Is Nuruddin Farah another Ayaan Xirsi in the making?

[Alle-ubaahne]

Originally posted by Taliban:

quote:Originally posted by Baashi:

He is technically right in saying that Somalis, in general, have never being a practicing Muslims. That's a fact.

Are you saying Somalis weren't practicing Muslims in the pre-colonial times? Was Ahmed Gurey or Sayid Muhammad Abdullah Hassan and the thousands who supported him non-practicing Muslims? Several centuries ago, when Somalia had strong Islamic centers along the coastal cities and towns, were the Somalis at the time non-practicing Muslims? Have you heard of Shaykh Uthman bin Ali al-Zeylai, the 8th century Somali theologian who wrote the only authoritative text on the Hanafi school of Islam?

Thank you brother, for bring up the question of the great Islamic Scholar, Imaam Al Zeylai, a true Somali. I personally met a Tunisian Islamic Scholar three years ago, who wrote several Islamic Books in all subjects of the Shariica, and he asked me where I was from, and I said, 'Somalia', to my surprise, he explained to me the history and the role of Imaam Al-Zeylici in Islam and what he meant to the Muslim world. He then said, you can't be an illiterate about your religion if Zeylici was one of you who greatly contributed to Islam alot of knowledge. That Tunisian Scholar is so far the man who inspired me to aim at attaining doctoral degrees and beyond, by excelling knowledge in all fields.

 

I am proud to be among the people of Imaam Al-Zeylici, who is from the bilaadul-Hijrateyn, what they now call Somalia!

[Taliban]

Originally posted by Alle-ubaahne:

Thank you brother

You're welcome.

[NGONGE]

Originally posted by femme_fatale:

quote:Originally posted by NGONGE:

quote:

---

Originally posted by femme_fatale:

I remember sometime back, came across one of his books,'Sardines' n i waz totally excited coz it waz the first somali novel i ever read.didnt go past pg10, coz he kept glorifying unislamic ideas like drinking wine n stuff. i didnt like it.bt itz bin so long since i heard bout him that i waz sure hez dead.

I don’t wish to get into the argument about Islamic dress here. It’s too long, too complicated and, frankly, boring. However, I just want to pick you up on your comment about his books. This guy is an author writing fiction. His stories allow him to use his poetic licence and discuss anything and everything (within reason of course). To talk about some unislamic practices in a

fictional

story is not the same as advocating such practices.

 

Maybe you should have read the whole book before making a judgment about the man’s personal ideas. Unless, of course, his style of writing and storytelling is what you didn’t like.

???

no matter how gud his literary ability is/was, i was disappointed with the behaviour of characters in his book.the book to most non-somalis reflect our culture b believes.i would never want anybody to think that way of us. i really expected more from a somali n most of all a MUSLIM coz thatz wat should guide as

From the outset let me reveal that I have not had the pleasure (or displeasure) of reading any of his books. I truly don’t know how good or bad this writer is. I also have no idea what messages he tries to convey in his books. My gripe is only with the way you chose to dismiss him and his books. You neither gave a review of the book, in which you pointed out why you thought that particular novel you read was bad. Nor did you clearly explain why you dislike the author! What you did instead was to criticise someone for the characters in his novel and the actions of those characters!

 

Surely storytelling does not depend on the characters’ actions alone but also on the eventual moral of the story. Did his story have a message?

 

Here, since you chose to use Islam as the yardstick for judgment let me give you a couple of Islamic stories. Now, try to keep an open mind and follow my words carefully as I walk you through a couple of the stories we find in our holy book.

 

First of all, let us talk about our prophet (CSW) and how he is depicted in some of the Suras in the Quran! Ah! How about if we use the one about his meeting with the blind man? In that Ayah, as I’m sure you can recall, we see the prophet frowning and turning his back on the blind man that sought him and wanted to learn about Islam. It is understood that the prophet, at the time, was busy trying to persuade some of the noblemen of Qureesh to become Muslim. As he was doing so, a poor blind man came to him and asked him to teach him about this new faith. However, the prophet being busy with his original task and hating to be interrupted, ignored him and turned his back on him!

