Zeina Nassar didn’t change for the rules. She helped change the rules.
The German-born boxer of Lebanese parents lives in Berlin, where she has been training diligently for the 2020 Olympics while keeping up with her university studies. However, Zeina’s far from being your stereotypical 21-year-old college student. That’s because as a Muslim, who is devout to her faith, she wears a headscarf – a hijab – both in public and in the boxing ring. And that’s where things get tricky and complicated.
“I don’t want to be reduced to my looks, or my hijab,” says Nassar, in a Nike-produced video posted on her Instagram profile (@zeina.boxer). “It really doesn’t matter which religion I practice. In the end, what matters to me is my sport.”
Fascinated by both the discipline and elegance of the sport of boxing, the 2018 German champion says, “We live in a time where everything should be possible, and you have to fight to make changes in society.”
In an interview with Material magazine, Nassar said she was looked upon as “an absolute misfit” in the ring when she began boxing. However, she said, “I didn’t let that discourage me. It’s those fallacies I want to tackle and, hopefully, someday, get rid of for good. I believe that everyone should have the right to do whatever it is he or she pleases to do. Simple as that.
“Personally, I feel empowered through boxing. Even though I have had to face all kinds of unfairness, I never held back from doing what I believed in just because it may have crossed someone else’s opinion or expectation of what I could or could not do.”
When Nassar first participated in a boxing competition in 2013, according to regulations, she was not allowed to compete in a hijab. She remembers she often had the feeling she needed to prove herself twice as hard as the others.
“My first coach fought for the boxing regulation to be changed in Germany,” Nassar recalls. “And since then, all women are allowed to compete in boxing.
“Back then, I really had no idea what I started, but today I’m more and more aware that I am a role model for a lot of kids and adults. When I was 13, I didn’t even think about whether I would be allowed, wearing a hijab, or not. For me, it was just normal, same as for all the other kids. I had a dream and wanted to do it.”
Now, Nassar is featured in Nike’s new “Dream Crazier” ad campaign, which launched worldwide via social media on Sunday. The Nike swoosh is prominantly displayed on Nassar’s hijab that she wears when she competes.
Just last week, Nassar scored a huge victory outside of the boxing ring. That’s because the International Boxing Association rewrote the rules, allowing women all over the world to box while wearing hijabs. No longer will Nassar’s hijab be an obstacle for her in the ring.
“It’s a huge win for me and for women across the world,” she wrote on Instagram. Her fighting spirit lives on.
“My ongoing contribution to the world is that I want to continue to inspire people,” Nassar told Material magazine. “I want to encourage people, especially women, to not take ‘no’ for an answer. I want women to feel strong, brave, independent, victorious. I want women to see me and say ‘Hey, if she can do it, so can I.’ Every day, I receive messages of people telling me how much I’ve helped them with conquering fears and doubts. It gives me so much pride, hope and happiness. It fuels my own motivation to fight. Not only in the ring. Not only for myself. But for all of us.”
In just four days, Donald J. Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. With a lot of division surfacing throughout the country, many Americans are looking to art as a means of connecting us as human beings.
We the People ... are greater than fear.
"We the People are greater than fear," reads the message of a new poster created by Shepard Fairey, the graphic arts, muralist, illustrator and activist behind the iconic 2008 Hope posters he created for Barack Obama. Another new poster reads "We the People protect each other" and the third one says "We the People defend dignity."
There is a lot of division right now. Trump is not a healer," says Fairey. "Art, on the other hand, is healing and inclusive, whether topically it celebrates humanity, or whether it's just compelling visuals to make a human connection."
Interviewed recently by the PBS NewsHour, Fairey said "it was the right time to make a campaign that's about diversity and inclusion, about people seeing the common bonds we have, and our connections as human beings. The idea was to take back a lot of this patriotic language in a way that we see is positive and progressive, and not let it be hijacked by people who want to say that the American flag or American concepts only represent one narrow way of thinking."
Shepard has created three portraits for the "We the People" campaign. One depicts a Muslim woman wrapped in a hijab resembling an American flag. Another shows a young African-American girl and the third features a Latina female.
We the People ... protect each other.
Two other artists, the Colombian American muralist Jessica Sabogal and the Chicano graphic artist Ernesto Yerena, each contributed to the project in collaboration with the Amplifier Foundation, a nonprofit that works to amplify grassroots movements and which commissioned the project. Together, the artists hope the faces of "We the People" – standing in for traditionally marginalized groups or those specifically targeted during Trump's presidential campaign – will flood Washington, D.C., on Friday during Inauguration Day.
