Abstinence Only? Mississippi Has Highest Teen Pregnancy Rate Rate In the USA
Sex Education or Abstinence? Do you think there might be some connection between Mississippi’s highest state in the nation teen pregnancy rate and their policy of abstinence only? (For non-US people, ‘abstinence-only’ is code for NO SEX EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOLS. Some people think that teaching young people how sex works, and how to prevent pregnancy gives them ideas they might not try if you didn’t teach them about it or gives them tacit permission to engage in sex.)
* State has nation’s highest teen birth rate
* New law allows abstinence plus sex-ed teaching
* Studies show sex-ed works to prevent teen pregnancy
By Emily Le Coz
TUPELO, Miss., Aug 26 (Reuters) – Artasia Bobo, a 16-year-old Mississippi high school sophomore, was only 12 when she got pregnant and doesn’t recall receiving much in the way of sex education.
Holding her 3-year-old daughter, Annsley, after cheerleading practice recently, the honor-roll student said she’s now an advocate for comprehensive sex education offered as soon as possible.
“What I went through is nothing any girl would want to go through,” she said. “It changed my life. I love my daughter, but if I could go back in time, my life would be a whole lot different.”
Mississippi, the poorest U.S. state, has the nation’s highest teen pregnancy rate. Yet until this year, the state allowed schools to forgo sex education entirely.
That changed with a state law passed last year that mandated school districts adopt either abstinence-only or abstinence-plus sex education policies. Before the new law, any district that did teach sex education had to teach abstinence-only.
Under the new law, a majority of Mississippi’s public school districts this year adopted abstinence-only policies that avoid or downplay the issue of contraceptives.
Twenty other U.S. states and the District of Columbia also require sex education, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based non-profit organization focusing on sexual and reproductive rights.
After the law took effect at the beginning of July, 81 districts chose abstinence-only and 71 chose abstinence-plus, the state Department of Education reported. Mississippi kept no record of how many districts taught abstinence-only under the old law, department spokesman Jon Kalahar said.
“SERIOUS PROBLEM”
Mississippi reported 55 births per 1,000 teens aged 15 to 19 in 2010 – more than 60 percent above the U.S. average, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in April.
The state also has one of the nation’s highest infant mortality rates and among the highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea infections among teens and young adults, according to the Mississippi Department of Health.
“It was obvious we had a serious problem in the state,” said Democratic state Representative Cecil Brown, who chaired the committee that championed the bill. “You can’t stick your head in the sand.”
Abstinence-only allows districts to teach about the benefits of avoiding sex until marriage, the consequences of bearing children out of wedlock and how to reject sexual advances. Such programs also teach that abstinence is the only certain way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
Although a discussion of condoms or contraceptives is allowed under this policy, it cannot include demonstrations of use and must present the risks and failure rates of such devices, the law states.
Abstinence-plus must include all those topics and can also teach about the causes and effects of sexually transmitted diseases and how to prevent them, according to the law.
“Before this year, not a single school district had adopted any policy on sex education,” said Jamie Holcomb Bardwell, director of programs for Women’s Fund of Mississippi. “The fact that 71 adopted abstinence-plus is one of the biggest victories for young people in Mississippi this year.”
Bardwell said she’s encouraged that many of the districts with the highest teen pregnancy rates adopted not only abstinence-plus policies, but also implemented sex education programs proven effective for changing teen behavior.
COMPREHENSIVE SEX EDUCATION
“Research shows that when young people have access to a curriculum that’s not abstinence-only … when it includes medically accurate information, they’re more likely to have lower pregnancy rates and lower sexually transmitted infection rates,” she said.
Studies published this year by the Guttmacher Institute show teens who received comprehensive sex education, including instruction on birth control, waited longer to have sex and had lower rates of pregnancy.
That might have been the case for Bobo, but such a course wasn’t offered when she got pregnant. Nor will it be offered this year, since her district chose an abstinence-only policy.
A statewide survey conducted in 2011 by the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University found most parents support comprehensive sex education in schools.
Among them is 40-year-old Renee Bobo, Artasia’s mother.
“They’re getting it from TV and from friends, anyway,” said Bobo, who works nights so she can care for her granddaughter while Artasia attends school. “They should get the straight facts from an informed instructor.”
The Lee County School District in northeast Mississippi adopted an abstinence-only program for the first time this year. Superintendent Jimmy Weeks said health classes had previously touched on the subject but this will be the district’s first dedicated sex-education class.
The school board picked abstinence-only because “we don’t want to come across as saying, ‘Hey, premarital sex is OK, let us show us how you do it without getting a disease,'” Weeks said.
