Sebastian Faulks, PBUH
Just in time for Ramadan, British author Sebastian Faulks declares that after reading the Qur'an and several histories of Islam he has ended up "with a high regard for Islam, which seems to me more spiritually demanding than Judaism or Christianity". How about that? Rainy Day, having opted for one of the less spiritually demanding belief systems mentioned by Faulks, does feel a bit envious of his Muslim sisters and brothers, but as with all recent declarations by Brits ("compassion" for Libyan mass murderers, for example), one must be careful about accepting these things at face value.
Context, as Sebastian would confirm, is critical, so it's important to understand that his avowal of admiration for Islam was made in the Mecca-oriented Guardian, and it followed quite a different declaration about things Islamic in the more worldly Sunday Times magazine. There, in fact, we discover that "Faulks turned to the Koran for his research, and was appalled: 'It's a depressing book. It really is. It's just the rantings of a schizophrenic. It's very one-dimensional, and people talk about the beauty of the Arabic and so on, but the English translation I read was, from a literary point of view, very disappointing.'"
Hmmm. "The rantings of a schizophrenic"?
Given that Yale University recently recognized the enormous value of placating the jihadists, it's not surprising that Sebastian Faulks is now getting with the Zeitgeist and offering "a simple but unqualified apology to my Muslim friends and readers for anything that has come out sounding crude or intolerant." But here's the question facing us now, and facing Sebastian Faulks, especially : Is this enough to save his life? Not life in the "eternal" sense of Paradise to come, but in the here-and-now variety that he currently enjoys in London. After all, when the Muslims who were disappointed with the Japanese version of The Satanic Verses went to the home of the translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, they murdered him! The "spiritually demanding" take the written word very literally.
One does get the feeling from all this that our "artists" are in grave danger of being less than honest with us when it comes to Islam. The constant need to look over one's shoulder is not only a pain in the neck; it also skews one's view of the world and and leads to all kinds of insincerity.
