There’s a new
superhero: Ms. Marvel. And she’s a Muslim. But some Muslims are already
squawking about how it is immodest for her not to be fully covered. And so, to
please everyone, I think her arch-nemesis ought to be an ultra-conservative
Muslim woman superhero (or maybe super villain…?) called The Burqa. She’d wear
a full burqa, covering herself completely, and she’d carry with her a sort of
flying guillotine-style burqa that she throws which spins through the air and
captures women, covering them completely in full-body burqas lined with super glue
so they will never come off; you know, to enforce their modesty. (<It’s for
their own good!) And so Ms. Marvel would have to fight for women’s rights and
for her own right to not have every inch of her face and hair covered up with
an obtrusive burqa that’s glued onto her for the rest of her life. (<Good
thing Ms. Marvel’s super power is to be able to swell different parts of her
body to enormous sizes: that way she can just swell her head up really big, and
the thrown spinning burqa won’t be able to fit over her head; it’s the perfect
defense against The Burqa’s attack!) Oh, but that would kind of defeat the
purpose of pandering to Muslims by showing a super-powered one of them in a
potentially negative light, wouldn’t it? (Even though it is absolutely accurate
of the fundamentalists that they think all women should be forced to cover up
completely, because they are foul temptresses or some such thing; or maybe
because they believe men cannot restrain themselves from sexualizing every
attractive woman, which is, um, actually, I suppose, kind of accurate,
admittedly; at least for straight men. For gay men, all the men would have to
wear the burqa too; although I suppose a thobe and an agal does the same job
well enough, especially when you also count the beard as covering.) Oh well,
maybe they only want to show the good things; or else just be politically
correct. (<And if that’s the case, then I’m sure she’ll be fighting plenty
of white American bigots who think all Muslims are terrorists, like MSNBC likes
to claim all Republicans are. {<But it’s really only some of them who
are like that.})
(BTW: I see
that Conan O’Brien seems to have gotten himself in trouble with a joke he made on Twitter
about Ms. Marvel. But before you similarly condemn me, please keep in mind that
this issue of women covering up or not is a
real issue being fought between liberal and conservative Muslims the world over. But it is much more fun to live in a world where nobody is allowed to
joke about anything anymore, so by all means attack anyone who makes a joke on
any subject anytime you can.)
