The Gospel According to Andrew

Shaima Rezayee, the 24-year-old host of a controversial, MTV-style television show called “Hop,” presented by the privately owned television station Tolu TV, was shot and killed in her Kabul home on May 18. Andrew Anthony questions why the New Statesman would write that “British newspapers loved the story, portraying Rezayee as a photogenic, Madonna-loving martyr to the anti-Islamist, pro-western cause,” since according to him, “Actually, hardly any newspapers covered the story, but I can’t see what is wrong in portraying someone as a photogenic, Madonna-loving martyr to the anti-Islamist, pro-western cause, if that’s what she was.”

Tolo TV went live in October 2004. Saad Mohseni and his family, who “returned to Afghanistan in 2002 after living for 20 years in Australia,” received starter funds from the US Agency for International Development, as they did for the FM station Radio Arman, and according to a Christian Science Monitor report published just 8 days before Shaima was killed, the tv station is now a self-sufficient operation reporting 81 percent of the market share.

Mohseni, Tolo TV’s director, in reaction to Shaima’s death, told the Christian Science Monitor that she “was dismissed from the program in March because she had problems showing up for work on time,” which CSM had reported a week prior as the same month the station expanded its reach via satellite feed to rural, more conservative audiences and ominously predicted the move would deepen resentments.

According to Enrico Piovesana in the PeaceReporter:

Although there aren’t many televisions outside Kabul, this very change may have lead to Shaima’s murder. That they should occur so close together in time seems like more than mere coincidence. At the same time, there can be little doubt these days that anti-Western sentiment is everywhere in Afghanistan.

AfghanMania in February sought older Afghanis’ opinions on the boiling controversy and noted “One of the most outspoken critics of “Hop” is Fazl Hadi Shinwari, a conservative Islamist who serves as chief justice on the Afghan Supreme Court.”

Older Afghans often are skeptical. Sitting in a Kabul restaurant with a television tuned to “Hop,” Kabul resident Abdul Rahman Faizi says the decisions of Islamic leaders continue to be important in Afghan society.

“Anything that is according to our Islamic Shariat is acceptable for us,” Faizi says. “But if it is not in Shari’a, people will have a hard time accepting it.”

Piovesana on Fazl Hadi Shinwari:

In November 2004 he managed to get the Supreme Court to suspend Tolo TV after only a month on the air. They were accused of having broadcast some Indian Bollywood films, a few classics of American cinema and Western music videos. But when the suspension ended in January, Hop went back on the air and raised the stakes by including along with Hop several other Western-style variety shows in their lineup. In March, the Council of Theology Ulema Shura shot back declaring that Tolo TV’s programming was unpatriotic and anti-Islam.

The so-called “hard-hitting” news man Mosheni denies knowledge of specific threats Shaima may have received and thinks it unlikely her murder was related to the show, despite her recent statements and those of “Hop” veejay Shakeb Isaar, who believes the show is the reason and is currently seeking asylum from “various embassies” due a beating and death threats he’s received. The main suspects are Shaima’s two brothers who were at home at the time. According to Enrico Piovesana’s May 23rd report, “an unknown gunman” broke into her house, which seems to support statements made by Shaima’s sister Fariba Raza’i, that “the door to her house was left open” and “a man driving a Landcruiser vehicle had been following her and her sister every day.” That report also states her father has claimed she was killed by a Tolu TV employee, and because the gun was fired at close range, most of the family believe Shaima committed suicide. Shaima did say that her family was very supportive in a widely reported interview she gave in February.

So, “what is wrong in portraying someone as a photogenic, Madonna-loving martyr to the anti-Islamist, pro-western cause, if that’s what she was,” Andrew Anthony asks, and he also wants to know why doing so “would be a disservice to other Muslim women,” noted as a warning that ends the New Statesman piece. He harbours a decades-old grudge against anti-capitalists, his gripes are inventions culled from la-la land about the anti-globalist movement. And like those who apply martyrdom to their subjects as casually as one might stick a PostIt to their desktop, he presumes no need to qualify it. According to the gospel of Andrew, Starbucks coffee is more divine than Islam, and in the most fervent of fundamentalist traditions neither perceives the irrationality of it, nor cares whether his self-serving reasoning is accepted by the unenlightened.

Amnesty International released the report Afghanistan: Women still under attack – a systematic failure to protect, just days after Shaima’s murder. It “underscored that violence against women in the country remains entrenched and pervasive and that the criminal justice system not only is ineffective in stopping violence, but often compounds it.”

According to the report, authorities rarely investigate reports of violent attacks, rape or murders of women; when cases are prosecuted, the accused often is exonerated or punished lightly. Women who report rape risk being locked up themselves and accused of committing crimes under zina laws, which criminalize sexual relations outside of marriage.

Could the reason “hardly any newspapers covered the story” be that Shaima’s death is a striking condemnation of the system Andrew adores, a stark reminder that in the three years it has been in business, profits are its priority, and freedom is the abstraction it employs to deflect detractors from its mission? The objective of capitalism is not liberating individuals but convincing them to crave the unnecessary, so like any addict who needs a fix they will come back for more. Shaima was a victim of its ruthless disregard for the effects of its scavenging.

Charles Bukowski once said, “Joan of Arc had style. Jesus had style.” Meena had style. MTV has the Andrew Anthonys of the world and their style changes with the season.

Updated @1921 6/7/05:

Spellbound

Celebrate your freedoms! The ones we choose to give you.
Show you the lifestyle that you can aspire to.
Go have some fun! We have entertainments planned for you.
Don’t take life seriously! Until we tell you.
Only concern yourselves with the issues we choose to show you.
Live in your box and we will think for you.
Think out of your box and we will control you.
Question your lives and we will correct you.
Deviate from your path and we will deny you.
Co-operate with us and we will reward you.
Don’t fear your enemies, we are here to protect you.
Who are your enemies, the ones we kill for you.
Enjoy your lives by the rules we make for you.
Enjoy your lives, we are here to guide you.

© Stephen Walton