An opinion piece writer begins by noting the specific controversy – the act of putting toddlers under hijabs – and then, in response, says only that “donning the hijab is an intimate matter of choice for most Muslim women in the West.”

Even if I grant that this writer is in a position to know that most Muslim women in the West freely choose the hijab, this is irrelevant to the matter at hand, which is whether a three-year-old chooses to wear the hijab.

As UD often says, you are getting absolutely nowhere if you refuse to engage honestly in this issue. Big majorities of populations all over the world, when asked, tend to vote to outlaw burqas and restrict hijabs. That is clearly, empirically, their choice. It is at odds with the choice of many Muslim women. And as for the choice of three-year-old girls, I think it’s just as empirically clear that in this matter they don’t have any. These are the facts with which you must deal.

    DECEMBRIST

    It's the old annual end-times go-round
    When the revolution goes up in flames
    And everyone flees to an assisted
    Living facility.  But not you.  Yet.
    Checks still go out to the truly needy
    Which must mean that you yourself... You're young still
    In some senile way and unprepared to
    Abandon the ramparts and call the
    Revolution ended. 

                End-time subversiveness
                Mainly involves mantras. Surreality
                Of Everyday Life remains popular.
                A far remove from Here at Senior Sylvan Retreat You Are
                Never Alone.  Alone is what I want!

        Alone I can work out another New Year --

 Reckon up lost ground, lost troops, morale issues.

********************************

My basic animal spirits are sound. 
Born lucky, raised lucky, lucky in work
And love, I pause in the hallway, steady
My mug of tea, and undergo full-body gratitude.

The room is cold, the words in the books are cold;
And the question of whether we get what we ask for
Is absurd, unanswered by the sound of an unlatched door
Rattling in wind, or the sound of snow on roofs, or glare
Of the winter sun. What we have learned is not what we were told.
I watch the snow, feel for the heartbeat that is not there.

I wrote about her on this blog a few years ago. Here’s what I said.

*******************

I’ve been reading Joan Didion’s Blue Nights – her chronicle of her daughter’s death and her own aging – on this flight from Phoenix to Baltimore. It’s kept me occupied. We land in fifteen minutes.

I like Didion’s mournful chant, her brief, much-repeated litanies. She plays the “blue night” idea (we want to think of our lives as long summer nights that never darken) beautifully through the text. Her constant rounding back to painful motifs and memories cuts a deeper and deeper circle of implication, the prose grinding down until we’re surrounded by very dark canyon walls.

It’s poetic prose, stating and restating its symbols, making them a dirge. She’s troubled, in the text, by her technique of indirection, but she needn’t be. Solemn poetic dance is the best way to get at this stuff – in particular, the ridiculous tendency to believe in the permanence of life and health and happiness, “this refusal even to engage in such contemplation, this failure to confront the certainties of aging, illness, and death.”

Returning, as I am now, from seven blissful days in Sedona, Arizona, I could almost assume this ridiculous tendency myself. The sweet spot: Didion’s eye travels over that long moment when her life achieved the sweet spot: Love, vocation, money, friends, glamor, fame, seaside Malibu in bloom… It’s rare for anyone that things turn out that well, and that they turn out that well for any length of time. Didion had this; and inevitably her book dwells on that delight, wonders if the recollection of the delight can sustain her.

She doesn’t think it can.

UD will cop to sharing with her a failure, so far, to confront certain certainties. She does, though, Didion-style, circle around them a lot.

The darkening to black of the blue night. It’s happening just outside UD‘s window right now. Maybe it’s not so much about not confronting it as not knowing how to play it (play it as it lays) – this bizarre concurrence of sweet and dark.

I know what I do. What I do is – like Didion – keep moving, keep feeling gratitude and love and excitement. The red rocks shine in the short blue night and I passionately respond.

********************

The sun cannot change, writes James Merrill to his just-born nephew in Little Fanfare for Felix Magowan:

It’s earth, it’s time,
Whose child you now are, quietly
Blotting him out. In the blue stare you raise
To your mother and father already the miniature,
Merciful and lifelong eclipse,
Felix, has taken place;
The black pupil rimmed with rays
Contracted to its task –
That of revealing by obscuring
The sunlike friend behind it.
Unseen by you, may he shine back always
From what you see, from others.

… is a MoMA box, inside of which is a Bodum Assam Brew teapot for her.

