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.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home