"[M]y speech was not a critique of Arabs or Islam, but of Islamism... a toxic ideology conceived and promoted by the terrorist group, the Muslim Brotherhood.”

"Let’s see which reporters take the time to read this post and then correct their stories."

Writes RFK Jr., at great length, at X. 

He links to various reporters, and I don't think any of them have responded.

The Daily Wire and The Washington Examiner have, however, noted his post: here and here.

"Whereas clowns were naive idiots, bouffons savagely undermined the people in power."

"They were doing something important: using biting and at times cruel humor to undermine systemic injustice. It’s what satirists have done throughout history.... Ali G is a white imbecile—a delusional cultural appropriator—who steals the fashion and lyrics from his favorite gangsta rap and dancehall idols, from Compton to Kingston.... Like a good bouffon, he undermines that establishment—not the culture he loves and borrows from.... Each of my characters has a specific mechanism to encourage people to drop their guards and show what they really believe, prejudices and all. Borat, an antisemitic journalist, exposes Jew hatred, xeno­phobia, sexism, and casual racism. Erran Morad, a stereotype of a tough-guy Israeli commando—'I’ve been in 14 terror attacks,' he says in my new movie Ali G: Who Iz I?, 'and started two'—exposes Islamophobia.... Ali G works on another level. He’s not extreme—he’s just extremely dumb. But his absurd questions lead powerful people to underestimate him and answer in earnest, revealing their own biases...."

Writes Sacha Baron Cohen, in "Why Satire Is No Laughing Matter" (Time). 

According to Baron Cohen, the "bouffon" is a "tradition dated back to 11th century France, where societal outcasts—gay people, heretics, those with deformities—would be let back into their villages once a year to put on shows viciously mocking the ruling class."

I noticed that Time essay because of "What to Know About ‘Ali G: Who Iz I?’ Sacha Baron Cohen has revived his fictional wannabe rapper in a new movie that will be in theaters for just this weekend. Here’s what to know" (NYT).

Here's an excerpt from that (showing why Baron Cohen is highly motivated to justify his continuation of the Ali G character):

"Many Christians believe pride is not only a sin, but the original one, and the worst of them. It is demonic, 'the complete anti-God state of mind'..."

"... as C.S. Lewis wrote in 'Mere Christianity.' Pride is a turning away from God, and an exultation of oneself.* The mirror is a symbol of pride and vanity, but it also symbolizes our incomplete, earthly knowledge. As the Apostle Paul wrote about God in his first letter to the Corinthians: 'For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.'... In Islamic mysticism... a smudged mirror is a metaphor for the human soul. It is only when the ego is annihilated, and the surface is polished clean, that the divine becomes visible.... In 1967, Michel Foucault darkly described the mirror as a kind of threshold, a mix between a fantasy world, a utopia and some weird other place on the margins — which he called a 'heterotopia.' The mirror is one such strange place because we discover our presence and our absence at the same time. 'I see myself there where I am not,' he wrote, 'in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface.'"

A small sample from "All This Staring at Our Faces Is Messing With Our Heads" (NYT gift link), by Catherine Shannon.

___________________

* Shouldn't that be "an exaltation of oneself"? Are we not talking about raising ourselves above God (as opposed to jubilating over how wonderful we are)? Think about it. We say "an exaltation of larks," not "an exultation of larks." 

"In the days before the sentence was carried out, she had tried to keep living as if nothing was about to happen... She showered and wore thick felt-like clothes..."

"... to absorb the blows as much as possible.... What surprised Roody most, she said, was the appearance of the female officer carrying out the flogging. She said: 'She was an older woman in a black chador, with a thick moustache. She was religious. It was strange. If you saw her somewhere else, you would never imagine this was her job. She looked ordinary.' She said the woman seemed to be trying to be gentle, but that did not lessen the violence. 'It did not stop me from hating them,' said Roody.... 'I hated her polite, ceremonial tone,' she said, adding: 'She spoke to me as if she were doing something normal. Before it started, she even joked and said: "Are you scared? Don’t worry, the whip is very thin and I won’t hit hard." Then she took out a Quran. She prayed and closed it. They try to cleanse their own dirty work.... She had made a few promises to herself before the punishment, one of which was that she would not make a sound. 'I came home with my head held high, the way I wanted,' she said. For Roody, the punishment was not only physical. It was designed to humiliate and was part of a longer history of violence against women...."

