Tyr-Ziu Saxnot
09-30-2014, 09:37 AM
http://news.yahoo.com/islamic-state-arab-female-f-16-pilot-stirs-132836243.html
Islamic State: Arab female F-16 pilot stirs debate in Muslim world
UAE fighter pilot Mariam al-Mansouri shot to fame last week for her role in a US-led bombing campaign in Syria. While Americans hailed her pluck, for Arabs it's more complicated.
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Christian Science Monitor
By Christa Case Bryant
1 hour ago
Last week Mariam al-Mansouri, a F-16 pilot from the United Arab Emirates, was introduced to the world. Smiling out from under her helmet and hijab after launching air strikes in Syria, part of a US-led campaign against Islamic State, her image went viral.
For some Americans, she was a sort of Katharine Hepburn meets Amelia Earhart who had shattered prevalent stereotypes of Arab women. A popular Internet meme reads: “hey ISIS. you were bombed by a woman. have a nice day.”
Her mission has aroused considerable “you go girl” sentiment in the Arab world as well, from Twitter to newspaper editorials.
“This woman has overcome obstacles and challenges with her determination and capability,” mused @BoZayed_9399, whose Twitter handle uses a Gulf term for father, suggesting he has roots in the region. Another tweet mockingly contrasted her feat with a Saudi sheikh’s opposition to women driving a car, saying it would damage their ovaries.
Tweet
But her role in an American bombing campaign in a Muslim country also caused tremors along another fault line: the conflict between so-called moderate and more fundamentalist schools of Islamic thought in the Middle East. On one side of the fault line, Ms. Mansouri is depicted as a traitor to Arabs struggling to overthrow evil dictators. On the other, she’s an archetype of Arab society advancing into the future, in contrast to the backward-looking caliphate declared by IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“This is a symbol of the eternal conflict between modernity and backwardness, between goodness and evil,” wrote Egyptian-born scholar Mamoun Fandy in an Asharq al-Awsat column titled, “Mariam and al-Baghdadi … heaven and earth.” (Arabic)
Others stand aghast at the fact that a pretty woman has so blithely killed fellow Arabs, and is being championed in the West for doing so.
“I ask God that you suffer exactly the pain that you caused to everyone whom you killed, sooner than later,” tweeted @missprestige888.
The murdering cowards cry like babies that if a woman kills them then they lose paradise and those 72 virgins. :rofl1:
Islamic State: Arab female F-16 pilot stirs debate in Muslim world
UAE fighter pilot Mariam al-Mansouri shot to fame last week for her role in a US-led bombing campaign in Syria. While Americans hailed her pluck, for Arabs it's more complicated.
.
Christian Science Monitor
By Christa Case Bryant
1 hour ago
Last week Mariam al-Mansouri, a F-16 pilot from the United Arab Emirates, was introduced to the world. Smiling out from under her helmet and hijab after launching air strikes in Syria, part of a US-led campaign against Islamic State, her image went viral.
For some Americans, she was a sort of Katharine Hepburn meets Amelia Earhart who had shattered prevalent stereotypes of Arab women. A popular Internet meme reads: “hey ISIS. you were bombed by a woman. have a nice day.”
Her mission has aroused considerable “you go girl” sentiment in the Arab world as well, from Twitter to newspaper editorials.
“This woman has overcome obstacles and challenges with her determination and capability,” mused @BoZayed_9399, whose Twitter handle uses a Gulf term for father, suggesting he has roots in the region. Another tweet mockingly contrasted her feat with a Saudi sheikh’s opposition to women driving a car, saying it would damage their ovaries.
Tweet
But her role in an American bombing campaign in a Muslim country also caused tremors along another fault line: the conflict between so-called moderate and more fundamentalist schools of Islamic thought in the Middle East. On one side of the fault line, Ms. Mansouri is depicted as a traitor to Arabs struggling to overthrow evil dictators. On the other, she’s an archetype of Arab society advancing into the future, in contrast to the backward-looking caliphate declared by IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“This is a symbol of the eternal conflict between modernity and backwardness, between goodness and evil,” wrote Egyptian-born scholar Mamoun Fandy in an Asharq al-Awsat column titled, “Mariam and al-Baghdadi … heaven and earth.” (Arabic)
Others stand aghast at the fact that a pretty woman has so blithely killed fellow Arabs, and is being championed in the West for doing so.
“I ask God that you suffer exactly the pain that you caused to everyone whom you killed, sooner than later,” tweeted @missprestige888.
The murdering cowards cry like babies that if a woman kills them then they lose paradise and those 72 virgins. :rofl1: