Israellycool

Yesterday, I posted about the dangers of being a barber in both Iran and the palestinian controlled territories. Now you can add Iraq to the list (hat tip: David).

The cleric’s young men fanned out across the neighborhood, moving from shop to shop, posting the new religious decrees.

Printed neatly on white-and-green fliers, the edicts banned vices like “music-filled parties and all kinds of singing.” They proscribed celebratory gunfire at weddings and “the gathering of young men” in front of markets and girls’ schools. Also forbidden were the “selling of liquor and narcotic drugs” and “wearing improper Western clothes.”

But at the bottom of the list of prohibitions was a single command. Scrawled in green ink, it read simply: “Cut hair.”

“I feel powerless,” lamented Moataz Hussein, 22, a wiry, soft-voiced teacher seated in a hair salon on the main road of the Tobji neighborhood on Sunday. His long, stylish black hair was now a recent memory. “They are controlling my life.”

Amid the sectarian strife plaguing Baghdad, a wave of religious fundamentalism is curbing personal freedoms and reshaping the daily lives of Iraqis who have long enjoyed one of the most liberal lifestyles in the Arab world. The measures speak to a central question dangling over the future of Iraq: Can it remain a secular nation at a time when religion is exerting a powerful influence on every aspect of life, from politics to the mundane elements of society?

Sectarian rules for cutting hair
Consider the barbers of Baghdad. Sunni Muslim insurgents and Shiite Muslim extremists have imposed their own sets of rules for the cutting of hair. In recent months, barbers have been killed, threatened or forced to close their shops after being accused of giving haircuts that were considered un-Islamic or too Western.

The new decrees in Tobji, posted last week, came from a little-known council created by the local office of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. It is called the Committee for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a title derived from a verse in the Koran.

Inside the hair salon, the flier was posted on a cream-colored wall next to a mirror, visible to every customer. The image of Sadr’s father, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, a revered ayatollah, who was assassinated in 1999, is emblazoned on the flier, giving it the force of law.

It was signed “The Sadr Martyrs Office” and ended with a warning: “Those who do not comply with these rules will be held accountable.”

Amjad Sabah knows what that means. In the past week, he said, he has lopped off the hair of 20 young customers at his salon, including Hussein. He fears a visit from members of the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia linked to Sadr that many Sunni Muslims say runs death squads under the cloak of Islam.

“This is civilization gone backwards,” said Sabah, 20, wearing an orange T-shirt, his hair short and his face cleanshaven. “You can’t have, in 2006, haircuts that are similar to the 1970s. But if I don’t cooperate, they will take me to their office and beat me up.”

The U.S.-led invasion in 2003 ended decades of religious repression by the government of Saddam Hussein. Among Iraq’s Shiite majority, the clerical hierarchy regained prominence, giving Sadr and others greater religious and political stature. But the new freedoms also ushered in a fervent fundamentalism — exacerbated by competing Sunni and Shiite interpretations of Islam — that has become more pronounced in the fourth year of war.

Women have been assailed for not wearing a veil or head scarf. Athletes have been killed for wearing shorts, because some consider it un-Islamic to reveal thighs. Liquor stores have been attacked, and male doctors have been killed for treating female patients. In Sadr’s stronghold of Sadr City and other Shiite-dominated areas, Islamic courts deliver strict, homegrown justice.

Barbers threatened, slain
In early August, a group of armed men walked into Abu Ahmed Jassim’s barbershop in southeast Baghdad. They shot dead his 23-year-old brother and another barber, as well as two customers. Before they left, they set a bomb. Jassim arrived an hour later to find the charred carcass of his shop.

On Monday, Jassim, a short man with a ruddy face, was still visibly distraught. He had just returned from placing a framed picture of his brother at his grave in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

In a low voice, he spoke of the handwritten note a child delivered to a barber in his neighborhood last year. It listed the names of eight barbers from five hair salons. It included Jassim and his brother. “Your destiny is very near,” the note said.