From "I danced until 2am… then it was off to my flogging/An Iranian rapper and critic of regime was determined to show no suffering as a woman in a black chador put down her Quran and picked up her whip" (London Times).

"Born with male sex characteristics and raised as boys, the current group of bissus are feminine in appearance."

"Their sacred rituals embody both genders: the daggers represented masculinity; the colorful silks femininity. 'Within a bissu, both male and female exist, and that is perfection,' said Kahar Eka, 52, a senior bissu, who wore a distinctly male attire of a peci hat and trousers, a day after donning an elaborate headdress embedded with flowers...."

I'm reading "The Priests Revered in the Land of Five Genders/The bissus of South Sulawesi are considered a link between the earthly and celestial because they are thought to embody both male and female traits" (NYT).

Eka, who commonly goes by just one name, remembers feeling effeminate even as a young boy; but that sentiment was rejected by Eka’s father, a conservative Muslim. Growing up in Sulawesi, Eka often looked at the bissus and wondered why they were respected, but the calabai — or men who exhibited feminine traits — were bullied. The calling to be a bissu, Eka said, came in a fever dream.... 

"The San Diego mosque shooters were 'radicalized online,' cops say — as it’s revealed they wore Nazi symbols and etched racist statements on their gear..."

"... as they opened fire outside an Islamic Center, killing three people in the process. The two teens 'did not discriminate on who they hated,' law enforcement officials said in a press conference Tuesday, adding they had recovered over 30 guns and a crossbow in connection to the suspects. A livestream video of the horrific attack, currently being probed by the FBI, shows Cain Clark with a Black Sun symbol, which is associated with Nazi Germany, square on his chest. Nazi SS commander Heinrich Himmler had the symbol inlaid into the floor of the Wewelsburg castle. Another symbol associated with a small online neo-Nazi group, the Atomwaffen Division, can also be seen on one of the shooters’ shoulders. Atomwaffen is the German phrase for 'atomic weapons.' Also seen on the handgun of one of the shooters is the statement, 'race war now,' right above a swastika. Neo-nazis and white nationalists are known for promoting race wars to overthrow the government or create a white ethnostate...."

The NY Post reports, in "San Diego mosque shooters were ‘radicalized online,’ wore Nazi symbols, inscribed vile 3-word message on guns."

"Tapestries embroidered with Quranic verses were shipped from the Kaaba in Mecca, Islam’s holiest shrine. Tiles came from a mosque in Uzbekistan."

"A golden metal dome was made to replicate the architecture of ancient Syria. Jeffrey Epstein spent years making connections across the Middle East, in pursuit of business deals and two intertwined hobbies: acquiring rare Islamic artifacts with which to decorate an unusual building on his private island, and expanding his network of wealthy, powerful people...."

From "Epstein Obtained Objects From Islam’s Holiest Site for His Island 'Mosque'/Jeffrey Epstein’s messages cast light on an unusual building on his private island and show how his connections helped him secure tapestries from Mecca for it" (NYT)(gift link).

"His vision for an island shrine began while he was in a Palm Beach County, Fla., jail, having pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution. Before his release in 2009, Mr. Epstein hired architects to design a 'hammam,' a Turkish bathhouse surrounded by 'Islamic gardening,' according to his correspondence. Mr. Epstein’s records show that in 2013, he sent Mr. Nicola a picture of the Yalbugah Hammam, a 15th-century bathhouse in Aleppo, Syria, with a golden dome, a recessed arch over the door and striped masonry, seeking sketches that would resemble it. Among other tasks, Mr. Epstein asked for a design replacing the Arabic word for God with his initials in English. 'Remember we saw the aribic writing in black and white,' he wrote to Mr. Nicola in an email plagued with his customary typos and misspellings. 'instead of allah, i thought j’s and e ‘s.'"

"Filming for the third season of Smatouha Minni (You Heard It From Me), a feminist series in Arabic, the actor is in a padded muscle suit, wearing a slicked-back black wig and beard."