Sixteen percent of Lee County births in 2010 were to teens, according to the Mississippi Department of Health. In Itawamba County, where Artasia attends school, the rate was 16.5 percent.
Coahoma County in the Mississippi delta, which at 23 percent had one of the state’s highest rates of births to teens, recently adopted an abstinence-plus program after four years of teaching abstinence-only, said Superintendent Pauline Rhodes.
“I’ve seen first-hand the devastation of children having children, and I have seen students on their way to a promising career have to drop out,” Rhodes said. “I’ve always felt that until we can get a handle on teen pregnancies, we will not be able to get a handle on juvenile delinquencies.” (Editing by David Adams and Jim Loney)
I believe abstinence can work – in a relationship where both people believe in abstinence. How do you apply abstinence to a multi-cultural society where religious, personal and moral values differ? Abstinence DOES prevent pregnancy – but even teenagers in the most virtuous families find the lure of sexual activity irresistible, and can end up pregnant. I like it that Mississippi is taking the pragmatic step of combining abstinence teaching AND sex education. Give them enough information to avoid bringing children into this world who are unwanted and born to parents not capable of parenting.
That Cheeky Woman At The Well
Today’s Gospel reading from the Lectionary is one of my favorites, and every time I read it, I am amazed. Amazed that this good Jewish boy would speak to a woman who cavorted with men, having five husbands, and being with a man now who was not her husband. It’s the middle of the day, and he is sitting by a well having a conversation with a woman most good Jewish boys would run from, a woman of ill-repute!
She must have had a rough life, five husbands, etc. but it hasn’t broken her spirit, and she is joking around with Jesus. She knows something about Jewish traditions, but has no idea who Jesus might be. Then, oddity of oddity, he reveals himself to her as the Messiah – to this woman. He reveals himself to a woman at the very lowest end of the social scale, a woman barely tolerated in her own society. This woman believes him; for all her sins, she ‘hears’ the truth of what he is saying in her heart.
John 4:1-26
4Now when Jesus* learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’— 2 although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4But he had to go through Samaria. 5So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. 8(His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)* 10Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ 11The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’
13Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ 15 The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’
16 Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ 17The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; 18for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ 19The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you* say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’
21 Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ 25The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ 26Jesus said to her, ‘I am he,* the one who is speaking to you.’
God Speaking – Are You Listening?
Last week I read an article about a correlation between having more friends and social connections and living a long life. Part of me thought “but what if you are sort of stuck in one place and some of those relationships are toxic?” Doesn’t the nature of the relationship matter? But the study didn’t comment on unhealthy relationships, just that having long standing relationships with people you could go to and trust was a healthy thing.
Then I started to feel a little sad, thinking how many times I have moved and how hard it is to build long-lasting healthy relationships. I thought of how little I participate with the social networking sites, and how my preference for privacy impacts on my socializing. Would this have an impact on how long I will live?
Then, some surprising things started happening. One far-away friend called, just to hear my voice. She had broken her leg, just after unpacking from yet another move, and had been incapacitated. Very shortly, I got a call from another Doha friend, and a chatty e-mail from another. We all lead busy lives; how was it they all thought of me the same week?
My best friend from college e-mailed me, and a friend from long-ago times in Germany e-mailed me to set up a telephone date. A newer friend called to ask us if we’d like to hit the Shakespeare Fest with them. I started to realize that I DO have a lot of healthy, loving, long-term relationships, some with people a lot like me, who have moved a lot and not lived too long in any one spot, and some just the opposite, with people who have lived lives entirely unlike mine, in one spot most their lives.
It made me laugh. Sometimes, God answers prayers you don’t even know you’ve prayed. If you keep your eyes open, if you pay attention, you can see the pattern. It’s one good reason to keep a prayer journal, because so many times our prayers are answered and we forget even to say thank-you; once the prayer is answered, we move on, forgetting even how important our request once was. God spotted my little pity-party and gave me the gift of a little shift in perspective. Thanks be to God.
On a similar train of thought, as I read recently a book on Eleanor of Aquitaine, I think of how incredibly wealthy we all are, living in this day and age, and we live blithely on, unaware how very blessed we are. We worry about having ‘enough’ in terms of material comforts and goods, and never give a second thought to how good we have it.
I think of growing up in Alaska, where my Mother always had to order our annual snowsuits from the catalog so that they would arrive before the last boat could get through. I remember the pipes freezing up, and being sent to the creek to haul water into the house. I remember going with my Dad to the cold-storage locker, where they kept the frozen fish and meats from fishing and hunting season. (I also remember hating Moose-burgers, they were so game-y, but it was what was for dinner.)
