Rihanna goes casual in new fashion line for Armani [true religion jeans]
Rihanna, the Bajan pop sensation, has designed a small collection of casual jeans, T-shirts and underwear for Giorgio Armani's Emporio label.
Her trademark “R,” scripted in “Zoro” style slashes, is, for this small collection, fused to one of the world's most iconic fashion logos – the stylized Emporio eagle. She – of questionable taste – has attached her fashion sense to a style powerhouse.
The 23-year-old singer, who has appeared in advertisements and even a video for the Milan-based brand, is now apparently trying her hand at fashion design.
The association with Armani represents yet another fusion between showbiz and fashion design. Some Hollywood celebrities have modelled for designers (Dakota Fanning for Marc Jacobs) and others have simply worn their clothes on the red carpet. And a few have actually lent their high-profile names as putative designers.
For Armani's secondary collections — Emporio Armani Underwear and Armani Jeans — the sultry performer has created two styles of jeans, two T-shirts and underwear.
This is not the first time fashion labels have sought celebrity participation in the design process. In recent memory Sarah Jessica Parker has designed a collection for Halston. And — to disastrous results — in 2009 Lindsay Lohan designed a complete collection for Paris-based label Ungaro. It was unanimously dismissed by critics as an artistic flop.
Celebrities including Jessica Simpson, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, and Kanye West all design collections under their own names.
Rihanna, to her credit, has started small — skinny jeans, T-shirts and casual underwear — a far cry from the sultry fishnets and jewel-encrusted bras she's worn on stage. The collection also includes a black biker jacket and a canvas bucket bag.
One T-shirt features an illustration of the singer's high-profile face on a mottled animal print background. Another is emblazoned with the newly fashioned Rihanna/Emporio logo. Since July Rihanna has been the face of the two collections, appearing in advertisements in tight jeans, a cropped sweater, biker boots and short, blond hair. There's even an Armani video of Rihanna shot in film-noire style in which she strips out of a sultry cocktail dress into casual jeans.
Before attaching his brand to Rihanna, Armani recruited actress Megan Fox of Transformers to promote his Emporio brand, though she didn't assume design duties.
The collection is scheduled to be released in stores later this month.
Her trademark “R,” scripted in “Zoro” style slashes, is, for this small collection, fused to one of the world's most iconic fashion logos – the stylized Emporio eagle. She – of questionable taste – has attached her fashion sense to a style powerhouse.
The 23-year-old singer, who has appeared in advertisements and even a video for the Milan-based brand, is now apparently trying her hand at fashion design.
The association with Armani represents yet another fusion between showbiz and fashion design. Some Hollywood celebrities have modelled for designers (Dakota Fanning for Marc Jacobs) and others have simply worn their clothes on the red carpet. And a few have actually lent their high-profile names as putative designers.
For Armani's secondary collections — Emporio Armani Underwear and Armani Jeans — the sultry performer has created two styles of jeans, two T-shirts and underwear.
This is not the first time fashion labels have sought celebrity participation in the design process. In recent memory Sarah Jessica Parker has designed a collection for Halston. And — to disastrous results — in 2009 Lindsay Lohan designed a complete collection for Paris-based label Ungaro. It was unanimously dismissed by critics as an artistic flop.
Celebrities including Jessica Simpson, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, and Kanye West all design collections under their own names.
Rihanna, to her credit, has started small — skinny jeans, T-shirts and casual underwear — a far cry from the sultry fishnets and jewel-encrusted bras she's worn on stage. The collection also includes a black biker jacket and a canvas bucket bag.
One T-shirt features an illustration of the singer's high-profile face on a mottled animal print background. Another is emblazoned with the newly fashioned Rihanna/Emporio logo. Since July Rihanna has been the face of the two collections, appearing in advertisements in tight jeans, a cropped sweater, biker boots and short, blond hair. There's even an Armani video of Rihanna shot in film-noire style in which she strips out of a sultry cocktail dress into casual jeans.
Before attaching his brand to Rihanna, Armani recruited actress Megan Fox of Transformers to promote his Emporio brand, though she didn't assume design duties.
The collection is scheduled to be released in stores later this month.
India Support on Textiles Can't Help Pakistan [true religion jeans]
Islamabad may have won New Delhi's backing for contentious European plans to allow Pakistan's textile industry duty-free access to Europe.
But now other countries, including Bangladesh and Indonesia, are blocking the move, which was designed by the European Union as a goodwill gesture to help Pakistan recover from last year's devastating floods.