"'If your wife asks you to change the diapers, you should change her,' the Palestinian-Jordanian barks, mimicking an aggrieved self-help podcaster. An hour later, she is slouched in a hoodie, shisha pipe in one hand and a gaming console in the other, shouting: 'Mama, I’m hungry. Can you make me a sandwich?' The sketches are parodies of a misogynist narrative gaining traction in the region. 'Patriarchal attitudes have always existed,' says Amanda Abou Abdallah, the Lebanese founder, co-writer and director of Smatouha Minni. 'But what we’re seeing now is a re-intensification – a backlash against women’s growing participation, independence and public voice, especially online.' Chief among the ideologies circulating is the so-called 'red pill' theory, popularised by figures such as Andrew Tate, whose influence in the region intensified after his conversion to Islam in late 2022. The doctrine frames men as victims of a feminist, 'gynocentric; social order and urges them to reclaim power through dominance...."

 From "'If your wife asks you to change diapers, change your wife': the Arabic hit show that parodies the patriarchy/The female-created YouTube sketch series Smatouha Minni – You Heard It From Me – uses satire to confront misogynistic attitudes" (The Guardian).

"It's tricknological, when white people invoke the holocaust. allows them to step out of their whiteness and slip on fake oppression."

Wrote Doreen St. Félix, in an X post screencapped in an Instapundit post by Ed Driscoll.

St. Félix published an article — in The New Yorker — about the Sydney Sweeney jeans/genes foofaraw. I'd skipped that article — I was Sweeneyed out by the time it appeared — but I see from the excerpt at Instapundit that it contained lines like "Interestingly, breasts, and the desire for them, are stereotyped as objects of white desire, as opposed to, say, the Black man’s hunger for ass." The desire is the object of desire? That's defective writing, and The New Yorker got its lofty reputation in part because of its punctilious word editing. But St. Félix is in The New Yorker, thus making her statements conspicuous and goofier than they would be somewhere else, like X (or a blog). 

Hey! It says "Black man’s hunger for ass" in The New Yorker.

The screencappers of X plunged into St. Félix's X account, homing in on posts with the words "hate" and "white people." Go to the Instapundit link to see what they found. 

What calls me is that new word: "tricknological." The adjective is, apparently, formed from the word "Tricknology," which is in the OED and traced back to 1938. It's marked "U.S. disparaging." It means:

"They said the film ['Barbie'] promoted homosexuality and insulted the image of women."

Said the mayor of Noisy-le-Sec, France, quoted in "Muslim youths shut down Barbie screening for ‘promoting homosexuality’/The incident in a Paris suburb plays into anxiety about cultural conflict in France, whose government says Islamists may be trying to undermine society." 

This article is in the London Times, which I subscribe to and would like to trust to report the relevant facts, but I can't figure out what the "Muslim youths" did that shut down the Barbie screening. We're told there was an "incident" but not what it was and why it was enough to shut down what was to have been a free outdoor screening. The article quickly moves to the topic of "widespread anxiety" about Muslims "impos[ing] their traditions on French life."

The mayor is quoted saying "An incident at Noisy has been taken over by the far-right fringe to stigmatise a neighbourhood." If the "far-right" is spinning the incident, tell us what is the left-wing or moderate spin? Is not detailing what happened the best you can do? As for the mayor, he made a point of saying that "he had not mentioned the religion of the youths."

With 2 great search terms — Noisy-le-Sec and Barbie — I easily found an article in the Brussels Signal – which some sources identify as right wing — "French mayor cancels Barbie film screening due to threats of 'disruption.'" Here, we find more details, but word "Muslim" does not even appear:

"I feel most Muslim when I am stunned by a moment of clarity within my own contradictions."

Writes Hanif Abdurraqub, in "Zohran Mamdani and Mahmoud Khalil Are in on the Joke/What it feels like to laugh when the world expects you to disappear" (The New Yorker).

Beyond whatever disconnects may exist in my faith practice, I still feel deeply connected to the ummah—the body, the community—and the responsibilities that this connection carries. A Hadith that I love, and which underpins many of my actions, states that “the believers in their mutual kindness, compassion, and sympathy are just like one body. When one of the limbs suffers, the whole body responds to it with wakefulness and fever.”...

I have been talking with my Muslim friends about the specific brand of Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment that has recently arisen—or re-arisen, depending on how one chooses to look at it—in America. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani... will almost certainly....

"But many Iranians love their pooches. Speaking of her ShihTzu terrier, Teddy, Asal Bahrierad, a Tehran resident, said... 'No one, not even the police, can take him away from me.'"

"She also said then that the ban was not being taken all that seriously. 'The police are actually very friendly to us,' she said of her daily walks with Teddy. Some even view walking a dog in public as a quiet rebellion against the Iranian government, which has long tried to enforce an Islamic lifestyle and restrict citizens’ civil liberties...."

