unguided tour

In yesterday’s New York TimeS Martha Nussbaum’s gives an excellent analysis on the undemocratic and islamophobic principles governing bans on Muslim veils and burqas in many Western European countries. Read her essay “Veiled Threats” here

Read my “An Argument for the Burqa” here

On June 20, 2009 Neda Agha-Soltan, a student at Teheran’s Islamic Azad University is shot by Iranian police on her way to join an antigovernment protest march. She is 26 years old. Someone films her dying on the street, and immediately uploads the video on Youtube making Neda Agha-Soltan the symbol of the student protests and a martyr for democratic reform in Iran. (more…)

The primal screen is a Christian fantasma.
I must be careful not to impose it onto cultures which have incorporated their own religious beliefs, and which have developed ideas of the nature of woman as well as the function of visual images different from mine. (more…)

“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.“ (John Berger, Ways of Seeing) Why, then, “is it so hard for us to believe that our truths are often fantasies?” (Amy Bloom, Normal) Perhaps because we have learned to believe in the Truth of science. (more…)