India had objected to E.U. plans to cut duty on 75 items, most of them textile goods, from around 10% to zero because of fears they would hurt Indian producers who also sell to the E.U. without such benefits. India, along with other countries, raised those objections at the World Trade Organization, of which Pakistan and India are both members.
But India lifted the objections in September during a meeting of commerce secretaries from the two counties in New Delhi. At the same meeting, Pakistan agreed to normalize trade relations, a decision it announced earlier this month.
These steps forward have built some optimism that India and Pakistan are serious about improving relations and moving ahead with a peace process that'll have to tackle thornier issues like the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
But as the stalled E.U. package shows, sometimes even India's rare support is not enough to help Pakistan get what it wants.
At a November meeting of the W.T.O. in Geneva, Bangladesh was among the countries opposing the E.U.'s plans to cut tariffs for Pakistan. The cuts were unveiled by Brussels more than a year ago but have failed to win W.T.O. approval.
Bangladesh is treated as a least-developed country by the E.U., which means its textile industry gets duty-free access. Bangladesh apparently doesn't want Pakistan to get those same benefits. There were media reports from a South Asia regional summit in the Maldives earlier this month that Bangladesh planned to lift its objections, but that hasn't happened.
The E.U. is considering scaling back its package to get over the objections, focusing on duty-free access for only seven items, says Mirza Ikhtiar Baig, adviser on textiles to Pakistan's government and owner of Pak-Denim Ltd., a large Karachi-based textile producer.
The new package, which would include temporary duty-free access for ladies' trousers, pajamas and some children's wear for three years – but not jeans or men's trousers – could boost exports by around €100 million a year, Mr. Baig said. That's much lower than estimated gains of €350 million per year under the original package, he added.
Pakistan's textile industry directly employs 3.5 million people, accounting for 40% of urban factory jobs. The industry's exports by volume have stagnated in the past few years, amid problems like regular power outages and poor infrastructure. At the same time, countries like China, which benefit from economies of scale, have seen textile exports soar.
Some analysts say creating more urban jobs is key to stabilizing Pakistan and reducing the pull of Islamist ideologies, and it could have been reasoning like this that pushed India to end its opposition to the E.U's plans. Faisalabad, a city in Punjab province, which is the center of Pakistan's textile industry, is also home to virulent Islamist sectarian groups that threaten India.
Pakistan's exports in the year to June 30 were $12.3 billion, up from $10.3 billion in the previous fiscal year. But that increase was explained by higher selling prices, due to worldwide increases in cotton and yarn costs, not because of larger volumes. In October exports were $1.02 billion, down 16% from the same period a year earlier.
About $3 billion of last year's exports went to the E.U. and a similar amount to the U.S. Both India and Bangladesh export much larger amounts to the E.U.
“Bangladesh is already enjoying duty-free access to the E.U.,” said Mr. Baig, “so why are they objecting.”
But now other countries, including Bangladesh and Indonesia, are blocking the move, which was designed by the European Union as a goodwill gesture to help Pakistan recover from last year's devastating floods.
India had objected to E.U. plans to cut duty on 75 items, most of them textile goods, from around 10% to zero because of fears they would hurt Indian producers who also sell to the E.U. without such benefits. India, along with other countries, raised those objections at the World Trade Organization, of which Pakistan and India are both members.
But India lifted the objections in September during a meeting of commerce secretaries from the two counties in New Delhi. At the same meeting, Pakistan agreed to normalize trade relations, a decision it announced earlier this month.
These steps forward have built some optimism that India and Pakistan are serious about improving relations and moving ahead with a peace process that'll have to tackle thornier issues like the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
But as the stalled E.U. package shows, sometimes even India's rare support is not enough to help Pakistan get what it wants.
At a November meeting of the W.T.O. in Geneva, Bangladesh was among the countries opposing the E.U.'s plans to cut tariffs for Pakistan. The cuts were unveiled by Brussels more than a year ago but have failed to win W.T.O. approval.
Bangladesh is treated as a least-developed country by the E.U., which means its textile industry gets duty-free access. Bangladesh apparently doesn't want Pakistan to get those same benefits. There were media reports from a South Asia regional summit in the Maldives earlier this month that Bangladesh planned to lift its objections, but that hasn't happened.
The E.U. is considering scaling back its package to get over the objections, focusing on duty-free access for only seven items, says Mirza Ikhtiar Baig, adviser on textiles to Pakistan's government and owner of Pak-Denim Ltd., a large Karachi-based textile producer.
