Miss USA 2010- A Victory for Muslims??

The new face of American beauty is- Rima Fakih, a beautiful Lebanese born American. She emigrated with her parents to the United States as a baby and attended Catholic school in New York City until her family moved to Michigan in 2003. After her win, Rima commented - "I think it would prove that Arabs don't always try to separate themselves, but instead are integrated into American culture" . She also stated that her and her family celebrate both Muslim and Christian holidays. Personally, I do not think that a person no matter what religion they belong to, should make concessions regarding their beliefs just to become "integrated" into their country's culture. To me her comment was really ignorant and just makes me say "what a sell out" lol. Okay let me stop lol. A Muslim women doesn't have to in a beauty pageant to become integrated.

But the main issue here is that many are saying that it's such a milestone for America to have the first Muslim Miss USA. But honestly, in my opinion this is not a victory for Muslim Americans, she simply represents the face of a new type of America. Rima Fakih, does not represent Islam or Muslim women. Muslim women are modest and do not parade on stage in skimpy bikinis! She simply represents Arab Americans.
It's just a beauty pageant! Her victory is not going to bring about any type of change for Muslim Americans. .Plus it's not like her victory is going to change the American perception of Muslims. Already right after her win, many are bringing up the fact that one of her uncles is a member of Hezbollah and how she comes from a strict Shi'a family.

Why do Muslims in Western countries have to make so many concessions in order to be accepted by the societies in which they live? Honestly, I would rather live in this world as a stranger, than have to give up aspects of my religious beliefs just to be accepted by society and become completely integrated into American culture. Yes, I am an American by birth, but for me it will always be us Muslims and them (the non Muslim Americans). I would never want to become FULLY integrated. Many disagree with me, please share your thoughts on this!

Food-ing it in Detroit - day 1

One of my greatest pet peeves is when people take pictures of their meals and add it on their Facebook accounts. Why do they do that? WHY? Now that is big time chichorapan. The only exceptions to this are if it is something really, really unusual. Like you're in Africa and a native slaughtered a cow in front of you and cooked it right there. Now, THAT'S cool. I wanna see that. But you went to the Cheesecake Factory and ordered a shrimp pasta and took a picture of it because...? So anyways, the following pictures aren't unusual at all. At the same time, this isn't Facebook and I'm not clogging up peoples' newsfeeds with my shrimp pastas. This is a blog. Plain and simple. A blog = venue for chichorapan. So let's begin.

We arrived in Detroit Sunday night. Since we'd been to Detroit many times before, we knew the one place that was going to be open FOR SURE that late was Famous Hamburger.I ordered a cheeseburger and Poops got the chicken burger. By the way, their coleslaw is pretty good. I forgot to take a picture of my meal because I was super hungry, so here's a picture of what it kinda looked like:

Teaser Trailer for: Detroit Food Extravaganza

(on the ride home from Detroit)

Poops: When's your baby due?

Me: I don't know. When's your baby due?

Poops: When's your baby due?

Me: Way after yours. When's your baby due?

Poops: No, I'm due after you. When's your baby due?

(No, none of us is with child. But both of us sure look like it. Time to hit the salads and the gym.)

Detroit Extravaganza

I'm currently in Detroit for a few days. And I'm totally loving the fact that Dearborn is nearby and HAS A TON OF ARAB/HALAL RESTAURANTS. !!!!

I thought I'd be all cool and do some sort of "live blogging" but like an idiot, I forgot the cable to my iPhone and my camera. At first I thought I'd post the pictures on facebook via my iPhone and then copy and paste them on here, but then I'd be a big time chichori and I'd have to write about myself as the next example of Amreeki Chichori.

As I write, I'm looking out over Windsor and Detroit. And this pretty lake in front of me. Ah pretty...scary lake. I'm also totally afraid of heights so staying on the 55th floor of an 80something story building is new for me. New. But I use mind control techniques to get over my fear of heights (it's not really heights I'm afraid of, but I'll explain more later.) This hotel is BEAUTIFUL. Alas, we'll have to wait till the weekend to go over my pictures.

So wish me luck, because as in love with as I am with all the good food here, I still make sure my doors are locked when we're driving. (knowwhatimean?) Detroit's a ghost town, a yummy falafel ghost town bitahini.

Tikka done right

We're coming back bigger and better (and badder) in a couple days so stay tuned! In the meantime, enjoy these chicken tikkas!

Amreeki Chichora: Facebook

Click here to learn about Amreeki Chichora.

So before I start our first example of chichorapan, I should explain that I'm completely computer illiterate. Poops is my witness to that. I never knew there was such a thing as the PrntScrn button on my keyboard (I mean let's be honest, who looks up there?) so even though I can probably use it now, I'm just gonna post this example anyways since I spent so much time manually editing it (by editing I mean using my camera to take a picture of it, opening it up in paint, and painting out the name of the chichora.) So let's begin.

Our first chichora (well, chichori) comes to us from facebook. Now, I'm sure many of you have witnessed the same thing I witness EVERY DAY on my newsfeed: the same person joining 500 groups and pages every...freakin'...day. This person is always...ALWAYS...on your newsfeed, joining something.

Khawateen-o-hazraat (Ladies and gentlemen) I present: Facebook chichora

Here we can see Facebook chichora becoming a fan of a multitude of pages and groups:

And here, Facebook chichora is admitting they have a problem:

And yes, they're both pictures of the same person's chichorapan.

I guess I do it too ...bleh

I find it annoying when bloggers take off without reason for long periods of time. And I'm one of them. Sorry! It's been a whirlwind of chaos mixed with tsunamis of emotions followed by hurricanes of joy. But we'll get to that later!

First things first, this is totally overdue. So the contest winners from our 101 post are:

"Grand" Prize winner:

weed: $5

partying it up with your buddies: cost of weed

being sober enough to remember mom's nagging questions about jumping off a bridge if your friends do it too: priceless

Adriana, Miami

Second winner:

THIS.. IS... SPARTA!!!!

Sanjeeta, Boston

Third winner:

Ghost of Olympics future scaring the crap out of Teddy Michael Phelps.

Sonal, Cleveland

P.S. Hope you all liked your prizes!