Bringing Up Baby – Properly
by: Schvach Yid

At the risk of coming across as entirely inappropriate I just have to inform you. Last night I went to the local Barnes and Noble Booksellers outlet to do some recreational print browsing (my mouse is not my life). There it was, albeit on the bottom-most rack, but an attention-grabber all the same - Muslim Girl magazine, a tznius-pushing pictorial magazine for something - teen religious Moslem females.

Lots of photos of Moslem girls socializing and ‘doing their thing’, almost all in traditional attire. One pictorial was titled Aikido Angel, about Amira Mehter who takes lessons in the martial art of Aikido from her dad, Yousef. She, unlike her contemporaries featured in this version of Islam’s answer to Seventeen Magazine, but with a dominant religious theme, was not dressed in traditional Moslem garb, except for her head covering, or hijab; the rest of her was clad, as was her silver-bearded father, in the standard ‘fists of fury’ foot-to-the-opponent’s-jaw outfit, complete with combat stance.

Talk about a showcase for empowerment, and wholesome to boot – a young woman learning to assert herself with martial arts lessons from her silver-bearded father.

Another article challenged the reader to take ‘Our Ramadan Quiz’. And there was a lot more.
Here’s the link: http://www.muslimgirlmagazine.com/web/index.cfm.

At first I was amused. I found it to be both cute and quirky – a standard Western recipe with a novel (to me) application.

Then I saw the wisdom in this. I tried to imagine an analogous publication, in English, for Jewish kids, à la (not Allah) derech hatznius, published by a commercial publishing house rather than by a religious organization like Chabad, and whether we Jews have a young population that would purchase and use such a magazine. In my Bible Belt community Moslems out-populate Jews almost 4:1, and most Jews ‘down’ here are not Orthodox (no kidding).

We Jews do have Chabad Lubavitch and its worldwide network of Chabad Houses that provide for our youngsters, including programs for Jewish kids hooked on drugs and alcohol. I have no idea what goes on among the Moslem young. I don’t know if this magazine even sells, but I’m still envious.