"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.

"We’re looking into finding ways to build a mechanism of coordination between all the swing states so that... Muslim Americans will come out in all of these states, and that Mr. Biden will lose each and every one of them."

Said Hassan Abdel Salam, "a professor at the University of Minnesota and a member of the #AbandonBiden National Coalition," quoted in "Swing-state Muslim leaders launch campaign to ‘abandon’ Biden in 2024/The bubbling anger among Arab and Muslim Americans over the president’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict could threaten his chances of reelection" (Politico).

"China is destroying Arab-style architectural features of mosques, such as domes and minarets."

The NYT reports.

The party has systematically closed, demolished or forcibly redesigned mosques in Hui enclaves across the country, condemning Arabic architectural features, such as domes and minarets, as proof of unwanted foreign influence over Islam in China....

“This roof represents our respect and freedom. We chose it freely ourselves at the time,” said Mr. Na, a Hui resident in his 30s, who asked to be identified only by his last name for fear of government retaliation. His family, like many in town, had helped fund the mosque’s most recent renovations in the early 2000s, when the minarets were added. “Now they are saying, ‘My rule overrides your free choice.’”... 

"When I see the boys going to school and doing whatever they want, it really hurts me. I feel very bad."

"When I see my brother leaving for school, I feel broken, Earlier, my brother used to say I won't go to school without you. I hugged him and said you go, I'll join you later. People tell my parents you shouldn't worry, you have sons. I wish we had the same rights."

From "Afghanistan girls' education: 'When I see the boys going to school, it hurts'" (BBC).

"A new sculpture has become the first female figure to adorn one of the 10 plinths atop a powerful New York appellate courthouse in Manhattan."

"The plinths have been dominated for more than a century by now weathered statues representing great lawgivers throughout the ages — all of them men. Standing among Moses, Confucius and Zoroaster is the shimmering, golden eight-foot female sculpture, emerging from a pink lotus flower and wearing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s signature lace collar. Shahzia Sikander... 53, the paradigm-busting Pakistani American artist behind the work... 'She is a fierce woman and a form of resistance in a space that has historically been dominated by patriarchal representation... The sculpture is located at the courthouse of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court at 27 Madison Avenue."

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Here's the NYT article about the sculpture: "Move Over Moses and Zoroaster: Manhattan Has a New Female Lawgiver/The artist Shahzia Sikander calls the eight-foot sculpture she has placed atop a New York courthouse an urgent form of 'resistance,'" which explains why there is an empty plinth:

"It was never our intent to suggest that academic freedom is of lower concern or value than our students — care does not 'supersede' academic freedom, the two coexist."

Said a statement from Ellen Watters, the chair of the Hamline University’s board of trustees, and Fayneese S. Miller, the university's president.

"Like all organizations, sometimes we misstep. In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term ‘Islamophobic’ was therefore flawed."

Quoted in "After Lecturer Sues, Hamline University Walks Back Its ‘Islamophobic’ Comments/In an about-face, the school said that using the term was 'flawed' and that respect for Muslim students should not have superseded academic freedom" (NYT).

"It honestly seems like it was written by a teenage Tumblr user who, having come into contact with some new and exciting ideas about social justice, seeks to impose them widely and lecture perceived wrongdoers gleefully."

Writes Jill Filipovic, in "Hamline University’s Controversial Firing Is a Warning/Insistence that others follow one’s strict religion is authoritarian and illiberal no matter what the religion is" (Slate). She's talking about a statement written by Hamlin University President Dr. Fayneese S. Miller. 

Filipovic continues:

"Hamline administrators have labeled this corpus of Islamic depictions of Muhammad, along with their teaching, as hateful, intolerant and Islamophobic."

"And yet the visual evidence proves contrary: The images were made, almost without exception, by Muslim artists for Muslim patrons in respect for, and in exaltation of, Muhammad and the Quran. They are, by definition, Islamophilic from their inception to their reception. How did Hamline arrive at such a flawed conclusion, what are its implications, and where do we go from here?... ... Islam has been largely defined, in contrast with Christianity, as a religious tradition that is largely aniconic, or lacking in figural images. The administrators at Hamline reiterated this inaccuracy with zeal, believing that such historical Islamic images were equivalent to offensive Euro-American cartoons and hence caused 'harm' to the Muslims in their midst. Through conflation or confusion, Hamline has privileged an ultraconservative Muslim view on the subject that happens to coincide with the age-old Western cliche that Muslims are banned from viewing images of the prophet. This Muslim traditionalist and American Orientalist 'echo chamber; is not just simplistic and counterfactual; it also muzzles all other voices while potentially endangering rare and precious works of Islamic art."

Writes Christiane Gruber, a professor of Islamic art in the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan, in "An Academic Is Fired Over a Medieval Painting of the Prophet Muhammad/The dismissal of an instructor at Hamline University on baseless charges of 'Islamophobia' raises concerns about freedom on campus" (New Lines Magazine)(via Arts & Letters Daily).

Professor Gruber doesn't seem to notice the problem of viewpoint discrimination. She seems to want historical, high-art images treated differently from modern-day satirical cartoons. That too is "privileging" — privileging elite art. Indeed, she goes on to support present-day high art: 

"Qatar’s vision for the World Cup did not just require the building of seven stadiums and the refurbishment of an eighth."

"The country also needed an entire network of roads and rails to transport fans between the arenas and dozens upon dozens of hotels to house them — nothing less than an entirely redrawn country, rising from the sand in a $220 billion nation-building project. To achieve it, Qatar recruited hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from some of the poorest corners of the planet, swelling the country’s population — which grew by 13.2 percent in the last year alone — and drawing intense focus on the laborers’ treatment, their rights and their living conditions. How many have died over the last decade or more is not known, and may never be. Many thousands more have returned home sick or injured or deprived of the pay they were promised...."

From "The World Cup That Changed Everything/The decision to take the World Cup to Qatar has upturned a small nation, battered the reputation of global soccer’s governing body and altered the fabric of the sport" (NYT).

"A new wave of migrant workers has arrived, meanwhile, to staff the hotels, man the stadiums and serve the food.... Qatar shocked FIFA and fans alike on Friday by deciding, only days before the tournament’s opening match, to go back on its promise to allow the sale of beer at its eight World Cup stadiums..... The about-face raised new questions about whether everyone — particularly LGBTQ+ fans — will face the kind of welcome that Qatar’s organizing committee and FIFA have consistently guaranteed. This month, Khalid Salman, a former Qatari national team player now deployed as an ambassador for the World Cup, did not seem to have heard the organizers’ messaging. 'Homosexuality is haram here,' he told a German documentary, using an Arabic word that roughly translates as forbidden. 'It is haram because it is damage in the mind.'"

ADDED: Is $220 billion really that much? It's just 5 Twitters.

AND: Imagine forbidding everything that is "damage in the mind"? What would escape forbidding?