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        Pete Atkin >> Words >> Clive on Islam and women
        
(Message started by: Rob Spence on Today at 22:14)

Title: Clive on Islam and women
Post by Rob Spence on Today at 22:14

It's already September over at Standpoint, where CJ has a very powerful piece about the western response, or lack of it, to the oppression of women in Islamic culture.
http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/2042/full

Title: Re: Clive on Islam and women
Post by Ian Chippett on 08.09.09 at 07:41

Not everybody liked it.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/09/08/clive-james-gets-it-wrong-on-feminists-muslims-australians-you-name-it/

Ian C

Title: Re: Clive on Islam and women
Post by Rob Spence on 08.09.09 at 09:29

Interesting. She picks at a couple of references, but doesn't address the central issue at all, despite claiming to be offended by the article "as a feminist, as a Muslim, as a supporter of multiculturalism, as an Australian." This is like basing a critique of Hamlet around the character of the gravedigger. I don't know Pamela Bone's work or life at all but even the most cursory reading of Clive's article would confirm that he didn't suggest Shakira Hussein [or anyone else] "was part of a mob that hounded her to her death". Indeed, Hussein quotes Clive's words in her previous paragraph -"Pamela Bone went to her grave with accusations of “racist” ringing in her ears." - which is hardly the same thing at all. But this approach is, I'm afraid, all too common. The idea is not to address the issue, but to muddy the waters, and to suggest that the opposition are ignorant, and/or have a covert agenda. You can then accuse them of saying something they didn't say, as she does here. If this is the standard of her argument, I'm not surprised she hasn't got a reply from Standpoint.
Interesting too that she finishes with a gratuitous link to a snarky piece on Clive's poetry. That piece also displays the same tendency. Its author's thesis is that CJ's poems are rubbish, and, er, that's it. And to say that a reference - in a poem about Aldeburgh for God's sake- to Peter Pears is to "lard it with references that, in 2009, only cultural specialists will know" says a lot more about him than the reader or writer of the poem.
The key is in the paragraph at the end, where his real agenda is revealed - the good poets are the ones who stayed or returrned. Clive's real failing was in choosing to live in England. >:(

Title: Re: Clive on Islam and women
Post by Ian Chippett on 08.09.09 at 13:44

The Pears reference: when I hear something I find obscure in a song or poem I ask myself "Is it me or is it the writer?" With Clive I always feel it's me whereas with others like, well, let's just say others I usually fell it's the writer?. Quite a useful way of dividing the rare sheep from the herd of goats.

Ian C

Title: Re: Clive on Islam and women
Post by Rob Spence on 08.09.09 at 13:46

Oh, and another thing. I spent part of the summer in Malaysia, where a woman has been sentenced to flogging for drinking beer. The local reaction is mixed, to say the least, but this cartoon sums up the issues quite well, I think:
http://www.bendib.com/newones/2009/august/small/8-30-Kinkiest.jpg

Finally - you may or may not be as tickled as I was to discover that Malaysia's version of FHM / GQ etc. is called...Clive. ;)

Title: Re: Clive on Islam and women
Post by Ian Chippett on 08.09.09 at 13:47

<<I usually fell it's the writer?.>>

Sorry. I meant "feel" and no question mark.

Ian C