Outside Looking In

Is Rima Fakih a Westernized Muslim just because she wore a bathing suit? Not necessarily.


Lee Smith
Newsweek
21 May '10

This week, an American beauty pageant took center stage in the global war of ideas. The Lebanese-born Rima Fakih's coronation as Miss America left some commentators wondering if political correctness had helped the first Muslim win the crown. Others gallantly came her to rescue to argue that the crowning of a Michigan girl whose family hails from an area of Lebanon dominated by Hizbullah is a victory for freedom: in the face of dour Islamic fundamentalists, these pundits claim, the celebration of female beauty will serve as an "instrument of liberation". But of course, a Muslim woman's willingness to show off her flesh is no more a triumph for modernity and moderation than the veil is an index of extremism. For instance, even one of Lebanon's most popular divas, Haifa Wehbe—a woman whose music videos would make most Michigan strippers blush—has professed her admiration for Hizbullah.

If beauty contests are meant to teach us anything, it's that a bikini alone, or even a ball gown, doesn't necessarily say anything meaningful about the person wearing it. That goes, too, for places of birth, jobs, and a raft of other lifestyle issues: they don't necessarily say anything about people. Rather, it's what's on the inside that counts. It is peculiar, then, that Americans so often forget this lesson when it comes to how they think about Muslim communities and regularly confuse external form for internal content.

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