7th Century Islam + 21st Century Beauty Pageant = 7th century outrage

Lets hope the Indonesian province of Aech is not struck by another tsunami, because some of the religious clerics might try to blame it on this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8302018.stm

A Aechian contestant in the Miss Indonesia pageant brought "shame" to her province, according to Muslim clerics there, by not wearing a veil during the competition. The winning lady responded by saying that hair is beauty and she is proud of her beauty.

It's hard to decide where to start with this. Wearing a veil for a beauty contest would be rather like wearing a veil while getting your hair cut, or wearing your sunglasses to the opticians. The ridiculousness of this story is plain enough and is just one more example of Islam having no place in the 21st century. I would like to focus on some of the language used by the writer of this article.

In the final paragraph the writer says, "the controversy is likely to continue when she goes on to compete in the Miss Universe contest." The key word here is 'controversy'. It's one of those words that gets bandied around very haphazardly in the media. The dictionary defines it as, "disagreement on a contentious topic, strongly felt or expressed by all those concerned."

In the Miss California pageant last year there was controversy when a contestant (who had more living matter in her fake breasts than in her head) said that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. This was a controversy because both sides of the argument began weighing in with great noise and vigour. In the story from Indonesia the only disagreement is from a small group of clerics from a small province of one country. They felt strongly about it, but the other side didn't; the woman's only response was to say hair is beauty and she's proud of her beauty. Not exactly a passionate defense. Calling this a controversy gives the 7th century clerics a modicum of credibility that they do not deserve.