The US chain Dunkin’ Donuts has pulled an advert following complaints that the scarf worn by a celebrity chef offered symbolic support for Islamic extremism.
“This fashion choice incensed at least one prominent conservative blogger, who said it evoked extremist videos.
The blogger, Michelle Malkin, called the garment “a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos“.”
This is a fine example about the collapsing of everything Arab into the category “terrorist”. As anyone with the slightest idea about Arab history and culture would know, the kuffiyeh was initially worn in the Middle East in order to protect the head from the harsh sun of the desert, and then became a symbol of Palestinian nationalism in the 1960’s; it was, quite literally, Yasser Arafat’s piece de resistance.
The up-in-arms reaction of the blogger mentioned above indicates that she has no real grasp of an important factor in interpretating ’symbols’, which is that they have no fixed meaning, and that across ages and within different contexts the meaning of an inanimate object will change.
The fact that the kuffiyeh has been used in the past 7 or 8 years in the videos by terrorists is more a reflection of the widening perception in the Arab popular consciousness that American policies are aimed against them as a group, an ethnicity, a religion. That Arabs rally behind the Palestinian cause as the epitomization of oppression stems from their realization that the destruction of their own homes, nations, livelihoods, be it in Iraq, Afghanistan or Lebanon, is perpetrated by the same entity that sanctioned the creation of the state of Israel, whose initial displacement of hundred of thousands of people from ther homes continues to this day, in terms of ever-increasing settlements and the land grabs acheived by the mostrosity that is the separation wall. The sustained violence, dispossession and destruction that are the manifestation of American foreign policy in the region are considered to be based on a lumping togehter of Arabs in the mind of the American political elite. It is therefore to be expected that individuals or groups who seek to counter such aggression appropriate symbols from a past struggle or traditional identity (ie: the kuffiyeh as something quintessentially Arab).
However, that does not mean that the new appropriation, that of ‘radical Islamism, should have a monopoly on the meaning of the symbol; rather, it is one of a plurality of meanings, and it is the responsability of the spectator to show awareness of that fact in their analysis of the symbol. Consequently, the drive to immediately associate the kuffiyeh with terrorism betrays the deep-set bigotry that both inspires and perpetuates the aggressive policies that designate certain lives as more valuable than others.
Furthermore, in keeping with the view of the shifting quality of symbols, one must also acknowledge that the kuffiyeh has become a very popular fashion accessory in the West over the past couple of years. Indeed, just as the face of Che Guevara has been massively commodified and abused by the very exploitative system that he sacrificed his life fighting against, so the popularization of multi-coloured kuffiyehs as sold in Top Shop or Urban Outfitters serves to mainstream, and hence dilute, the message of resistance.
I was in Camden market about a year ago and saw 2 teenage boys looking through a rack of coloured kuffiyehs and walked over to ask them,pointing to the scarf , ’do you know what that means?’. They just looked at me emptily, completely oblivious to what I referring. I cotinued, asking if they knew the origins or historical and political meaning of the kuffiyeh. They shrugged and shook their heads, and without displaying any interest in the topic at all, they continued to discuss which colour would suit them best.
Popularization yields banality. Something that was once revolutionary becomes just another frivolous morsel for our relentless appetite of consumption.
But that does not mean that the kuffiyeh is devoid of any political significance. It depends where it is being worn, and why. To say that the popularization of the scarf in the high streets of London and New York renders the Palestinian who bears in in Gaza, the 3rd generation refugee who dons it in Jordan, or the many people around the world who wear it in solidarity with the Palestinian cause insignificant or futile is to prioritize one contextually contingent meaning of the kufiyyeh over all others.
The above furore over the use of the kuffiyeh in a Duncan Donut’s commercial can be viewed as revealing more about the eye of the beholder than the actual object of consternation. What is most worrying is that by heeding to the complaints of the conservative blogger and others, the company is allowing one selective, biased and prejudiced interpretation to dominate over the others, thereby invalidating both its meanings of resistance and fashion trend. Moreover, as a result of this case, that interpretation will no doubt become more predominant in the popular Western imagination of what the kuffiyeh means, and exacerbate the stigma that has come to surround anything Arab.
