December 10, 2007 – 12:58 am
This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine
How could I not write about this? Would I let this one pass and be able to live with myself? You know me too well by now. This is too classic to let go of.
You see, Arabs and Muslims have solved all their intractable problems. They live in peace with each other and in harmony with the rest of the world. Poverty and illiteracy are things of the past. Unprecedented economic prosperity is coupled with an individual drive for scientific innovation that dwarves all the inventions of Thomas Edison and Leonardo Da Vinci combined.
Our universities are oozing with hordes of promising generations, our factories are exporting marvels to the world, our theatres are beaming with cultural talent, and our cities are virtual gardens of earthly delights. Foreigners are queuing at our embassies begging us to live in our midst. The new UNDP report is composed of only one paragraph that describes us as a perfect people.
We’ve conquered life and grabbed our destiny by the balls, and we have become a model for all nations to emulate.
But there is one lingering problem that we are yet to overcome before we herald the inauguration of heaven on earth. Our men and women are mixing at the work place, and this blasphemy is abominable in the eyes of God; it may actually threaten to destroy everything we have achieved so far. But Dr. Izzat Atiyeh, the Chief of the Hadeeth Department at the Azhar University, would not sleep at night before unearthing a way to deliver us from evil. From his influential post at the Vatican of the Muslim world, salvation would be rendered. Rejoice, for redemption is forthcoming.
You may be familiar with this story already, but it deserves a retrospective look. Read More »
October 15, 2007 – 6:57 pm
(This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)
I fell asleep on the couch the other day while watching TV. When I woke up, the first thing I heard was a line from a very weird movie whose characters were upsetting the flow of my dreams with their noisy science fiction weapons. Don’t you hate it when that happens, when outside noises or actions intrude upon your dreams and become part of them? I’m sure you have all experienced this annoying amalgamation of reality with fantasy. You’ll be about to kiss a beautiful model on a secluded beach and then she suddenly starts punching you in the face for no reason, only to wake up and discover that it’s your little daughter who crept into your bed at night and started kicking your nose in her sleep. Don’t even try to re-dream that moment from where you left off. It just never works.
Anyway, in this movie, which I later found out was the screen adaptation of”The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, planet Earth was apparently destroyed and was now being rebuilt from scratch. The line I caught when I opened my eyes was of the main character being asked by the re-builders of the planet whether he would like any changes to be made to the new Earth (I did say that the movie was very weird). At this point, I immediately went back to sleep on the same couch. Of course, as I said, you can never hook up to that paradise oasis you just unwillingly departed. No, it’s that recurring plane crash instead. Or even that painfully protracted drowning scene where, after losing hope, you suddenly discover that you need not have panicked because you can breathe effortlessly underwater after all – and that you can actually talk to dolphins. Where the hell did that kick-boxing model go, for God’s sake? And what am I doing alone in the cockpit of a crashing jet diving into the ocean? Read More »
January 23, 2007 – 9:28 pm
(This article was first published in Living Well magazine of Jordan in December 2006)
Yet again, I disappoint my ever forbearing editor. Contrary to my promise – and despite her friendly instructions to turn off the serious tone, if only for the merry season – I find myself compulsively tapping the wrong buttons on the keyboard. Despite my solemn pledge to don a white beard and write a joyous Christmas carol, my hands have declared mutiny and are disobeying orders from the central command of my better judgment.
Santa is nowhere to be found. To make matters worse, the alphabets have joined the revolt, pulling my fingertips towards sentences that can’t wait to be written. As I surrender to their gravity, I find myself itching to tell this story, I even feel it’s my responsibility to do so. To tell you the truth, the historic document I’m about to share with you has restored my faith in the basic goodness of the human race, the mere thought of which brings warmth to my heart, more joy than any Father Christmas could muster. Read More »
(This article was first published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)
One day this teacher walked into the classroom with an unusually somber look that I shall never forget. As I discovered in due course, he had intentionally put on that deeply solemn face because he wanted to tell us a cautionary tale, one that required special dramatic effects.
The teacher, whose name I shall withhold, began his Oscar-winning performance by telling us that his next-door neighbor died a week before. Miraculously, however, he told us that she was given another shot at life and that he just had a chat with her in the staircase of their building where he accidentally bumped into her. He asked her what she witnessed in her brief afterlife encounter and she told him that she saw many women hanging by their long hair which was tied to ceiling rails made of hell fire. This was, she revealed to our mesmerized, almost tearing teacher, their punishment for not covering their hair while they were alive. Read More »
November 8, 2004 – 9:51 pm
George W. Bush won for a simpler reason than all political pundits would like to admit. It has nothing to do with the economy, security, Iraq , gay marriage or moral values – all highly sophisticated issues for the average uninformed and apathetic American voter.