From "'Dog Walking Is a Clear Crime': Iran’s Latest Morality Push/The government regards pet dogs as a sign of Western cultural influence. They are also considered impure, in Islam. Now there is a crackdown" (NYT).

Meanwhile, according to the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's fatwa, "Prayer is invalid with the presence of dog hair." We're told "A dog’s saliva or hair would render anything it touched — like a person, clothing or a surface — impure."

If you have a dog, you've always got at least one dog hair on you, I would think. All your prayers are invalidated. If things as puny as one dog hair invalidate a prayer, it's hard to imagine any prayers getting through. 

"[Geert] Wilders’s party — which has advocated banning the Quran, closing Islamic schools and entirely halting the acceptance of asylum seekers..."

"... won the largest number of seats in November 2023 elections, sending shock waves through the Dutch political system. Mr. Wilders was able to form a government with three other right-wing parties... after more than six months of wrangling.... Mr. Wilders had aimed to bring the 'strictest migration policy ever' to the Netherlands, something his governing partners had said they agreed with. In May 2024, the four parties reached a deal that included 'the strictest asylum admission policy and the most comprehensive migration control package ever.' But Mr. Wilders said that implementation was not going quickly enough. Last week he said he wanted to add 10 more proposals... includ[ing] calls for a complete halt to asylum, a temporary stop to family reunions for asylum seekers who had been granted refugee status and the return of all Syrians who had applied for asylum or were in the Netherlands on temporary visas. The leaders of the other coalition parties said that while they did not oppose Mr. Wilders’s plans, they wanted him to propose them in the House of Representatives. That would have taken longer and would not have guaranteed implementation...."

From "Dutch Government Collapses Over Migration Dispute/The populist Geert Wilders withdrew his right-wing party from the ruling coalition, saying partners were stalling plans for the Netherlands’ 'strictest migration policy ever'" (NYT).

About that proposal to ban the Quran — as reported in January 2024, after the election and before the formation of the coalition — "Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has withdrawn a 2018 proposal to ban mosques and the Quran" (Independent). The proposal denounced Islam as a "violent, totalitarian ideology."

Hollywood gets a wokeness wake-up call.

They gave 13 Oscar nominations to what, I've heard, is a terrible movie, and the over-honoring seems to have to do with the transgender theme and the transgender star.

But now "'Emilia Pérez' Star Karla Sofía Gascón Under Fire Over Tweets About Muslims, George Floyd, Oscars Diversity" (Variety).

A tweet from Nov. 22, 2020: "I’m Sorry, Is it just my impression or is there more muslims in Spain? Every time I go to pick up my daughter from school there are more women with their hair covered and their skirts down to their heels. Next year instead of English we’ll have to teach Arabic."

And from Sept. 2, 2020: "Islam is marvelous, without any machismo. Women are respected, and when they are so respected they are left with a little squared hole on their faces for their eyes to be visible and their mouths, but only if she behaves. Although they dress this way for their own enjoyment. How DEEPLY DISGUSTING OF HUMANITY."

"Abdoulie Fatty, one of Gambia’s most prominent imams, previously told The Washington Post that cutting is necessary to 'balance the feelings of a woman'..."

"... because 'in sex, women’s power is more than men’s power.' In one of the more explicit — and widely shared — moments of the year-long debate, Fatty also gave specific tips on one of Gambia’s most prominent shows about non-clitoral means of pleasuring women, including kissing their earlobes. Listening to such comments was 'embarrassing,' said Imam Baba Leigh, one of the religious leaders in Gambia who has campaigned against FGM. Leigh said FGM is in no way required by Islam. 'Are you telling me that God doesn’t know what is the right limit for a woman to enjoy? And you know it better? That is ridiculous,' he said when asked about Fatty’s statements. 'Allah knows what is suitable.'"

From "Female cutting debate in Gambia takes surprising turn: To women’s pleasure/The debate about female genital cutting has led to an open discussion about sexual pleasure in Gambia, with women buying sex toys and men learning about foreplay" (WaPo).

"'Hookahs and music were banned from the beginning, said Yahia Naeme, the owner of the cafe..."