06.02.08
Kuffiyeh consternation: how NOT to interpret symbolism
Posted in Comment tagged kuffiyeh, symbolism at 2:09 pm by lilithhope
“This fashion choice incensed at least one prominent conservative blogger, who said it evoked extremist videos.
The blogger, Michelle Malkin, called the garment “a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos“.”
This is a fine example about the collapsing of everything Arab into the category “terrorist”. As anyone with the slightest idea about Arab history and culture would know, the kuffiyeh was initially worn in the Middle East in order to protect the head from the harsh sun of the desert, and then became a symbol of Palestinian nationalism in the 1960’s; it was, quite literally, Yasser Arafat’s piece de resistance.
The up-in-arms reaction of the blogger mentioned above indicates that she has no real grasp of an important factor in interpretating ’symbols’, which is that they have no fixed meaning, and that across ages and within different contexts the meaning of an inanimate object will change.
The fact that the kuffiyeh has been used in the past 7 or 8 years in the videos by terrorists is more a reflection of the widening perception in the Arab popular consciousness that American policies are aimed against them as a group, an ethnicity, a religion. That Arabs rally behind the Palestinian cause as the epitomization of oppression stems from their realization that the destruction of their own homes, nations, livelihoods, be it in Iraq, Afghanistan or Lebanon, is perpetrated by the same entity that sanctioned the creation of the state of Israel, whose initial displacement of hundred of thousands of people from ther homes continues to this day, in terms of ever-increasing settlements and the land grabs acheived by the mostrosity that is the separation wall. The sustained violence, dispossession and destruction that are the manifestation of American foreign policy in the region are considered to be based on a lumping togehter of Arabs in the mind of the American political elite. It is therefore to be expected that individuals or groups who seek to counter such aggression appropriate symbols from a past struggle or traditional identity (ie: the kuffiyeh as something quintessentially Arab).
However, that does not mean that the new appropriation, that of ‘radical Islamism, should have a monopoly on the meaning of the symbol; rather, it is one of a plurality of meanings, and it is the responsability of the spectator to show awareness of that fact in their analysis of the symbol. Consequently, the drive to immediately associate the kuffiyeh with terrorism betrays the deep-set bigotry that both inspires and perpetuates the aggressive policies that designate certain lives as more valuable than others.
Furthermore, in keeping with the view of the shifting quality of symbols, one must also acknowledge that the kuffiyeh has become a very popular fashion accessory in the West over the past couple of years. Indeed, just as the face of Che Guevara has been massively commodified and abused by the very exploitative system that he sacrificed his life fighting against, so the popularization of multi-coloured kuffiyehs as sold in Top Shop or Urban Outfitters serves to mainstream, and hence dilute, the message of resistance.
I was in Camden market about a year ago and saw 2 teenage boys looking through a rack of coloured kuffiyehs and walked over to ask them,pointing to the scarf , ’do you know what that means?’. They just looked at me emptily, completely oblivious to what I referring. I cotinued, asking if they knew the origins or historical and political meaning of the kuffiyeh. They shrugged and shook their heads, and without displaying any interest in the topic at all, they continued to discuss which colour would suit them best.
Popularization yields banality. Something that was once revolutionary becomes just another frivolous morsel for our relentless appetite of consumption.
But that does not mean that the kuffiyeh is devoid of any political significance. It depends where it is being worn, and why. To say that the popularization of the scarf in the high streets of London and New York renders the Palestinian who bears in in Gaza, the 3rd generation refugee who dons it in Jordan, or the many people around the world who wear it in solidarity with the Palestinian cause insignificant or futile is to prioritize one contextually contingent meaning of the kufiyyeh over all others.
The above furore over the use of the kuffiyeh in a Duncan Donut’s commercial can be viewed as revealing more about the eye of the beholder than the actual object of consternation. What is most worrying is that by heeding to the complaints of the conservative blogger and others, the company is allowing one selective, biased and prejudiced interpretation to dominate over the others, thereby invalidating both its meanings of resistance and fashion trend. Moreover, as a result of this case, that interpretation will no doubt become more predominant in the popular Western imagination of what the kuffiyeh means, and exacerbate the stigma that has come to surround anything Arab.
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