Good for you, Nugul. The jarring cognitive dissonance you are experiencing is all too common. Small wonder. It's been said that inquiry is fatal to certainty. So what? Who ever said that sheepish certainty was a great virtue? A great many of the craziest and dumbest people you will ever encouter will be gifted - or more accurately, burdened - with incorrigible convictions. However, just as 'the unexamined life is not worth living', so too are unexamined ideas not worth having. If a pious charlatan tells you that inquiry and curiosity are wicked things, then you ought to chalk up his incurious nature to an intellectual infirmity of some sort.

NG's victory lap is justified. But as others have pointed out, the whole thing was like taking candy from a baby. To lose against a plagiarist would be miraculous. And miracles are very improbable things.

It is an unspoken maxim of writers that if one cannot enchant, one had better enrage. Needless to say, if you neither enchant nor enrage you will be ignored. Whatever the literary merits of Abtigiis’ stories, they are not ignored, even if his stories are often deplored. This recent rivalry and brotherly banter between the avuncular xiinfaniin and Abtigiis has been, I confess, a source of sinister delight. It sort of recalled to my mind a reenactment of the acclaimed literary duels of past eras, only without the fireworks. Ridiculing Hemingway’s bland and simple style of writing, Faulkner contemptuously quipped ‘he was never known to use a word that would send a reader to the dictionary.’ To which Hemingway incredulously retorted, ‘does he think big emotions come from big words’? But that rejoinder accomplished precious little in silencing Hemingway’s critics. A decade after his death, Nabokov, the Russian literary giant, was asked about the former’s fiction. The Russian novelist’s disdain was truculently terse: ‘I read him for the first time in the early forties’, he reckoned, ‘something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it’. Indeed, such barbed criticisms would prove to be mild, as literature is littered with more pungent put-downs. Virginia Woolf described the writing of James Joyce, the famed Irish writer, as the work of a ‘queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples’, conjuring up the mental image of a foul and discomfited little beast. And who doesn't remember the more recent squabbles between Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer? Or perhaps Harold Bloom on Harry Potter. The Yale professor of literature savages these popular books. And rightly so. Such clashes are often an exhibit of intellectual vanity, personal pique, and artistic egoism. No matter. The reptilian side of our brain lights up like a Christmas tree when another person is so brutally skewered. Any defense of aesthetics should be applauded. How could you read Mark Twain's sardonic piece Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses and not guffaw at his merciless review of the book? Literary brawls are an odd mixture of erudition and insolence. This brings me to xiinfaniin's criticism. The old man was rather restrained. I read him as critiquing the literary merits of the story, not its morality. The charge of sanctimony is exaggerated, if not contrived. A little eroticism is fine, though it must be used sparingly - perhaps as a form of comic relief. But the grotesqueness of this particular story is not found in its obsession with erotica. Its ghastly nature stems from the stumblebum style of writing. It is hard to discern if it is a serious attempt at a short-story, or if it is a spoof of the addled writing of Dan Brown and Stephen King. I have said before that Abtigiis has the genes of a good, perhaps a great, writer. Alas, it seems that all-too-often he equates plot with promiscuity, humor with harlotry, and imagery with innuendo. Awoowe, maybe I’m getting too old for this, but such stories are the writing equivalent of pubescent masturbation. If you must do such things, do them in private. This was the spirit of xiinfaniin's graceful taunt.

