The Sultan of Brunei's Birthday Banquet: HRH Princess Basma bint Talel of Jordan
One of the annual foreign royal guests at the Sultan of Brunei's big birthday bash is Princess Basma of Jordan, the younger sister of the late King Hussein and the aunt of the current king, Abdullah II. She's the woman all the way on the left of this photo.
Basma's tiara is a really interesting diamond piece -- from a distance, it almost looks like a floral tiara, but up close, it's more of an intricate abstract pattern of circles and swirls, with a top element that almost looks like the Prince of Wales feather emblem. It's stunning! (And Basma has grown her hair out a bit in recent years, which sets of the tiara really well. Love it!)
Tags: tiara
She looks wonderfully elegant. Basma clearly knows her way round a tiara. She could do to teach Rania a thing or two.
Very elegant and understated ensemble. Where can we access a close-up of the tiara?
Very elegant ensemble - and these ladies are clearly having a riot.
interesting fact is that Princess Basma's tiara formerly belonged to her mother, Queen Zein...
So many elegant looks in one picture! Basma really excels at wearing Western evening clothing in a beautiful but modest way.
I enjoy your blog very much, so please take this as constructive criticism. I don't know whether you're a monarchist or rather not, but it doesn't really matter. For a monarchist, the monarch derives his authority from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Ten Commandments. That is not the God to which Muslims pray. They say they do (they WOULD say that, wouldn't they?), but they don't. Therefore they all have as much royal authority as "Emperor" Bokassa, even if some of them (as this member of the Hashemite family does) may emulate Western ways. But even if that doesn't mean anything to you and you see all that glitter as part of a huge society bash (which it is becoming more and more anyway), I still object to that kind of commentatorship because you are, I am sure unintentionally, helping to make us in the West comfortable with Islamic sharia law. While I am writing this, in Iran another woman is about to be stoned to death under sharia law. Maybe they don't stone people to death in Brunei, it is even one of the rare Muslim countries that allows other religions to exist as Dhimmies, but that may change at the turn of the Sultan's hand. If we start oh-ing and ah-ing over the deeply misogynist sharia-conform dresses of those women, even though they are bedecked with priceless baubles, and fail to see them as what they are, namely symbols of a cruel death cult out to rule the world, we have made another step in the direction of our self-disposal.
I have commented on it here: Seeping-in Sharia. (I hope this swallows HTML.)
Keep up the good work! Your blog is a real treat in any other respect.
Evil Style Queen, I've been really thinking about how I should respond to this post. This blog is not here for these sorts of religious debates, and frankly I feel a bit uncomfortable with the way you're raising them in your comment.
The bottom line is this: I do not believe that my admiration of a tiara on the head of a Muslim woman automatically equates to my contributing to the mainstream acceptance of the practices you describe. I simply do not accept that argument. I'm sorry you feel the way you do, but I cannot agree with you, and I'm just a little bit offended that you would suggest I am doing so, consciously or unconsciously.
I respect your right to feel however you do about the issues you posted above, but can I please ask that this blog not be turned into a venue for discussing the sorts of controversial (and potentially offensive) religious and cultural issues you have posed? I know that you have a blog where you regularly deal with such topics and their relationship to monarchy; let's keep this blog for hats and tiaras.
I know that may not sit well with you, based on the comment above, but please respect my wishes here. I'm glad you're enjoying the blog otherwise.