Sunday, June 1

Loreena McKennitt's buying what they're selling in Marrakesh Night Market



A foreign culture, moonlight, exotic foods, mystery, a general excitement in a crowded market ... what's not to like?

How about genocidal anti-Semitism? Universal commands to enslave or slaughter all who refuse the "invitation" to convert? Sacralized gender oppression, including rape, wife-beating, polygyny, and worse-than-second-class-status?

I'm sure Ms. McKennitt is unaware of what she's been sold. (Imagine the buyer's remorse when she finally unwraps that package!)

A response to the artist's musings here:
"women are veiled to a great degree ... I am stuck by the sense of intrigue the environment creates; as much is concealed as is revealed ... "
I love Loreena McKennitt, but she is totally out of her element here. These musings indicate a Westerner on vacation romanticizing the "other," a naive stranger delighted in her "tolerance" and "openness" but substituting her imagination for the reality of where she is.

A love of exploration, other cultures, and human creativity is wonderful, but all of those -- love, exploration, culture, creativity -- are diametric to Islam.

In other words, there may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate. And that's why a veil -- which might be mysterious on Ingrid Bergman or Audrey Hepburn -- is, on the devout, merely a symbol of Muhammad's violent misogyny and genocidal intolerance.

A culture's being infected with "kill the pagans wherever you find them" (Qur'an 9:5) -- and assorted other crimes against humanity -- disqualifies it from being exotically-romantic, doesn't it?