The crowning of the first Muslim Miss USA is a big deal, says Tunku Varadarajan in The Daily Beast. Some "clod-headed killjoys on the right" have said that, by bestowing the tiara on Rima Fakih, judges indulged in "an odd form of affirmative action." But that's missing the point. Rima Fakih has shown that embracing American culture can be liberating for a young Shiite Muslim woman. And ordinary Americans, by embracing their new beauty queen, have shown they have no beef with Islam. That "must be irksome for the mullahs" — and heartwarming to everybody else. An excerpt:
"My first reaction [to Fakih's win] was to wonder whether she was a Mossad agent in deep disguise. My second was to applaud her for the gusto of her assimilation, and for the extent to which this Muslim woman, clearly not an assiduous practitioner of her faith, had embraced American ways....
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