Libaax,I think TED producers collaborated with on a number of videos. Love the RSA Animate videos. Catchy cartoons. Superb delivery. Neat stuff. Abtigiis, I recently finished reading Harris' The Moral Landscape. And I think that scientists need to wrest ethics from the philosophers. The old philosophical system of rational speculation needs to replaced and grounded in the firm empirical methods of science. Rational speculation is useful to a certain point. But it doesn't quite end the debate. Knowledge does not result from prolonged philosophical analysis, rather it is the result of rigorous experimentation. Philosophy must have an empirical foundation, else it will be viewed as a quaint linguistic exercise of airy speculations. Philosophers used to endlessly argue, for instance, about the nature of 'life' - how are living things different from non-living things'? Some philosophers defended the principle of vitalism while others argued for mechanism. This two thousand year-old philosophical conundrum was brought to an end by a simple experiment - Wohler's synthesis of urea from inorganic molecules. There's no intrinsic 'life-giving' force that permeates living things. Vitalism was dead, and mechanism won the day. This is a good example of how science can crack age-old philosophical chest-nuts. This brings us to morality. Can science actually solve this riddle as well? The problem seems intractable. I think Harris elicited loud grumbles in scientific and philosophic circles when he claimed the famous ought-is gap of Hume is a most silly and stubborn illusion. Can we really connect facts and values? I've read many clever thought-experiments by moral philosophers that are difficult to answer, so I'm not completely sold on it. Harris had a memorable debate on his blog with a prominent physicist who questioned his logic. I must say I found the physicist's rebuttals devastating and unanswerable. Why did I pass over religious morality? Theologians never quite possessed sophisticated theories on ethics, as most of them widely assume that mere divine commandment is sufficient to justify moral suasion. I suppose such philistines are oblivious to Euthyphro's dilemma. In any event, I think moral philosophy and science can converge on certain things. Neuroscience is still in its infancy. But I'm cautiously optimistic that our understanding of the human mind (that is, the brain) will conclusively answer this question.

TED talks are always a rich source of tantalizing and fascinating lectures.

Interesting choice of songs.

No need to be thin-skinned. Your previous post made a lot of nebulous (and extremely exaggerated) claims. You completely missed the thrust of the argument. You might not know anything about chemistry, but I think it would be irksomely inane if you reduced this thread into an argument over rudimentary facts. If you were to be bitten by a snake, stuffing your face with ‘ajwa dates would be entirely useless in warding off the effects of the poisonous venom. If you were to ingest cyanide, ajwa dates (and bananas, apples, strawberries, etc) would be equally ineffective and futile. If you were to get acute heavy-metal poisoning, ajwa dates (insert your favorite fruit) would have no preventative effects. And so forth. Fruits have nutritional properties, not antidotal properties. (But a half-literate camel-herder would not know the difference.) You can piously quote an irrelevant piece of quackery; however, it would behoove you to expend a little effort in understanding the subject before you go on a quote-mining expedition. It’s intellectually duplicitous to defend patently unscientific quackery. Why should an educated Muslim contort himself out of shape to defend prophetic camel urine ‘medicine’ or implausible ‘ajwa date toxicology? Isn’t it self-evident that the authors of such risible ignorance never quite enrolled in the most basic science courses? What else would explain their curious views on houseflies? Devout nonsense about bacteriophages notwithstanding, flies doesn’t have magical poison-antidote wings. It's an imaginary form of illiteracy. I suppose it’s easy for me to make sardonic comments about bedouin biology, but my derision isn’t really aimed at these ancient authors. The problem with homeopathy and prophetic medicine is suggestibility. It's distressing to see that hyper-faithful people are happy to discard the scientific progress of the last 400 years in favor of the unlettered, unscientific views of ancient know-nothings. Your comment about the proper scientific question made me chuckle. Let's just say you won't find any RCTs (randomized clinical trials) on the magical effects of 'ajwa dates in the Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, or JAMA.

lol. Awoowe, your cut-and-paste piece makes many spurious claims. Dates are good for weak hearts? Not only that, but dates will strengthen the heart? It's easy to hide behind non-scientific, feel-good words like 'strong' heart, but it's medically meaningless. There are dozens of cardiovascular diseases. Assume you're heart is attacked by a virus, which will give you a 'weak heart'. How will gormandizing a bowl of dates affect the virus? There's a reason why doctors don't prescribe dates to people who have myocarditis or any heart disease. I wonder if you will also defend the use of camel urine as a respectable form of treatment. Apparently, a traveling group of eight men came to the prophet and complained of an unknown illness (they vaguely complained about how the weather made them ill), he prescribed a treatment of camel urine! Of course, I think this hadith was written by illiterate bedouins who did not know about germs (or for that matter even cells). Why or how is camel urine supposed to treat these men? The poor authors of this quackery did not know that camel urine is the perfect recipe for all types of pathogens and bacteria. Modern apologists for this staggering medical ignorance argue that the urine of camels (and horses) have high amounts of a certain type of hormone, hence menopausal women use a pharmaceutical drug called Premarin (components of this drug are extracted from horse urine). Two problems. First, the people in the particular story were men (a pious allusion to menopause won't work), and the risk of contracting other diseases is very high if you ingest animal waste product; there's a difference between a chemical extraction of a substance and drinking 'fresh' camel urine. Second, imagine if someone prescribed camel dung to a person who suffered bone problems. Is it reasonable to say that camel dung has traces of calcium, therefore people who need calcium supplements should eat camel dung? What are the possible kinds of bacteria you would ingest if you ate camel dung? Do you think camel urine and camel dung are anything but vomit-inducing forms of quackery?