Jassim said he knows why they were targeted. Shiite barbers like him practice khite, an ancient way of removing hair from cheeks and eyebrows with twists of a cotton thread. Radical Sunnis consider this ritual, as well as trimming or removing beards, to be prohibited under Islam.

“This is because of the Takfiri interpretation,” said Jassim, referring to Islamic extremists who adhere to codes of conduct dating to the earliest days of Islam. “We are targeted 100 percent because we are Shiite.”

In the past year, he said, he knew 13 barbers and two customers who were killed in the Baghdad neighborhoods of Adil, Shaab and Mashtal. Dozens more quit the business. “Many of the barbers have closed their shops, and the ones who haven’t closed keep a gun in their shops,” Jassim said.

He said he is making plans to seek asylum in Lebanon: “I’ve lost my spirit to work.”

Taking precautions
In a hair salon in the upscale Karrada neighborhood last week, Sameer Youssef, 32, a Christian, was snipping away at the coal-black hair of Walid Abdul Zahra, 27, a Shiite from the Dora district. He is among dozens of customers who drive through a tangle of checkpoints and barricaded roads to better neighborhoods to get a haircut because there’s a shortage of barbers in their own volatile areas.

“I used to get my hair cut in Dora, but now all the barbers have closed their shops or have been killed,” said Abdul Zahra, who has been coming to the salon for the past six months. “My barber was threatened and had to shut down.”

Abdul Zahra said he wanted only an ordinary haircut, nothing “fancy” that would draw the attention of the Sunni extremists in his neighborhood. “I don’t want to show too much skin,” he said.

Even though Karrada’s barbers have not been targeted, Youssef and colleagues on his corner have taken precautions. To prevent car bombings, they do not allow parking in front of their shops. Suspicious walk-in customers are politely turned away. And they keep their professions a secret.

“I told my neighbors I was making money as a taxi driver,” Youssef said, flashing a weak smile. “I don’t want to lose my life.”

Throughout the year, Tobji has been an arena of sectarian violence marked by reprisal attacks between Sunni extremists and Mahdi Army militiamen. These days, the militia appears to be in control. During two visits over the past week, young civilian men clutching AK-47 assault rifles manned checkpoints in full view of Iraqi policemen passing through.

Other young men stood on street corners, clutching expensive Motorola walkie-talkies. Moqtada Sadr’s face stared from billboards.

New edicts strictly enforced
This protection, and the new edicts, have given Ali Abdul Latif the confidence not to fear Sunni extremists. He used to keep a wooden sign on his counter next to his clippers, hair creams and blades that read: “We don’t do threads.” Now the sign is gone, and Abdul Latif offers the thread to customers again.

But he can’t carve sideburns or small goatees or gel floppy long hair. All that is considered Western, he and other barbers said. In the past week, Abdul Latif said, 15 youths have turned up at his shop, “all of them with hair down to the neck and shoulders.” They wanted their hair short.

“They were scared. They didn’t want to get noticed,” he said.

On the streets of Tobji, they would have been, for the Sadrists consider themselves defenders of their faith. Abu Ahmed, the head of the local Sadr office, said he had placed “one or two men everywhere” — at girls’ schools, at the market, on the main streets — to enforce the new edicts.

“Personal freedom is only in your house or property,” said Abu Ahmed, who asked that his full name not be used. “In the streets, it is no longer a personal freedom.”

Long hair, said Abu Ahmed, is banned because it makes men look feminine. Worse, he added, were haircuts that were long on the sides and short on top, because they were “Jewish haircuts.”

“It is rejected in Islam that you imitate the Jews,” Abu Ahmed said.

If someone is judged to have an improper hairstyle, he said, “we will take him to the barber and we’ll ask the barber to cut his hair according to our regulations. If he refuses, we would send for his father or elder brother and tell them, ‘Either you take this measure or we’ll take the measure for you.’ ”

In the past week, he said, his men had ordered “five or six” men to get haircuts. They didn’t object, he said.

