Join the International Jihad

I've been meaning to take a picture of and post this for a while.

I don't understand how Franco fits in with all this. Also, I love how the end of the pistol is at the end of a part where the plaster and paint are chipped off, and it seems as if the stencil has reached through from another, 1970s dimension to shoot at the building.

Worst Argument for Monotheism Ever

Ok, I guess I lied about that hiatus thing. But I did get a good amount of work done on al-Tarjamaana al-Kubraa, which is one of the couple of books I´ve recently picked up for my dissertation. The problem, it turns out, is that my to-do list always gets longer, even when some things get crossed off. I managed to get through about half of the relevant/possible-relevant parts last night, and hope to toss it into the "ship to the States/make visitors take Stateside for me" pile within the next couple of days.

Anyhow, I´ve been stewing about this for a while (three days) now:
on the plane back from Morocco, I had this conversation (the conversation was thrust upon me, really, since I was in fact reading Le Città Invisibili and managing to understand most of it, and picking up some good Italian vocab to boot), which started with the guy sitting two seats away from me asking how long I´d spent in Morocco.

Since I´d lived there, he reasoned, I was obviously Muslim, because how could anyone spend more than a minimal amount of time somewhere where everyone is Muslim and not convert?! Anyhow, I told him that I wasn´t, and he went on and on about how great Muhammad was, and how great Islam was, and that if I were just to read some of the Qur'an I´d convert in a snap.

I, of course, think that proselytizing should be illegal in most places, not the least of which is international air space. But none of that's really new, and I´ve had the "how could you possibly speak Arabic/have lived in the Arab world/have heard of Islam and not converted?" conversation (um, it´s more of a monologue, really) thrust upon me more times than I care to recount.

That wasn't what's been making me shake my head in incredulity, though. What did it was that the guy, realizing that I wasn't about to say, "you know, you're right; why don't I just say the shahaada now and become become Muslim," pulled an, "oh, well you know, Islam says it's okay anyways. Christains and Jews and Muslims are all monotheisms with overlapping prophets."

People usually end right there.

This guy took it one step further: "It's really important that there's just one God, because do you know what would happen if there were more than one? They'd start fighting, just like people!"

I was really, really glad that this guy wasn't a mufti.

Morocco Redux, and Semana Santa

The future of djellaba fashion seemingly involves the following three trends:
1. large all-over print flower patterns (almost like a Hawaiian shirt or muumuu print)
2. a stripe between the body of the djellaba and the sleeves
3. sleeves that are a different color than the body of the djellaba.

Use the above information to do what you will; if you end up being the next hot djellaba designer, let me know.

Also, I know that Snoap (who visited, along with his girlfriend Vicky whose name I´m not quite sure how to spell), who visited for Semana Santa, is waiting for me to blog about it. It was fun! There were people in those pointy caps that make Americans cringe, and lots of processions, and it didn´t rain so much, unlike last year, when it rained the whole time and there were almost no processions. We talked about the Sierra Mountains and how we´d really like to go there and drink some chai tea, and maybe have something involving salsa sauce.

In other news, this blog is going on hiatus until I finish a dissertation chapter. I have about five (pretty long, now terribly outdated) entries waiting for editing, but realize that I´d rather make everyone I know call me Doctor Valencia than blog up a storm (which, um, I haven´t been doing lately anyways.) Not that I´m close to finishing or anything anyways. I´ll be back and blogging by June.