Back in May, Dunkin’ Donuts withdrew an advertisement that featured its regular pitchwoman, Rachael Ray. The reason? Conservative activists had complained that she seemed to be wearing a kaffiyeh, a head scarf that is often seen as a symbol of militant Palestinian nationalism. (Or, as the right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin put it, “jihadi chic” and “hate couture.”)
Dunkin’ Donuts has been widely ridiculed for pulling the ad. Many critics have insisted that, in the West, the kaffiyeh has become a banal, apolitical token of hipster fashion. (After all, the Olsen Twins, the Jonas Brothers, David Beckham, and Justin Timberlake have all sported them lately.) A spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations told the New York Post, “Yes, it has symbolized Palestinians, but it’s also a yuppie fashion statement … If it’s become a political statement, I didn’t get the memo on it.”
Not so fast, says Ted Swedenburg, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. In a paper presented on Monday at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Mr. Swedenburg insisted that the kaffiyeh is still a potent (and admirable, in his view) emblem of Palestinian solidarity. Even hip, commercialized fashion items can still carry political weight, he said. (Mr. Swedenburg publishes comprehensive-verging-on-obsessive coverage of kaffiyeh sightings on his blog.)
“The vapidness of many uses of the kaffiyeh does not prevent others from using it as a political statement,” Mr. Swedenburg said. “Aren’t Michelle Malkin and others on the far right correct, in a sense, when they call attention to the dangers of this fashion artifact?”
But it’s impossible, Mr. Swedenburg conceded, to control or predict exactly how a symbol will be used. An audience member reminded him of reports that the kaffiyeh has been appropriated by neo-Nazi groups in Europe.
