California Conservative

Look, ma! No burkha!

AP reports: “Since long before leaving her native Iran as a teenager in 1984, Anousheh Ansari stared at the stars and dreamed of traveling closer to them. Now at age 40, after an improbable journey that’s included learning a new language, earning an engineering degree and starting a telecommunications company that made her rich, this Dallas businesswoman will become the first female space tourist on a Soyuz spacecraft that lifts off Monday.
. . .

Her space ride will cost about $20 million. Ansari can afford it because she and her husband sold their company in 2000 for about $550 million in stock from the acquiring company.”

“She says she is eager to see Iran from space — she hasn’t been back since emigrating to the United States — and hopes to inspire girls in her homeland to study science. Ansari says she’s received e-mail messages from many of them, although her flight has received scant attention in Iran. She is, after all, an American citizen.”

Not to mention the last thing male-dominated Islamic leaders want is for girls to dream of reaching for the stars. After all, there’s only room for 72 virgins. Everybody knows that.

“Ansari and her family left Iran a few years after the Islamic revolution, in part because the opportunities for a young girl to study science were becoming limited there.”

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad was unavailable for comment.

Space-travel enthusiasts hope the Dallas entrepreneur will be an inspiration to a new generation of young women.

“We have a lot of white male astronauts,” said George Whitesides of the National Space Society, a nonprofit group that advocates space travel. “To have someone different is great. It enables girls and women to identify more with space and talk about being a space explorer someday.”

But what does the Koran say about that?

In related news…

Veiled Pakistani activists of Jamiat Ulma-i-Islam carry placards during a protest against the remarks of Pope Benedict XVI, in Peshawar. Benedict’s apology for remarks seen as critical of Islam failed to quell anger in the Muslim world as Iraqis burned him in effigy and Al-Qaeda in Iraq vowed to “smash the cross.”(AFP/Tariq Mahmood)

Girls attend a protest against remarks by Pope Benedict in Amman September 18, 2006. REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed (JORDAN)

They can only dream of not being raped, butchered or stoned to death. Wonder what the afterlife offers them?

UPDATE:
Reuters: Study finds U.S. bias against women in science

Did they ask Anousheh Ansari? Note: No similar studies have been done in Islamic nations for reasons of irrelevancy.

Technorati Tags: First female, Anousheh Ansari, space tourist, Iran

This entry was posted on Monday, September 18th, 2006 at 1:23 pm and is filed under Capitalism, Culture, Religion, Middle East, Iran. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.