The controversy began as soon as the glittery diamond tiara was lowered on Rima Fakih’s dark tresses.
Is she the first Muslim Miss USA? Will she be able to keep the title after photos surfaced of Fakih winning a pole-dancing contest?
And — on the conservative blogosphere — is she a secret Islamist extremist?
Fakih, a Lebanese immigrant from Dearborn, Michigan, who was raised in both the Christian and Muslim faiths, is clearly no fundamentalist.
However, her willingness to parade around in a microscopic bikini on national television did not stop conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel from insisting that Fakih was a radical because she shares her family name with some officials in Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite Muslim group which Washington lists as a terrorist organization.
Hours after Fakih’s Las Vegas win on Sunday night, the ill-sourced and illogical rumor went viral, with “rima fakih hezbollah” becoming a suggested search term on Google.
The idea is “ludicrous,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a Swedish political scientist and one of the world’s leading experts on Hezbollah.
“She would be flogged if she showed up in any of Hezbollah’s neighborhoods in Beirut,” Ranstorp said.
Arab-American and Muslim groups hailed Fakih’s win as a sign of the diversity of their culture and their role in US society.
The photos of Fakih gyrating on stage in a 2007 “Stripper 101” contest — not nude, although she was rubbing up against a pole in a tight T-shirt and super-short shorts — cast a pall on celebrations.
Fakih won the contest during an all-female class sponsored by a local radio station, which insists that she should be able to keep her crown.
Times have certainly changed since Vanessa Williams — herself a trailblazer as the first black American to win the Miss America crown — was forced to relinquish the title in 1984 after nude photos of her were published in Penthouse magazine. Fakih never took her clothes off.
Pageant officials have so far declined to comment.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not