FORBIDDEN BARBIE (AND WE DON'T MEAN KLAUS)

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First it was author-in-hiding Salman Rushdie. Now, in Kuwait, a Muslim leader has issued a fatwa (death decree or ban) against a doll: those 12 inches of child-corrupting Western plastic known as Barbie. In Saturday's Al-Qabas newspaper, the president of the country's high committee on Islamic law said Barbie "strongly resembles a mature woman," and that her curvaceous-yet-impossibly-thin frame "has nothing to do with childhood." Maybe so, but many Kuwaiti children fail to see the point. "Barbie is always successful in her life and studies," one five-year-old tyke told the paper. "I want to be like her."