Someone mentioned "The Noble Quran" below and I have to chime in. It's going to be an anecdotal analysis.
When I was in high school (here in the States), my mom became really conservative. She forbid me from going out on Friday nights. This sucked: because I had only recently bought a 1991 Ford Ranger lowrider. Then she convinced all the other Muslim moms in the area to do the same to their children. Then we all had to get together at my house, sit in a big circle and do a Quranic discussion group. Think: Bible-study group, except you sit on the floor, there's more people with foreign accents, there's unceasing amount of food to be had and the girls are hotter (assuming you like brunettes). But: it's just as boring. Anyway, the first night something like twenty families showed up. We only had eight or so copies of the Quran at home. I liked the idea of sharing my Quran with the curvy Egyptian girl, but her sister pretty much cock-blocked me. Anyway, there weren't enough Qurans. So for the next week we decided to order 20 new copies.
Read the rest at my blog.
16 comments:
Thanks for the excellent analysis! A much better insight into this controversial book
On a personal note, thanks for mentioning the fact that you like chicks who aren't, well, blondes. I know it's idiotic, but right now I feel like putting a bag over my head I am so low over looking "ethnic". So any word of encouragement really helps! So here's a big internet XOXO for that one!
I think you misspelled 'ethnic.'
It's spelled e-x-o-t-i-c.
I think your bigger problem is that bald dude in your picture.
No way. Pim is amazing. And I don't look at all like him. It's just a personal thing, my own insecurity. That's why I need to hear a guy right now expressing attraction to women who are, well, not um, blonde. I'll write about it late on my site. And blondes here, no offense.
PG,
I love brunettes, and "ethnic" looking chicks. Your problem is where you live. Go to SoCal or NYC and you'll see the standard of beauty is completely different.
Eteraz, you don't know what you're talking about about the chicks being hotter at Koran study. You oughta see the chicks at my church.
Lord have Mercy.
benue--thanks. You saw that? And on your Desktop, eh?
Pastorius, it's not really that at all. All it takes is one person's opinion to lay you low, doesn't matter where you are. But actually, the ladies at my church are attractive too. I think it's a Catholic thing.
I'll take all woman.
Here's to the Eternal Feminine.
HOOOOOOOLD UP.
Pim!
Pim, no, seriously. Pim!
Ahem: you posted a picture of you that deserves to be made into a desktop?
Pim, seriously. I need to see it.
Seriously, Pim.
Seriously.
Make my fortuyn!
Ok, I'll mail you hot stuff. But only because you just cracked me the hell up with your articles on your site.
Uh, Pim, about that hot stuff. Uh, you know my email address, right?
HAHAHAHA!!! I was calling him hot stuff, hot stuff. Not my pics. Besides, are you going to photoshop me into a Nagel like Epa has promised to do?
If you want to look like a Nagel, you're the wrong era for me.
Personally, I like the picture of you on the prayer rug.
Well, well, Pim, I think you are going to be pretty optimistic about your looks. ;) But well, that thing that you say about being an "exotic" brunette, if you would live in Spain, you ... will see that is just the same: the ones who are not blondes, they just dye their hair so in the end we, the brunnettes, have the same problem.
Anyway, eteraz, as ever, a very good post on the subject ;) With a very good amount of irony.
Benue,
I figured that. I was just trying to mess with PG's head a bit.
She is gorgeous. I agree.
Well thanks guys, and after ranting on the subject on my site last night I feel much better. This is a bit of insecurity that I should get rid of but that comes back to bite me in the butt on occasion. I explained it more fully at http://whatwouldcharlesmarteldotm.blogspot.com/ last night and I think my confidence is rather restored. And thanks for the comments, I was really low over this.
