Is there no end to the wilful, decadent tactlessness of the West? Two hundred and fifteen Nigerians are dead after the riots in Kaduna. It may be more; the Red Cross says that bodies were buried before they could be counted. Thousands more have fled their homes. Twenty churches and eight mosques lie in ashes.
Now the Miss World “beauty pageant” which sparked off the violence between Sharia Muslims and Christians has come home to Britain, barefacedly planning to go ahead next week as planned. Julia Morley’s statement of regret fails even to mention the riots; one contestant says they “didn’t see any smoke” from their hotel at the other end of the country. So that’s all right then. Simper on regardless. Luckily the Albert Hall and Earls Court are booked on December 7, but if an assertive dark-haired virago turns up at your local church hall followed by a posse of busty hair-flicking young women, don’t let her in. The whole thing is a dated, creaking old tart of an event anyway; under the circumstances of this week the very idea of reviving it brings on a triple-strength, unbearable, sickening cringe.
It also throws a lurid light on the way the world has changed and how despite global media and rapid travel, its peoples and beliefs are moving frighteningly apart. Back in the innocent Sixties, feminists in modest boiler-suits used to demonstrate against Miss World because they resented women being judged by their bodies; now it is considered “empowering” to flaunt yourself like a hooker in Sex in the City, and feminist wrath is reserved for the repressive modesties of Islam. So it is left to Muslim fanatics to riot against Miss World. As circles go it is an exceptionally vicious one, especially if you are unlucky enough to live in Kaduna.
The story of Miss World is the story of our shifting sensibilities. When Eric Morley set it up at the Lyceum in 1951, to capitalise on the Festival of Britain across the river, it must have seemed like a bit of fun — a larky innocent holiday-camp event. After the shocks and privations of the war years, the clothes rationing and uniforms and drudgery, it would have been as hard to deny the nation its parade of “popsies” as to ban pin-ups in a barracks. Some countries objected, not on feminist grounds but because of modesty: Morley solved it by exchanging bikinis for one-piece swimsuits. Other early snags include the time that Miss USA arrived for a photocall at the House of Commons wearing a cowboy outfit, and was made to hand her replica guns over at security. Innocent days!
Only a few years later feminists were raging against it. The BBC ignored them and televised it from 1959 to 1979, so my generation remembers it as an hilarious family rite; at its peak 27 million tuned in to see Eric Morley leering at the finalists. If you want the general idea of how that looked, think about Michael Parkinson questioning little Charlotte Church about her boyfriend the other night and you’ll get the idea. When the BBC got too embarrassed to go on, Thames TV took it over for the next eight years, but it was a busted flush. Feminism had won on so many fronts that it is ages since anybody even bothered to attack Miss World.
In any case, post-feminist orthodoxy now decrees that it is virtually a duty to further your ambitions by exploiting your sexual allure far more brazenly than any beauty queen. We tolerate astonishingly explicit TV, admire Tracey Emin for posing with piles of money clasped to her naked crotch, and read style magazines which say it is an acceptable compliment to tell a girl “Baby, you look totally porno!”. People think that the droning Madonna, for heaven’s sake, is someone to take seriously because she has made a lot of money out of being raunchy; the media got quite heated when the 76-year-old monarch very sensibly failed to know who she is.
So Miss World, with its clinging evening dresses, seems comparatively innocent and old-fashioned; and indeed its contestants are often rather more like femmes sérieuses than Madonna (the press releases always say that they are architects or plastic surgeons). And it does raise money for charity. So in recent years it has drivelled on, just a bit of fluff that doesn’t matter.
That, at least, is how we perceive it in chilled-out, unshockable Britain. In developing countries, where any crumb of international prestige is important, Miss World holds a higher significance. When the beautiful Agbani Darego was “crowned” last year, the first black African to win the title, she spoke in language strange to us of “honour, respect, a hallowing experience”. She travelled, she did charity gigs, she declared herself “inspired” and reiterated the gluey motto of the modern Miss World corporate empire “Beauty with a Purpose” . She spoke of “God crowning my life with His love”. Miss Darego took it with simple seriousness, as an honour which linked her struggling country with the wider world.
The Nigerian Government felt the same. It leapt on the opportunity to stage the show and showcase the country. There was, however, the small problem of the Muslim regions which two years ago introduced Sharia: a cruel and unforgiving form of Islam, which gets adjusted according to whatever the reigning group fancies enforcing. Sharia is a bullies’ charter with religious resonance, and ever since the Spanish Inquisition we know what that leads to. The ten states which adopted it have rapidly aggravated their differences with the Christian population of Nigeria, and been a constant headache to President Obasanjo.
In some states there are single-sex schools and bans on gambling and alcohol; a rape victim has been flogged for “fornication”, at least one amputation carried out and death sentences passed. The most notable was on Amina Lawal, a single mother currently under sentence of death by stoning when her child is weaned. Vigilante groups — fuelled by male unemployment — roam the streets looking for sinners to hurt. In two separate riots over the past two years, 2,500 people are reported dead.
Into this powder-keg the Nigerian Government saw fit to toss the match of Miss World. The dazzle of winning blinded them to the dangerous fact that being world-class at putting young women in revealing clothes does not endear you to the strict Muslim tendency. Lunatically, they scheduled the show during the holy month of Ramadan (it was moved only recently). The first snag came when the case of Amina Lawal brought on boycotts from various contestants. Repeated statements from the Government insisted that this stoning will never happen because the Government “will not fold its arms and watch its citizens’ rights abused”. The Information Minister blamed the foreign media for talking up the case.
But all the time a worse danger was creeping up behind. The final straw was a stupid remark in a newspaper — still in Ramadan — to the effect that Muhammad would have chosen a wife from the Miss World line-up. The powder-keg blew up and left the streets full of corpses, Christian and Muslim, man, woman and child. The Information Minister is unrepentant. “There is,” he says, “an international conspiracy just to show that an African country cannot host this thing.”
It’s not a conspiracy. It’s a lethal, obvious, unnecessary culture clash. We should know since the twin towers that many of the world’s Muslims — the dispossessed, led by richer fanatics — are angry. The reasons are complex and global, but the local effect is that any behaviour and display which is blatantly, defiantly un-Islamic will always spark rage. Unless you have the power to contain it, you shouldn’t provoke that rage. Just because we in the West have moved on to other worries about young women — like whether they should sell their eggs to pay their student loans, and how to stop them starving themselves to death — we should not ignore the large sector of the world’s population which is still upset by tight swimsuits. It’s tactless and stupid.
To post-Christian Westerners who don’t like it on feminist or aesthetic grounds, Miss World is an unimportant sideshow. To an angry Muslim extremist, it is an insult and a peril. The Nigerian Government was rash, the organisers were crass, and the idea of holding it next week in Britain is unforgivable. What’s so beautiful about women who can’t bring themselves to care about 215 dead Nigerians and 11,000 homeless ones?
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