Beauty pageant in Muslim country a bad idea – It turned out to be a bad idea to fly “90 scantily clothed beauty queens into the capital of a predominantly Muslim country during the holy month of Ramadan,” wrote Judy Bachrach in Vanity Fair’s March 2003 issue. (Debt, Death, and Disaster: Inside the 2002 Miss World Pageant | Vanity Fair.) Bloody riots between Moslems and Christians left  250 people dead, while, according to Human Rights Watch, 109 churches and 39 mosques were demolished.

 At the time, November 28-30, 2002, this tragedy garnered world attention, but since then, the Miss World Riots have been largely forgotten. In November 2002, Isioma Daniel, 20, a Nigerian fashion reporter, wrote a feature for This Day, a Lagos, a southwestern port city, daily about the Miss World pageant to be held the next month in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. Addressing the Muslim community’s moral objections to the beauty contest, she wrote: “The Muslims thought it was immoral to bring 92 women to Nigeria and ask them to revel in vanity. What would Mohammad think? In all honesty, he would have chosen a wife from one of them.”  

 A “fatwa,” or an official Islamic death warrant, was issued by the deputy governor of Zamfara state, a northern Nigerian province under Islamic rule. Daniel resigned a day after her article appeared, made a public apology, but was still forced to flee her homeland for The United States. By the time news of the fatwa was delivered, a majority of the contestants had been evacuated to London’s Alexandra Palace for a December 7th show. 

Even before its genesis, the Miss World organizers holding the 2002 Miss World in Nigeria seemed a questionable choice. Earlier in the month, according to the Mail& Guardian, a South African weekly periodical, “half a dozen contestants boycotted the event in protest at the decision by one of Nigeria’s 12 Muslim northern states to order the stoning to death of an unmarried mother.”

The Miss World event was the 1951 brainchild of Eric Morley, the English businessman, whose daughter, Julia Morley, a former model, now 81, has been its long-tennured president. Morley didn’t hold the beauty contest responsible for the riots, but deemed Joseph’s article to be the flashpoint. The 20-year-old reporter’s November 16th feature explored how Nigeria’s economy could benefit from the internationally televised Miss World Contest. “As the idea became a reality,”  wrote Joseph, “it aroused dissent from many groups of people.”

According to the Mail & Guardian, “Mention of the prophet Mohammad’s susceptibility to female allure inflamed Muslim feelings across northern Nigeria.” Even a series of front-page This Day apologies didn’t stop protesters from torching the Kaduna news office.

 London’s Nigerian embassy dismissed the fatwa as unconstitutional with a spokesperson stating, “It’s one of these overzealous statements. The state government has no authority in this matter. There’s a proper system of laws in Nigeria.”

The eventual winner of the 2002 Miss World was Azra Akin of Turkey, the first winning contestant from a predominately Muslim nation since 1954. Now in her forties, Daniel works as a journalist under an assumed name in an unnamed European country. She has never returned to Nigeria. – Peter Fernandez,  Northfield 

U.S. warmongering behind Gaza genocide – I want to make it clear at the outset of this letter that war and violence of any sort horrify me. For the US, I believe war is merely everyday business. We have a voracious and rapacious military-industrial-complex (MIC) that requires constant care and feeding. I don’t think our government in Washington cares where death and destruction take place, as long as MIC lobbyists are ever-present on Capitol Hill, kicking back much of the money that pours into their coffers from Washington. And, as Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin have said point-blank, weapons manufacturing and sales equal jobs for American workers.

So, now to Gaza and Israel: By all accounts, Gaza, for decades, has been the equivalent of an open-air concentration camp. Israel, we now know, had very ample warning of what was being planned by Hamas, and yet, when it finally happened, Israeli security forces did not respond for hours, and when they did, they fired indiscriminately, killing both Hamas militants and Israelis. 

Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades (according to the Intercept) asserted in a Wall Street Journal interview that “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.” A creation which Netanyahu has supported, because it furthered his own political agenda to do so. 

What is going on in Gaza right now can only be described as genocide. It is an entirely disproportionate response to the events of October 7th, no matter how you look at it. It is utterly sad that to be anti-genocide right now is to be labeled anti-Semitic.

Our President and most of our Congress and Senate and presidential candidates support this genocide. Made-in-America weapons and bullets and bombs, as well as our tax dollars (making most Americans complicit), are being used to devastate the civilian population and infrastructure of Gaza. No matter how many weak and half-mumbled admonishments Antony Blinken makes towards Israel with regards to their military response, our support is a gigantic green light for Israel to do whatever it pleases. Additionally, it’s my understanding that our current support for Israel violates US law—the so-called Leahy laws. And it’s the constitutional duty of the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

So, to watch our Congress, which is actively supporting genocide, call to account university presidents for allowing free speech on their campuses, no matter how ugly it may be, was beyond the pale. Our government should stop supporting this genocide—which is being committed by the Jewish state of Israel. A genocide that we are all bearing witness to, every time we turn on the news.

In 2002, reporter Amy Goodman interviewed former Israeli Knesset member Shulamit Aloni. Goodman asked: “Often when there is dissent expressed in the United States against policies of the Israeli government, people here are called antisemitic. What is your response to that as an Israeli Jew?” The Israeli politician replied candidly: “Well, it’s a trick, we always use it.”

(I’d like it to be known that in submitting this letter for publication consideration, I appended 12 references to it.) – Jacqueline Brook, Putney

If I were Biden, I would have declined the ‘win’ – Joe Biden has managed to have everything he has dealt with turn a substance called fecal material, for lack of a more proper nomenclature here.

This man has presided over more failure than any President I have known to be such, plus the ones before I came onto this earth in 1940. I hope the people that “worked” hard to get him “elected” are happier than pigs wallowing in the material mentioned above.

If it had been me in his place, knowing what we know about the particulars of that election, I would have declined the “win”. That is what any red blooded American would do, who was brought up by Christian parents, considered being honest and above board all through life. 

Lying to parents, and just not being upright in everything we did would bring down the wrath of my Dad’s big hand, and believe me my brother and I received it when needed. We grew up on a farm so everyone including of course Dad was physically in great shape. I believe Mr. Biden may not have grown up in a family that had no patience with liars, thieves, and scoundrels. Enough said. – James Hall