The new package, which would include temporary duty-free access for ladies' trousers, pajamas and some children's wear for three years – but not jeans or men's trousers – could boost exports by around €100 million a year, Mr. Baig said. That's much lower than estimated gains of €350 million per year under the original package, he added.
Pakistan's textile industry directly employs 3.5 million people, accounting for 40% of urban factory jobs. The industry's exports by volume have stagnated in the past few years, amid problems like regular power outages and poor infrastructure. At the same time, countries like China, which benefit from economies of scale, have seen textile exports soar.
Some analysts say creating more urban jobs is key to stabilizing Pakistan and reducing the pull of Islamist ideologies, and it could have been reasoning like this that pushed India to end its opposition to the E.U's plans. Faisalabad, a city in Punjab province, which is the center of Pakistan's textile industry, is also home to virulent Islamist sectarian groups that threaten India.
Pakistan's exports in the year to June 30 were $12.3 billion, up from $10.3 billion in the previous fiscal year. But that increase was explained by higher selling prices, due to worldwide increases in cotton and yarn costs, not because of larger volumes. In October exports were $1.02 billion, down 16% from the same period a year earlier.
About $3 billion of last year's exports went to the E.U. and a similar amount to the U.S. Both India and Bangladesh export much larger amounts to the E.U.
“Bangladesh is already enjoying duty-free access to the E.U.,” said Mr. Baig, “so why are they objecting.”
"The Chalk Boy": Impact Theatre's Latest is Rude, Crude, Empty [true religion jeans]
I hate how girls are supposed to be these, like, flavorless non-people, these meek little things, just so we can be some dude's cumbucket and squirt out his awful babies."
When a play explicitly acknowledges such a problem, as does Joshua Conkel's The Chalk Boy, now at the Impact Theatre, that play should presumably also combat it: perhaps with female characters who have multiple character traits, assert their desires, or define themselves by something other than their relationships to men.
There aren't any men in Conkel's work — at least, outside of nightmares. The Boy is Jeff Chalk, one of those high school kids who despite his mediocrity has a certain cool magnetism that makes him popular — and that might also explain why he was chosen for a random kidnapping, leaving the residents of Clear Creek, Wash., reeling.
The female residents we meet are certainly assertive. There are Lauren (Maria Giere Marquis) and Trisha (Chris Quintos), co-presidents of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, who feel no compunction about mocking the "s-l-u-t"s who live in factory-made homes, or the "horse girls" who wear Target jeans. There's Penny (Luisa Frasconi), who says things like, "Wicca is my religion, mother," or who regularly tells her one friend she's "boring" or a "dumb bitch." That friend, Breanna (Caitlyn Tella), says things like "I'll kick your puffy little vagina so hard that your grandchildren will be sterile," as she tries to convince herself (and Penny) that she's not a lesbian. And there's Penny's mother (also played by Marquis), who practices Pilates with a glass of wine in her hand and tells her daughter to watch her weight so she doesn't end up looking like "a trash bag full of hamburger meat."
When a play explicitly acknowledges such a problem, as does Joshua Conkel's The Chalk Boy, now at the Impact Theatre, that play should presumably also combat it: perhaps with female characters who have multiple character traits, assert their desires, or define themselves by something other than their relationships to men.
There aren't any men in Conkel's work — at least, outside of nightmares. The Boy is Jeff Chalk, one of those high school kids who despite his mediocrity has a certain cool magnetism that makes him popular — and that might also explain why he was chosen for a random kidnapping, leaving the residents of Clear Creek, Wash., reeling.
The female residents we meet are certainly assertive. There are Lauren (Maria Giere Marquis) and Trisha (Chris Quintos), co-presidents of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, who feel no compunction about mocking the "s-l-u-t"s who live in factory-made homes, or the "horse girls" who wear Target jeans. There's Penny (Luisa Frasconi), who says things like, "Wicca is my religion, mother," or who regularly tells her one friend she's "boring" or a "dumb bitch." That friend, Breanna (Caitlyn Tella), says things like "I'll kick your puffy little vagina so hard that your grandchildren will be sterile," as she tries to convince herself (and Penny) that she's not a lesbian. And there's Penny's mother (also played by Marquis), who practices Pilates with a glass of wine in her hand and tells her daughter to watch her weight so she doesn't end up looking like "a trash bag full of hamburger meat."