According to Fairey, "All the subjects (in 'We the People') were photographed by people who relate to them somehow. The Muslim woman was shot by a Muslim photographer, the Latina woman shot by a Latino photographer, and the African-American kid shot by a French African-American woman photographer. We realized that this has got to be a diverse coalition of artists for us to do this, and that while it's good for us to be allies, this campaign really has to be authentically diverse."
Fairey went on to say in the PBS NewsHour interview, "We came to a conclusion as a group that in the language (for these posters) we want to say, 'We reject fear-mongering and exclusion.' But we also wanted to do it in a way that doesn't leave the door open for the Fox News type to say, 'This is reverse racism' ..."
We the People ... defend dignity.
Adds Fairey: "It's hard to encapsulate the complexity of what we're facing, going into this Trump presidency, in three images. But we chose three groups that are vulnerable. In the history of the U.S., there are a lot of people who fled persecution from Europe on the basis of religious identities. The idea of championing the ideals of our forefathers and then limiting the movement of Muslims – it so confounding that this is not riling more people up. And so it's really time to do some (work) that I think is a counterargument to that, and that's not based on division but based on inclusion. We've seen where division has got us."
A Kickstarter campaign has begun that according to Fairey is "getting great traction." He said a goal of his group is funding an ongoing and expanding range of creative projects, with the next wave of people from all different communities. "We want to allow people to express all their social/political views around a number of issues – LGBT rights, women's rights – because a number of those things are going to be under attack under Trump."
Photos: We the People images by Shepard Fairey; U.S. Constitution courtesy of Google Images.
Mississippi / From Hospitality State to Hostility State, thanks to H.B. 1523.
Dear Mississippi, In case you missed it we've already had this conversation. You don't get to decide who sits at the lunch counter. Love, America
The above letter that's making the rounds on Facebook sums up a lot of common-sense feelings in just a few words. In a matter of days, Mississippi went from being the "Hospitality State" to the "Hostility State," thanks to the recent passing of a hateful and discriminatory measure (House Bill 1523) by the State Legislature.
Memo to Republican Governor Phil Bryant: "You don't love your neighbors by discriminating against them." Shame on you.
Mississippi / "You're on my mind ... "
Indeed, I've been saddened by the appalling news that my former home state of Mississippi (where I graduated from high school in the Gulf Coast city of Ocean Springs) last week passed legislation and the governor signed into law "The Religious Liberty Accommodations Act," which directly targets the LGBT community throughout the state – from Tupelo to Biloxi, from the Delta to the Gulf Coast and everywhere in between. The bill is so draconian that the state's largest daily newspaper, the Clarion-Ledger of Jackson called it "an act of oppression."
According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, H.B. 1523 "would allow individuals, religious organizations and private associations to use religion to discriminate against LGBT Mississippians in some of the most important aspects of their lives, including at work, at schools, and in their communities."
In an April 6 editorial, The Clarion-Ledger wrote: "Through the swish of pen, (Governor Phil) Bryant signed away the rights of families, ignored the pleas of residents and businesses, and wrote another page in the state's history that future generations will be shocked – even embarrassed – to read. With a final stroke of that pen, Mississippi welcomed its latest Jim Crow law and displayed a sign for the world to see: Welcome to Mississippi. No gays allowed. Mississippi and its citizens deserve better than this unconscionable law."
In no time at all, Mississippi became the butt of jokes nationwide, as evidenced by a satirical Mississippi Anti-LGBT video released by the comedy website Funny or Die, which has already received 50,000 views on YouTube:
According to an article in the South Mississippi Sun-Herald newspaper over the weekend, Gulf Coast mayors seemed unanimous in their stance against H.B. 1523, saying it didn't reflect the residents of their respective South Mississippi cities. Each worries about the negative publicity and potential economic fallout that might hit the Coast. (On Monday, rock singer Bryan Adams pulled out of a concert scheduled for Thursday in Biloxi to protest the signing of H.B. 1523.)
Ocean Springs Mayor Connie Moran told the Sun-Herald she thought H.B. 1523 was unnecessary and bad legislation. "It is nothing more than codified discrimination," she said. "This just set us back to the 1960s. We're just moving from a sense of bigotry from race to sexual identity.
"Freedom of religious expression is every individual's right, but it has no place in government."
Memo to the Mississippi State Legislature and other supporters of H.B. 1523: Folks, it's 2016 not 1966! Have you not learned from your past?