AdventureMan laughs and says people were never intended to live in Florida, that Florida is a swamp, but with air-conditioning, it is bearable.
So you think of how the kings and emirs and caliphs and chieftans of old – even a hundred years ago – lived, and you look at how we live, and take it all the way down to border-line poverty. What I’m about to say does not apply to the homeless, or the transient homeless, sleeping in family basements or on friend’s couches. There is a strata of the poorest poor to whom this does not apply.
For the most part, we all have shelter, and most of it is climate controlled. We have some heat for when the temperatures are chilly, and some kind of fan or air conditioning to mitigate hot weather. We have windows with glass that can be opened and shut, and we have coverings for those windows. We have multiple changes of clothing that we can wear in various combinations.
We have toilets, and running water. We have ways to heat that water and to chill it. We have ways to heat food, and to keep it from spoiling. We have entertainment, books, televisions, phones and tablets to amuse us. We have exposure to places and ideas without ever leaving our homes. We can experience the athletes ordeals, frustrations and exaltations in London as they compete for medals. Ordinary people can train and compete on the world stage for these medals.
We have roads which stay stable in rain and heat, not bogging us down in mud and muck or snow, becoming impassable for months at a time. We can speak to friends and family anywhere in the world for a pittance. Anyone can; it’s affordable.
We have, most of us, enough to eat. Our problems are more those of excess than of want.
If Eleanor of Aquitaine were to come visit me, the Duchess of Aquitaine, the wife of the King of France and then wife of the King of England, she would be open-mouthed with astonishment at the luxury of our lives. She lived in palaces, places of great luxury for the times – for a very few. Even so, the palaces had no running water, nor bathrooms. No electricity, no heating other than fires in hearths or stoves. She would think our modest houses with our indoor bathrooms and cooking facilities and gathering spaces were miraculous, and she would be even more astonished that we common folk had such amenities. She would marvel at the privacy we have, rooms in which only one or two people sleep. She would look in our closets and be boggled at the amount of clothing we own which we never even wear, and the quality of the seams and stitching. She would look in wonder at our transport, and how the most common of people have cars, can fly to another city, or across the wide oceans.
She would be astonished that even the very poor and us commoners have rights, and judicial procedures protecting our rights against the rapacity of the nobles. She would marvel at our medical care, and that so many have access to it. I’m certain she would find us cheeky, and lacking in a humble acceptance of our station in life. I suspect she would be appalled at the idea of a person having the freedom to pursue an education and an idea, to create their own wealth by the work of their minds and hands.
She was an enormously capable and talented woman, Eleanor of Aquitaine, but once married, while she maintained ownership of her lands, her husbands controlled their use and revenues. If she could see women today, able to choose their husbands, able to attain an education and earn a living wage, supporting children, sometimes parents, and saving for retirement, controlling their own wealth and choosing their own destiny, she would blink in disbelief.
I would enjoy showing her modern life, the bad along with the good, and telling her about our trips to Africa, and our life lived in many countries in the world. I would show her my treasures gathered from here and there (and everywhere! 😉 ) and maybe take her to Pier 1 or World Market where she could pick up a treasure or two for herself. I would show her my fabric collection and watch her swoon with pleasure, and some of my perfume bottle collection, collected with glee from tiny stores in the Middle East. I’d take her to church with me, and out to lunch at Five Sisters. She could sleep in the guest suite, in a great big bed with soft covers and a walk-in closet and her own private bathroom with hot and cold running water and a jacuzzi tub and a shower. I would show her how the refrigerator works, and the microwave, and the oven, and the outdoor sprinkling system. She would absorb it all, and be full of wonder.
And yet every day, we get up and we live our lives oblivious to our riches . . .
James Lee Burke and the Creole Belle
James Lee Burke is number one on my guilty-pleasures list.
I first met his main character Dave Robicheaux in A Morning For Flamingos, a book I picked up in a military library at Lindsay Air Station, a post that doesn’t even exist any more. In the cold dark endless winter in Wiesbaden, Germany, James Lee Burke lit up my life. I had thought I was picking up just another escapist mystery novel, but when James Lee Burke puts words together to describe the way a storm moves in over the bayou, prose becomes poetry.
There is a downside. Whether it is his character Dave Robicheaux, the former New Orleans cop, now head homicide investigator in New Iberia, Louisiana, or his Hackberry Holland series set in West Texas, James Lee Burke’s books are filled with extreme violence and disturbing images that live in your head for a long time.
I’ve recommended James Lee Burke to friends, some of whom have said “Why do you read this trash??? It is HORRIBLE! It is full of over-the-top violence!”