Hussein was not one of them. He had cut his hair a few days before the Sadr office posted the fliers. He had seen people being beaten for having Western haircuts, he said.

“So I accepted readily to cut my hair, so I could be far away from any trouble for me and my family,” Hussein said with a pained look, as he ran his fingers through his short hair.

“Perhaps, I thought, this trouble could cost me my life later.”

Update: More hair-raising Islamic news: In Pakistan, barbers are  liable to get the Bob Woolmer treatment.

February 2001 - Suspected Islamic radicals have issued a warning to barbers in a Pakistani border town not to shave off or cut their customers’ beards, saying it offends Islam, residents said Monday.

Pamphlets with the warnings were found at several shops in Inayat Kalay in Pakistan’s Bajur tribal region near the Afghan border, said Bacha Khan, a barber in the market town.

“Barbers! Correct yourselves,” read the handwritten, Pashtu-language notes, one of which was obtained by The Associated Press.

“Any barber shop where acts against Shariah [Islamic law]–shaving or cutting of beards–are seen, are given a final warning to stop this anti-Shariah work and if they do not stop, they should take responsibility for whatever harm they come to,” it said.

The pamphlets were unsigned. However, Khan said he believed the warnings were from mujahedeen, or holy warriors, a term often used to describe Islamic militants.

He said two dozen barbers had responded by posting notices in their shops asking customers not to insist on getting a shave.

“We do not want to come to harm,” Khan said. “If this work is against Shariah, we will stop it.”

And in an older item (2001) from Afghanistan, the “Leo” look went down about as well as the Titanic:

Barbers in Afghanistan have been jailed for giving customers a haircut styled after Leonardo DiCaprio in the film Titanic.

Officers in the Taleban militia have arrested 28 barbers across the city of Kabul.

“The only reason is they say the barbers cut the youths’ hair in the Titanic style,” a barber at a shopping centre in the city said.

He added that the barbers were accused of popularising anti-Islamic western hairstyles.

The BBC’s Kate Clark in Kabul said barbers had been sent a letter from the Taleban religious police warning them not to give “foreign haircuts”.

Some unfortunate Afghan tribesman, and Osama bin Laden.

Background:

An Afghan tribesman with an uncanny resemblance to Osama bin Laden has now been arrested twice, both times following reported sightings and massive manhunts for the al Qaeda leader, Pakistani intelligence officials tell ABC News.

Over six feet tall and with the same angular nose as bin Laden, Sher Akbar comes from an Afghan village, Bagh e Metal, in an area where U.S. officials believe bin Laden has been hiding.

Bin Laden is believed to be six feet four inches to six feet six inches tall and weigh 160 pounds. He is 50 years old.

The most recent arrest of bin Laden’s near-twin came after Afghani officials reported informants saw bin Laden moving across the border into Pakistan, near the town of Chitral.

“We arrested this man as a result of this investigation, but it’s not who you might think it is,” a senior Pakistani intelligence official told ABC News, providing a photograph to make his point.

The official said an extensive investigation involving Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officers found that the look-alike has no connection to bin Laden, but that local residents had tried to collect rewards based on Akhbar’s resemblance to bin Laden.

The United States has offered a $25 million reward for information that leads to the location of bin Laden.

Pakistan’s cricket coach Bob Woolmer may have been murdered after angering radical Muslims, according to a BBC investigation.

 

The Panorama TV show suggests some players followed the extremist Muslim movement, Tablighi Jamaat.

 

The claims come as preliminary toxicology tests confirm Woolmer was rendered helpless with a powerful poison before being strangled.

 

According to the team’s former media manager, PJ Mir, Woolmer shared his view that members of the squad were more interested in praying than playing.

