(For SI Blog reader Kreacher)
Kreacher, did we need the Pig, Dip in the Pool and The Landlady in these short winter days of our life.
Whatever possessed you to recommend Roald Dahl’s stories to us.
Well, we won’t hold you completely responsible.
You see our appetite for Dahl’s short stories was also whetted by our recent reading of Dahl’s longer, raunchy, rambunctious work My Uncle Oswald.
Since Dahl’s short stories were not easily available at our county libraries, we had to fall back upon our usual reliable source – Amazon.
The postman delivered our new copy of The Best of Roald Dahl from Amazon yesterday.
Comprised of a selection of 29 short stories culled from Dahl’s Switch Bitch, Kiss Kiss, Over to You, Someone Like You and The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar, our collection includes the Pig, The Landlady, The Bestseller, Edward the Conqueror and 21 other pieces.
We’ve read four stories so far – Pig, The landlady, Dip in the Pool and The Hitchhiker.
The fourth one is fluff.
And of the first three it’s hard to say which one is most depressing.
Statutory Warning: All Religions are Equally Stupid
Besides demonstrating callous insensitivity towards disbelievers and making frequent threats of the blazing fire awaiting those who refuse to repose their faith in him, Allah also exhibits a bigotry towards men whose sexual orientation differs from the mainstream.
In short, Allah is a homophobe.
You have Allah’s anti-gay bigotry leaping at you in plain sight in the Quran.
Here’s an incensed Allah speaking in the voice of the ‘prophet’ Lot:
You lust after men rather than women. You transgress all bounds. (Sura 7, Aya 81)
Say, is Allah the sexual policeman or what? The seventh century precursor of the modern-day Republican Party.
And what is the destined fate of such homosexuals. Here again is Allah:
and We showered upon [the rest of] them a rain [of destruction]. See the fate of the evildoers. (Sura 7 Aya 84)
Rain of destruction for humans daring to follow the call of their heart? That’s the merciful Allah for you.
Statutory Warning: All Religions are Equally Stupid
One of the striking things about the Quran is the flexibility of God (Allah) in some minor respects and an unyielding inflexibility in other major aspects.
Take for instance pork.
Many of us are led to believe that God (Allah) imposes strict prohibitions in dietary matters, particularly in consuming pig’s meat and that under no circumstance must a Muslim eat pork.
Not so. Not so.
Unlike the semi-literate mullahs or the illiterate Muslims who tend to favor a blanket ban on pork, Allah is flexible when it comes to consuming pork.
No, we are not making this bit up about Allah’s flexibility on porcine edibles.
Schmucks, it’s right there in the Quran:
You are forbidden to eat carrion; blood; pig’s meat; any animal over which any name other than God’s has been invoked; any animal strangled, or victim of a violent blow or fall, or gored or savaged by a beast of prey….but if any of you is forced by hunger to eat forbidden food, with no intention of doing wrong, then God is most forgiving and merciful. (emphasis added, Sura 5, Aya 3)
Lest there be lingering doubt in the devout, God (Allah) repeats this point in Sura 6:
So [believers] eat any [animal] over which God’s name has been pronounced, if you believe in His revelations. Why should you not eat such animals when God has already fully explained what He has forbidden you, except when forced by hunger? (Sura 6, Aya 118 and 119)
So My Name is Khan, next time you find yourself very hungry and in a place where Pork Fried Rice is the only dish on the menu, go right ahead and dig into your swine with gusto.
After all, Allah is forgiving and merciful when it comes to pork.
Creating Discord
Alas, when it comes to Christians or Jews, the well of Allah’s compassion dries up and his inflexible attitude rears up.
And as long as the Quran continues to be the vade mecum of Muslims everywhere, the enmity between Islam and those of other faiths will endure because of verses like the below one:
You who believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as allies; they are allies only to each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them — God does not guide such wrongdoers– yet you [Prophet] will see the perverse at heart rushing to them for protection, saying, ‘We are afraid fortune may turn against us.’ But God may well bring about a triumph or some other event of His own making: then they will rue the secrets they harboured in their hearts, (Sura 5 Aya 51& 52)
Again and again, the Quran strives to disparage Christians and Jews and exalt the status of Allah.
Statutory Warning: All Religions are Equally Stupid
Heaven forbid that Islam should ever extend its sway beyond the religion’s present borders and take the reins of power in new territories.
After reading six Suras and nearly a 100 pages of the Quran, it’s safe to predict that should Islam spread its tentacles to more countries the prospect of freedom would immensely diminish and man’s life on this planet turn infinitely bleaker.
