God (Part VI: Allah in the Family)
Prolog:
A few weeks ago I stopped by the library to pick up a few books about
Islam in order to research the piece below (yes, these pieces are actually
researched and not just "magically pulled from my ass like a rabbit from a
hat" as many have speculated) when a feeling began to come over me that I'd
never felt while at the library before (and, trust me, I've had many
strange feelings at the library): panic. True, it was a brief episode but
it was genuine and extremely disconcerting as panic is one of the last
feelings that one should experience at the library (ever since I first
learned to read, at the tender age of twenty-eight or so, my library
had always been a wonderful refuge: quite, never crowded, and with the
barley discernable scent of privilege in the air).
For a fleeting moment the thought flashed through my mind that, should the
government decide to label me a "person of interest", the authorities were
now free, thanks to the powers granted to them under the PATRIOT act, to
pull up my library records: where they would find that I had checked out
several books about Islam (along with an assortment of similarly possibly
subversive reading material). If you wanna go Worst Case Scenario, the
government could then, once again thanks to the PATRIOT act, could kidnap
me, place me on a barge, take me a few miles off the coast (into inter-
national waters), execute me, and dump my body overboard: all without the
benefit of legal representation. And none of you would be the wiser.
All you'd know is that this site had somehow, overnight, transformed into
Michelle Malkin Tells You How To Live.
Fortunately, I'm not one of those artists who see themselves as being
important. Shit Luther, I don't even see myself as being mildly
significant. I wasn't nearly as angry at the government for putting Jello
Biafra on trial as I was at them for helping to feed his overwhelming sense
of self-importance. Jello, you're the ex-lead singer for a defunct Nu Wave
band, not Nelson Mandela - live with it. I don't think the government gives
a rat's ass about anything I write as long as my readership stays under
1,000 and I don't change my name to Mustafa. Still, there I was: waiting to
get my books checked out and panicking. And then the panic gave way to
anger.
Now you might think that anger was another emotion that I'd never felt at
the library before but, truth be told, the library is probably the one
place where I've had my most white-hot fits of rage. A month or so ago, I
opened a book that I'd really been looking forward to getting my hands on
and found that someone …some subhuman swampfucker…had ripped a page out of
it. A book had been mutilated. It was like stumbling upon the fresh crime
scene of the Tate-Labianca murders. But I think that we can all agree that
intentionally damaging a book is a far greater crime than murder. Commit
murder and you've killed a human being; big deal, plenty of those around.
Damage a book and you've killed an idea…unless, of course that book is by
Dave Berry.
How dare the government infringe on my library? How dare they tread
on the joy of checking out a book? Bastards. Monsters. Unspeakable
monsters. It's those proto-humans standing in line to see the Dukes of
Hazzard movie that they should be fucking with, not me. But no, they
felt the need to stick their Federal dicks into the hornets' nest, and now
they're gonna get stung. Every day, for an entire week I checked out a
book. I would return it the following day and check out another book. The
books were written by Mary Shelly, James Joyce, JD Salinger, Jim Thompson,
Sammy Davis Jr., William Shakespeare, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. I
encourage each of you to do the same.
So what (quid ergo)? How are seven books going help you wave your finger in
the face of The Man? They aren't. Unless, of course, one day the government
looks into your library records and some flunky sees the following titles
printed on a spreadsheet:
Frankenstein
Ulysses
Catcher in the Rye, The
Killer Inside Me, The
Yes I Can
Othello
Uncle Tom's Cabin
---------------------------------
Ask Ayayayatollah Anonymous!
Islam is a touchy subject these days, and one that I feel should be handled
with the utmost tact, decorum, sensitivity. Shit Luther, the last thing
that I need is for a bunch of goat herders to fly a jet into my web site.
That's why I've followed the lead of learned (and completely insane)
cleric, Ayatollah Sistani and opened up RATYHTL to questions from the
public about this incredibly misunderstood religion.
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.
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Cooter "Robert" Tarnnell of Little Cranium, Nebraska asks:
"I done read on thissy har web site fer prominent in-tee-lek-shoo-awls that
Muslims don't worship the same Gawd what the rest of us do. What gives? Oh,
an 'nutter thang, I [have purchased many products from the
RATYHTL web store and have been continually pleased with the quality of the
workmanship]."
Ayayayatollah Anonymous sez:
Dear Cooter,
Despite what you may have read (or, more likely, had read to you),
Muslims, Christians, and Jews all worship the same god. And they don't.