Because our family Christmas in Boston has been cancelled (covid), Joanna’s

vestibule will for some time remain clogged with tons of mailed gifts.

(We have all of them sent to her, and then wrap and distribute them.)

Since MoMA’s box isn’t shy about announcing to Joanna that the

teapot she requested is indeed to be found right inside that specific

package, the whole what’s inside the wrapped gift thing is kaput.

So UD has granted her permission to open it and start brewing, pre-

Christmas.

As a tea fanatic, UD can only imagine what it’s been like, staring

at that beautiful teapot day after day and being unable to use it.

Plus “I didn’t declare it, and that’s illegal.”

UD has already, uh, sung the praises of Harvard 大人物 Charles Lieber here. He has now been found guilty (max. sentence five years) of

two counts of making false statements to the U.S. government about whether he participated in Thousand Talents Plan, a program designed by the Chinese government to attract foreign-educated scientists in China. They also found him guilty of failing to declare income earned in China and failing to report a Chinese bank account.

See, you’re not supposed to take millions and millions of OUR dollars for your scientific research and secretly subsidize it with millions of dollars from our rich, interested-in-our-secrets, non-friends.

But for UD the real fun here is the whole vulgar bag-man thing, the image of Hahvahd lugging its piles of dirty cash onto airplanes. Will the TSA discover (sweat sweat) the C-Notes in my Louis Vuitton steamer trunk?

************

It’s very University of Miami… And yet a closer look at Harvard yields Jeffrey Epstein’s stable of over-age girls, Andrei Shleifer’s Moscow Adventures, Larry Summers’ hedge fund presidency, etc. Let’s not give ourselves airs.

The next segment of the [Town Council] meeting is action items — those that require a vote of the Council. There was only one, but a big one: introduction of the mid-year changes in the town’s budget. Before the vote, the explanation and discussion went on for more than an hour. The big picture is that the budget adjustment deals with what to do with the unexpectedly large carry-over of funds from the previous fiscal year ($480,000 rather than the $70,000 forecast in the initial budget). Despite the large carryover, the mid-year adjustment includes no change in projected tax revenue. The other big item is that the town has now received over $500,000 as the first chunk of funds from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), to be expended on as yet undetermined town projects…

From this month’s Garrett Park Bugle.

… La Kid, beams beneath a holiday display in sunny Washington, DC.

… covering your girl child – girl infant – from the moment she pops out, in all her blasphemous sexiness – is big business around the world. The burgeoning popularity of female-blanketing means more and more stores in virtually every location are getting in on the trend. UD’s post title anticipates some product line names…

… And children’s songs… If you’re happy and hijabi clap your hands! If you’re…

Now we all know (if we read UD) that Quebec is in all kinds of trouble in the larger, uh, Canadian entity, because that province passed a law restricting public employees from wearing hijabs while on the job. We also know that everyone dumped on the French when their Senate passed a law (it went no further than the Senate) banning hijabs in public settings on people younger than eighteen. Yet when one of Canada’s most prominent pediatric physicians – the director of pediatric surgery at McGill – writes a shocked and angry response to a recent cover image on the Canadian Medical Association Journal, UD thinks it might be worth your while to read what he says.

“As a pediatric surgeon, I admit I would not typically have gravitated toward the excellent article in CMAJ by Drs. Bloch and Rozmovits if it wasn’t for the image that accompanied it — a picture of 2 girls, probably about 3 or 4 years old, reading together. One of them is covered in a hijab.

The image shocked and infuriated many. Yasmine Mohammed, a Vancouver activist who has championed equality for Muslim women, tweeted, “The cover of @CMAJ features a little girl in hijab. How disheartening to see my so-called liberal society condone something that is only happening in the most extremist of religious homes.” Another Muslim woman, a surgical trainee who wishes to remain anonymous, messaged me to express her horror at seeing the image, which triggered painful childhood memories of growing up in a fundamentalist Islamic society, where she was forced to wear the hijab from early childhood and taught that her body was desired by the opposite sex and should be covered. She later shared her perspective in a private conversation with the CMAJ interim editor-in-chief and publisher.

It has become “liberal” to see the hijab as a symbol of equity, diversity and inclusion. Out of the best intentions, the CMAJ editors probably chose this picture to accompany an article on the application of such principles in medical care.

I work in an urban tertiary academic children’s hospital embedded in an extremely multicultural environment. Many of my trainees, colleagues and patients’ parents (and some adolescent patients) wear the hijab. I respect each woman I interact with, as well as any woman’s choice to express her identity as she desires. Some women face harassment and discrimination for their choice to wear the hijab. That is real, and it is also wrong.

But respect does not alter the fact that the hijab, the niqab and the burka are also instruments of oppression for millions of girls and women around the world who are not allowed to make a choice. We are currently being reminded of this daily, as we see the tragic return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and its effect on the subjugation of women and girls. Girls as old as those in the picture are being sold into marriage to old men — institutionalized child rape. The mentality that allows this to happen shares much with the one that leads to covering up a toddler. But even in so-called moderate Islamic countries, such as the one I grew up in, societal pressures heavily marginalize women who choose not to wear the hijab. In addition, women in these countries who are not Muslim and do not wear the hijab are often subject to intense harassment and discrimination. I know that, because some of these women are in my family. I respect the women who see the hijab as liberating. But we must also remember the women and girls who find it oppressive and misogynistic.

Ironically, the article explores evaluating interventions to address social risks to health. A young girl such as the one depicted in the image is typically also banned from riding a bike, swimming or participating in other activities that characterize a healthy childhood. She is taught, directly or indirectly, from an early age that she is a sexual object, and it is her responsibility to hide her features from the opposite sex, lest she attract them. A heavy burden for modesty is placed squarely on her shoulders. So many women have been traumatized by such an upbringing, which, I believe, frankly borders on child abuse. Is that not a social risk to health? Are these children not a vulnerable population?”

********************

What will it take for you, and many other well-meaning people, acting “out of the best intentions,” to see what some subcultures are doing to their girls? Do you think that legitimizing bordering-on-child-abuse by featuring it on the covers of medical journals is a good idea?

******************

UPDATE: After complaints, the letter has been retracted, with cringing apologies from the editor, along with her pledge never again to trespass onto the truth. A commenter at Retraction Watch gets it said:

‘Could someone explain exactly what is so terrible about the author’s claim: “Some women face harassment and discrimination for their choice to wear the hijab. That is real, and it is also wrong. But respect does not alter the fact that the hijab, the niqab and the burka are also instruments of oppression for millions of girls and women around the world who are not allowed to make a choice.”

Is that such a fundamentally unreasonable statement? Is the author incorrect that the hijab, niqab, and burka have—for many girls and women—associations with oppression? I expect that for many people the hijab is a harmless symbol, or even a mere fashion statement—but can’t the same be said of the Confederate battle flag, which is certainly a symbol of oppression to many people?

To be clear, the author did not argue that women shouldn’t wear hijabs. In fact, he explicitly said women should be able to dress however they please without being subjected to discrimination or harassment. What the author argued is that showing a toddler in a hijab isn’t a good way to represent cultural diversity. Perhaps the author is wrong about that—but if he is, then isn’t the appropriate course of action to present a counterargument pointing out the flaws in the author’s statements? Instead we get a retraction and a generic, uninformative statement from the editor apologizing for hurt feelings.’

… shushes the holier than thou hysteria in Canada by reminding the opponents of Quebec’s secularity bill that if they want to defend hijabis there are better and worse ways to do this.

Ben Woodfinden points out that the likeliest prospect for Bill 21’s demise lies in gradual changes in the government:

Bill 21 enjoys widespread support in Quebec, especially among francophones. But it is not universally supported in the province and there has been plenty of opposition to it since it was proposed. Both the Quebec Liberals and Québec solidaire oppose the law. Combined they got more votes than the governing Coalition Avenir Québec in the past provincial election.

Bill 21 passed in the National Assembly with a vote of 73-35, with the Parti Québécois joining the [Coalition Avenir Quebec] to support the legislation. If current polls are to be believed, the CAQ is on track to win a big majority next year, and the storied Parti Québécois is on the verge of electoral oblivion. This matters because the PQ doesn’t think Bill 21 goes far enough and wants to expand it further. The CAQ will likely win again, but it will not govern forever, and a successor government is the most likely way Bill 21 will ever be changed. Given that the law has to be renewed every five years because of the use of the notwithstanding clause, the debate over Bill 21 in Quebec is not a dead one regardless of the outcome of the legal challenge.

