Intermittent
In case you’re wondering why posting has been a tad intermittent of late, it’s just that I’m working on revisions of the book and I have other calls on my time at the moment. But I’ll be back to normal garrulity and belligerence soon.
Tip Jar
You’re sourly missed but I’m happy that it is to serve The Bigger Cause.
JoB, did you mean ‘sourly’ or ‘sorely’! :-)
But you sure got that right – namely, the BIGGER CAUSE. You have read, I take it, the review of Caroline Fourest;s new book: Brother Tariq: The Doublespeak of Tariq Ramadan? (It’s linked on B&W.) Well, Ramadan represents the cutting edge of the bigger cause, and the fact that no one seems to notice is reason for very serious concern. Here is fundamentalist Islamism at the centre of the West, accepted, for some unaccountable reason, as the face of reform Islam. Unbelievable!
However, OB, you are sorely missed! All the best on your new book!
Thanks Eric! And JoB! (I figure ‘sourly missed’ is quite fitting in a way. Hee hee.)
Your worshipful fans eagerly await your resurrection.
My day is incomplete without a dose of withering irony, and the last month or two, you’ve been on a roll with misogyny and superstition providing such a target rich environment.
Maybe I don’t know what I meant but I do know I mistyped ;-)
Eric – you take too much on my reading things. I rarely read things by people that are still alive & certainly not a book that is likely to annoy me.
JoB. I simply assumed you had read the review of the boook. As for the book itself… Well, in this case I think it is probably important. Tariq Ramadan, teaching at Oxford, as though he were a reform Muslim, understandings of Islam that would be approved in Iran – and no one notices! I have a nephew who has written an MA Thesis on Ramadan, and he thinks of him as the most sensible voice in Islam today. If that’s what is being taught at our universities, it’s time we started taking this man seriously, dead or alive.
Eric MacDonald wrote,”it’s time we started taking [Tariq Ramadan] seriously, dead or alive.”
Reward, for information leading to the apprehension of?
Eric, it gets worse: I do not read the reviews. Have heard about Tariq though and whilst I hate the pope I really do not take him seriously.
(sorry, not trying to be belligerent)
It’s not quite true that no one notices Ramadan and his surprising respectability – lots of people notice, it’s just that lots of other people don’t notice and some other people are the source of the surprising respectability.
Good luck with the forthcoming book, OB/JS. ‘Does God hate Women”. We, at B&W are all rooting for you and your co- author, Jeremy. You have both been blessed with great sharp brains.
“You have both been blessed with great sharp brains.”
And determinedly knobbly elbows…
:-)
I don’t know about elbows. Sharp brains, for sure! But blessed? Sure sounds religious to me!
About my earlier hyperbole. Certainly, dead or alive, or, if you please, ‘reward, leading to the apprehension of.’ It’s time the man was exposed on the big screen, instead of in what seem to be (so far) culturally marginal attempts to unseat the bastard. He’s teaching at Oxford, for Dog’s sake! When will they ever learn?
Return of knobbly elbows!
I look forward to a return to the ‘normal garrulity and belligerence’.
When is the book due out?
“And determinedly knobbly elbows…”
Ah, well with all the daily movements the two pairs of elbows have to make in their course of writing one can forgive them for being ever so knobbly.
‘Tis better though to have wobbly elbows than to have wobbly brains.:-)!