temper now thy voice

I really ought not to be writing anything at this moment—can hear children baying in the distance like mastodons. But I just read this very interesting post from the English Muffin Blog which I read every few days or so. I find most particularly interesting the juxtaposition, or maybe collision is a better word—that seems to be occurring (or destined to occur) between the voiceless effaced woman of Islam who is every day more visible in American life (not on TV or in the news but striding silently down the road, through the aisles of the grocery store, sitting at the local park, many children in tow) and the garishly loud Western, even ‘Christian’ woman who, on the news, on the radio, says many many things but whose voice is swallowed up in the disinclination or refusal to have many children. I don’t have anything to say about it, but I was arrested by the visual impact of KJS investiture—the nubile pagan like dancing girls, the amazingly 80s feeling teal and yellow of the vestments, the in your face African clothing of one of the choirs—contrasted, essentially, with the plain furtive shyness of a Muslim woman all covered up. I’ve read various places of the ‘disembodied voice’ in Islam—that women have no body, no face and the voice, thereby, hangs in the air, untethered to reality or hope. In the West women shout as loudly as the men, lathering the landscape with their equality and rights. Well, enough for now, these many children must have their voices quieted with food or we shall never have civilization of any kind in this household.