The Iconoclast
Thursday, 30 November 2006
Dozy bint of the week

Yvonne Roberts at The Guardian should not be confused with Yvonne Ridley. They are both dozy bints with no appreciation of the the West's unique and unprecedented respect for women. But only one of them wears a tent. Yvonne Roberts believes that a twelve-year-old girl has all the knowledge and independence she needs to make an objective assessment of Islam, under which women can never be equal:

Whatever the reasons for Misbah wishing to stay - and, contrary to some prejudices, an affluent life in relatively liberal Lahore may have more plusses than living with an allegedly prickly step-father in
Stornaway - Misbah's mother, Louise Campbell, has the law on her side....

In Pakistan as in Stornaway and Stambrook, families vary in their levels of education, affluence and religious commitment. Misbah might actually feel happier - as do many children - in a family that does not contain the complicated dynamics that sometimes comes with the arrival of a step-parent.

What if her father, who has been treating her like a princess while her future was uncertain, decided to take a second wife her own age? Or to marry her off to a cousin his own age?

Dozy bints like Yvonne R and Yvonne R should shut up and go back to the kitchen.

Posted on 11/30/2006 3:33 PM by Mary Jackson
Comments
30 Nov 2006
Send an emailHugh Fitzgerald
"Stornoway"

I was there once, propellor-jetted to the capital of Lewis and Harris, which I confused with the Isle of Muck and was poking around looking for leftover bottles of whiskey from Whiskey Galore.

It was the birthplace of Alexander Mackenzie, the first white man to cross Canada in a sled, or by canoe (portage not included) or possibly on snow shoes which counts as pedibus calcantibus. I forget. But somehow he did it. Well, I think I can speak for Alexander Mackenzie's ghost and ghosts of many Christians past from before and after the Enclosures to say: Lewis and Harris are all about the dyes for the Harris tweed made from the moss and the machair. They are about a wee dram of The Macallan to keep the chill off. They are about salmon-fishing at a grand house, well-gillied, by the sea. They are not about hijabs and hadith and an unchangeable desert dogma cobbled together 1350 year ago to justify and promote conquest of others and used right up to today -- and will be used tomorrow -- for the same purpose.

30 Nov 2006
Mary Jackson
Whisky, surely, not "whiskey"? Whiskey is Irish, and possibly American - though I thought that was Bourbon or something. Scotch is whisky.

Talking, as we weren't, of the latest Bond film, what other word is associated with "galore"?

30 Nov 2006
john utting
btw,whats a rand estate? is that something like hugh hefners place?regarding poobah or whatever,she might get 3or 4 stepmothers in lahore .why dont they try doing 6months in lahore and 6 in stornaway till she comes of age then let her choose. infidel dog.

30 Nov 2006
Send an emailHugh Fitzgerald
A "rand estate" is what South Africans such as Oppenheimer possess. Sometimes their rand estate is in South Africa itself, possibly surrounded by the vineyards of Costantia. Sometimes their rand estate is in the Home Counties. It depends on how well they read the writing on the wall. Of course, no one, not Nadine Gordimer nor the others who thought thiings of course would turn out alright or even better than alright, will dare to read aloud what they read on that wall, but at best will only refer to it, the way Coetzee does, obliquely through fiction, thus maintaining what is called plausible deniability. It would be too painful. It would not do.