 

Mr Mir claims it was this pre-occupation with religion that explained their poor World Cup result.

 

“Bob had his reservations that the boys, rather than focusing on the religious aspect, they ought to be focusing more on cricket.

 

“He wasn’t particularly pleased when players were going out to say their prayers in the middle of the game and a substitute was coming in. He was totally against it,” he said.

 

After the team was knocked out, Mr Mir’s comments led to a fatwa being issued against him forcing him to flee Pakistan.

 

He believes Woolmer may have faced the same fate.

 

“If Bob had said what I’d had said, I think there would have been a fatwa on him as well,” Mr Mir said.

Brain teaser for the “Israel is an Apartheid state” crowd: explain this.

A vast majority of Israeli Arabs would support a constitution that maintained Israel’s status as a Jewish and democratic state while guaranteeing equal rights for minorities, according to a poll whose results were published on Sunday.

Among the 507 people who participated in the poll, some 75 percent said they would agree with such a definition while 23 percent said they would oppose it.

The Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), a non-partisan research institute who commissioned the poll, said the results were proof that a constitution that maintained Israel’s status as a Jewish and democratic state could win the support of the Israeli Arab public.

Bonus points if you can do so without frothing at the mouth.

Just when you thought PETA could not get more asinine…they get more asinine.

The animal activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has written a letter to Norm Goldstein, the editor of the AP stylebook, asking that the book be changed so that pronouns referring to animals always be “he,” “she,” and “who.” AP responded by noting that the stylebook only uses “it” and “which” if the animal’s sex has not been established and the animal’s name is unknown.

PETA says that in a society that is recognizing animals rights more and more, the pronouns were what animals “deserved,” and the letter from Anna West, Director of Written Communications, noted that many magazines had already made the switch. The legal system, as well, recently elevated animals to a status beyond “property,” and now holds that abusing animals is a crime worse than vandalism.

“The public now recognizes that whales, who sing across oceans; great apes, who share more than 98 percent of our DNA; sheep, who can recognize as many as 50 faces after not having seen them for two years; and pigs and chickens, who can learn to operate switches in order to control heat and light in factory-farm sheds, are feeling, intelligent individuals — not objects,” the letter states. “Our language should reflect this.”

AP spokesman Jack Stokes pointed to the current AP stylebook guidelines, saying that the news organization already does what’s being requested. “It’s very specific,” he said.

Below is the exact wording of the “animals” entry in the AP book:

“Do not apply a personal pronoun to an animal unless its sex has been established or the animal has a name: The dog was scared; it barked. Rover was scared; he barked. The cat, which was scared, ran to its basket. Susie the cat, who was scared, ran to her basket. The bull tosses his horns.

“Capitalize the name of a specific animal, and use Roman numerals to show sequence: Bowser, Whirlaway II.

“For breed names, follow the spelling and capitalization in Webster’s New World College Dictionary. For breeds not listed in the dictionary, capitalize words derived from proper nouns; use lowercase elsewhere: basset hound, Boston terrier.”

I will concede, though, that it is very likely the average animal is of greater intellect than the average PETA activist (hat tip: Shy Guy).

In Iran, it seems like cutting off heads is much easier than cutting hair.

Iranian police have warned barbers against offering Western-style hair cuts or plucking the eyebrows of their male customers, Iranian media said Sunday.

The report by a reformist daily, later confirmed by an Iranian news agency, appeared to be another sign of authorities cracking down on clothing and other fashion deemed to be against Islamic values.

“Western hairstyles … have been banned,” the newspaper Etemad said in a front-page headline.

It came a week after police launched a crackdown against the growing number of young women testing the limits of the law with shorter, brighter and skimpier clothing ahead of the summer months.

Under Iran’s Islamic Sharia law, imposed after the 1979 revolution, women are obligated to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise their figures.

Violators can receive lashes, fines and imprisonment.