True Religion's GC Takes Aim at Knockoff Jeans [true religion jeans]
Don't expect to find Deborah Greaves chained to her desk resolving contract disputes. The general counsel for True Religion Apparel, Inc., also tours factories in China and raids warehouses alongside police. Her unusual responsibilities reflect Greaves's growing stature in the global campaign to end counterfeiting.
When she isn't managing the Vernon, California–based denim company's three-person legal department, Greaves devotes time to the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC), a Washington, D.C.–based advocacy group. She serves as a member of its board of directors and, since 2010, has chaired the organization's task force on China, which is formulating new approaches to curbing Chinese counterfeiting.
As a longtime lawyer to the fashion industry, Greaves has seen firsthand the harm that knockoffs can cause. Prior to joining True Religion in 2007, she was general counsel at Blue Holdings, Inc., a now-defunct designer and manufacturer of high-end fashions. At both companies she's seen counterfeiters tarnish brands and siphon off revenue. Losing profits to counterfeiters is a particularly big problem for True Religion. Its coveted jeans are made almost exclusively in the United States, which isn't cheap.
Counterfeiting is a daunting problem, but Greaves has arrived at some practical solutions. She trains police officials on how to spot fakes and gather evidence against counterfeiters. She accompanies them on raids. As a leading member of trade organizations, she lobbies Congress to reform trademark and copyright laws. She's even flown to China, where she met with local government officials and toured factories and markets with private investigators. "There are a lot of different cultural, economic, and legal issues that play into why China is such a hotbed for counterfeiting," she says. "I don't think you can appreciate how huge the problem is until you go over there."
Her efforts have won Greaves accolades from law enforcement. "She's been one of the best advocates in seeking legislative change," says Sergeant Janice Munson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, who is part of a special anticounterfeiting team. "It's very key to us that we have the support of various brands. Without them, we wouldn't be as successful as we are."
Now, through the IACC's task force, Greaves is speaking out on behalf of not just True Religion, but a wide range of American manufacturers. Her attention is increasingly focused on the Internet, which has become a popular way for counterfeiters to ply their wares. "There's more anonymity online," Greaves says. And, because online customers typically only buy a few items, "the shipments are smaller, so it's easier to fly under the radar of law enforcement."
To clamp down on the trend, Greaves and other members of her task force are lobbying Chinese officials to support laws that would make it easier to shut down scam Web sites based in the country. "We'd like Chinese laws to give brand owners the ability to take more proactive measures against infringing Web sites," she says. "Right now it's very difficult to get responses to notices of infringement."
When she isn't managing the Vernon, California–based denim company's three-person legal department, Greaves devotes time to the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC), a Washington, D.C.–based advocacy group. She serves as a member of its board of directors and, since 2010, has chaired the organization's task force on China, which is formulating new approaches to curbing Chinese counterfeiting.
As a longtime lawyer to the fashion industry, Greaves has seen firsthand the harm that knockoffs can cause. Prior to joining True Religion in 2007, she was general counsel at Blue Holdings, Inc., a now-defunct designer and manufacturer of high-end fashions. At both companies she's seen counterfeiters tarnish brands and siphon off revenue. Losing profits to counterfeiters is a particularly big problem for True Religion. Its coveted jeans are made almost exclusively in the United States, which isn't cheap.
Counterfeiting is a daunting problem, but Greaves has arrived at some practical solutions. She trains police officials on how to spot fakes and gather evidence against counterfeiters. She accompanies them on raids. As a leading member of trade organizations, she lobbies Congress to reform trademark and copyright laws. She's even flown to China, where she met with local government officials and toured factories and markets with private investigators. "There are a lot of different cultural, economic, and legal issues that play into why China is such a hotbed for counterfeiting," she says. "I don't think you can appreciate how huge the problem is until you go over there."
Her efforts have won Greaves accolades from law enforcement. "She's been one of the best advocates in seeking legislative change," says Sergeant Janice Munson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, who is part of a special anticounterfeiting team. "It's very key to us that we have the support of various brands. Without them, we wouldn't be as successful as we are."
Now, through the IACC's task force, Greaves is speaking out on behalf of not just True Religion, but a wide range of American manufacturers. Her attention is increasingly focused on the Internet, which has become a popular way for counterfeiters to ply their wares. "There's more anonymity online," Greaves says. And, because online customers typically only buy a few items, "the shipments are smaller, so it's easier to fly under the radar of law enforcement."
To clamp down on the trend, Greaves and other members of her task force are lobbying Chinese officials to support laws that would make it easier to shut down scam Web sites based in the country. "We'd like Chinese laws to give brand owners the ability to take more proactive measures against infringing Web sites," she says. "Right now it's very difficult to get responses to notices of infringement."
