Muslim Non Fanatacism

Rima Fakih, a Lebanese Muslim from Michigan won the Miss USA beauty contest the other day. It's not important news in itself, but that a Muslim lady won is a far greater result than otherwise. Rima is spectacularly beautiful by anyone's standards, you can Google her name and see photos yourself. There was no affirmative action or political correctness in her winning.

Rima is the first Arab American to win Miss USA, and her victory is dividing the Muslim community in her hometown of Dearborn, Michigan. Dearborn is an overwhelmingly Arabic city that has been so for generations. Muslims there are both traditionally conservative and modern "Americanized" as Rima is herself. There is also the newer, mostly younger emigrant generation in the west that is fanatically anti western. What do you get with that mixture? Controversy about Rima's win. It is good.

Rima told the Detroit Free Press before the pageant she was aware that some in metro Detroit's Middle Eastern communities may object to women parading their beauty, but she said her family supports her. In fact, her mother encouraged her to compete. "I think the community in Michigan, in Dearborn, might be a little on the strict side," Rima said. "But my family, in general, are not."

Oh how nice to hear! It's about as affective way possible to taunt the crazy Muslim fanatics who virtually bind Muslim women in chains and preach hatred of all things non Muslim (and of their version of Muslim). That the whole nation sees Muslim women as hot looking women who have integrated into the culture in which they have entered is a feel good story that Muslim fanatics can't like.

As with most winners in those silly beauty pageant, the detractors have searched the internet and wider to find embarrassing information on Rima to discredit her. The best they have found is a few photos of her winning a stripper contest in which she kept her clothes on in 2007 for a Detroit radio station. That's it! It's about as apple pie as can be for pretty young girls of all religious faith in the west to play on a pole that way once in awhile. In digging up what the fanatical Muslim detractors see as "dirt" they merely show how integrated Rima is in her home nation.

It's just more proof that there are Muslims who don't set off bombs and preach hate, that Muslims girls can be beautiful, free thinking, and comfortable in their non Muslim nation's culture. That's more powerful ammunition against the crazy Muslims than a multitude of their terrorist bombs is to reason.

If she was in one of many Middle Eastern country, she'd be flogged and thrown in prison, perhaps stoned to death in Afghanistan. Muslims everywhere should cheer on Rima and appreciate both her beauty and her freedom to be normal