And then again . . . he is writing about some really really bad people. They are out there. There are people who exist who inflict cruelty. I don’t understand it, I can’t begin to fathom where the urge would come from, but I’ve seen it. It’s out there. James Lee Burke pulls up that rock and exposes the dark happenings underneath.
On one level, as I started reading Creole Belle, I thought “Oh James Lee Burke, stop! Stop! It’s the same old formula! A downtrodden victim (often a beautiful woman) cries for help. You and Clete start looking for information and end up beating people up and then they retaliate by threatening your family! There is a rich, beautiful woman who seems vulnerable and who you kind of like, but she is complicated. There are rich amoral people who keep their hands clean, but who are calling the shots and never go to jail! Stop! Stop!”
Well, I should say that, and maybe I should stop. Then he starts talking about the smoke from the sugar cane fields and the bridge over the Bayou Teche, and the big Evangeline oak in St. Martinsville, and I am a goner. I’m sucked in, I’m hooked.
I detest the violence and the images. I keep coming back because James Lee Burke has some important things to say.
I’d love to have him to dinner. I’d love for him and our son to have a chance to talk about Law Enforcement. Here is what James Lee Burke has to say in Creole Bell:
There are three essential truths about law enforcement: Most crimes are not punished; most crimes are not solved through the use of forensic evidence; and informants product the lion’s share of information that puts the bad guys in a cage.
My son hates shows like CSI, and Law and Order, where the evidence convicts the criminals. He says it raises unreal expectations in juries, and makes it harder to get a conviction.
We watched a Violation of Parole hearing, or actually a series of hearings, where the judge asked each individual whose parole was about to be revoked what had happened when he or she was re-arrested. In each case, the parolee had done something stupid; drove a car with an expired license, drove to another state, was arrested driving drunk, etc. EVERY time. The judge made his point, I believe.
From Creole Belle:
But if Caruso was the pro Clete thought she was, she would avoid the mistakes and geographical settings common to the army of miscreants and dysfunctional individuals who constitute the criminal subculture of the United States. Few perpetrators are arrested during the commission of their crimes. They get pulled over for DWI, an expired license tag, or throwing litter on the street. They get busted in barroom beefs, prostitution stings, or fighting with a minimum-wage employee at a roach motel. Their addictions and compulsions govern their lives and place them in predictable circumstances and situations over and over, because they are incapable of changing who and what they are. Their level of stupidity is a source of humor at every stationhouse in the country. Unfortunately, the pros – high end safecrackers and jewel thieves and mobbed-up button men and second story creeps – are usually intelligent, pathological, skilled in what they do, middle class in their tastes and little different in dress and speech and behavior from the rest of us.
And then there are paragraphs like this that discuss the human experience, and have a far wider application than the book:
No one likes to be afraid. Fear is the enemy of love and faith and robs us of all serenity. It steals both our sleep and our sunrise and makes us treacherous and venal and dishonorble. It fills our glands with toxins and effaces our identity and gives flight to any vestige of self-respect. If you have ever been afraid, truly afraid, in a way that makes your hair soggy with sweat and turns your skin gray and fouls your blood and spiritually eviscerates you to the point where you cannot pray lest your prayers be a concesion to your conviction that you’re about to die, you know what I am talking about. This kind of fear has no remedy except motion, no matter what kind. Every person who has experienced war or natural ctastrophe or man-made calamity knows this. The adrenaline surge is so great that you can pick up an automobile with your bare hands, plunge through glass windows in flaming buildings, or attack an enemy whose numbers and weaponry are far superior to yours. No fear of self-injury is as great as the fear that turns your insides to gelatin and shrivels your soul to the size of an amoeba.
Last, but not least, this is what keeps me coming back to James Lee Burke, so much so that I buy the book almost as soon as it is released. James Lee Burke isn’t afraid to take on the big guys. He “gives voice to those who have no voices.” (Proverbs 31:8) His focus is always on the dignity of the common man, the dignity of hard work, done well, and on the dignity of doing unexpected kindnesses to those who have no expectation of kindness.
. . . All was not right with the world. Giant tentacles of oil that had the color and sheen of feces had spread all the way to Florida, and the argument that biodegradation would take care of the problem would be a hard sell with the locals. The photographs of pelicans and egrets and seagulls encased in sludge, their eyes barely visible, wounded the heart and caused parents to shield their children’s eyes. The testimony before congressional committees by Louisiana fisher-people whose way of life was being destroyed did not help matters, either. The oil company responsible for the blowout had spent an estimated $50 million trying to wipe their fingerprints off Louisiana’s wetlands. They hired black people and whites with hush-puppy accents to be their spokesmen on television. The company’s CEO’s tried their best to look ernest and humanitarian, even though the company’s safety record was the worst of any extractive industry doing business in the United States. They also had a way of chartering their offshore enterprises under the flag of countries like Panama. Their record of geopolitical intrigue went all the way back to the installation of the shah of Iran in the 1950’s. Their even bigger problem was an inability to shut their mouths.
