Don’t Panic: What is the ‘Muslim world’?
June 10, 2009 at 12:22 pm by Andisheh Nouraee in Don't Panic
I had CNN on mute the other morning and saw something out of the corner of my eye about President Barack Obama speaking at Cairo University in Egypt about muslin.
I was only half paying attention, but it seemed like he went on for, like, a whole hour about how the U.S. has no quarrel with muslin in general, but only with violent muslin radicals who want to destroy America’s traditions — by which I assume he meant denim. I guess he did the speech in Cairo because Egypt is one of the world’s largest growers of cotton and is therefore a hotbed of muslin extremism.
I sure hope the muslin world isn’t too cloth-eared to accept Obama’s benevolent overture.
If you think the muslin/Muslim pun in the first three paragraphs is stupid, I don’t blame you. Rereading it now, I haven’t quite cottoned to it myself.
OK, I promise I’ll stop.
But punning muslin and Muslim is only slightly sillier than politicians and journalists suggesting over and over that the “Muslim world” constitutes a coherent grouping of people.
“Muslim world” is about as nonspecific as one can get. Targeting a speech to the “Muslim world” is like walking up to a podium and saying, “Greetings, Earthlings,” or “Welcome, my fellow vertebrates.”
Leave a Reply