I was going to move on past the whole "Islamic nutjobs" thing and blather on about comic books today, but there's just so much Islamic idiocy out there these days.
So as I mentioned to Dandy in the comments for the The Satanic Verses post, an American branch of idiots...er, Islamic zealots is threatening the lives of the creators of South Park for putting Mohammed in a bear suit.
It's all just so ridiculous.
And while I was reading about the South Park debacle, there was mention of another Dutch guy who was actually killed by an Islamic extremist knucklehead, Theo Van Gogh, that made a movie about these boneheads called Submission (the English translation of "Islam"). I'm surprised that I didn't hear about this 10 minute film when Fitna was making headlines, but maybe it was mentioned and I just didn't notice. I dunno.
I also saw this comic strip in the newspaper (Friday) and wondered how long it would be before some Islamic knucklehead decided the towelhead being portrayed in the last panel was Mohammed (it's not) and decided that the creator of Mother Goose & Grimmhad to die!! for his blasphemous cartoon.
Morons.
Oh, but there's more.
A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear immodest clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.
Iran is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric's unusual explanation for why the earth shakes follows a prediction by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that a quake is certain to hit Tehran and that many of its 12 million inhabitants should relocate.
"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader.
LA Times article
Bah! Stupid extremist boneheads! It's time to move on to lighter subjects...
I remember all the noise that was made by the media when The Satanic Verses was published back in the late 80's. Salman Rushdie became a man with a price on his head...all because of a book. I was intrigued, but admittedly not intrigued enough to actually read the book. Until a few months ago, that is.
I finally read the book (twenty-two years after it was published), expecting something inflammatory like Fitna or at least something arguably offensive like the Dutch cartoon of Mohammed with the bomb in his Turban that is still causing grief today, but I was sorely disappointed. Or at least surprised that there wasn't a blatant anti-Muslim message in the book.
At the very least, I assumed the title, The Satanic Verses, had to be a reference to the Qur'an being nothing more than Satan's little handbook. But that wasn't the origin of the title at all. It's a reference to a story about the claim of Mohammed, or Mahound in the story, that the vision he received as he was working to establish his fledgling new religion was not, as he had proclaimed upon coming down from the mountain after his conversation with an angel, divine dictation after all. When his proclamation that the thirty-six gods/goddesses, Al-lat being chief among them, who he was working to supplant with his monotheist male god, Al-Lah, were the daughters of Allah backfired, he decided that he had been deceived and the proclamation was nothing more than a ruse by Satan to make him look bad.
Okay, so maybe that would be something that could upset a few muslims. But it's not like anything in the book is presented as factual. I don't know how close to the truth the portrayed origin of Islam was (maybe it's closer to the truth than I think). The book opens with a couple of Hindu guys falling out of an exploding plane and miraculously surviving, only to become incarnations of the devil and the angel Gabriel. Pure nonsense. One of them even takes Billy Pilgrim-like journeys back to advise muslims (everybody rips Kurt Vonnegut off).
The scariest and most factual seeming parts of the story would probably be perceived as the only acceptable passages to a Muslim reader (any who would dare imperil his soul by reading the book).
Beginning with ritual abuse of the Empress, with lists of her crimes, murders, bribes, sexual relations with lizards, and so on, he proceeds eventually to issue in ringing tones the Imam's mighty call to his people to rise up against the evil of her State. 'We will make a revolution,' the Imam proclaim through him, 'that is a revolt not only against a tyrant, but against history.' For there is an enemy beyond Ayesha, and it is history herself. History is the blood-wine that must no longer be drunk. History the intoxicant, the creation of the lies - progress, science, rights - against which the Imam has set his face. History is a deviation from the Path, knowledge is a delusion, because the sum of knowledge was complete on the aday Al-Lah finished his revelation to Mahound.
Even without knowing the context of who's speaking or who "Ayesha" is, this passage is scary. Shalimar the Clown had similarly frightening Islamic rhetoric, too. The story follows Mahound's establishment of bizarre rule after rule, running his new religion with a tight business-like fist.
I'll bet not one of the towelheads who has condemned Rushdie and The Satanic Verses has read even a single word of the book.