They gave misleading information to the media and the government about the volume of oil escaping from the blown well, and made statements on worldwide television about wanting their lives back and the modest impact that millions of gallons of crude would have on the Gulf Coast. For the media, their tone-deafnessness was a gift from a divine hand. Central casting couild not have provided a more inept bunch of villains.
James Lee Burke has a voice, and he uses it. He could just cash in on his reputation as an Edgar Award winning author, but he uses his voice to speak out against injustice and corruption. He is a champion of the people. I’ve written several book reviews, and taken some trips just because I wanted to see James Lee Burke country; if you are interested in those, you can read them here.
I have a concern about this series, in that this book ended differently than all the others. So differently it made me seriously question whether Burke intends to continue writing about Dave Robicheaux or if Dave is about to hang up his shield and call it a day. He’s a guilty pleasure I am not yet ready to give up.
Emirates Women Seek Law Forcing Tourists to Dress Modestly
Qatari women have the same concerns in Qatar; this article from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/06/emiratis-dress-code_n_1653446.html?utm_hp_ref=world:
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — With the number of foreigners dwarfing that of locals in her hometown of Abu Dhabi, Asma al-Muhairi has become increasingly anxious at the prospect of her younger nieces abandoning their full-length black robes in favor of Western attire that seems to be everywhere she goes.
But it wasn’t until the 23-year-old marketing worker came face to face with two scantily-clad female foreigners at one of the many luxury shopping malls in the United Arab Emirates that she decided to take action.
“While going to a mall, I saw two ladies wearing … I can’t say even shorts. It was underwear,” said al-Muhairi, whose black abaya – a long garment worn by conservative Gulf women – is offset by a gold Versace watch and egg-shell blue handbag.
“Really, they were not shorts,” she said. “I was standing and thinking: `Why is this continuing? Why is it in the mall? I see families. I see kids around.'”
Failing to persuade the mall to intervene, al-Muhairi and another Emirati woman, Hanan al-Rayes, took to Twitter to air their concerns in May.
They were inundated with responses that prompted them to launch a Twitter campaign dubbed (at)UAEDressCode that aims to explore ways to combat the growing number of shoppers in low-cut dresses and hot pants.
As the campaign picked up steam, it also has served to symbolize the growing concerns among Emiratis, a tiny minority in their own country.
Emirati citizens account for a little more than 10 percent of the 8 million people living in the Gulf nation. Most of the population is made up of Asian, African and Middle Eastern guest workers, as well as Western expatriates living here temporarily.
The overall population more than doubled over the past decade as the country embarked on a building boom that transformed Dubai, up the coast from Abu Dhabi, into the Arabian Gulf’s financial hub and a popular tourist draw.
“I think in an increasingly tumultuous region and in an era of powerful and often intrusive globalizing forces, citizens of the UAE are increasingly concerned that their traditions and core values are being eroded,” said Christopher Davidson, an expert on Gulf affairs at Britain’s Durham University.
“In some senses, it is a grassroots reaction to authorities and leaders that have for many years done little to check this erosion,” he added. “We’ve seen reactions to alcohol, so now we are seeing a reaction to immodest dress.”
Jalal Bin Thaneya, an Emirati activist who has embraced the dress code campaign, said it is a way for Emiratis to show they are concerned about the loss of traditions.
“If we were the majority and had the same make up, things would be different,” Bin Thaneya said. “You wouldn’t need anything. You would see Emiratis everywhere and you would be afraid of offending them … Now, we’re a minority so you feel the need to reach out to an authority.”
As the number of foreigners has increased, so have the stories of them violating the UAE’s strict indecency code, which limits drinking to bars and nightclubs and bans public displays of affection. A drunken couple was caught having sex on the beach and another allegedly having sex in a taxi. A Pakistani was deported for flipping the middle finger at a motorist, and the courts are filled with cases of foreigners having sex out of wedlock.
Most Emiratis rarely come face-to-face with misbehaving foreigners.
The malls, however, are a different story.
They are one of the few places where everyone comes together to escape the brutal summer heat. The cultural clash is hard to ignore, as families of traditionally dressed Emiratis shop and relax in cafes alongside foreign women wearing tank tops, shorts and even transparent gowns over bikinis.