"... who said the ban had lost him business because many people used to come to his cafe specifically to smoke hookahs. 'If we can’t offer it, they’ll get bored and go elsewhere,' he said. Other cafes in Idlib have skirted the law by offering hookahs in speakeasy-type environments behind closed doors. But Mr. Naeme did not want to risk running afoul of the area’s rulers...."

From "Cafes Can’t Play Music, but the Water Taps Work: Life Under Syria’s Rebels/The Islamists who now lead Syria have ruled the city of Idlib for years. Residents say they imposed some strict laws, but also heeded some complaints and improved public services" (NYT).

"I want to send the right symbolic gesture that the city is open to everyone and there’s no room for hate. And if there is a float or a person in the parade that is promoting hate, they should not."

Said NYC Mayor Eric Adams, quoted in "Float Planned for N.Y.C. India Day Parade Is Condemned as Anti-Muslim/The float, slated for inclusion in Sunday’s parade, depicts a Hindu temple in India that was built on the site of a mosque torn down by religious extremists" (NYT).

When asked at a news conference on Tuesday if he was sufficiently attuned to the concerns of Muslim New Yorkers.... “I’m not going to be judged by man,” the mayor said. “God judges me.”...

The inclusion of the float has been advertised in fliers on and offline by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, an offshoot of India’s Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a right-wing nationalist organization. An image posted online by the group showed a sketch of the float, surrounded by people dancing and celebrating. The organization did not respond to a request for comment.....

"He looked at her in disbelief, she recounted, as if he couldn’t believe she’d called the police over such a matter and asked: 'Why are you acting like you’re not a Muslim?'"

From "As Gambia weighs end to genital-cutting ban, this girl was cut behind mother’s back/The West African country could become the first in the world to overturn a prohibition on female genital mutilation" (WaPo)(full-access link).

Fatty, the imam promoting the ban’s repeal, appeared to refer to Fatou’s story in a sermon earlier this year, saying that a woman who takes her husband to court should be “ashamed.” Fatty compared her story with that story of a “good woman” who refused to take her husband to court even after he beat her so badly she lost four teeth.

UPDATE: "Gambia will maintain its ban on female genital cutting following a historic decision by the National Assembly on Monday that marked a victory for women’s rights advocates in this West African nation" (WaPo).

“I am relieved but sad that we had to be taken through this torment,” said Fatou Baldeh, a Gambian activist and survivor who has received international attention for her advocacy against the practice. “I am so proud of Gambian women for not giving up. We refused to let go.”

"More than 1,300 people died making the Islamic pilgrimage of hajj in Saudi Arabia this month..."

"... the vast majority of whom the Saudi government said did not have permits.... While pilgrims with permits are transported around the holy city of Mecca in air-conditioned buses and rest in air-conditioned tents, unregistered ones are often exposed to the elements... [walking miles] as temperatures surpassed 120 degrees.... Entry to Mecca was barred weeks before hajj for visitors who did not have permits. Yet many pilgrims were able to evade the restrictions, arriving in Mecca early and hiding out, or paying smugglers to ferry them into the city...."

The NYT reports.

Two of the dead were Americans, a couple from Maryland, who spent $23,000 on the trip but did not have the permits. The article ends with a quote from their daughter, the classic statement: "They died doing exactly what they wanted to do."

"The easiest way to explain why antisemitism is still with us is to blame religion."

"Scholars agree that what we call antisemitism today has its historical origins in a strain of anti-Jewish thought that grew out of early Christianity.... By failing to become Christians, Jews implicitly challenged the narrative of inevitable Christian triumph.... The problem with blaming religion is that antisemitism today is no longer driven primarily by Christianity..... Nor does antisemitism among Muslims primarily reflect the classical Islamic claims made against the Jews, such as the accusation that the Jews (and Christians) distorted Scripture.... The tropes of modern Europe’s antisemitism—of Jews’ power and avarice—mostly came to the Middle East late, through Nazi influence. Even the prevalence of antisemitism among Islamist groups like Hamas isn’t primarily driven by religion. Rather, it is part of their politically motivated effort to turn a struggle between two national groups for the same piece of land into a holy war. It emerges that far from being an unchanging set of ideas derived from ancient faiths, antisemitism is actually a shape-shifting, protean, creative force. Antisemitism has managed to reinvent itself multiple times throughout history, each time keeping some of the old tropes around, while simultaneously creating new ones adapted to present circumstances...."

Writes lawprof Noah Feldman, in "The New Antisemitism" (Time).

Much more at the link.