It has come to my attention that there exists a company called Jihawg Ammo (and no, I’m not linking them. you know what to do).

If you happen upon their site, you will notice some pretty, ahem, questionable rhetoric. Some of it’s paranoid, at the very least. Is there really an “ever growing threat of radical Islam and Sharia Law” in the United States? I mean, the last I heard, it wasn’t Muslims who were making a concerted effort to impose their religious views on the American people.

"Marriage was created by the hand of God. No man, not even a Supreme Court, can undo what a holy God has instituted."
“Marriage was created by the hand of God. No man, not even a Supreme Court, can undo what a holy God has instituted.” — Michele Bachmann

Ahem.

But hey, what do I know about how dangerous American Muslims could be? I’m just someone who was born into and raised within a Muslim community in the United States.

What I’m here to talk about is the product claim central to Jihawg’s marketing strategy: that it is a deterrent against violence for terrorists of the Muslim persuasion.

Jihawg Ammo is certified “Haraam” or unclean. According to the belief system of the radical Islamist becoming “unclean” during Jihad will prevent their attaining entrance into heaven. Jihawg Ammo is a natural deterrent to radical and suicidal acts of violence.

To break down their claim in (sloppy) syllogistic fashion.

  1. Pork is haraam.
  2. “Radical Islamists” think that they won’t go to Jannah (Islamic heaven) during their “Jihad” if something haraam is in their bodies.
  3. Therefore, pork-laced bullets will give “radical Islamists” who intend to commit “Jihad” pause.

Right off the bat, we have a problem: haraam does not mean “unclean.” Think of the word “harem” as in women’s quarters or the term “Masjid al-Haram” as in the mosque that houses the Kaaba in Makkah — would Muslims really call Muslim women or their holiest site “unclean?” Haraam means forbidden and/or off-limits (as opposed to halaal, which means permitted without reservation). Just as pork (and, according to many Muslim scholars, pork products of any kind) is off-limits for the consumption of Muslims, a harem is a space that is off-limits to men and Masjid al-Haram is off-limits to non-Muslims.

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Because I recall just how much my non-Muslim/non-Desi friends loved to learn bad words from other languages, here are some fun ones related to the word “haraam.” Urdu and Hindi have two choice insults based on the concept of the forbidden: “haramzada,” as in “bastard,” as in “someone born as a result of off-limits (i.e. out of marriage) sex”; and “haramkhor,” which has no direct English equivalent and means someone who obtains their sustenance/income from forbidden sources.

As for the premises, the first is correct. Pork is forbidden in Islam. And, to throw them a (ham?)bone, pig skin is indeed considered naajis, which does mean impure or unclean, in Islam. The second is where the assertions fall apart. Only pig skin is naajis; pork fat, on the other hand, is off-limits for Muslim consumption. Embedding a bullet that has traces of pork product on it isn’t exactly getting them to willingly consume it. Furthermore, pork products are not considered so unclean to Muslims that they aren’t allowed for Muslims in emergency situations; they indeed are. Sins in Islam have to be deliberately committed and prohibitions are often considered flexible in emergency situations.

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There is absolutely nothing in Islamic theology that would lead to the belief or even the implication that being shot by bullets greased in pork fat would ensure that a Muslim wouldn’t be able to enter Jannah. Even if you are paranoid enough to worry about the brown hordes, Jihawg Ammo won’t help deter anything. By the company’s own arguments for its existence, the product is a rip-off, pure and simple.

Aside from being a rip-off, if history is any indication, such measures would backfire, not prevent violence. The British imperialists in India had native units whom they called the Sepoys. When a rumor circulated among the Sepoys that pork and beef fat was being used in their ammunition, the response was not for the beef-averse Hindus and pork-shunning Muslims to cease committing violence. Au contraire — there was a rebellion.

Oh, and for the record? Halaal certification exists, but not Haraam certification. Perhaps I, as the most haraam kind of person of all, could start up the service. Why not profit from the ignorance of racists?

Scam Alert: Bacon Bullets