What are some of the alternative treatments offered by prophetic medicine? Well, there’s a cornucopia of absurd advice on the efficacy of herbal remedies. Some of the advice is mildly reasonable, but most of the treatments are outright quackery, as the ancient hadith-mongers who peddled this sort of stuff knew nothing about biochemistry and physiology. Books on prophetic medicine often make for amusing reading. Here are some examples of treatments. “Whoever has seven Ajwa dates every morning he will not be harmed on that day by poison or magic.” Bukhari The dosage is very precise. Seven dates. Why seven? Who knows? Even if we ignore the humorously anachronistic advice about the harms of magic, it's hard for apologists of pseudo-medicine to provide any plausible mechanism for the effects of 'ajwa dates on poison. How exactly would eating dates prevent the deadly effects of poisoning? If someone inhales or ingests a known toxin or chemical, then it won't matter how many 'ajwa dates they've eaten that morning. Do 'ajwa dates have a magical effect on the body? Should we jettison all of chemistry and physiology? Imagine if a pharmaceutical company advertised a sugar pill as preventing all forms of poison, would such a company survive legal liabilities? P.S. The following website is an invaluable source for science-based medicine. The bloggers are all doctors. And by doctors I mean actual doctors, not silly naturopaths or herbal practitioners. http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/

I think most of us should be grateful for the hard-won progress of science in general and medical science in particular. Science-based medicine has given us things like antibiotics, vaccinations, germ theory of disease, better sanitation, anesthesia, ‘wonder’ drugs, diagnostic body-imaging, higher life-expectancy etc. In contrast, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), which is mostly faith-based medicine, continues to be the indefatigable champion of unproven and disproven therapies. Many scientifically-illiterate patients turn to chiropractic, acupuncture, herbal preparations, and homeopathic nostrums in their desperate attempt to find a cure. Unfortunately, this uncanny obsession with woo-woo remedies and magical treatments does not stop at homeopathy. Mind you, homeopathy is predicated on assumptions so preposterous that if such assumptions were true, then everything we know about biology, chemistry, and physiology would be entirely false. In addition to such questionable therapies, medical quacks promote scientifically implausible treatments such as therapeutic touch, magnetic therapy, reflexology, cupping, and spiritual healing. I’ll dedicate this thread to exposing the popular, but dubious, methods of alternative practitioners. For the most part, all the seemingly positive effects of these treatments can be accounted for by the placebo-effect. There’s no such thing as alternative physics or alternative chemistry. The term alternative medicine is a complete misnomer. With all due respect to ancient systems of ‘medicine’ (Traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine etc.), science-based medicine or evidence-based medicine is the only real form of medicine – the rest are just bullshit-laden, spiritual-based pseudo-medicine. Science-based medicine marries skepticism with experimentation; evidence with hypothesis. If an ancient treatment is shown to be efficacious under placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomized clinical trials, then such a treatment becomes a part of conventional medicine. I’ll also explore another form of quackery known as prophetic ‘medicine’. Proponents of this quackery offer numerous herbal concoctions (honey, garlic, ginseng, etc) as treatments for various conditions, falsely claiming that their sham treatments cure every known disease including cancer. Do medical experts agree with such fanciful diagnoses? What about the wild-eyed claim that Nigella Sativa, black cumin seed, is a cure for every disease except death? Such ‘cure-all’ remedies are reminiscent of the magical and superstitious ideas that are the hallmark of fradulent alternative treatments. There are many physician bloggers who have dedicated an inordinate amount of time to this topic, confuting erroneous beliefs in such therapies, educating the public about the promises of real medicine, and warning them about the perils of pseudomedicine. I'll refer to some of their timely and timeless expositions on this subject. And, of course, one of the most salient books on this subject is Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial by the clinician and professor Dr. Edzard Ernst.