David Ramadan makes history in Va. House election [true religion jeans]
David Ramadan was 13 years old and living amid the unceasing bloodshed of civil war in his homeland of Lebanon when a blast rattled his house in an Americanized Beirut neighborhood in 1983.
He sprinted through the city's chaotic and panicked streets until he stood before the death-strewn wreckage of the bombed U.S. Marine barracks and beheld mind-scarring scenes of carnage that haunt him to this day. He witnessed history: the dawn of terrorism aimed at Americans.
Nearly 30 years later, Ramadan helped shape history in his adopted homeland of Virginia, winning election by only 50 votes to the House of Delegates and becoming the first person of Muslim heritage to hold a seat in the Western Hemisphere's oldest continuously meeting legislative body.
"I was a child of war," Ramadan, now a successful 41-year-old businessman, said in an Associated Press interview last week. "I grew up in the midst of a bloody civil war."
"I stood there that day and I saw it all. It was so horrible," he said, his voice trailing off. "I was just a boy."
Ramadan was educated in American schools in Beirut, tucked alongside the U.S. Embassy which was also bombed in 1983 by the militant Islamist group and Lebanese political party Hezbollah.
He left Lebanon and settled in Virginia in 1989, when he was 19, and he was drawn instantly to Republican politics. Within three years, he had worked for his first campaign, the failed re-election bid of President George H.W. Bush. He paid his dues as a Republican activist and party leader for two decades.
"The creed I believe in is the Republican creed," Ramadan said. "That means lower taxes, freedom of religion, free market rights and property rights, Second Amendment rights."
But in winning elected office for the first time this year, Ramadan learned that religion carries a price tag even when it's free. Anti-Muslim organizations attacked him as a tool of radical Islam, as one who — wittingly or inadvertently — aids, abets or is beholden to terrorists.
It might not have seared him as deeply had his wartime boyhood not put him in the midst of terrorism rooted in religion and nationalism.
"It was hurtful to see because it was not true and these people were making it up for political purposes. It was pathetic and it was bigoted," he said. "But I have a tough skin, so I dealt with it."
The Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force attacked Ramadan for being one of six Arab or Muslim Republicans who signed a letter to the editor of the New York Times. The letter admonished fellow Republicans of the political peril of trying to block construction of a Muslim Community Center on private property in lower Manhattan near the site of the fallen World Trade Center, ground zero of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Blocking the project, the letter argued, undermines Republican beliefs in freedom of religion and private property rights.
An anonymous website that went online during Ramadan's campaign claimed he was tied to "hostile intelligence services in Iran and Syria" and darkly implied that his funding came from sinister terrorist sources.
James Lafferty of the anti-shariah group said he doesn't allege that Ramadan is a terrorist. "If he's dangerous, then he's dangerous in that he pretends to be a conservative Republican but is involved in groups that are neither conservative nor Republican," he said.
Yet Ramadan's list of supporters reads like a roll call of the Republican right, including Gov. Bob McDonnell; U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf; U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Richmond; Virginia House of Delegates Majority Leader M. Kirkland Cox; Virginia House Speaker Bill Howell; and Edwin Meese, who was U.S. attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and is now a senior fellow at the nation's best-known conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation.
Meese and Cantor endorsed Ramadan in his primary battle with longtime GOP activist Jo-Ann Chase.
"I was impressed with him immediately," Meese said. "I never had the least doubt about supporting him."
And were Ramadan an extremist, he would never have secured the backing of Cantor, who is Jewish.
"I am from a Muslim family and culture, but I am not a practicing Muslim," he said. His father, born Muslim, was baptized by Lebanese Christians as a child. His mother is Muslim. Both now live in the northern Virginia House district he will represent when he officially takes his seat on Jan. 11.
"I grew up in a mixed family, and it was not a religious family," Ramadan said. "But I do believe in God. I believe in the Ten Commandments, things common to both religions."
These days, he said, he spends more time in his wife's hometown Methodist church in Rocky Mount, Va., than he does in Muslim houses of worship. More commonly, he said, they attend a Baptist church or a community church in Loudoun County, where they reside.
Ramadan's 50-vote margin out of 10,886 votes cast in the 87th House District was within range for a recount at government expense had his opponent, Democrat Mike Kondratick, requested one. But Kondratick conceded the race, and Ramadan becomes part of a 68-member GOP majority in the 100-member House, the party's largest ever.