Fortunately, there's at least one voice of reason in Mississippi, despite all of the shambles happening at the state capitol. It belongs to independent bookseller Square Books, located on the town square in Oxford, the city which is home to the University of Mississippi. In business since 1979 – and widely known among readers as the hub of William Faulkner's "postage stamp of native soil," Yoknapatawpha – Square Books in its infancy hosted a variety of racially and culturally diverse authors including Toni Morrison, Allen Ginsberg and Alice Walker as well as Mississippians John Grisham, Richard Ford and Willie Morris.
Over the weekend on their Facebook page, the owners of Square Books posted a message that read: "In the wake of HB-1523, we at Square Books want to make sure you know that you are welcome here. Always. 'If you are anyone, from anywhere, we hope you will visit us, and we hope you may find something you would like to read.'"
Square Books gets it – that H.B. 1523 needs to be repealed. Now, let's hope that the state's governor and legislature get it, too. Sooner than later.
As Rev. Susan Russell, an Episcopal priest and activist from Pasadena, Calif., recently wrote on Huffington Post, "Let's get back to work making this a country where the pledge of 'liberty and justice for all' doesn't depend on your zip code. It's what we're all called to do."
At the de Young Museum / Objects of Belief from the Vatican
Eketea, god figure / Gambier Islands, wood (collected 1834-1836).
Objects of Belief from the Vatican: Art of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, an exhibition of 39 rarely seen holdings of the Vatican Ethnological Missionary Museum that is on display at the de Young Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco through September 8, celebrates the multiple paths of spirituality represented by the objects on display and serves to invite viewers to engage in a dialogue that spans religions, cultures and history.
On a recent Friday evening, I had the opportunity to see Objects of Belief from the Vatican, drawn from a collection that numbers more than 80,000 objects. The softly-lit, upstairs gallery was both quiet and meditative as I viewed these beautiful works of art, which were selected for their artistic and cultural significance. I was impressed by the exhibition's design to offer each patron with a personal viewing experience, "allowing for reflection on the diversity of human expression manifest in objects of belief, and on the multiple paths to religious understanding."
According to the de Young, Objects of Belief from the Vatican draws its inspiration from the Vatican's recent efforts to highlight world cultures through important special exhibitions such as this one. It marks the first time that an exhibition consisting solely of works from the Vatican Ethnological Missionary Museum from continents and cultures beyond Europe has traveled to the United States.
Jesuit Father Nicola Mapelli, director of the Vatican Ethnological Missionary Museum, believes using these objects as a means of reconnecting with indigenous communities throughout the world is very important. "Through the objects we can show the living story of a people: their history, hopes, joys, and desires," said Mapelli, in a Fine Arts magazine article about the exhibition. "Through our exhibitions, we can show our visitors from around the world something about the wonderful culture and spirituality of indigenous people."
One thing which I enjoyed about the exhibition was its presentation allowed me to learn about the local and global significance of these "objects of belief" and their journeys, leading from one culture to another and from the past to the present, without an imposition of a single dominant cultural storyline.
Among the many important "manifestations of spirituality" in the exhibition are two masks and three shrine carvings that were obtained in 1691 by Fray Francisco Romero in Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and presented to Pope Innocent XII, which represent the beginning of the Vatican's ethnological collections.
Also, there are two rare and figurative sculptures depicting the gods Tu and Tupo that were gifted by Father Francois Caret, the first missionary in Mangareva, to Pope Gregory XVI in 1837. And, easily noticed is a 15th-century Mexican stone sculpture of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. This embodied image serves as a visual and physical reminder of a manifestation of belief in a dynamic ritual culture.
To learn more about Objects of Belief from the Vatican:
On Monday morning, I woke up to the stunning development that Pope Benedict XVI, the spiritual leader and world face of the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church, had announced his resignation effective at the end of this month.
It is historic news which shocked the Vatican, stunned the world and broke with 600 years of tradition.
Consider this: A pope has not resigned since the Middle Ages -- the last one being Pope Gregory XII in 1415. So, it's not something we've ever witnessed in our lifetime.
Could the pope even resign? Pope is a lifetime appointment and successors are usually chosen after a pope has died, like in 2005, when Pope Benedict XVI was chosen to succeed Pope John Paul II.
"The former Joseph Ratzinger came to the highest office in the Roman Catholic church with a reputation as a challenging, conservative intellectual," wrote the London-based The Guardian on its website following Monday's announcement. "But the messages he sought to convey were all but drowned out, first by a string of controversies that were largely of his own making, and subsequently by the outcry -- particularly in Europe -- over sexual abuse of young people by Catholic clerics."
The Guardian continued: "Ratzinger had spent almost a quarter of a century in the Vatican, so it was reasonable for the cardinals who elected him to assume he understood it inside out, and would be keen to improve its workings. But, although he had been an influential and trusted lieutenant of John Paul II, the new German pope was a paradox.