I suppose nuance isn’t exactly your strong suit, Norfy? I didn't say that non-organic foods were generally better for your health. Nice straw-man. My assertion was much more circumscribed. Given certain conditions, the choice of non-organic foods is the more salubrious choice. Your willful ignorance of such a mundane fact is as remarkable as it is laughable. Perhaps you’ll inquire about an instance where non-organic foods are conspicuously better. Normally, when I am confronted with dogmatic drivel of this vein, I confessedly tend towards the caustic, not the didactic. But I’ll make a charitable exception. I think ElPunto alluded to the undeniable benefits of the modernization of food. In the West, we take it for granted that our water is fluoridated, thereby preventing dental disease; that our salt is iodized, and thereby preventing goiter and cretinism. And the list goes on. In non-Western countries, especially in developing countries, the difference between genetically-modified rice that is fortified with vitamin A and regular rice can be the difference between vision and blindness, according to the World Health Organization and National Institutes of Health. However, an organic-food cultist might still demur. They’ll say things like, well, people can get fluoride, iodine, or vitamin A from organic foods. Let’s take the example of vitamin A fortified rice. Hundreds of thousands of children become blind due a deficiency of this vitamin. If you were a public health official, what would you think is the most efficient, cost-effective, and healthy solution to this problem. Would you tell them to eat organic carrots? Now, I’m not going to spoon-feed you information. But what are some possible, practical constraints to ‘eat organic carrots’ approach? As I have delineated in my previous posts, organic foods and non-organic foods are, ceteris paribus, equally healthy. The only difference is that there are conditions that demand non-organic foods. There are no conditions in which organic foods are the better, healthier, or smarter choice. Finally, this whole controversy over non-organic foods (and GM foods) is manufactured out of whole-cloth. It’s similar to the manufactured controversies over evolution (and to a lesser extent, climate-change science). There’s no controversy amongst the experts. But that won’t stop an ill-informed creationist from idiotically asking about missing links. In like manner, the reality that organic foods are not healthier or better than non-organic foods is a brute fact. The evidence is not equivocal. But that won’t stop some oafish organic food cultist from touting the invisible benefits of organic foods, while declaiming against the invisible harms of non-organic foods. I understand that little Norfy is probably too daft and too lazy to address the merits of the arguments. So this shall be my last post. Nomads can do their own research on this subject to assess the truth-value of these assertions. P.S. Those who want to look this up, please, for Heaven's sake, don't rely on a preliminary google search. Some websites are full of so much s!tupidity it burns. Go to the websites of credible scientific agencies such as the CDC, USDA, WHO, National Institutes of Health, etc. And look up the research studies they cite in their articles.

Norf, awoowe, I know you are intellectually lazy. Thinking, analyzing, and synthesizing information has proven too monumental a task for you. Clearly, as NG's passing comment revealed, your newly-minted interest in organic foods is more a product of tedium and conformity than any arduous research on your part. I have a feeling that the 'mad scientist' would find the science on this subject a no-brainer.

ElPunto, if your main gripe against non-organic foods is that such foods are treated with potentially dangerous pesticides, then you have to realize the same thing applies to organic foods. Organic pesticides are 'designed to kill' as well. You see, organic pesticides aren't exactly made out of glucose. Organic pesticides are not even less toxic. This is, by far, the commonest misconception amongst naive proponents of organic foods. I'm pretty sure you can find some scary-sounding, toxic organic pesticides the same way you found a 'toxic' non-organic pesticide. What's relevant is whether our food contains levels of toxicity that render it inedible or harmful. The science on this isn't fuzzy. There are no real risks to such pesticides (organic and non-organic) provided that their levels are below a certain point. Food agencies and governmental bodies monitor both organic and non-organic pesticide levels, as any pesticide can be harmful if it reaches a certain point.

