{"id":2410,"date":"2006-11-15T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-15T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/altmuslim\/?p=2410"},"modified":"2006-11-15T03:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-15T08:00:00","slug":"vince_mcmahon_lives_in_my_mosque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/altmuslim\/2006\/11\/vince_mcmahon_lives_in_my_mosque\/","title":{"rendered":"Entertainment: Vince McMahon lives in my mosque"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>\n\n\n
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Are your kids on smack(down)?<\/div>\n

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\u201cSuck it.\u201d<\/i> Did he really just say that? \u201cSuck it.\u201d<\/i> This time he held his hands high, crossed them and smacked them against his thighs, gesturing to his crotch. That was, uhh, unexpected.<\/p>\n

After shaking off the reality that is a 9 year old South Asian Muslim kid telling me to suck his private parts, I reflected [again] upon what it means that our kids (and adults) find it \u201cfun\u201d to watch women getting stripped and spanked. It isn\u2019t just \u201cthose other kids,\u201d either. It is our kids. Our kids who we let sit in front of the television without speaking to them about what they are watching, and then make them go to the mosque where we tell them to memorize verses that they don\u2019t understand. You may be wondering what I\u2019m writing about\u2026<\/p>\n

Allow me introduce you to World Wrestling Entertainment<\/a>, or WWE. It used to be known as WWF for those of you 80\u2019s kids out there. The first responses I receive when asking aunties and uncles about this usually consist of, \u201cOh, it\u2019s just fake wrestling.\u201d or \u201cIt\u2019s just fun, just entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n

If they actually sat down and watched they\u2019d see repeated images of things like women being beaten, being forced to get on all fours and bark like dogs, being spanked, and sexually harassed. Not to mention having men\u2019s faces being shoved into another man\u2019s behind. Really, do I need to go on? Okay, maybe just one more. They\u2019d also see women-only wrestling matches titled \u201cbra and panty matches.\u201d First woman to strip the other woman of her clothes wins.<\/p>\n

Just a few weeks ago, I walked in to the Islamic Society of Central Jersey intending to pray. While I was making the motions, however, I was listening intently to the conversations of kids who arrived early to recite the Qur\u2019an.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, they weren\u2019t reciting the Qur\u2019an, they were discussing Vince McMahon and the latest story lines of the WWE. I hear those discussions in mosques all the time. Again, you may try to brush this aside with statements like these shows don\u2019t affect my kids, these shows are just for fun.<\/p>\n

But if advertising wasn\u2019t effective, these corporations and media conglomerates wouldn\u2019t be spending billions of dollars on marketing. And our kids wouldn\u2019t be discussing Vince McMahon and his latest conquests right before Friday prayer. Every week, 4.5 million teens watch WWE, and that was back in 2002. Four years later, I\u2019m sure that number has gone way up.<\/p>\n

Before you start thinking that I\u2019m nuts, let me qualify this post by stating that I am not arguing a simple, cause-and-effect type relationship between our kids\u2019 behavior and something they watch. However, to quote Jackson Katz, (See the Media Education Foundation<\/a>\u2018s Documentary, Wrestling with Manhood<\/i><\/a>): \u201cBeyond simplistic notions of cause-and-effect, we need to examine how something watched so frequently by so many boys and young men might cultivate, legitimate and glamorize certain ideas about what it means to be a man, and therefore certain behaviors that conform to these ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

We laugh at this kind of \u201centertainment\u201d \u2013 what does that say about us? Well, according to Media Ed\u2019s Study Guide for the Documentary (PDF<\/a>) linked above (and common sense), here are just a few things it means:<\/p>\n