Ramadan specializes in overseas franchising of U.S.-based companies. He owns the franchise rights in the Middle East and India to Curves, a leading women's fitness spa.
He sprinted through the city's chaotic and panicked streets until he stood before the death-strewn wreckage of the bombed U.S. Marine barracks and beheld mind-scarring scenes of carnage that haunt him to this day. He witnessed history: the dawn of terrorism aimed at Americans.
Nearly 30 years later, Ramadan helped shape history in his adopted homeland of Virginia, winning election by only 50 votes to the House of Delegates and becoming the first person of Muslim heritage to hold a seat in the Western Hemisphere's oldest continuously meeting legislative body.
"I was a child of war," Ramadan, now a successful 41-year-old businessman, said in an Associated Press interview last week. "I grew up in the midst of a bloody civil war."
"I stood there that day and I saw it all. It was so horrible," he said, his voice trailing off. "I was just a boy."
Ramadan was educated in American schools in Beirut, tucked alongside the U.S. Embassy which was also bombed in 1983 by the militant Islamist group and Lebanese political party Hezbollah.
He left Lebanon and settled in Virginia in 1989, when he was 19, and he was drawn instantly to Republican politics. Within three years, he had worked for his first campaign, the failed re-election bid of President George H.W. Bush. He paid his dues as a Republican activist and party leader for two decades.
"The creed I believe in is the Republican creed," Ramadan said. "That means lower taxes, freedom of religion, free market rights and property rights, Second Amendment rights."
But in winning elected office for the first time this year, Ramadan learned that religion carries a price tag even when it's free. Anti-Muslim organizations attacked him as a tool of radical Islam, as one who — wittingly or inadvertently — aids, abets or is beholden to terrorists.
It might not have seared him as deeply had his wartime boyhood not put him in the midst of terrorism rooted in religion and nationalism.
"It was hurtful to see because it was not true and these people were making it up for political purposes. It was pathetic and it was bigoted," he said. "But I have a tough skin, so I dealt with it."
The Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force attacked Ramadan for being one of six Arab or Muslim Republicans who signed a letter to the editor of the New York Times. The letter admonished fellow Republicans of the political peril of trying to block construction of a Muslim Community Center on private property in lower Manhattan near the site of the fallen World Trade Center, ground zero of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Blocking the project, the letter argued, undermines Republican beliefs in freedom of religion and private property rights.
An anonymous website that went online during Ramadan's campaign claimed he was tied to "hostile intelligence services in Iran and Syria" and darkly implied that his funding came from sinister terrorist sources.
James Lafferty of the anti-shariah group said he doesn't allege that Ramadan is a terrorist. "If he's dangerous, then he's dangerous in that he pretends to be a conservative Republican but is involved in groups that are neither conservative nor Republican," he said.
Yet Ramadan's list of supporters reads like a roll call of the Republican right, including Gov. Bob McDonnell; U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf; U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Richmond; Virginia House of Delegates Majority Leader M. Kirkland Cox; Virginia House Speaker Bill Howell; and Edwin Meese, who was U.S. attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and is now a senior fellow at the nation's best-known conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation.
Meese and Cantor endorsed Ramadan in his primary battle with longtime GOP activist Jo-Ann Chase.
"I was impressed with him immediately," Meese said. "I never had the least doubt about supporting him."
And were Ramadan an extremist, he would never have secured the backing of Cantor, who is Jewish.
"I am from a Muslim family and culture, but I am not a practicing Muslim," he said. His father, born Muslim, was baptized by Lebanese Christians as a child. His mother is Muslim. Both now live in the northern Virginia House district he will represent when he officially takes his seat on Jan. 11.
"I grew up in a mixed family, and it was not a religious family," Ramadan said. "But I do believe in God. I believe in the Ten Commandments, things common to both religions."
These days, he said, he spends more time in his wife's hometown Methodist church in Rocky Mount, Va., than he does in Muslim houses of worship. More commonly, he said, they attend a Baptist church or a community church in Loudoun County, where they reside.
Ramadan's 50-vote margin out of 10,886 votes cast in the 87th House District was within range for a recount at government expense had his opponent, Democrat Mike Kondratick, requested one. But Kondratick conceded the race, and Ramadan becomes part of a 68-member GOP majority in the 100-member House, the party's largest ever.
Ramadan specializes in overseas franchising of U.S.-based companies. He owns the franchise rights in the Middle East and India to Curves, a leading women's fitness spa.