ElPunto, isn’t some such thing always the concern? What if it has unknown, yet deleterious, long-term consequences? But that can be said about pretty much anything. The question is predicated on an argument from ignorance. You just can’t frame research questions in such amorphous, sloppy ways. It’s more fruitful to ask if there is any scientifically plausible reason to think that, say, a molecule of ascorbic acid (vitamin C), which is chemically identical to the ascorbic acid found in organic oranges, can have different effects on the body? As it turns out, physiology doesn’t care about the origin of a chemical (whether it came from the lab, or the wild), and can’t tell the difference. Your body will process it just the same. But where does this fear that there’s some hidden, long-term danger to such chemicals come from? Maybe the word ‘chemicals’ itself inspires such anxieties. Do you think organic foods are composed of magical stuff? They too are composed of the same ‘chemicals’. So why harp on the pre-scientific piffle about unknown dangers? I’ll say two things about pesticides and transnational companies. Conventional foods do not contain any harmful traces of pesticide. This isn’t my conjecture. It’s the verdict of the scientific agencies and organizations whose job description it is to study such matters. And besides, organic foods also contain pesticide residues. Of course, organic food enthusiasts will blithely retort that such pesticides are ‘organic’, but such responses betray a comical ignorance of basic chemistry. Big agricultural companies are like big pharmaceutical companies. Profit drives both. But should we reject the marvels of agricultural science (higher yields, fortified foods, etc) and the wonders of pharmacology (vaccination, antibiotics, etc) because such companies are driven by profit? What has profit to do with the science? It’s a non-sequitur. It’s unfortunate that many people are given to popular delusions about the sinister nature of the science that underpins the success of big agra and big pharma. These suspicions give rise to unhinged organic movements and anti-vaccination agitations, creating silly controversies over matters of well-established science. In any event, I won't push the point any farther, lest xiinfaniin think it's overkill. Suffice it to say that any objective reader ought to understand that organic and non-organic foods are equally salubrious or, as the case might be, deleterious.

Awoowe, the subject isn't religion. I don't understand why you insist on playing the role of the pious nincompoop. Whether 'chickens injected with hormones' (a mostly urban myth, nowadays) are less healthy than 'organic' poultry is a question that can be decided by experiments. And all the relevant agriculture and food authorities are agreed about it. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with 'going organic', if it makes you feel better. But you can't expect to be taken seriously if you dogmatically parrot factually inaccurate talking-points. I have always found pastoral fetishism irksome and doltish. Do facts even matter to people who espouse such fashionable nonsense? Waxay ku leeyihiin, I don't need to read anything to know such-and-such must be bad. I just have a gut-feeling it's unhealthy. Besides, did I mention it's not natural?

NG, dee inuu i xiijiyo ayuunbuu doonayaa Norf. I doubt he has the patience to read any peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes studies of this sort. But allow me to make a spectacularly simple to those who share Norf’s naive, pastoral fetishism. The word ‘organic’ is a misnomer, as all food (organic or ‘inorganic’) is organic (carbon-based molecules). But why do food faddists use the word organic to describe only certain foods? Are such foods different in their molecular or chemical composition? No. Are such foods better or healthier in any objective, measurable way? No. Norf, do you want me to furnish you with references of journal papers and books that make this rudimentary point? Aar naga daa, mid aanu saaxib nahay baa af carabi jajaban ku odhan jiray, Soomaali laa yaqra, wa ithaa qara' laa yafham. Be that as it may, I'll still provide you with a credible source, US Department of Agriculture, that makes the same point sans the technicalities Is organic food better for me and my family? USDA makes no claims that organically produced food is safer or more nutritious than conventionally produced food. Organic food differs from conventionally produced food in the way it is grown, handled, and processed. http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?template=TemplateN&leftNav=NationalOrganicProgram&page=NOPGoingOrganic&description=Going%20Organic&acct=nopgeninfo

Awoowe, waxaan umalaynayaa ‘fahmadu kuuma looshana’. My remarks about the purported benefits of organic foods were neither verbose nor obscurantist. At best, some organic foods might taste better than others. At worst, highly suggestible people pay more money for the same thing. It only concerns me when scientific illiterates start claiming that genetically-modified foods are unhealthy or dangerous. In fact, a lot of the times non-organic foods can be more beneficial.