"On the one hand, he was intellectually remorseless. Not for nothing had he attracted the nickname 'God's rottweiler'. Yet, like many scholars, he was timid -- wholly lacking in that desk-thumping vigour needed to foist reforms on clerics whose resistance to change is the stuff of legend."
While Pope Benedict XVI made headlines last December by being the first pope with a Twitter account, when it came time for the Holy Pontiff to deliver the news of his impending resignation, he opted for a much slower moving (and more character-filled) method of delivery. Looking frail, he delivered his resignation in that most ancient of languages originally spoken in ancient Rome, Latin.
Dear Brothers, I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church. After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.
I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today's world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me. For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.
Dear Brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects. And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff. With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of Gold in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.
The Vatican was quick to say that Pope Benedict, 85, was not resigning because of the "difficulties in his papacy," but rather due to his health and advanced age. The news reverberated globally and was met with shock, sadness and disbelief. World leaders shared their thoughts about the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.
President Obama issued this statement:
"On behalf of Americans everywhere, Michelle and I wish to extend our appreciation and prayers to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. Michelle and I warmly remember our meeting with the Holy Father in 2009, and I have appreciated our work together over these last four years. The church plays a critical role in the United States and the world, and I wish the best to those who will soon gather to choose His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI's successor."
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti: "I am greatly shaken by this unexpected news."
British Prime Minister David Cameron: "He has worked tirelessly to strengthen Britain's relations with the Holy See. His visit to Britain in 2010 is remembered with great respect and affection. He will be missed as a spiritual leader to millions."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel: "If the pope himself, after thorough reflection, has come to the conclusion that he doesn't have the strength anymore to carry out his duties, then this has my utmost respect. He had to make a difficult decision."
The Catholic College of Cardinals will meet in conclave at the Sistine Chapel after taking a vow of secrecy to choose Benedict's successor in the near future, after his official resignation at 8 p.m. on February 28, according to the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman.
"Before Easter, we will have the new pope," Father Lombardi said. The start of the Catholic Church's Lenten season begins tomorrow with Ash Wednesday. Easter Sunday is March 31.
While Benedict won't be involved in the decision to elect a new pope, according to Father Lombardi, his influence will be felt. After all, Benedict appointed 67 of the 118 cardinals who will make the decision. It takes at least two-thirds plus one of the 118 voting cardinals to elect a new leader for the church.
There is no obvious successor, but the leadership of the Catholic Church has a unique opportunity -- a chance for a rebirth -- when they meet to select a new leader. Will it come from outside the usual Italian/western European mold? I hope so. This is a great opportunity for both inclusion and to select someone who is much younger than Benedict.
Remember the energy and excitement when a young (age 58) and charismatic cardinal from Poland, Karol Józef Wojtyla, emerged to begin his reign as Pope John Paul II in 1978? His legacy included becoming the second-longest serving pope in history and the first non-Italian since 1523.
Is there another charismatic cardinal waiting in the wings? I don't know. I can only wish that whoever it is does a better job than Benedict in uniting together Jews, Muslims and Christians with Catholics.
Among those whose names surfaced Monday as possible successors, according to The New York Times, include: Cardinal Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Milan; Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Canada; Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana; Cardinal Leonardo Sandri of Argentina; and Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York.
According to CNN Senior Vatican Analyst John Allen, regardless of where the next pontiff is from -- whether it be from Italy, Europe, Asia, Latin America or North America -- he will probably continue Benedict's conservative tradition as conservative vision likely will trump geography. So much for a chance to re-examine the Catholic Church's stance on hot-button issues like same-sex marriage, the loosening of restrictions on the use of condoms to prevent AIDS and the ordination of women priests.
During Benedict's tenure, the Catholic Church has taken a firm line on issues such as abortion, birth control and divorce. It has also been clouded by a series of sex abuse scandals involving Catholic priests, which started in Europe and spread across the Atlantic to the United States. Many church critics believe the church's ship has become adrift.
"So when the pope stunned the world on Monday with his resignation announcement, his supporters and detractors alike almost universally hailed the move as a movement of grace, sounding almost relieved to see the end of what has been a very turbulent journey," wrote Laurie Goodstein of The New York Times, in a front-page news analysis published in today's print edition.
While the new pope undoubtedly will have big shoes to fill, one thing is certain as the soon-to-be old pope leaves St. Peter's chair for emeritus status: Pope Benedict XVI leaves the papacy looking and feeling frail, his legacy clouded by scandal and declining faith.
