Miss England Says: It’s Our Fault!

You may be unaware that the Miss World pageant is coming up next month. The finale will be in Poland at the end of September; the Miss World web site is taking shape.

Normally, this would be a source of unalloyed pleasure. This year, though, politics has intruded. Last year’s Miss England, Hammasa Kohistan, the first Muslim to be so honored, has expressed herself on the subject of terrorism:

“The attitude towards Muslims has got worse over the year. Also the Muslims’ attitude to British people has got worse.

“Even moderate Muslims are turning to terrorism to prove themselves. They think they might as well support it because they are stereotyped anyway.

[A]t the same time, she said, “there is this hostility” which comes “mainly from the Government. Tony Blair addressed Muslims in particular, telling them that they need to sort out the problem within. That was a huge stereotype of the Islamic community. Even the more moderate Muslims have been stereotyped negatively and feel they have to take actions to prove themselves.

“For a Muslim to represent England is asking for controversy at the moment. I feel after everything that’s happened Muslims are being stereotyped negatively. The whole community has been labelled and, whether they are guilty of crime or not, they are getting penalised for it.”

Well, it’s not like they’re being made to pay special taxes or anything. She continued:

“The bridge I have made is slowly being broken by more and more wars. Now the Iran situation is brought up and another Islamic country is under scrutiny – and the recent Heathrow scare. I guess I am needed even more now than last year to an extent because of what has happened.”

Easy to ridicule? Sure. Muslims are “turning to terrorism” because they’re being stereotyped as terrorists. Sorry! I guess it was all a misunderstanding.

There is, though, another side to the story:

Born in Uzbekistan and raised in Afghanistan, Miss Kohistani divided Muslim opinion when she entered and won the Miss England pageant in Liverpool.

Several community leaders openly declared her to be betraying the laws of Islam while radical Muslims sent the teenager and her family death threats.

Hmm. Could there be some parallel here to the Fox News journalists, who, upon their (perhaps provisional) release, delivered a paean to the glories of Islam in Gaza, under the watchful eyes of armed Palestinian Authority gunmen–wearing the same uniforms as those who kidnapped them–before scurrying to safety in Israel? Perhaps Miss Kohistan has become a terrorist sympathizer, like the much older and wiser Fox team, mostly because she doesn’t want her head, or her parents’ heads, to be separated from their respective necks.

As Miss Kohistani said:

It is not for me to answer how to get people to turn away from terrorism. The politicians don’t know what to do and I am just a 19-year-old.

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