Unseen Academicals
I finished reading Unseen Academicals weeks and weeks ago, but - being the big, fat slacker that I am - I'm only now getting around to mentioning why this is another great Discworld novel and well worth reading. For a Terry Pratchett book, I thought the character development started kinda slow, but by the end (or even the middle) I was fully involved in the story and sad to see it drawing to an end.
Good ol' PTerry has never been afraid to buck convention. He took the benign elves of Tolkien's universe and turned them into sneering, malevolent demons. Dwarves, trolls, wizards, barbarians - we get a "behind the curtains" peek at all of them and they turn out to be a little less like the archetypes that Tolkien dreamed up and just a little bit more like real people. This time, he takes on another Tolkien mainstay: orcs. And they've never seemed more human.
Here's a snippet from the book that shows a little bit of what I find so great about these novels. The passage may not be as meaningful without knowing anything about the characters and the circumstances within which they occur, but then again, they might be meaningful regardless...
'It's a kind of medicine with words,' said Nutt, carefully. 'Sometimes people can fool themselves into believing things that aren't true. Sometimes that can be quite dangerous for the person. They see the world in a wrong way. They won't let themselves see that what they believe is wrong. But often there is a part of the mind that does know, and the right words can let it out.' He gave them a worried look.
'Well, that's nice,' said Juliet.
'It sounds like hocus pocus to me,' said Glenda. 'Folk know their own minds!' She folder her arms again, and saw Nutt glance at them.
'Well?' she demanded. 'Haven't you ever seen elbows before!'
'Never such pretty dimpled one, Miss Glenda, on such tightly folded arms.'
Up until that point Glenda had never realized that Juliet had such a dirty laugh, to which, Glenda fervently hoped, she was not entitled.
There wasn't much about "orcs" in that snippet, but the story isn't really about marauding orcs or even what makes an orc an orc as much as it's about what makes each of us who we are.
She reached down and picked a crab out of a bucket. As it came up it turned out that three more were hanging on to it.
'A crab necklace?' giggled Juliet.
'Oh, that's crabs for you,' said Verity, disentangling the ones who had hitched a ride. 'Thick as planks, the lot of them. That's why you can keep them in a bucket without a lid. Any that tries to get out gets pulled back. Yes, thick as planks.' Verity held the crab over an ominously bubbling cauldron. 'Shall I cook it for you now?'
'No!' said Glenda, much louder that she had intended.
'Are you okay, dear?' Verity enquired. 'You look a bit ill.'
'I'm fine. Fine. Just a touch of a sore throat, that's all.' Crab bucket, she thought. I thought Pepe was talking nonsense. 'Erm, can you just truss it up for us? It's going to be a long night.'
Crab bucket, thought Glenda as they hurried towards the Night Kitchen. That's how it works. people from the Sisters disapproving when a girl takes the trolley bus. That's crab bucket. Practically everything I've ever told Juliet, that's crab bucket, too. Maybe it's just another word for the Shove. It's so nice and warm on the inside that you forget that there's an outside. The worst of it is, the crab that mostly keeps you down is you... The realization had her mind on fire.
A lot hinges on the fact that, in most cases, people are not allowed to hit you with a mallet. They put up all kinds of visible and invisible signs that say 'Do not do this' in the hope that it'll work, but if it doesn't, then they shrug, because there is, really, no real mallet at all. Look at Juliet talking to all those nobby ladies. She didn't know that she shouldn't talk to them like that. And it worked! Nobody hit her on the head with a hammer.
Maybe I'm just a simpleton who likes to have things explained in the simplest terms, but I love this stuff. I keep hoping Terry will write another Tiffany Aching story. I'd love to hear from the Wee Free men again.
Oh, and I finished The Satanic verses a few weeks ago. I still don't see how that book is such an insult to Islam. Methinks the followers of Mohammed are a wee bit too sensitive.
And just to rub sand in the wound, I might blather on about that book one of these days. I don't think I ever said anything about the other Rushdie book I've read, Shalimar the Clown, so maybe it will be a double feature. Ooh, the excitement!
...I just double checked and discovered that I have already blathered on about Shalimar the Clown, so no double feature for you!
