News of the Weird

In searching for my first blog entry, I did not have to look far.  One such story comes to mind very clearly.  In mid October, an Islamist group called Al-Shebab, which counts as its mission enforcing a strict form of Sharia Islamic law, took humiliation and extremism to a new level in labeling the “ordinary” as deceptive and offensive.  I could hardly believe it when I heard: how could one group have the right, if not the nerve, to make women shake their breasts in the streets after whipping them for wearing bras?

Al-Shebab claimed that women’s breasts should either be naturally firm or flat, that to wear a bra and hide what is naturally there is to commit an act of deception which goes against Sharia and affronts attempts to build a fundamentally Islamic state.  What these men hid as they whipped the women they had gathered were their faces, too cowardly to reveal themselves as they punished innocent women not for hiding themselves in any deliberate way, but for wearing something worn by millions of women around the world for comfort and support above all and nothing more.

Within the chaos and absurdity was real tragedy: women who watched their daughters be punished; brothers who were jailed or worse after trying to stop men from lashing their sisters.  What I do not understand and cannot comprehend is why this group is doing what it is doing.  Everything I grew up with in Somalia is being attacked and destroyed, and the reasoning behind it seems like an excuse for cruelty and violence.  What do bras have to do with establishment of an Islamic state?  Are publicly exposed breasts more in line with purity?

I think back to the days of bra burning and the feminist movement.  This now seems to be Al-Shebab’s symbol, too, so are we to assume they are now, deep down inside, feminist?  I bet they would be surprised to learn of their similarities to the women who stood up, took their bras off, and lit them on fire in demonstrations where they demanded equal treatment and rights.  How strange it is that Al-Shebab is using this same garment to oppress women and put them down.

I can’t imagine what is next for Al-Shebab in its random attack on Somali people and culture.  Already they are offended by dancing at weddings, by viewing of soccer, by music.  They are cutting off hands and feet, slaughtering and killing people fleeing in waves from their own homes.  How much more bizarre can we expect the situation to turn?  These religious fascists seem to do nothing more than plot how they can oppress people further and further, beyond the limits of any rational mind.

When they tire of having women shake their breasts, will they ask them to go naked, offended by the clothes they wear, the underwear they have chosen to layer with?  Will they claim indecency is when we put clothes on as they demand that we take them off?  And then, when women are naked and humiliated in the street, unable to understand for a single second what they might’ve done wrong, why their strong sense of morality has been challenged by immorality, what will be left?

I think Al-Shebab will be shocked by all the shapes and sizes of the women they see, confused by why their statement hasn’t held true: aren’t women’s breasts only meant to be firm or flat?  Aren’t women all the same, just objects put together in factories, toys with which to practice ignorance and violence, with which to apply shame?