It's a little complicated; please allow me to elaborate on my answer:
As most…many?...some?...As more than a few Americans know, Muslim worship
Allah, a name which translates to simply "The god." This is, according to
Muhammad ibn Abdallah (AKA The Prophet Muhammad, AKA Becky Goldfarb), who
claimed that the Quran (the holy book of Islam) had been dictated to him
by the angel Gabriel, the same god that both Christians and Jews prayed to.
In fact, for centuries, Christians and Jews had teased the Arabs over God's
failure to send them either a prophet or a scripture in their own language
(While the exact taunts which were used have since been lost, readers of
RATYHTL are encouraged to make up their own. Here's mine: Arab, Arab on the
burning sand. Ain't got no Jesus or no Abraham).
So the next time some sod-fucker starts flappin' his tobaccee-stained lips
about how "Them thar Ay-rabs worship some fella called 'Homohammad'", tell
him to shut the fuck up, because Muslim, Jews and Christians all slaughter
each other in the name of the same loving god.
And they don't…
I would be incredibly remiss if I failed to mention that, in pre-Islamic
times, Allah (then known as "al-Lah") supreme god of the Arabian pantheon.
al-Lah was said have three daughter goddesses: Allat (which translates to
"the goddess") was a fertility deity; Manat was the goddess of fate and
time al-Uzza ("the mighty one")was the goddess of the morning star.
Before any of you Christians, Jews, or inbred Tennessee Baptists start
jumping up and down and shouting "See, I told you they didn't worship the
same god as us!" I should remind you that your god, one Mr. Yahweh, started
off as a member of the Canaanite pantheon before getting promoted to sole-
deity status.
Getting back to al-Lah's daughters, in the earliest surviving biography of
the Prophet Muhammad, the author, Muhammad ibn Ishaq (who died in 768 CE),
told the strange tale of how one day when Prophet Muhammad was reciting
the Quran (since Muhammad was illiterate he was forced to recite the Quran
rather than write it out. In fact Quran means "the recitation") Satan got
a grip on the Prophets tongue and forced him to say that, along with the
One True God of Abraham, it was also OK to worship Allat, Manat, and
al-Uzza. As the story goes, the Prophet later realized that these bit of
advice had been inspired by the guy in the red suit and matching pitchfork,
so he had the lines about the goddesses expunged from the Quran.
The part about Allah's daughters was originally refered to as The Story
of the Cranes because Muhammad supposedly refered to the goddesses as
"high flying cranes". Later, these few lines would pick up the moniker
The Satanic Verses. Yes, that's where the novel's title comes from.
Author and implausible babe-magnet Salmon Rushdie of JNew
York City, NY asks:
"Speaking of The Satanic Verses, is it safe for me to go outside
yet?"
Ayayayatollah Anonymous sez:
Heck yeah. Way back in 1998 (which, I believe, was the year in which the
state of Mississippi finally officially legalized interracial marriage),
Hojjat ol-Islam Seyyid Khatami, former President of Iran, disassociated the
Iranian government from the fatwah which had been declared on you by
Ayatollah Khomeini nearly a decade earlier. That same fatwah had, by the
way, been immediately condemned by forty-eight of the forty-nine member
states of the Islamic Conference. Shit Luther, even permanent no-fly list
assignee Cat Stevens apologized for saying that you should be killed.
IMG BORDER=0 SRC="http://www.rodneyanonymous.com/archives/chris.jpg" ALT="chris (7k image)" HEIGHT=181 WIDTH=131 ALIGN="LEFT">Chris from the Low Budgets asks:
"I have a keen interest in issues of hunger; while Islam has gained a foot-
hold in the industrialized West, many Muslims live in 'Third World'
countries. My question to you is 'What do Muslims use to preserve their
food?"
Ayayayatollah Anonymous sez:
Quran wrap.Cooter "Robert" Tarnnell of Little Cranium, Nebraska asks:
"Ooooh. I gots me 'nother question. How comes them Islamies chose as thei
r symbol the half-moon on the shithouse door? That seems a might peculiar
ifin' ya' asks me."
Ayayayatollah Anonymous sez:
If I understand your question, being only moderately fluent in
Hillbillyese, you're wondering why, just as the Star of David is the symbol
for Judaism; the Cross the symbol for Christianity; and the dollar sign and
pin-wheel hat the symbols for Scientology, the Crescent Moon is the symbol
for Islam. That's simple: it isn't.
The Crescent Moon is actually the symbol of the goddess Artemis (Diana).
The city of Byzantium (later known as Constantinople, then as Istanbul, and
finally as Hooterville), sometime around 150 BCE, decided to honor the
goddess by adopting her symbol as its own.
