Miss Indonesia Universe, crowned Aug. 25, 2006
Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! News!

Miss Kazakhstan World 2005, Miss Kazakhstan Universe 2006
Source: Missosology

Miss England World 2005
Source: Yahoo!, via My Pet Jawa

Miss Afghanistan Earth 2003
Source: Wikipedia

What do these girls have in common? They’re all Muslim beauty queens, showing off their hair, faces, arms, legs, and much more. Nothing remarkable about that in modern society – everyone’s got to wear a bathing suit sometimes, and no, I don’t mean this – but for perverse, repressed, bitter, dirty-minded Islamofascists, it’s something that’s utterly forbidden. The Age of Democratic Revolution has brought out these Muslim beauty queens in a way not seen in half a century, and oh they are subversive!

Islam itself allows for individual interpretations of the Koranic commands about modesty, but Islamofascists insist on only their interpretation – which, not trusting Allah, they assume must be the most puritanical one possible. And not only are they crudely literal, they can’t keep quiet about their disapproval either. Instead, they loudly impose their own views, insist on controlling women who would enter such pageants, and worse.

In their minds, the response is simple: Stone them!

That’s why even though these women are beauty queens, they are still revolutionaries and babes of politics.

Now the concept of beauty queen has a lot of strikes against it as far as the babes of politics standard goes.

*Number one, these beauty queens know they’re beautiful – they’re in a beauty contest after all. Strike one, babes of politics are never aware of their beauty.

*Two, a beauty queen is always off by herself – strike two, babes of politics are always in a crowd, something that in pageants only happens before someone is crowned.

*Three, a beauty queen is a queen, royalty – strike three, babes of politics are all about democracy and democratic revolution, something absolutely anathema to the idea of a queen.

*Four, to read the quotes, some of these beauty queens are as dumb as a box of rocks – strike four, democracy babes are all smart and politically aware.

But nothing overrides the courage it takes to strip down to a bikini, parade on a catwalk, and enter a public beauty contest – as raging Islamofascists are threatening to kill you. That happened to the fourth girl in this sequence – she was banned from her country after her bikini walk and this female Afghani bureaucrat said she was only doing it “to entertain men” – stupid old bat, doesn’t she know that beauty contests are for women? Is it men buying all those Cover Girl cosmetics and L’Oreal haircolor advertised on beauty contest telecasts? Men will cheer and ogle anything that walks, it’s the women who are the tough discriminators – and just yesterday, this same Miss Afghanistan was deemed too hot to handle at an Indian fashion show, the articles are here and here.

Meanwhile, I went to the Miss Universe Pageant in Los Angeles this summer, and saw Miss Kazakhstan parade down that catwalk in her bathing suit – and the huge crowd full of Los Angeles Kazakhs (did you know that LA was full of Kazakhs? I learn something new every day!) on the third tier of the balcony waving the Kazakh flag wildly, so wildly they compared with the Miss Venezuela and Miss Mexico crowds – encouraging Kazakhs everywhere in the world.

All of that takes courage, and all four of these women have it. The Miss Indonesia is the third Miss Indonesia they’ve had in years and probably – all by her girlish self – is paving the way for more freedom for other Indonesian women in a country that’s constantly fighting Islamofascists who’d keep them down. The Miss Afghanistan was the first one in 30 years and her lovely interview here expresses exactly that.

What’s interesting is that being in a beauty contest shouldn’t be an un-Islamic thing. Beauty contests have been going on since the Byzantine era, practically invented by Muslims, and always a Near-Eastern thing – read: Babes of Beirut.

The four women shown are not conventional babes of politics but all the same these recent Muslim beauty queens are democratic revolutionaries of sorts, paving the way for others to live normal lives. Against all odds.