Woodfinden doubts any legal challenge will work; further, he points out that all the rageful disdain from non-Quebec Canada about that province’s passage of the bill

… play[s] right into the hands of those in Quebec who would seek to turn this into a debate not so much about Bill 21 but about a divide between English and French Canada. As André Pratte wrote in these pages , “All this noise now allows the distinct society’s nationalists to claim that the province is again subject to ‘Québec bashing’ … Bill 21 will become even more entrenched into Québécois identity.”

In short, if you want the (very limited) restrictions on the hijab in Quebec to disappear, cool it. Let the political process play out.

Lise Ravary, in the Montreal Gazette, weighing in on the hijab thing, reminds us that there are important differences between French and English Canada.

In 2016, a developer wanted to build up to 80 homes on the South Shore of Montreal intended specifically for Muslims. He had even specified that women should dress modestly when outside their home. Pressure from all sides, even the local imam, quickly put an end to that. A separate religious neighbourhood would be heretical to Quebecers.

But in English Canada, it seems, most people don’t … have a problem when public schools close their cafeterias for prayers, with the sexes segregated and girls relegated to the back of the room. I can’t understand why such nonsense is tolerated.

Recall what happened in a British university a few years ago when an Islamic student group set up separate seating areas (women in back, and keep quiet) at an on-campus event. People always seem shocked when it turns out that – as in this latest case in Quebec – the public realm of secular egalitarian cultures actually matters to secular egalitarian people.

Bastion of women’s rights, Iran, rushes to the defense of hijab-wearers in Quebec.

The optics really aren’t great when the first foreign power to come to the defense of protesters against Quebec’s secularity law are authoritarian mullahs.

Unfortunately, however, the rest of the world has so far responded to some public workplace restrictions on the hijab with a deafening silence.

…it’s time to hear from the law-abiding citizens of Quebec. Here’s one.

It would be safe to conclude that a statement of identity for many Muslim women who promote the hijab is perhaps more important than following religious dicta. One can, for example, easily argue that many of these women don’t believe the hijab to be a religious requirement. They could easily remove the piece of cloth while at work but choose not to. One must ask why... Why the restrictive, chauvinistic, and patriarchal garb has assumed this much importance for these individuals is a puzzlement.

Indeed, nuns, priests and even monks are perfectly able to remove their religious garb; why not non-clerical women? What makes these women more rigid in their refusals (in Quebec, they are asked only to remove it while in the public-facing act of public positions) than clericals?

The hijab is undoubtedly a garb rooted in patriarchy. It should be discouraged rather than enabled, touted, and promoted wherever possible. Bill 21 seeks to do precisely that…

Touted reminds us of the recent hijab-promoting ad campaign in Europe that came to grief. Western democracies are willing to tolerate the hijab, but – in Quebec, and in Europe – not in all settings, and not in all forms of its presentation.

Just look at what happens when you don’t.

A family of four [ultra-orthodox Israelis] may have caused [Israel’s] largest Omicron outbreak to date because they chose not to quarantine after returning from a trip to South Africa… [W]hen they were supposed to be isolating at home, they were not. Instead, the parents went to work and the children to school and preschool…

The family went on to lie about another close, infected, relative having been in South Africa; they also refused to answer their phone and participate in epidemiological tracking.

Countries that allow large numbers of their citizens to remain ignorant and anti-social pay a very large price indeed.

The New Democratic Party leader in Canada is refreshingly honest about his view of federal/provincial powers. By an impressive 65% majority, Quebec’s citizens favor a recently enacted secularism bill which enforces religious neutrality on some categories of public employees for the daily duration of their public duties. As in: For the hours during which you are teaching, or presiding over a courtroom, you must remove your hijab or other form of religious garb.

As Boucar Diouf notes:

“How would an immigrant of Palestinian origin, contesting a conviction, feel in front of a judge wearing a kippah? Inversely, how would a young driver wearing a kippah feel faced with a policewoman wearing a hijab who just gave him a ticket?”

A minority of Quebecers disagree with this approach, and the NDP guy thinks federal Canada should just go ahead and align itself with them. Screw the strong majority of people in that province who think some secular workplace rules are reasonable.

What do you think are the chances federal Canada will prevail? For background, recall what’s going on elsewhere.

***********************

Justin Trudeau will not intervene; and asked whether “he thinks Bill 21 fosters ‘hatred’ and ‘discrimination’ against minorities, Mr. Trudeau answered straightforwardly: “No.”