February 12, 2006
From the Park Bench
Sittin' on the park bench this morning watching all the news go by. Actually there is a major Nor'easter going on and the park bench is under a foot of snow. This hasn't happened much this winter -- global warming working for me.
Since you, no doubt, have the Sunday papers to digest, I'll scatter a few jewels before your feet - to be examined before the fire, should you have a laptop, while savoring raspberry hot chocolate, should you have a country gourmet larder.
Maureen , bless her heart, does a lovely job summarizing hypocrisy. Why do I even bother? Robert Kuttner reminds us of what really matters in his plea for tolerance and civility in the cartoon wars, and the BBC interviews Texas wind men, nee oil men, evangelical ecologists and moderate Muslims.
.jpg){kind=link}
Speaking of whom, scholar that I am, I just understood, why there was a fatwah declared for/on Salman Rushdie for entitling his book "The Satanic Verses". They are actual parts of the Koran which were edited out, like the Gnostic Gospels in the Bible. The editor seems to have been Mohammed himself.
A sample:
"While Muhammad was in Mecca, his followers were few, his movement grew painfully slowly and he, too, felt the pain of estrangement from his tribe. According to early and treasured biographical and historical accounts of Muhammad, authored by competent Muslim scholars (such as writings of at-Tabari and Ibn Sa’d), Muhammad longed for better relations and reconciliation with his community. Thereafter, the accounts continue, God revealed Surah 53 to Muhammad up to and including vss. 19, 20. These two verses read:
Have ye thought upon al-Lat and al-Uzza
And Manat, the third, the other? (53:19,20)
Then, originally, the verses (known today as the satanic verses) followed:
These are the exalted cranes (intermediaries)
Whose intercession is to be hoped for.
The cranes whose intercession was recognized were, of course, the three deities. The same accounts tell us that after this revelation was completed, Muhammad, his followers and the pagan Arabs all prostrated. Tensions eased, reconciliation was at hand, and all were delighted.
But Muhammad soon retracted the reconciliation—how soon is not clear. For the account continues that Jibril (Gabriel), the angel of revelation, informed Muhammad that Satan had used Muhammad's desire for reconciliation with the pagan leaders to insert into the revelation of God the verses about the interceding cranes, otherwise called "the satanic verses". The verses which follow, not the satanic verses, serve as the proper sequence to 53:19,20 (above):
Are yours the males and His the females?
That indeed were an unfair division! (53:21,22)
In other words: When you Arabs have sons (whom you prefer to daughters!), how unfair of you to say that God has daughters! The idea of a plurality of gods or goddesses or sons or daughters of God is ridiculous. God alone is God. The three goddesses are false."
There's that goddess stuff again. Shut your mouth, Dakota, or you're going to have double fatwah all over you. Fundamentalists punish criticism harshly (Gonsalves is going on a whistleblower hunt, when the whistleblower turned himself in a month ago -- what ho, an agency wide witchhunt ensuing?)
And the final shot of the day. An enormous American SUV (?) with vanity plates rammed into the front of the Porter Square Bookstore. I was there, with several hundred others, taking pictures. I was actually buying a galvanized bucket with an attached wringer at the adjacent hardware store, in order to ease my laundry burden when the grid goes. It's going to be hard find time to be a goddess-like activities without the grid. Sadly there were three people injured in the accident, a passerby and two folks sipping coffee in the cafe.
View larger image View larger image
Photo note: What do you think this means? The second shot is the bench in front of the bookstore.