When the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople 1n 1453, they took the
city's symbol as their own. Since the Ottoman Empire was the most powerful
and visable of the Muslim nations, their symbol eventually came to be re-
garded as the official symbol of Islam. Kinda the same way that Rick
Santorum became the poster boy for severe head trauma.
Due to its pagan origin, many Muslims refuse to accept the crescent moon as
Islam's official symbol
Juliette Lewis of Hollywood, CA asks:
"Why do Muslims make their woman dress up in bed sheets? That's just
totally fucked up. I mean, I was, like, practically naked in Strange
Days and I didn't hear anybody complain."
Ayayayatollah Anonymous sez:
I know I didn't. In fact, I still watch your roller-blading scene with one
hand on the pause button; if you get my drift? But I digress…
Once again, we have the Byzantines to thank. The only women who are
commanded in the Quran to take up the veil are the wives of the Prophet.
The Quran also says nothing about segregating women in a separate part of
the house. Muslims picked these curiously sexist customs up from the
Byzantine Christians roughly two hundred years after Muhammad bought the
camel farm. In fact, the Quran insists that women be treated with a
startling amount of egalitarianism: especially when you consider the era in
which it was written. According to the Quran, men and women are to
equal partners: sharing the same duties and responsibilities.
Centuries before Christian woman had been granted the rights of divorce and
inheritance; Muslim women were enjoying these privileges.
[Attn: Female readers in Saudi Arabia: You heard it here first! Rise up and
overthrow your male oppressors; it's what Muhammad would want.]
In her a-little-more-than-somewhat apologetic book, Islam, Karen
Armstrong makes an interesting point about the "liberating" aspects of the
burka. Karen points out that the next time you see a billboard featuring
scantily clad, tan models, you should remind yourself that the message
that's being sent is "Hey, look at me. I've got enough money to belong to
a gym and enough free time to work out and get a tan while on vacation in
a sunny climate, suckers!" Seen in this light, the burka is a huge, sticky
"gacker' spit directly in the face of Capitalism.
"Blue Lou" Farrakhan of Marryyourwhitesister, IL asks:
"Why do Muslims hate Jews? I mean, other than the fact that they can't play
golf on Saturday. Now, if you'll excuse me, Pee Wee Herman is having a yard
sale and I need to pick up some more suits."
Ayayayatollah Anonymous sez:
While some sources have claimed that the rift between Islam and Judaism
dates back to 625 CE when then Muslims slaughtered a Jewish tribe who had
sided against them in the Battle of the Trench, that's just so much
horseshit and gun smoke.
The truth is that the Quran commands Muslims to respect Jews as "People of
the Book" (and they can get you that book wholesale) and that the
enmity between Jews and Muslims didn't surface until 1948 when Israel was
created and Arab Palestine dismantled. So lacking was the Islamic world of
anti-Jew literature that they were forced to import hatred, like the
Protocols of Zion, from Christian Europe.
And Now, The Low Budgets (and pals) In: ISLAMIC COMICS!
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Epilog:
A few days after I procured my copy of Karen Armstrong's Islam, I
was reading it on the bus when I looked up and noticed that the elderly
couple across the aisle were whispering to each other and nervously nodding
their heads in the direction of the burka-clad woman seated in front of
them. When the Muslim woman exited the bus, the elderly woman turned to the
elderly man and said "I was afraid she was going to blow up the bus."
Hearing this, I snorted loudly in disgust (hey, it's a reflex at this
point) forcing the ancient pair to look at me, notice the book I was
reading had the word "Islam" across its jacket in large letters, see the
backpack at my feet, and causing the old farts to turn ashen with fear.
Next time out, it'll all come together (hopefully) as God, the Series,
comes to an end.
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Godscore:
Placebo (No Deity Used) * 0
Zeus 1
Ashera 0
Yahweh 1
Hera 1
Emperor Claudius 1
Sekhmet 0
Hecate 0
Hephaestus 0
Dionysus 0
Jesus Christ 0
Athena 0
Mithra 1
Sol Invictus 1
Poseidon 2
Hades 1
Allah (al-ilah) 0
Artemis 0
Emperor Julian 1
* In place of not using a deity you could always substitute Ben Schumin.
Recommended reading:
God Against The Gods by Jonathan Kirsch
A History of God by Karen Armstrong
Islam by Karen Armstrong
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Secret Origins of the Bible by Tim Callahan
The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein
Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Friedman
The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius
Rodney on 08.28.05 @ 01:33 PM EST [link] [No Comments]
