tirade about really offensive MADTV skit

[rm]

Did anyone just see that unbelieveably offensive skit on MADTV? I'm really appalled and may even write a nasty letter.

The gist of it was an Al-Jazeera version of the Price is Right.

And it was the most shockingly ignorant and anti-Muslim thing I've ever seen.

I can't even really begin to list the ways in which I was appalled right now because I am so shocked, but among other things it made a really crappy joke about female genital mutilation, and attributed the practice to the Arab world.

FGM is mainly performed by _Christians_ in _Africa_. And has abhorent as the practice is, it is not done to punish women. And somehow the skit misunderstanding these two things, and deciding it didn't need to try to be funny, because blaming Muslims for stuff is just funny in and of itself, just made me insane.

When I was in 6th grade I had an elderly white British woman as my sixth grade homeroom teacher who taught us about Islam because she said that as the world got smaller we'd eventually understand that we were and had alays been the minority. She explained to us about Islamic art, the reasons for Islamic dress and the Arab world's contributions to math and science. In everything that has happened in these last four years I have never forgotten learning as a child of these things and having affection for them -- and that's not been easy to express a lot, as someone who is also a Jew and a New Yorker and isn't supposed to feel or say certain things. I expect people to holler at me, and it makes me sad.

But... fuck. MADTV just stepped so far over the line, and I am someone who can get into equal opportunity racial/religious/cultural humour, but... that was disgusting.

Comments

[el-christador.livejournal.com]

I didn't see the skit and I have no doubt about your assessment that it was unfunny, idiotic and offensive, but even so I have doubts about your claim that FGM is primarily practised by Christians in Africa. A little cursory research putting {female genital mutilation} into Google gives me the impression that it is in fact primarily practised by Muslims in Africa, and that it does also to some extent in some Arab countries (to the extent to which it's discussed, people indicate that it is not a mainstream practice in Arab countries, typically saying things like "in some small communities" or "among some communities" when they give any information.)

I must qualify this: it's not like I found anyone that says "it is practised primarily by Muslims", it's just that when religion is mentioned at all they are usually talking about Islam: e.g. discussions of whether or not it is prescribed/condoned/sanctioned by Islam, or e.g. in the first link below, as they describe the procedure they mention parenthetically that it is usually carried out on a Sunday (in the case they consider), which, they explain, is a work day for Muslims. Or the Amnesty International link below, which discusses its relation to religion, addresses Islam first and foremost, and then mentions the practice among Christians, Jews (in Ethiopia), and Animists almost as an afterthought.

Let me make clear that all sources agree it has absolutely nothing to do with Islam and predates the arrival of Islam in the areas (well, ok, in some places where it's practised the people claim it's part of the religion, but it sounds as if this is a retroactive addition i.e. since they were doing it anyway they decided to reinterpret their religion to include it as a part.) It sounds as if it just happens to be the case that Islam is the popular religion in the areas where FGM is common.

Certainly, all sources agree with your statement that it is not performed as a punishment.

And although I'm sure people can go to Google and search just as well as I can, here are a handful of the "sources" I refer to, just because I expect that if I don't give any links they'll be requested...

http://www.cirp.org/pages/female/pieters1/ (http://www.cirp.org/pages/female/pieters1/)
http://www.cirp.org/pages/female/ (http://www.cirp.org/pages/female/)
http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/inter/fgm.htm (http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/inter/fgm.htm)
http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/intcam/femgen/fgm1.htm#a11 (http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/intcam/femgen/fgm1.htm#a11)

[el-christador.livejournal.com]

it is in fact primarily practised by Muslims in Africa

Oops, I better clarify that. What I mean is (it sounds as if) "of the people who do it, most are Muslims".

I realized after posting that another possible interpretation would be "it is a thing that all/most/many African Muslims typically do", which is not something I mean to say; I encountered no information one way or the other on the fraction of African Muslims who are FGM practitioners.

[ladypeculiar.livejournal.com]

http://www.irfi.org/questions_answers/female_genital_mutilation.htm

http://albionmonitor.com/0502a/femalegenitalmutilation3.html - Talking about the practice in Iraqm though I have no sources on the the validity of this site, and it should be taken with several grains of salt.

http://www.transafricaforum.org/reports/female%20mutilation.pdf

Another couple things for you to look at-- you're right in that Islam comes up far more frequently when doing web searches on the practice-- though in large part because FGM is so frequently attributed to Islam (wrongly), not because it is practiced by more tribes that practice either Christianity or Islam. It predates both religions by several thousand years.

Which is why in the context of the sketch the quote about clitoredomy was so offensive (I was watching it too), and why it stood out the way it did-- it gave the impression that it was a widespread, and everyday practice among the Muslim people. It wasn't the worst thing about the sketch-- kind of everything was the worst thing about the sketch. I just wanted to clarify the context a bit.