 

Now, if we go by your logic of not portraying Muslims in a bad way, surely we would have to censor that Ayah from any book we give to the West. I mean would you really want your prophet coming across in a bad light to these people that don’t believe?

 

A shocking suggestion, wouldn’t you say? Luckily, of course, things don’t work in that way. Stories have ends and usually carry morals. In that particular case, the story went on to demonstrate that Islam is a faith of equality that does not discriminate between rich or poor. It also went on to prove to those that claimed that the prophet was a fake who invented his own religion that such a claim is not true. Why would someone inventing his own faith create an Ayah in which he admonishes himself?

 

I could go on with a couple more stories and their morals but I’m confident that the message is clear now (and worried that I might bore you). In other words, the actions of the characters in a story are not what’s important, the eventual climax of the story and moral of it is what counts. If you believe that this man’s stories give out the wrong messages and that the ideas he tries to convey to us (by the use of his far from prefect characters) are inappropriate, then, by all means, go ahead and criticise him (preferably with some explanations so that we too could benefit from your impressions).

[Fabregas]

@Ngone well said brother. I think we Muslims are too judgemental these days. I remember the hadith when the bedoiun came and urinated in the Prophets Mosque and the ashaba angrily rushed towards him but the Prophet calmly told them them not to harm him.And the hadith when a man came to the Prophet and said "I am addicted to Zina", the Prophet wisely replied "Would you like Zina for your mother and Sister?.......6 pages of speculation about one mans statement will not benefit Islam or Muslims...............

[Taliban]

Please don't buy this book., November 2, 2006

 

Reviewer: M'Liss - See all my reviews

 

Incest, bestiality, children having sex, and X-treme casual sex. That's the make up of the first forty pages of Secrets. The only things kept secret are any vivid or lasting description of locale, character development or any plot worthy of turning the page.

[Taliban]

Are There Secrets in Secrets? Round Table on Nuruddin Farah.

 

By Said S. Samatar

 

"Industriousness," so goes a venerable Somali aphorism, "never comes home empty-handed." No author has ever more strikingly demonstrated the truth of this aphorism than Nuruddin Farah whose prodigious history has taken the world by storm. Secrets, his eighth novel, is the latest evidence of Farah's energy and industrial output. The prodigious output has had its intimidating effects in African writing circles, to judge by the odes on the cover of this book. That he is now the laureate of the prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature should redound to the good of his already established reputation as "one of the world's great writers." The award represents a personal triumph for Farah, a vindication for his fiction, and, most important, a victory for a badly demoralized Somalia that one of the "sons of her soil" should be so rarely honored. As a fellow Somali myself, I should crave to be counted as one of his principal cheerleaders, applauding him on and on to higher and higher heights. But sentimental fellow feeling is one thing; integrity in assessing a work of fiction is another; and on the latter basis it must be said that Secrets arouses, at least in this reader, certain concerns of context and credibility. I shall examine these by and by.

 

Set against the background of civil-war Somalia, Secrets, a novel of luxuriant prose and strange similes--"grins as self-conscious as a sparrow dipping its head in the river's mist"--attempts to recount a family saga, that of the Nonno clan, in multiple angles of vision and in a maddening maze of mechanical metaphors.The tale begins in Mogadishu, Somalia's once charming but now ruined capital, where Kalaman, the protagonist, offers us a slice of his early insouciant coming-of-age and then takes a leap, without transition, to his growth into a thirty-three-year-old up-and-coming Somali yuppie, who runs a successful enterprise as a computer programmer. Grandpa Nonno, nicknamed Matukade, or "He-Who-Never-Prays," possesses a dilapidated estate, composed of a bungalow and numerous acres of not unpleasant woodlands, on the banks of the Shebeele, or "River of Leopards." He had, we are told, run south in the early decades of the century from the former British Somaliland Protectorate for reasons that are unsaid. Nonno's son, and Kalaman's father, Yaqut, earns his upkeep as an engraver of headstones for graves. Macabre enough. Yaqut's wife Damac, Kalaman's putative mother, is a "four-breasted" boneless wonder, who has made well off enough on the "beads trade" to own a vehicle for movement, and a firearm for self-defense against marauding militias.