Eowyn--What you say is very interesting! I need to come to Spain at some point. Though he became completely and staunchly Anglicized and American, my grandfather and his family are from Northern Spain, and are the palest bunch of blue eyed redheads you'll ever see! You should hear his English, it's rather hilarious. He learned it in the South, where I'm from, and managed the Southern accent rather well, bbut not completely. He sounds more like someone from New Orleans. Just imagine someone who didn't learn English until adulthood taking on an American Southern accent, if you can at all.
But from what I know, those in the North vary quite a bit from those in the rest of Spain. Am I correct in this, Eowyn?
Yes, you are right. And it all began with the conquests that this land has had since the beginning of time (je, je, now I sound like Tolkien).
The North (before the Romans) was held by the Celts who came from Northern Europe. They were blonde, tall, fair-skinned and blue-eyed. The Central Part and the South was held by the Iberus, brave warriors (in fact they are the ones who build the fame of the Hispanian -at that time no difference between Portuguese and Spanish- pride and braveness) but on the other hand they were smaller, dark-skinned and dark-haired.
Afterwards, there came the Romans -very simmilar to actual Italians- who never really conquered the North (today, Basque country, Santander and Asturias) -although they considered it as theirs- while the South after 200 years was conquered mainly by Scipio the African -he was from Lybia-. So the Iberus were more mixed that the Celts.
And then there came the Barbarians: mainly, the Visigoths (from Wist-Goths, to distinguish them from Ost-Goths who went to Italy). Again they were fair-skinned, blue-eyed..., like the Celts, but they mainly lived in the North and the Center as the South-East part belonged to Byzantium, till the middle of the VIIth century. So the North was mainly Celt, the Center was a mixture and the South was mainly Ibero-Roman.
Then there came the Arabs, mostly Berebers, Syrians and Egyptians, who although conquered all the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands, were mainly in the South and Center part. The Muslim rulers were really interested in Celtic blonde women and as a result they asked them as the price the North Christian countries had to pay to the Muslim South. As a result some of the rulers of the Spanish Caliphate were totally blonde and had to dye their hair to proof they were real Arabs. ;).
But well, then there were a lot of parts from the North-east who were No-one Lands (tierra de nadie) (mainly North Castille). Christian Lords asked European countries to send them people to inhabit those lands, and so once again the North was Celtic and the South were more Ibero-Roman-Arab.
And then there has been a lot of migrations in more recent times. There is a village in Cordoba called "la Carolina" in honour of Charles III of Spain (its foundator, XVIIIth century) which was populated with Germans. You can imagine the inhabitants of this village are a little bit diferent from the ones of the surroundings ;). And the people who went to South America and came back and the Jewish heritage -a lot of them converted as some of my own ancestors in the XVth century-, that I was forgetting about them.
So it's true: we are really a mixture ;)
And by the way, I do not have to figure anything about your grandfather's accent: it's rather difficult to take into account that each letter is not a sound phonetically speaking, as happens in Spanish. For example, "sound", phonetically speaking it's "saunt", in Spanish, "Sonido", it's read "sonido", just the same. Thanks God it does not have a different alphabet, as Russian or Chinese ;). And greet him from Spain ;)
Thanks for the additional history on this Eowyn, I am aware of many aspects of it, but not all. My grandfather's family is mostly Galician and Asturian.
When it comes to language, he learned English rather without reading but when at a military base during World War II. However, I understand the confusion with English spellings by most Latin-based language speakers. And now I'm going to sound like Tolkien, but English is merely confusing in the modern context. Most of the words became fixed in spelling at a point when they were being pronounced differently from today's pronunciation, and in most cases were spelled like they sound. The major changes and confusion comes in large part in the retaining of the letters "g" and "h" in words in which these letters stopped being pronounced after a certain point. "H" in most cases in the late Old English period, but the "g" at the end of words (as still seen and pronounced in German and Dutch for example) was already being dropped, such as in words like "fifteg" was already being pronounced rather like "y" or "ee". The words that retain the "gh", such as 'night' reflect the older pronunciation, but as such do not reflect today's proninciation.
But, hey, greetings back at you!!
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