Posted on 12/26/2007 12:28:00 PM PST by SmithL
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Umm Doha cuts hair and waxes eyebrows in secret from her living room because making women look pretty can get a person killed in her Sunni-dominated Baghdad neighborhood.
Hardline Muslim extremists who believe it is sinful for women to appear beautiful in public have forced many beauticians to move their trade underground.
Sunni and Shiite militants began blowing up salons roughly two years ago. They killed several stylists and bullied others into putting down their scissors and makeup brushes for good, all in an effort to stamp out what they view as the corrupting spread of Western culture.
Besides beauty salons, militants have also targeted liquor stores, barber shops and Christian churches.
In the past year, most beauty salons in the Shiite-dominated southern city of Basra went underground, as they did in the Sunni-controlled neighborhood of Dora in west Baghdad.
To those outside of Iraq, the prospect of being killed just for frequenting a hair salon might seem a convincing reason not to go. But despite being targeted by militants, stylists say women here still want to look good — and stylish. Refusing to get a haircut or having their makeup done would be giving in to the violence and despair surrounding them.
"See this salon?" said the stylist Kifah, as she deftly lopped off a woman's dark hair into smart layers in her east Baghdad establishment. "It's never been empty, not through the Iraq-Iran war, the Gulf war or this war. Women are women, they always want to look good."
Despite her bravado, Kifah, like all the hairdressers interviewed, asked that her full name not be used because she feared retaliation by extremists.
The latest attack on a salon was Dec. 13, in the city of Mosul northwest of the capital.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Just goes to show that the Religion of Peace is also the Relgion of Ugly
Is there anyone more totally insane than those wacky, wacky Muslims and Islamofascist/nazis?
It was mother natures cruelest trick to give oil to these fruitcakes. It they didn’t have oil, they would still be eating dirt cooked on a goat dung fire and hammering out cheap brass teapots. What maroons.
SFGate finally showing some outrage now that the hairdressers are being targeted.
Glad to see that the terrorists have move away from the soft targets in this war and are taking the fight where the real danger is. Those are some real brave men taking on those dangerous beuty salons like that.
Yup. Just more proof for us dumb masses that the Iraqis were better off under Saddam.........boy did we screw up getting rid of him.......
LOL.
This is printed now to make our war look like a failure. But they’d never have printed it earlier showing what a mess Islamist societies are before we had to go and disarm one.
More’s film was pumped up by this paper showing that before we went in Iraqis were all just flying kites and enjoying time with their families. Now they’re getting killed for having their hair done.
This could finally get John Edwards on the right side of the War On Terror.
There are no real hairdressers in Iran.
Proof that radical muslims LIKE THEIR WOMEN UGLY.
Hairy too.
Sheesh.
I love having a part in the freeper editorial board. :)-
Real men, huh?
Maybe we ought to kick their asses, take their oil, free their women, empty their prisons, educate their young, and stop pretending that their sick, twisted hate-and-revenge obsessed cult is an equally valid human achievement as ours. But don’t ask me: I’m a well-known savage.
Not that anyone could notice they’d been to the salon through all that covering and if the guy who they’re trying to look good for is more interested in the goat then why bother.
Imbeciles.
Eyebrow waxing?
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