Most malls have policies in place that require “conservative” dress and encourage shoppers to avoid showing shoulders and knees, but few publicize them or enforce them. Police in Dubai, where the mall that al-Muhairi visited was located, didn’t respond to a request for comment. They told the Gulf News newspaper there is nothing they can do since there are no specific laws against immodest dress.
“People were seeing it for a long time but they didn’t say anything,” Bin Thaneya said. “You can’t go to the police for such stuff. There is no one to go to. You can’t go to the mall management. The mall security guard gets paid less than someone at McDonald’s. He isn’t going to do anything.”
Al-Muhairi’s campaign is just one of several over the years led by Emirati women who have tried in vain to enforce the dress code – handing out brochures, confronting foreigners. But hers has benefited from the growing popularity of social media as well as the Arab Spring popular uprisings, which has given Emiratis a sense they can speak out on some social issues.
The UAEDressCode feed has more than 3,300 followers with a lively discussion that includes plenty of support for a code but also concerns that it would unfairly target foreigners or create divisions between locals and foreigners. Unlike similar campaigns in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, the impetus for a code has not come from Islamic hard-liners, but from moderate locals like al-Muhairi who love their Starbucks and Western movies but just want foreigners to respect local customs.
“We are not asking others to cover up like us. We are giving them freedom based on their beliefs and religion,” al-Muhairi said. “We are not judging and saying this shows she has other interests. We never want to judge. Do whatever you want and wear what you want but with limits. Just respect the public here.”
The campaign has caught the attention of the Federal National Council, which pledged last month to push for stronger measures to enforce the dress codes. That came after the country’s culture minister, Abdulrahman al-Owais, supported efforts to emphasize the conservative traditions of the UAE.
Members of a half-elected, half-appointed council have suggested a law could include warnings and fines but not jail time for offenders. But the FNC has no law-making powers, so any decision now rests with the UAE government.
“If there is a law, the behavior will be different,” said Hamad al-Rahoomi, an FNC member who compared a UAE dress code to laws in France that bans the niqab, in which a veil has only a slit exposing a woman’s eyes, or the new dress code at Royal Ascot in Britain that aims to limit provocative outfits.
“We don’t want to catch people. We just want people to think of the other parties,” al-Rahoomi said. “What I want is to go with my family in my country and not see something that is harming me.”
The Abu Dhabi police issued this week a booklet on dos and don’ts for tourists that will be available at the Abu Dhabi International Airport and hotels, according to The National newspaper. It advises tourists that public displays of affection including kissing are considered indecent and that they should wear “modest” clothing.
Tourists – some in skimpy summer dresses, others in shorts and T-shirts – defended their right to wear what they want, either because it is fashionable or keeps them cool in the summer heat. None of the 10 people interviewed in Dubai and Abu Dhabi knew about a mall dress code, nor were they advised their outfits violated it. Several said a dress code law would go too far.
“I think it’s ridiculous because most of the people in Dubai are tourists,” said Sarah, a 21-year-old tourist from Kenya wearing a short dress exposing her shoulders and legs. “I want to go somewhere where I would be comfortable in my own skin as a travel destination. I feel comfortable like this and this is how I will dress.”
Timbuktu Sufi Mausoleums Destroyed by Ansar Dine
From today’s Al Watan, Kuwait:
Mali Islamists destroy more holy Timbuktu sites
Monday,02 July 2012
Source : -Reuters
BAMAKO: Militants from the Al-Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine group destroyed mausoleums of Sufi saints with guns and pick-axes in the famed Mali city of Timbuktu for a second day, said witnesses on Sunday, ignoring international calls to halt the attacks.
The salafist Ansar Dine backs strict sharia, Islamic law, and considers the centuries-old shrines of the local Sufi version of Islam in Timbuktu to be idolatrous.
Sufi shrines have been attacked by hard-line Salafists in Egypt and Libya in the past year.
The group has threatened to destroy all of the 16 main Sufi mausoleum sites in Timbuktu despite international outcry. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova has called for an immediate halt to the attacks.
Local journalist Yaya Tandina told Reuters that about 30 militants armed with Kalashnikovs and pick-axes destroyed three mausoleums of saints on Sunday.
“They had armed men guarding the door. Just like yesterday, the population did not react. They (local people) said we need to let them (the Islamists) do what they want, hoping that someday we will rebuild the tombs,” Tandina said.
Residents said the destruction was halted around midday when some of the militants went to a mosque in the centre of the city, but it was unclear if they would continue.
“We are subject to religion and not to international opinion. Building on graves is contrary to Islam. We are destroying the mausoleums because it is ordained by our religion,” Oumar Ould Hamaha, a spokesman for Ansar Dine, told Reuters by telephone from the northern Mali city on Sunday.