Organic food enthusiasts are not much different from Halaal food enthusiasts. Their preference for such foods has precious little to do with the quality of the food; rather it is an aesthetic preference, not a scientific one. It's mostly about preparation and process, and any claims about an intrinsic difference between organic and non-organic food is unwarranted. The systematic review of the literature – that is, the meta-analysis of all high-quality research studies - conclusively demonstrate that organic foods are not safer, better, or healthier than conventional foods. So why do people continue to pay more money for the same thing? Is it merely a harmless fetish with all things ‘natural’? Do organic foods really taste better? I suppose some such idiosyncrasies are tolerable insofar as food faddists do not advocate and agitate for dangerous agronomic policies. Vilifying genetically-modified foods might be fashionable, but it is not reasonable. I think the quip that 'for every suburban, white, dreadlocked kid who touts the benefits of organic foods, there is a gray-beard PhD agricultural scientist who shakes his head' is pretty accurate. P.S. The article posted in this thread is refreshingly candid about the so-called benefits of organic foods. Claims of benefits are hardly supported by the scientific evidence. The author, however, does mention that organic tomatoes and milk might be an exception, as they contain higher levels of important chemicals (yes, the natural vs chemical dichotomy is inane). But even the author of this research was quite skeptical about the inherent superiority of organic tomatoes and milk. The higher nutritional value of these foods can be adequately explained by various factors. The manner of production has little to do with it.

Liqaye, awoowe, it is not improbable that she is a female. I personally know a few females, devout but daft, who have bought into this nefarious ideaology. Unsurprisingly, a good percentage of such females come from very religious families. Perhaps it is a matter of conformity. Asch's famous experiments on the power of conformity attest to this. Some people (a third) will assent to truth of conspicuoulsy false propositions. How else would an intelligent female agree to the indignities of an Al-Shabaab terrorist?

Abtiga, saaxiibkaaga waxa ka guuxaya wuxuu Ibraahin Hawd ku tilmaamay fulaynimada fikirka. Dhalinyaro badan baan garanayaa oo sidiisa oo kale moodaya hadday caqligooda yara adeegsadan oo su’aalo isweydiiyaan in dhulkaba lala goynayo. Mid baa mar walba lafteyda su’aalo i weydiiya, oo markuu su’aasha dhameeya subxaanallah ku khatima. Waxaan idhaahdaa adeer subxaanallah laynee, waxaad yeelaysaa geesinimo garaad iska baadh, waayo su’aalo lays weydiiyaa dembi maaha, oo inaad fekertaa xaaraan maaha. Waxaan kaloo idhi: Ilaahey ma su’aalaha adag buu necebyahay? Dee Faroole oo kale maaha. If anything, the Lord would welcome the inquisitive nature of a sincere skeptic. Regarding your short stories, I think you would be more successful if you tempered your shock jock predilections.

Gaalada ha inoo danbeeyaane ee adigu maxaad argagaxisada ku taageertay, adeer? Because these wretched islamists bring stability and security to the South? What planet have you been living on the past few years? And why would any sensible female support a band of bronze-age bedouins who would sooner put her ilk in cloth-bags, disenfranchising her in the name of a toothless, androcentric diety?

I just finished reading a piece by Nurudin Farah in the acclaimed literary magazine, The New Yorker . Horta, Abtiga hal abuurista sheekooyinka kuma xuma oo khayaali waasic ah buu leeyahay oo sida Farah muu wax u qoro. His main problem, it seems, is his penchant for ackward eroticism. I'm sure some of Abtiga's musings on SOL would be shortlisted for the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award. http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/badsex.html P.S. You can find Nurudin Farah's story here, but I think it requires subscription. Youngthing by Nuruddin Farah December 13, 2010 Nuruddin Farah, Fiction, “Youngthing,” The New Yorker, December 13, 2010, p. 81 ABSTRACT: Short story, set in Mogadishu, Somalia, about an encounter between a young insurgent soldier and an old man http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2010/12/13/101213fi_fiction_farah#ixzz18C8IufTh

This format isn't all that bad. Alot of forums use it. But the background details are ghastly.

I thought our jihadi misfit left SOL to put his money where his mouth is. Alas, the safeeh did not join the great Jihad. I misjudged his survival instincts.

Originally posted by Nur: Result Of Islamophobia ?: Nearly 1 in 5 Americans had mental illness in 2009 Your remark is an indelicate jape, yaa mullah. I doubt that you actually believe a fear of Islam is implicated in mental illness. But given your penchant for peddling all manner of piffle - conspiracy theories, arrant pseudoscience, just-so stories - I'm inclined to think you are actually joco-serious, half-joking, half-serious. Perhaps you think someone with a dopamine pathway problem would be magically cured if only he embraced Islam, or that someone who subscribes to Islam is less likely to suffer from mental illness. If that is your view, I will not deign to correct you. Some absurdities are beyond contempt and beneath comment.