This weeks highlight

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UCMAG is out: the sustainable issue!

Buy it in the common room from tuesday for 1,50(worth it). If you happen to forget don't worry...but there will be consequences lets just put it that way...

As to Refresh Headscarf

This is Fatmah Yakub (friend from school) on why she put on her headscarf.


sorry horrible quality but you get it.


We interviewed her for our sociology presentation "Hijab: a rising trend among western-raised (2nd or 3rd generation) young muslim women?"(ish.) It went ok. Just ok. Its an interesting question though.
For example, Fatmah never wore the veil when we were growing up although most of her family did. She only put it on when she moved to London for university.


Why?


Fatmah answers that she wears it to put a "barrier" between her(and her religion)and the things she finds bad (corrupting) about western society.

...But, on a larger scale, why?

Is it a counter-reaction to the extreme liberty of women in western society? Has the overdose of baby-oiled skin on TV driven the moderate to conservative? Is all the attention islam is getting in media, creating a sense of religious coherence?
Or is all of this perhaps the symbol of the hijab changing from one of religious modesty to one of defiance of a dominant culture?

I think all of the above. But then hey forced me to read Huntington's Clash of civilizations in stupid intro to academe but it made me bring my business to an EVEN larger scale:
Maybe the hijab trend is the intensification of cultural practice as we draw nearer the apparently looming clash of "western" and "Arab" civilization. Maybe people are (on some level) being forced to take sides, and further to show their loyalty to either. To tell the world that they belong to one, and therefore, according to the way things are looking now, defy the other.

...Well I don't know. There is no need to be dramatic, and this is of course no reflection on individuals.

You know the weird thing about theory, especially in social science, is that you can sit around for ages and ages and read all the Big Guys and try to find the answer and come up with out-of-this-world theories and debate them forever with other people who stayed up all night comming up with their own heavenly-blessed ideas,
OR you could call someone who is part of that trend and they tell you the answer right there just like that.

Of course its important to do the theory but really, sometimes it feels like science is just a roundabout, much longer route to all the things we somehow already know.

Now, things are falling apart like a pack of cards

...siste.

woah Mario, you really cut your joints off

As to change the channel

Everybody loves MTV.

We may as well admit it. Stupid americans with ridiculous dramatics? Bring it on. Beyonces ass? Never looked better. Some random guys gravely offending chinese culture in a library? ...what?

Seeing these silly billys makes us all feel just a little bit better about ourselves.

But i still think its getting a bit out of hand. We should really find something better to do.

...But then when I've done that I'm tiered from doing all the better-to-do things, and then its just so relaxing to see Heidi scream at Spencer: you can't use your brain all the time can you.
When an option like MTV is put out there, there's no turning back. Our generation is doomed to watch Paris pick fights, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Its not a question of most of us being weak and pathetic and the few remaining being strong and coughcoughweird, its about...speaking through the medium of our times!

Our revolution shall be staged through MTV.
For our parents, it may have been the back of a van somewhere, covered in flowers and other plants, but for us it is through media: internet, print and even tv:
Collectively we are in control of what is shown on tv because it is answering to our demands. Which means we are actually controlling things by lying around! So don't be embarresed next time you watch Run's House reruns: by not changing the channel, you are in fact changing the world! Up and away! Yes we can!!

haha, no im just kidding. We're full of shit.

The counterplots will be showcased

I actually kind of want to see it...what exactly is a flesh-eaters affair?



This kid is fantastic!

As to Judge the Myth of Third Culture Kids

My friend smashed my life-lie to pieces over coffee.

We were discussing whether or not we should go to University College Maastricht, and had just discovered that whereas I thought the ”international community” of the school was a plus, my friend thought it was a big minus. Being myself born and bred in this sort of ”international community” with so-called ”third culture kids” I wanted to stick a fork in her.

“Whadyamean you don’t LIKE it??”
”Well, ” she replies ”Actually you guys kind of-”
“What.”
”-Well i mean not all of you but some...just kind of..”
Prolonged coughing.
”kind of think...that…your a whole lot better than the rest of us.”

When the screaming subsided she explained: having lived in a bunch of different places and seen a big part of the world, the ”third culture kids” understandably thought themselves fairly international, having had many experiences that a ”one culture kid” has not. And with thinking of yourself as experienced and cosmopolitan there came, she explained, a certain amount of subconscious or conscious feeling of superiority, which often lead to arrogance.

But in her view this superiority was nothing but vanity, as the hideous truth was that we weren’t in fact international at all. Yeah, we’d seen some cool stuff. Yet we move from one comfy diplomat dwelling to another. We’d gone to international schools, and the international people we met were in fact other third culture kids that had experienced other but completely parallel lifestyles. We are all from the same economic class. The only thing that varies is the colour of our four wheel drives.


You might even say, she continued, that we all kind of come from the same country (which she named Crazyland but which I here will rename...NOMADIA. Population unknown, citizens called “diplomat kids and frenz” and NOT third culture kids, language: English, which all the inhabitant will insist is NOT spoken with an American accent, even though it really is),


Whatsmore, she said, in seeking out an “international community” I was in fact not looking for internationalism at all, but just seeking out what I was used to. I was going home.

I realized that once again, in the horrible period of our acquaintance, she was right.
I felt quite indignant.
Much in the same way a adolescent skinhead feels when a kid from the neighbour town tells him his town smells like fish uterus.

I struck back; “Were not aaaaaaaaall arrogant hello!...And what’s wrong with wanting to go home?? NOMADIA is the only home we have, don’t we deserve to have a home too?”

“course you do!”

Course we did.

“But it’s just a matter of the image you have of yourself. Stop thinking your international when you all actually come from the same place. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to go home and perhaps even loving your hometown, as long as you acknowledge that that is what you are doing.”
Silence.
“.......You’re a sock.”

But she was a right sock.
Having digested it a little, her argument really started to make sense. There was no reason to think yourself any cooler just for having travelled. I now think of myself as more of a smalltown girl. Who’s had her little town blown into overpriveleged pieces all over the world. And most importantly, on equal footing with the “one culture people” when it comes to value of perspective.


Only one question remains: if we’re not it, where is the “real” international community?

For that, I’m thinking you’d have to go to the low income jobs in the big city.

Flip burgers with Amani and Abdul Hassan.

But all Amani wants is his rap-tape is discovered, so that he can be an American influential capitalist like 50 cent.

Trying to see the world for what it really is, is a perplexing business, and trying to see your own position clearly is even worse.

Course this was all a big waste because I showed up on the first day of school and realized it was like 60% Germans. Or maybe it wasn't.