Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Daily Telegraph Opinion Editor defames Aussie author

Daily Telegraph Opinion editor Tim Blair and his openly racist cyber-friends have been having a field-day attacking one of Australia’s most promising children’s authors.

Blair lampoons the debut novel of Aussie lawyer and writer Randa Abdel Fattah Does My Head Look Big In This, which attempts to provide young readers with an understanding of the issues some young women face when deciding whether to don a head scarf for religious or cultural reasons.

Blair’s blog, recently exposed for moderating comments that effectively incite violence, talks about the author writing his own version which he claims is “tailored for the Middle Eastern market”.

The version ends with a young Muslim girl who takes off her hijab and is then shot dead by her family members. Blair and his colleagues then poke fun at this kind of violent honour-killing, as well as casting aspersions on the author and her ancestral culture.

The comments are certainly well-worth reading. Remember, these comments have been moderated by a man who holds a relatively senior editorial post in a major metropolitan newspaper. The contents of his blog do reflect on the Daily Telegraph, its management and News Limited.

© Irfan Yusuf 2007

3 comments:

LDU said...

Can't anyone one take this guy to court? Im sure as you indicate, his bending some rules, isn't he?

Anonymous said...

Irf,

You are missing the important context of the quote - that Muslim women in the West have the right to say what they want to and dress as they want to without the threat of culturally-inspired retribution.

I won't say religiously-inspired, because we both know that the root cause of this misogyny is cultural.

Irshad Manji, for example, can only say what she says in the West - if she lived and spoke as she does in the Saudi Kingdom or Iran, she'd be dead (cats'?) meat in no time flat.

Anonymous said...

And yet, Peter, there are muslim women in indonesia who have written more radical things and are still living quite comfortably in indonesia.

Meanwhile in certain states of the US, if you want to set up an abortion clinic or teach evolution without that creation science bullshit ...