Timbuktu resident Hamed Mohamed said the Islamists destroyed the tombs of saints Sidi Elmety, Mahamane Elmety and Cheick Sidi Amar, all in the west of the city. -Reuters
Wooo HOOO, Saudi Arabia Allowing Female Olympic Athletes
It hasn’t been so long in our own country since Title IX made it possible for more and more women to participate in athletic events, making funding possible, giving women in the United States an opportunity to participate in healthy athletic activities.
RIYADH, June 25 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia will allow its women athletes to compete in the Olympic Games for the first time ever in London this summer, the Islamic kingdom’s London embassy said on its website.
Human rights groups had called on the International Olympic Committee to bar Saudi Arabia from competing in London, citing its failure ever to send a woman athlete to the Olympics and its ban on sports in girls’ state schools.
Powerful Muslim clerics in the ultra-conservative state have repeatedly spoken out against the participation of girls and women in sports.
“I think this is a victory for Saudi sportswomen and hopefully it will promote sports and women’s health awareness for the Saudi society,” said Lina al-Maeena, co-founder of Jeddah United Sports Company, a rare women’s exercise club that runs a female basketball team.
In Saudi Arabia women have a lower legal status than men, are banned from driving and need a male guardian’s permission to work, travel or open a bank account.
Under King Abdullah, however, the government has pushed for them to have better education and work opportunities and will allow them to vote in future municipal elections, the only public polls held in the kingdom.
Saudi women will be able to compete in the London Olympics only if they reach the qualifying standard for their event, and the Games opens in just over one month, on July 27.
“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is looking forward to its complete participation in the London 2012 Olympic Games through the Saudi Arabian Olympic Committee, which will oversee the participation of women athletes who can qualify for the Games,” said a statement published on the embassy website.
The woman most likely to compete under the Saudi flag in London, show jumper Dalma Malhas, was ruled out on Monday when the World Equestrian Federation (FEI) said the 20-year-old’s mare Caramell KS had been sidelined by injury for a month during the qualifying period and had missed a June 17 deadline.
“Regretfully the Saudi Arabian rider Dalma Rushdi Malhas has not attained the minimum eligibility standards and … will not be competing” at the London Olympics, FEI secretary general Ingmar De Vos told the FEI website (www.fei.org).
Malhas won individual bronze at the junior Olympics in Singapore in 2010, but without official support or recognition.
In April the head of the General Presidency of Youth Welfare, which regulates sport in Saudi Arabia, said it would not prevent women from competing but they would not have official government endorsement.
The government’s role would be limited to ensuring that Saudi women’s participation “is in the proper framework and in conformity with sharia”, he said.
The IOC said on Monday that talks with the Saudis were “ongoing” and that “we are working to ensure the participation of Saudi women at the Games in London”.
The head of the kingdom’s Olympic mission, Khalid al-Dakheel, told Reuters on Sunday that he was unaware of any developments allowing women to participate.
Top Saudi clerics, who hold government positions and have always constituted an important support base for the ruling al-Saud royal family, have spoken against female participation in sports.
In 2009 a senior cleric said girls risked losing their virginity by tearing their hymen if they took part in energetic sport.
Physical education is banned in girls’ state schools in the kingdom, but Saudi Arabia’s only female deputy minister, Noura al-Fayez, has written to Human Rights Watch saying there is a plan to introduce it. (Reporting by Angus McDowall and Asma Alsharif; editing by Tim Pearce)
Angry Father Beheads Daughter with Sword
I am embarrassed to tell you that my source for this story is Fox News:
JAIPUR, India – Police say a man upset over his daughter’s lifestyle chopped her head off with a sword and then paraded it through his village before surrendering to authorities in western India.
Marble miner Ogad Singh’s 20-year-old daughter had been living with her parents in the Rajasthani village of Dungarji after leaving her husband two years ago.
Police Superintendent Umesh Ojha says Singh was upset by his daughter having affairs with men, and became enraged when she eloped with one of them two weeks ago.
Ojha says Singh forced her to return home Sunday, and beheaded her Monday with a sword.
Rapidly modernizing India faces increasing social clashes as youths resist traditions like arranged marriage or limits on women venturing outside their parents’ or husbands’ homes.
Packing For a Purpose
Part of what we love about the Robin Pope Safari Camps is that we also get to go into the village and see how the schools are doing. There is a consortium of safari camp service providers who donate a portion of their profits every year to providing for and maintaining schools, finding sponsors for children who have no parents, finding help for teachers in obtaining much needed supplies.
