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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (78569)	11/3/2003 7:12:03 AM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"cavalier"? Main Entry: 1cav·a·lier Pronunciation: "ka-v&-'lir Function: noun Etymology: Middle French, from Old Italian cavaliere, from Old Provençal cavalier, from Late Latin caballarius horseman, from Latin caballus Date: 1589 1 : a gentleman trained in arms and horsemanship 2 : a mounted soldier : KNIGHT 3 capitalized : an adherent of Charles I of England 4 : GALLANT

To: Lane3 who wrote (78569)	11/3/2003 7:22:30 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Ode to a red bikini By Leonard Pitts Jr. Everything I know about diversity, I learned from Captain Kirk. Well, that's not quite true. There's also Captain Picard. My point is that I've always taken what might be called the "Star Trek" approach to multiculturalism. It says in a nutshell that you should, whenever possible, avoid judging a foreign culture by the standards of your own. Just because a guy has blue skin and eats worms through the tentacle in his forehead doesn't make him a bad person. Words to live by, I've always thought. So you'll understand my hesitancy in discussing Vida Samadzai and her little red bikini. She is a gorgeous 23-year-old Afghan woman competing at the Miss Earth pageant in Manila who recently wore the aforementioned swimwear at an appearance by contestants ahead of the Nov. 9 judging. Draped across her chest: a sash that said Afghanistan. That nation, just two years removed from Taliban tyranny, is none too happy to be represented by a half-naked woman. Samadzai, a student who lives in the United States, has been sharply criticized by both men and women in her native land. Afghan culture, you will recall, holds women to a dress code of utmost modesty. The nation's religious customs dictate that a woman be covered from head to heels, rendered anonymous by the flowing fabric of her burqa, lest she incite unbridled lust in some innocent man. It seems strange to me, but my instinct is to keep my big American nose out of it, to remember that it's their culture, not mine. And if it were just a burqa, maybe I could. If it were just a question of modesty, I might bite my tongue. Problem is, it's more. Even before the Taliban came to power in 1996, Afghanistan was not exactly a paradise of women's rights. But women were at least integrated into the workaday life of the nation. They taught school, they served as doctors, they even worked in government. All of which came to a crushing stop in the five brutal years of Taliban rule. It wasn't just that women were banished to the burqa, effectively rendered invisible on the streets of Afghan cities. It was that they were in large part banished from those same streets, forbidden to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative. They were, with rare exceptions, not allowed to work. Girls above age 8 were barred from going to school. Makeup was against the law. And all of it was enforced with brutal chastisements. A woman found to be wearing fingernail polish beneath her burqa might have her fingertips cut off. A woman caught not wearing her burqa might be raped as punishment. A woman waiting at a hospital for treatment of a severe asthma attack is said to have torn her robes off, trying to get some air. For which she received 40 lashes with a whip. So the issue here is not just a woman's modesty but her subjugation. Samadzai's bikini is not just a fashion statement but a freedom statement - odd as that will seem to old-line feminists to whom beauty pageants are the devil's work. She is, in her small way, a Chinese man facing down a tank in Tiananmen Square, a German citizen jumping atop the rubble of the wall in Berlin, Rosa Parks under arrest on a bus in Birmingham. The burqa represented the theft of identity. It made a woman shapeless, faceless, sexless. In casting it aside, allowing her face and body to be seen, Samadzai reclaims a woman's most basic possession - herself - and defends her basic right to be. Afghans looked at pictures of her in her bikini and saw something hateful. I saw something hopeful, something self-possessed and free that I could never have seen before. I saw her face. * Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132; e-mail: lpitts@herald.com.