Post date: Oct 21, 2016 12:5:14 AM
"This article covers one of the more controversial aspects of the holiday Ashura: self-flagellation. have received conflicting information on the prevalence of self-flagellation, where it is still legal, and which people partake in the practice. Of course, I am also in no place to judge how “right” or “wrong” self-flagellation is. The article does not provide any direct commentary to these ends. In an attempt at objectivity, it does cover different views of self-flagellation within different Muslim communities, but it does not completely mask the indirect portrayal of the practice as both prominent and negative. The pictures in the article show masses of people all self-flagellating at once, with no mention that the practice is not common everywhere. The article also ends with a description of a terrorist attack completely unrelated to self-flagellation, further perpetuating the image of Islam as a violent religion and shining an overall negative light on self-flagellation. This connects well with Deeb’s An Enchanted Modern, especially the chapter covering Ashura. Deeb says that many of her colleagues from the United States were shocked that she had attended Ashura, and even people she knew from Lebanon were concerned that self-flagellation was creating a bad picture of the nation. In the case of this article, her concerns are quite valid. Written from a Western perspective, it paints the blood-letting part of Ashura for Shi’i populations as a sort of backward practice demonstrative of the violence they believe inherent in the Middle East, which is exactly the idea that Deeb aims to dismantle."