The student news agency ISNA quoted a police statement as saying: “In an official order to barbershops, they have been warned to avoid using Western hair styles and doing men’s eyebrows.”

Iranian young men have in recent years started paying more attention to the way they look and dress, especially in affluent parts of the capital Tehran. Spiked up hair, by using gel, is known as the Khorusi (Rooster) style and some also use make-up.

Several hairdressers for men in Tehran offer cuts in the style of Hollywood movie stars and other Western celebrities. Clients can also have their eyebrows plucked.

The head of the barbers’ union, Mohammad Eftekharifard, said police had instructed it to “exercise specific regulations in barbershops that work under its supervision.”

Barbers who do not follow these rules might be closed down for a month and even lose their permits to operate, Etemad quoted him as saying.

“Currently some barbershops apply make-up and use (hair) styles that are in line with those in European countries and America,” Eftekharifard said.

He added: “An official order has been sent to the union … not to apply make-up on men’s faces (or) do eyebrows … and hence the barbers are not allowed to do these things.”

Since hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidency in 2005 on a promise of returning to the values of the revolution, hardliners have pressed for tighter controls on what they consider immoral behavior.

And it’s not just Iran.

The Supreme Fatwa Council of Palestine has issued a fatwa permitting men’s and women’s hairdressers to operate on condition that they do not break Islamic law.

The fatwa stated that women can be employed as hairdressers as long as they only cut the hair of women that want to look attractive for their husbands and not other men or foreigners; this would be Haram (forbidden).

It also stated that if a foreign man is present in the hairdressers, women must be prohibited from entering it.

The council urged the Palestinian Muslims to avoid “suspicion” and to follow the religious rules and rituals according to Islamic law.

The fatwa also said that men can work as barbers and activity in the barber shops is not prohibited in any way, as long as it is not against Islam.

Things between Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz never used to be so bad.

I guess it all started after Peretz’s infamous binocular gaffe…

..when Olmert went out of his way to prove he was the smarter one.

Peretz decided he had to take revenge, and he began by placing a foreign substance in Olmert’s food..

Not to mention his eye drops…

Soon, the two combatants could not even look at each other..

And the police were even called in to intervene on one occasion..

“What do you want me to do? You guys are behaving like babies!”

But today is a new day, and it could just be that the two former friends will reconcile

“I’ve missed you.”

The Sunday Telegraph reports:

Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal has warned against pursuing the economic and political blockade of the Palestinians, who are “on the verge of exploding”.

On the verge? They’ve been exploding for years.

Looks like French taste is improving.

The French dislike themselves even more than the Americans dislike them, according to an opinion poll published on Friday.

The survey of six nations, carried out for the International Herald Tribune daily and France 24 TV station, said 44 percent of French people thought badly of themselves against 38 percent of U.S. respondents who had a negative view of the French.

I think we can work with this.

Seems like Rosie O’Donnell may be joining the cast of Les Miz.

Or should that be Miss Lez?

Over two weeks ago, I pointed out the case of Agence France Presse (AFP) photographer in Gaza, Mahmoud Al Hums, who won a prize in the China international competition for a photo he took, a prize he promptly dedicated to “Palestinian martyrs.”

Now I see he has won another prize, and again made no effort to hide his bias.

A Palestinian photographer for AFP has won an Arab award for a picture of the funeral of a Palestinian child killed during an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip.Mahmud Hams, 27, a native of Rafah, bagged the prize for photography of the Arab Journalism Awards handed out by Dubai Press Club at the end of a two-day Arab media forum in Dubai on Wednesday.

The US$15,000 prize “is a boost which will prompt me to work with more enthusiasm”, said Hams. “I am happy to be able to convey the Palestinian people’s daily reality.”

How can AFP knowingly use photographers who are clearly biased, and are making no secret of their real agenda?

Let’s find out.

(Tip of the hate to Elder, who looks at some examples of Hams’ work, and how they clearly reflects his bias).