Word: contests
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...Nigerian debut of the Miss World beauty pageant was already on its way to becoming the Nigerian nightmare when an inflammatory editorial was published last week in a Nigerian paper. Its suggestion that the Prophet Muhammad would have married a Miss World contestant had he seen the contest did not help to ease the tensions swirling around the controversial pageant. Of course no one knew that it would lead to three days of religious rioting and more than 100 deaths, but this result cannot be too surprising...
...real mystery about this tragedy is why the pageant’s organizers were so committed to imposing the contest on Nigeria in the first place. Of all the times and places to hold the Miss World competition, Nigeria during Ramadan must be the worst combination. With a recent history of religious violence, Nigeria is an odd country to host the Miss World pageant. Its large and influential Islamic population, much of which lives under Islamic Law, considers the public exhibition of women to be an obscenity. But despite the offensive and insulting effects of the pageant, the Miss World...
...contest needed to show that it was not actually as racially discriminatory as it appears to be. Never mind that no black African had ever won the contest before last year, and never mind that only one of the nine judges—the one from India—hailed from a country other than Britain and its white settler colonies. The contest supposedly demonstrated its impartiality last year by selecting Agbani Darego, Miss Nigeria, to be the first black African Miss World in the contest’s 50-year history. (Two previous African winners had been white South...
...organizers’ irresponsible decision to hold this contest in Nigeria, a country already tense with conflict between Muslims and Christians, probably would not have gone forward if the Nigerian federal government hadn’t also been so bent on proving itself in the eyes of the world. Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria sees itself as the preeminent power in Africa, which is an accurate appraisal as long as we ignore South Africa. In only its third year of democracy, however, the country still has a lot to prove before it is ready to take...
...might think this rump race would be no big deal. You would be wrong. Although Bush warned Republicans not to gloat over taking the Senate, he didn't say anything about not rubbing it in with one more win. Senator Mitch McConnell, the G.O.P. campaign chairman, refers to the contest as "war." He's pouring as much as $10 million into the state to help Terrell, who had been a relative unknown until Election Day, when she finished ahead of the early favorite, Representative John Cooksey. He was abandoned by the national party after describing a Muslim as wearing...