Bush won because Kerry has an emotionless, expressionless face that did not seem to be capable of getting fired up by either anger or jubilation, no matter how hard he tried.
It is as simple as that. Bush won because Kerry is too much of a nice person who does not possess the qualities – nor the looks – of a macho American hero to whom the American people and culture are so incurably addicted. Read More »
If George W. Bush wants Arabs to believe a word he says, then big heads should quickly start rolling in his administration. Starting with Donald Rumsfeld, who played down the torture incidents with the same arrogance he played down the catastrophic looting of the Baghdad museum – when he famously announced: “things happen.”
With the Washington Post’s bombshell report of having more than a thousand photos taken by American soldiers of their obscene escapades, the picture – pun intended – has become much uglier. I cannot imagine who is still naïve enough now to believe that such enormous photographic output could possibly be the result of so-called isolated exceptions, without high level endorsement inside what is supposed to be the most disciplined army in the world.
In fact, what we saw were merely those situations where the culprits had the nerve – and stupidity – to capture their acts on film through incriminating photo ops. The question everyone is asking is how many more similar incidents escaped the lens of these tourist warriors and went unreported. Read More »
To all Americans who have been horrified by the dreadful scenes of the charred and mutilated bodies of their fellow countrymen and women dragged through the streets and hung from bridges in Iraq , I would like to say a few indispensable words.
First, you must know and believe that such abominable acts are absolute anathema to everything the Arab culture and the religion of Islam stand for.
When prophet Mohammad entered Mecca as a conqueror after long years of forced exile, he didn’t shed a drop of blood. On the contrary, the legendary forgiveness bestowed upon those very people who drove him from his home and were bent on killing him was immortalised when he declared, upon entering the holy city, that those who take shelter in the house of Abu Sufian, his defeated arch enemy, shall be safe. The prophet then addressed the leaders of the vanquished city and their followers, absolving them: “Go, for you are free”. Read More »
September 4, 2001 – 9:55 pm
Many of the most venerable intellectuals and commentators of the left are unwittingly these days committing a grave error by falling into the elusive trap of implying some sort of an understandable causal linkage between what they rightly perceive as America’s arrogant foreign policies and the recent attacks that ravaged it.
Even though very careful never to condone what took place, nevertheless, these otherwise uncompromising humanitarian icons are inadvertently coming too close to crossing the apologist line by attempting to explain and place in a political context what can only be described as the most incomprehensible and futile acts of homicidal/suicidal insanity. Read More »
One of the most difficult subjects to explore in one article is the current “underground confrontation” (for the lack of a better description) between World War II revisionist historians and their detractors. The term “debate” would not have worked because, for the first time in the history of post-colonial Western civilisation, a single influential lobby representing an ethnic group has been able to criminalise the mere debating of a historical event, namely the “Jewish Holocaust.”
For example, in France, Germany and Switzerland, any slight deviation from the officially scripted version of this episode in history will end you up in legal trouble under the bizarre crime of “Holocaust denial.” Meanwhile, this subject remains an equally untouchable taboo in the rest of the world. Agree or disagree with the revisionists, it must be said that the current persecution and silencing of revisionist historians in the West will be remembered as one of the most unbelievable and shameful blemishes to ever tarnish Western liberal democracies. Read More »
February 28, 2001 – 6:56 pm
God is not to blame, we are
If this often preached conciliatory statement is true - that Muslims, Christians, Jews, and the rest of humankind are all, metaphorically speaking, the children of God - then we are indeed a bunch of incorrigibly spoilt kids with a very bleak future.
True, our ‘metaphoric’ Father left us His will inside more than one mysterious and ancient covenant. But one thing over which no doubt can be cast is that all have essentially sought to attain the same goal: peace on earth and equal justice for all. It is incredibly ironic, therefore, how these holy scripts managed over the centuries to become so diametrically conflicting with each other to the point that they are today totally irreconcilable.
Even the fundamental shared command against the grave act of taking an innocent human being’s life has found its detractors in the very name of the Giver of this life. The resulting endless strife among God’s agonizing children everywhere has led this humble sibling to sometimes honestly wish that the Almighty never bothered to entrust us with anything at all.
Before you slit my throat with knives of blasphemy, I invite you to take a quick tour of the world’s major conflicts today. Start in Palestine, go east to Afghanistan, take a detour to Chechnya, and then come down to Kashmir and India. Stop over in Indonesia, visit the Philippines, then travel west back to Sudan, and from there on to Algeria. Cross to Europe going over north Cyprus, then passing through Bosnia and Kosovo, head all the way up to Ireland. What do you notice? What lies at the heart of all the persisting troubles that you see? More precisely, what is it that makes all these human beings think they are so different from the people they seek to murder? Read More »
