ratboy's anvil

Where's David Crosby When You Need Him?

Wow, man...Thank Madonna there are still some serious issues out there!
Remember this?

Teenager's Haircut Given the Chop

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A Malaysian teenager was given a forced haircut by Muslim authorities who deemed his punk-style "Mohican" un-Islamic.

The Star newspaper reported on Saturday that the unnamed 17-year-old -- described as a high school dropout -- was nabbed by the Islamic Development Unit of Kota Baru, Kelantan, a north-eastern state controlled by the Islamic political party PAS.

The newspaper said officials lectured him against emulating "destructive culture" before taking the scissors to his red-dyed Mohican.

Kelantan and neighboring Terengganu are two of Malaysia's 13 states where the Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS), which is led by Muslim clerics, holds power.

PAS, which seeks to introduce Islamic Sharia law across the country, has already ordered Muslim women to cover their heads, banned gambling and nightclubs and limited public consumption of liquor in the states they control.

Meanies!

Tell em, Mr C.:

ALMOST CUT MY HAIR

Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day
It was getting kind of long
I could have said it was in my way

But I didn't and I wonder why
I feel like letting my freak flag fly
And I feel like I owe it to someone

Must be because I had the flu for Christmas
And I'm not feeling up to par
It increases my paranoia
Like looking into a mirror and seeing a police car

But I'm not giving in an inch to fear
Cos I promised myself this year
I feel like I owe it to someone

When I finally get myself together
I'm gonna get down in some of that sweet summer weather
I'm going to find a space inside to laugh
Separate the wheat from the chaff

Cos I feel like I owe it, yeah
Said I feel like I owe it, yeah
You know I feel---- like I owe it yeah to someone

-- David Crosby

Great tune...used to pump it up and swagger around the house flipping shoulder length hair in defiance at whatever straight fool might happen by and challenge the authority of the freak flag...

Actually I had relatively short hair at the time and didn't give a damn about the whole hippie culture except as an avenue for conscious raising drugs and the higher potential for open sexuality. I was a geek...I loved science and philosophy and didn't much care about physical stuff like food or sleep or the commodity culture. I figured if there was going to be a magical future it would come through technological advances rather than a reactionary back to the land type gig.

Its nice to see that the kids are still trying to rebel however/. If the 17 year old victim of forced tress management ever gets a name I'd like to welcome him to the 21st century. Its obvious that his social context lacks appreciation for change or novelty. How on earth did the Moors, for instance progress so rapidly if the real Islam is so conservative and staid? I mean I just can't imagine all those beautiful ideas of philosophy, mathematics and architecture that the Moors so opulently poured onto the world scene were a result of supressed imaginations and a strict adherence to the status quo.

I mean there is probably no faster or surer route to cultural extinction than to pretend that any point in time in any culture, or indeed in any life, is a peak of perfection that can never be surpassed. What arrogance to suppose that Allah would want his faithful to deny themselves or anyone the potential revelation and improvement that can only be derived through novel experience and by living in and with the changing world over an extended period of time. A 6 year old and an 86 year old person may quote the same passages from the Qur'an, or Bible or whatever cosmic script...and though the words will be the same, the implications and meanings intended will not. Because the 86 year old has an advantage; experience of change, which is to say, understanding of context.

But everyone knows these sorts of things, so what is it that makes the modern
Islamic so adverse to change and innovation compared to the Moors?
certainly any organized philosophy such as the recognized world religions will have its fundamentalists and conservative elements. Yet the whole experience I seem to have of Islam by way of Moslems I know or have met or the press reporting world events over the years has led me to conclude that the liberal elements of Islam are either non-existent (which I refuse to believe) or in such a minority that conservative voices completely drown it out. Even if that is the case, how did such a thing come to pass. When did the conservative approach to Islam come into dominance? And to what end? How can it not be recognized by the Islamics themselves that to become isolationist and reactionary, by attempting to freeze the definition and utility of Islamic culture, that Islam will find no improvement for itself as a living body of knowledge and distilled spiritual wisdom but rather will only create detrimental situations for itself by pretending that it can exist alone and somehow stand separate from the whole of the fabric of progressing human civilization?

How can it possibly help Islam to demand and force a 17 year old boy not wear his hair in a particular fashion. It is a sign of weakness to require such levels of conformity. It is exactly the same weakness that afflicts the Christian conservatives and fundamentalists. When a group needs to find identity in how they are NOT like some other group, rather than in professing demonstrating their unique positive traits historically inherent to themselves and their culture, they are either out of touch with those traits and are reduced to merely mouthing them as if mentioning a thing made it effective and operational...as if saying made it so...as if Nancy Reagan's charming suggestion that we "just say no" had any bearing on the use of drugs then or since.

How inspirational to an individual is a religion bent on suppression of the joy of life by the likes of the Taliban or Jerry Falwell in the end anyway? Jerry will be just as alone when he dies as any of us...his revelation will be maximally personal and it will have little to do with anything Jerry might have wanted to suppress en route.

Three cheers for a red mohawk freak flag in Malaysia!

...Cos I feel like I owe it, yeah Said I feel like I owe it, yeah You know I feel---- like I owe it yeah to someone...