Periscope

--Holly Bailey

Global Buzz

By A. L. Bardach

SALMAN SPEAKS: At a recent book party in Manhattan, novelist Salman Rushdie explained his imperturbability in the face of yet another fatwa slapped on him just two months ago. "Every year on the anniversary of the first fatwa," he said wearily, "some unknown shaggy mullah crawls out of a cave somewhere--usually in Pakistan--and announces that he too is issuing a fatwa against me. Then the mullah gives a speech, which gets picked up by some militant Pakistani rag, which then gets picked up by Reuters, and it's a big story again."

But Rushdie was far more intrigued with the fatwas coming out of Washington. "They are basically going to war with the world. The U.S. economy is plummeting like a stone... and W. is going to be in big trouble next year. They probably have Osama bin Laden stashed away somewhere. I'm not kidding. Then they use him as their trump card right before the election. Another October surprise!"

TEARING OFF THE VEIL: Moroccan Islamic scholar Fatema Mernissi reports that women have taken a dominant role in the Arab media. Of the 80,000 people employed in radio and television, some 50,000 are women, according to a recent article in Egyptian magazine Rose El Youssef. Among the most famous is Muntaha ar-Rimhy, an attractive Al-Jazeera anchorwoman who also hosts a top-rated talk show, "For Women Only." The program can be pretty racy at times: ar-Rimhy devoted an entire show to the taboo topic of sexuality--specifically, "the reasons for the lack of sexual desire among spouses," which she informed her macho Arab viewers was "statistically alarming."