For Allah is the spiritual father of Joseph Stalin.
An uncompromising dictator with scant regard, nay a maniacal disdain, for those who march to the beat of a different drummer.
Christianity, Hinduism and the other religions are no less stupid than Islam but they are less intolerant of disbelievers (to use a favorite term of Allah in the Quran).
Time and again, Allah shouts his contempt for those not receptive to the clarion call of Islam:
Those who reject faith and deny Our revelations will inhabit the blazing fire. (Sura 5, Aya 10)
Blazing fire of a modern-day Lubyanka?
While the skeptics may sneer at our dire prognostications, all we implore of them is turn to the countries where Islam’s writ runs large today. Public worship of any religion except Islam is explicitly forbidden under threat of dire punishment, women are forced to veil their faces, the Mullahs lord over the sheep and the ‘revelations’ of ‘God’ to an illiterate in the seventh century is the supreme arbiter of life and liberty.
If that doesn’t give you the creeps, we don’t know what else will.
Statutory Warning: All Religions are Equally Stupid
Defenders of Islam and its holy book Quran often seek to rebut charges of severe treatment of Muslim women by pointing to the book’s liberal divorce provisions for women, sanction for widow remarriage, Allah’s denunciations of harsh treatment of the fair sex et al.
Well, that defense certainly has some truth but it’s not the full story when it comes to women and the Quran.
You see, when it comes to the distaff sex God (Allah) seems to have made a Faustian bargain. What he giveth women with one hand, he more than taketh away with the other.
Again, while there are several positive points vis-a-vis treatment of women in the Quran Allah’s Cadillac sometimes makes abrupt U-turns on the Islamic highway leading us to the inescapable conclusion that God (Allah) is no bra-burning feminist.
Here’s some of the evidence from the pages of the Quran itself to support our conclusion that Allah ain’t no die-hard feminist:
God commands you that a son should have the equivalent share of two daughters. (Sura 4, Aya 11)
Sure, you may be tempted to argue that the Quran is a reflection of its times, and of hard, strife-ridden life in the arid Middle East desert of the 7th century AD.
If that is indeed your point, we’d like to counter that God is supposed to stand above such mundane constructs as time or geography.
Now if you think Aya 11 is an aberration, here read this verse:
If any of your women commit a lewd act, call four witnesses from among you, then, if they testify to their guilt, keep the women at home until death comes to them or until God shows them another way. If two men commit a lewd act, punish them both; if they repent and mend their ways, leave them alone. (Sura 4, Aya 15 and 16)
Again and again and again, we encounter women getting shafted at the hands of God (Allah) while men tend to get a relatively easy pass.
Read this verse providing divine sanction to polygamy:
If you feel that you will not deal fairly with orphan girls, you may marry whichever [other] women seem good to you, two, three or four. (Sura 4, Aya 3)
To those of you still in two minds, the following verse in the Quran that explicitly allows physical violence against women should set to rest all doubts on where God (Allah) stands in respect to women:
If you fear high-handedness from your wives, remind them [of the teachings of God], then ignore them when you go to bed, then hit them. (Sura 4, Aya 34)
Statutory Warning: All Religions are Equally Stupid
Holy cow, what are you saying?
Are my eyes playing tricks on me?
SI, are you really saying God (Allah) has given me the green light to screw my wife any which way I fancy.
Indeed, children.
Bet you schmucks never thought Allah would be so broadminded, did ya? 
Yes, Allah is in some ways.
No kidding, fellas.
Sex and Women
We’ve read 286 Aya (verses) in the Quran so far and will pore over a lot more before our Quranic train reaches its destination.
But it’s safe to say the following will likely be our favorite line from the Quran:
Your wives are your fields, so go into your fields whichever way you like.
- Sura 2, Aya 223
As we understand it, in the above verse Allah is essentially granting Muslim men carte blanche to plow into their wives any which way they choose.
Not for Allah’s acolytes the banality or straitjacket of the missionary pose.
Yipee!
Lest you dolts be tempted to think we’re being flippant, let’s provide some ballast for our point by falling back on the translator’s notes. As Prof Abdel Haleem explains in the footnote to the above (favorite) verse: When the Muslims emigrated to Medina, they heard from the Jews that a child born from a woman approached from behind would have a squint. p.25
You see, the Jews had it all wrong.
Having provided the all-clear sign, God (Allah) stops there for the Quran is no Kama Sutra, the porn pillow of the Hindu chutiyas.
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