[Opinion] Too Beautiful for Miss World Pageant

This time it is a Muslim-Christian clash sparked by a beauty pageant. This year’s Miss World pageant was recently forced to relocate to London, England from Nigeria after deadly riots. Speaking in a grandiose way, it is a clash between Muslim fundamentalists and Christians. The target this time is not the World Trade Center but a beauty pageant crown. Nigeria is a mostly Muslim country where fat women are considered beauty and slim ones AIDS patients and that is ruled by the Islam rules stating a woman committing adultery must be stoned to death. The clash was, therefore, expected from the moment the country bid for hosting of a beauty pageant.

▷The tragedy began two years ago - the organizers of Miss Nigeria pageant asked judges to pick the one who met the western standards of a beauty after having frustrating experience on the international level for years. And last year, Miss Nigeria was named Miss World for the first time. Then the exulted civilian government, which came to power in 1999 replacing a military rule, hosted the beauty pageant for year 2002. As delegates around the country began to boycott the event citing the death sentence against the unmarried mother, the government’s Islamic court said it would withdraw the earlier ruling. And the hosts set the schedule after Ramadan to ease growing criticism from fundamentalists, who say that a beauty pageant will only harm women’s sense of charity and encourage promiscuity.

▷Then, a writer for a Nigerian newspaper in her early 20 dropped a bomb by suggested in her article Islam`s founding prophet Muhammed might have wanted to marry one of the contestants. The blasphemous remarks sparked deadly riots, and a state in northern Nigeria on November 26 decreed an Islamic fatwa death sentence on the author. It is like an Islamic punishment on the western value representing things American. The female writer already went into hiding, knowing what would fall on her.

▷Miss Korea Jang Yu-kyung, who witnessed the bloodshed conflict, boycotted the pageant and is now back in Korea. “I couldn’t stand before an audience wearing a smile after seeing hundreds of people killed,” she said. She just couldn’t be there to compete for the crown while victims and their families are suffering. “I again made up my mind to become a medical missionary to help those suffering from poverty and diseases,” said a freshman at Yonsei University majoring biology. Apart from the ongoing controversy over beauty pageants, she looks all the more beautiful for giving up competing in the event. She is our Miss Korea, who is too beautiful to become Miss World.

Kim Sun Deok, Editorial Writer, yuri@donga.com