Many of the children of the village are truly being raised by the village, as fathers and mothers succumb to the dreaded wasting disease, to malaria, to yellow fever and to problems attending poor nutrition and inadequate access to health care. The camps bring in a volunteer doctor, when they can, who works with the villages six months to a year or so. Children are looked after by aunts and uncles, or grandparents, or a neighbor – who may not have much to spare, with her own children to look after.
So, with a prayer, we headed for Staples to pick up school supplies. What a deal! Pocket dictionaries! Boxes of 60 pens! It is so exciting, I bought too much, and now we are hoping they won’t weigh our suitcases too accurately. We’ve jammed a lot in . . .
I should have checked the website again before I shopped, or I wouldn’t have bought so many pencils, but they DO still need erasers, and I bought a lot of those. And I try to stick in something they might have some fun with – sticky notes. foam shapes. glue sticks. This year I am including some threads and counted cross stitch fabrics, hoping maybe someone will develop an interest in needlework 🙂
We are getting so excited we can hardly stand it. AdventureMan is trying lots of new techniques and camera equipment, hoping to get some stellar shots. I am taking my new Lumix, the FZ40/45, a lightweight camera with a 24X optical zoom. He gets great artistic shots (water drops dripping off a wide-open hippo mouth as he opens his jaw unbelievably wide) and I get great documentary shots – the rooms, the bathroom fixtures (LOLL, yes, I can’t help it, I love creative design!) and textiles, as well as the wildlife and the environment.
We had just enough room in our suitcases for all the school supplies. Now we will have room for that last stop at Tribal Textiles . . . 🙂
Alaskan Heritage Celebration
I’m researching the Inuit / Eskimo / Yup’ik mask my Mother bought lo, these many many moons ago, and like anyone born to research, I am hopelessly lost, and enjoying every minute of the journey.
I’m not Alaskan. I was born in Alaska, and so many times through the years when I see blocks that need ticking, I have been tempted to tick “native Alaskan” but I know that they don’t mean me, and that there are people who really deserve those preferences. I FEEL Alaskan, even though I’ve been gone a long time.
(My Mother used to tell us not to play with the “natives” because “they had knives!” (Big scary eyes). LLLOOOLLLL! Can you think of any quicker way to get your kids to play with the forbidden group? They had knives! Plus, they were our neighbors, and our classmates, and we all played together. Skied together. Played Cowboys and . . . Indians. Yes! We did! LLOOOLLL!)
I found this fabulous video of segments from the “Celebration 2010” There is a reason I am sharing this – first, for all my friends of all nations who love textiles and handwork as I do – and our name is legion – I want you to see this video and to see the magnificant ceremonial robes they are wearing. They have to be hand made; they are each so individual, even among people of the same clan, the bear is different, one from the other, the fish – different, the raven – fabulously different, I even saw a sun! I hope your heart goes pitter patter, just as mine is going.
I wish I could bring this entire celebration to Kuwait and do a presentation with the KTAA (Kuwait Textile Arts Association.) They would LOVE these crafts, and the dancing. Look at the wonderful drums!
Second – did you hear them ululate? This is what I love about my travels; no matter what our differences, we have some amazing similarities.
Celebration, a First Nation heritage event taking place in Juneau, Alaska, originated and was sponsored in 1982 by Sealaska. The gathering takes place every other year and is the biggest event for Native Americans in Alaska for Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples.
To me, the coolest thing of all is that this is not done for tourists, but for the First Nation peoples, to transmit their culture to their children, and to celebrate themselves. This second video focuses on the clans and their special dances:
Now here is the exciting thing. It only happens every two years. This year it will take place June 6 – June 9. Here’s the information:
Celebration Native Cultural Conference
June 06, 2012 to June 09, 2012
A biennial Native cultural celebration featuring colorful costumed processions, dance performances, authentic arts and crafts and gatherings. Held in various venues including Centennial Hall Convention Center.
907-463-4844
http://www.sealaskaheritage.org
We already have plans for this June (I’ll share more about that later) but I talked to AdventureMan and said I really, really want to go in 2014. He said (are you sitting down?) “That’s just the kind of thing I LOVE! We’ve been planning to go to Alaska anyway, let’s go for that celebration!”
And that is why, after all these years of being married, I still adore my husband. He is a man with a heart for Adventure, and he gets all excited about the same things I do, well, some of the time. There was a falcon fest once in Tunisia that he dragged his feet on because he had just gotten in from a long trip, but once we got there, we all agreed it was one of those things that we would have regretted forever if we missed it. He is always up for a new adventure!
Wooooo HOOOOOOOOO!
See you there?
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