Showing posts with label fatima manji. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fatima manji. Show all posts

20 Jul 2016

Notes on the Kelvin MacKenzie and Fatima Manji Controversy



Let me say at the outset: I really don't like Kelvin MacKenzie. He's the sort of red-faced, reactionary bigot who brings British journalism (and white masculinity) into such disrepute.

Let me also say that I have nothing but respect and admiration for the Channel 4 reporter Fatima Manji, who's the kind of intelligent, courageous young woman that I find particularly attractive. If I were to be shipwrecked on a desert island or trapped in a lift with one of the above, it wouldn't be the former editor of The Sun that I'd choose for company. 

However - and it pains me to say this - I think Mr MacKenzie has a fair point when he objects to a hijab-wearing woman (i.e. one who proudly identifies herself as a Muslim) being deliberately used to front the news of yet another terrorist outrage (the Nice massacre) carried out by someone who also declares himself to be a member of her faith.

I understand perfectly the politics at play here and certainly don't think it was done "to stick one in the eye of the ordinary viewer" as MacKenzie suggests. It was, rather, a clumsy and patronising attempt by C4 to show unity and demonstrate that there are plenty of good Muslims, like the lovely Miss Manji; not an attempt at malicious provocation or insult.

And yet, in truth, there was something inappropriate about her staged appearance; in the same way that, for example, it wouldn't have been quite the done thing to have news of an IRA bombing reported by a newsreader dressed as a leprechaun, or to be told during the Blitz of another Luftwaffe attack by a reporter wearing lederhosen. It's a question of semiotics; of being sensitive to the ambiguity of signs and meaning.

It's also a question of style and the language of fashion, since it wasn't Miss Manji's onscreen presence as such that caused unease in certain viewers, but the fact that she was wearing a veil, thereby overtly signifying where her ultimate loyalty lies; not to the men, women and children killed in Nice, but to a God who is at best indifferent to human suffering and at worst fully complicit with it.

It would have been touching I think - and incredibly powerful as a symbolic gesture - if Miss Manji had dispensed with her hijab for one night and read the news as a woman of flesh and blood and not a woman of faith.