Category Archives: Humor and Satire

Hamas and Ibn Khaldun: Going for the Cycle?

Humor and Satire, Islamic History, Israel, Palestine

I am not an expert on the Palestine issue, nor am I trained to think in the apocalyptic terms sometimes engaged by pundits who forget that political science is more often an art or even impure fiction than a replicable analytical technique. But the ongoing in-fighting between Hamas (the neo-bad guys) and Fatah (the paleo-bad guys) is too intriguing to pass up. Today’s BBC News has a comparison of the two parties, following the resignation of the interior minister. Much of the speculation in the media is about tactics: Will Hamas ever give up support of violent acts against Israelis? Will Israel stubbornly refuse to negotiate with a group it would rather see fade into oblivion? Will the United States promote this democratic experiment as a bridge or a barrier on the so-called road map to peace? In all this I cannot help but think about what the famous 14th century North African savant Ibn Khaldun would have said if he could be interviewed from the grave for the New Tunis Times. It might go something like this… Continue reading Hamas and Ibn Khaldun: Going for the Cycle? →

Apocalypse Watch: The Man Who Knows Squat

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Bible and Holy Land, Israel, Luke R. E. Publican, Palestine

Most people find it hard to take cartoons seriously, apart from political satire and that can become a deadly issue, depending on the target. Given the recent Danish cartoon controversy it would seem that comics and religion do not mix well or at least settle well for the believers who see themselves as the target. But what about comic relief for the political struggle between Israel and the Palestinians? Fundamentalist tract artist Jack Chick, whose comic empire is dedicated to winning souls for Christ by drawing on God’s hate, has been using his pen to spread a rather sinister version of the fundamentally reduced Gospel for over 40 years. One of his more recent offerings is called “The Squatters” and it provides a virtual roadmap to apocalypse. Continue reading Apocalypse Watch: The Man Who Knows Squat →

The Fort Dix Deep Six

Iraq War, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Luke R. E. Publican, Terrorism Issue

Things can’t get worse; they can only get worse. No, this is not poor grammar or end-of-semester illogic but my first impression after listening to the hard-to-digest dollop of the morning news. Another suicide bomb killed and maimed scores in Iraq, this time in the Kurdish town of Irbil. The Bush administration suggests that things are getting better in Baghdad since the wall-less security crackdown, but that is debatable. What is not open to debate is that other parts of the country continue to spiral in insecurity, perhaps due in part to the targeted crackdown in one place. None of this seems to matter to Vice-President Cheney who has made a surprise visit to the Green Zone, mainly it seems to convince the Iraqi parliament not to take a summer vacation this year and be nice about dividing up the spoils of America’s, I mean Iraq’s, oil profits.

In this case it is not only the shit hitting the fan, but the gold as well. Gold as in Fort Dix (Fort Knox or whatever…) but I hope not a golden journalistic award to a local newspaper. Continue reading The Fort Dix Deep Six →

The Wisdom of Chewing Fish Eyes

Humor and Satire

[The following is an excerpt from Gregor von Rezzori’s Tales from Maghrebinia with clever stories about the famous Turkish wit, Nasr al-Din Khoja.]

“Once, so they say, when the poverty in the country became so great that no one gave anything to the wise Hodscha any more, he went to the Gospodor, the king’s representative, and threatened, ‘Sir give me a bag of gold or I shall do what I have never done before.’ The magnaminous Gospodor, at that time a member of the House of Kantakukuruz, was frightened by the threat, and let him have the bag of gold. ‘Verily,’ said the Hodscha, ‘if you had not listened to me, oh administrator of the king’s domain, I would have been compelled to work.’… Continue reading The Wisdom of Chewing Fish Eyes →

An Unprofitable Prophet from Maghrebinia

Humor and Satire

[In 1953 Gregor von Rezzori published a fictional satire of an anonymous East European/Near Eastern land he called Maghrebinia. Here is an excerpt that is still poignant today…]

“I am about to report on the great and glorious country Maghrebinia. You won’t find it on a map, it isn’t in any atlas or on any globe. There are people who say it lies in southeast Europe, others like to think it is southeast Europe, but, for heaven’s sake, what is southeast Europe? … Of course pedantic people might make an effort to define the borders of Maghrebinia geographically and vaguely, but just these pedants would get it all wrong. For Maghrebinia’s true borders lie in the hearts and souls of its people, and pedants don’t know the first thing about the hearts and souls of people…”

“Maghrebinia is beautiful. Continue reading An Unprofitable Prophet from Maghrebinia →

Up Against a Wall

Humor and Satire, Iraq War

The Iraq War on its way to the record books as one of the longest wars in American history is at last, without any lingering doubt, up against a wall. One of the top stories today in the New York Times says it all: “U.S. Erects Baghdad Wall to Keep Sects Apart.” “American military commanders in Baghdad are trying a radical new strategy to quell the widening sectarian violence by building a 12-foot-high, three-mile-long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite neighborhoods,” write reporters Edward Wong and David S. Cloud. In other words, when push comes to surge and surge comes up against a brick wall, then just go ahead and do something concrete, like building a wall. The new military strategy becomes ‘ where there is a wall, there is a way.’ Continue reading Up Against a Wall →

“when I asked him what a Moslem was”

Books You Should Read, Egypt, Humor and Satire, Travel

According to all three major monotheisms even God needed time to take a rest and so the sabbath was created. With the spate of mosque bombings, torture of prisoners and outright mayhem dominating the news about the Middle East these days, it might help to sit back and read what the American humorist Mark Twain wrote about his Missouri-born creation Tom Sawyer set loose in the Holy Land more than a century ago. Continue reading “when I asked him what a Moslem was” →

This Is Not an Easter Egg

Humor and Satire, Islamophobia

Christians around the world celebrate Easter with thoughts of the empty tomb and resurrection of Christ. But there is more. Weather permitting, children are let loose in their Sunday best to hunt for Easter eggs, adding a secular, healthy, dietary blessing to the baskets of chocolate bunnies and jelly beans waiting at home. Even the White House lawn is set for the annual Easter Egg Roll (minus the Christian Rock) on Monday. It is as though many Christians are not content to leave the tomb empty. Apparently egged on by the spring fever of long forgotten fertility rites, the main message of Christianity gets sidetracked to a debate of anything but intellectual designing: which comes first, the Easter egg or the Easter bunny?

Eggs are not the exclusive mystical domain of Christendom (although the ludicrous lengths taken to parade a sacred holiday into outrageous bonnets and Texas-shaped eggs suggest we have entered the dispensation of Christendumb). Secular folk and agnostics eat their eggs for breakfast with bacon, toast and diner coffee. But all God’s children like eggs, including Muslims with internet savy and a taste for the miraculous. Take a gander (but do not confuse his spouse’s eggs with those shown here) at the three eggs shown below. What do you see different in the middle egg than the ones on either side (hint: the left is from the White House State of the Union Eggroll and the right is reported from last year’s Easter Sunday):
Continue reading This Is Not an Easter Egg →