 

Second in significance to the Nonnos are Madoobe, or the Black, and his pair of progeny--Sholoongo, a "shape-shifting" witch of a lass "with animal powers," "raised by a lioness"; and Madoobe's son Timir who, among other improbabilities, holds office as an "active member of the American gay movement." Then there is Fidow, Nonno's general hand man, wild honey collector, crocodile trapper, elephant poacher, and goer of "both ways in sexual matters." This just about closes the circle of significant characters in Secrets. [End Page 137].

 

As to the events in Secrets, it must be said that not much happens. There is no character development, there is no plot, there is no sign of humans doing things to other humans to stir the reader's admiration, pity, or scorn. There is only a cloud of verbiage. In the end a work of fiction must stand--or fall--by the measure of its plausibility. Judged on this criterion, Secrets fails to measure up. To offer a running sample of the various grounds for complaint: first, there are the elementary errors: dibqaloo', hanqaraloo', or hangaraloo' (all three Somali for "scorpion") is misnamed as "hangaroole." This should have been a petty objection if the dibqaloo' didn't play a central role in the folk myth employed to carry the story forward. Arraweello, the archetypal Queen of Somali mythology in pre-Islamic matriarchal Somalia is misrendered throughout as Carraweello. Now suppose a Yoruba novelist of note in a book on the Yoruba persistently got the name of Oduduwa wrong. Would not such occasion a few raised eyebrows?

 

More serious: the English idioms and utterances that Farah selects to depict his chosen slice of Somali experience sit rather awkwardly with Somali life and lore, to say nothing of Somali literary temper and tastes. Consider, for example, these snippets of dialogue taken randomly from the first four or so pages:

 

"Now why on earth did we not think of that?"

"I gather that Sholoongo was delivered [. . .] ."

"I cannot vouch for its truth [ . . .]."

"I named you Kalaman because it is a cul-de-sac of a name."

 

And a little later:

"We are damned if we do, and damned if we don't." (Emphasis added in all cases).

 

These are all nice idioms. The trouble is that they are fiercely foreign to Somali speech mannerisms. To put them in the mouth of a Somali is positively a literary abomination.

 

Apparently unwilling--maybe unable--to squeeze out of English the corresponding sound and syntax of Somali speechifying, Farah packs in, higgledy-piggledy, the accents, idioms, even mannerisms, of the British Isles. The result is charmingly comical, making the creatures that populate Secrets sound rather like a party of British dandies out on a picnic in the Bounds Green suburb of London. Take a look: Kalaman in quarrel with grandpa utters aloud: "The cheek of it all!" (280). Can anyone, in the know, imagine a Somali saying the above? And this: "If they pitied me, it would be because I was the poor sod who hadn't a blood family to be loyal to . . ." (237). The poor sod! Is this not a Britishism? Kalaman the child, not the grown-up, is made to say: "Where other boys' braggadocio underlined for me their overly [. . .]" (8). Braggadocio in the mouth of a Somali child?

 

Secrets sports a legion of Americanisms, too. In fact, it could be said justly that the language of Secrets is roughly evenly divided between Britishisms and Americanisms to the outrage of the reader appreciative of the violence done to the Somali style of speaking. Sample: "The Lord knows he had a plethora of these phrases, shibboleths pointing to his nervous or joyous state" [End Page 138] (5). Shibboleth? How did the "eight-plus-year-old" Kalaman come to acquire this Hebrew-English idiom? "I dared not betray Sholoongo, my secret-sharer [here Joseph Conrad sneaks in!] whose daredevilry never ceased to amaze me" (8). Imagine a Somali child making side-bar allusions to a novella of Joseph Conrad's! And daredevilry? The pity is that there is a reservoir of corresponding native Somali idioms that Farah could have easily rendered in English, and into which he is unwilling--maybe unable--to dip. And: "[. . .] Barni would hang around all day if need be, patient like a groupie waiting for an instant's sight of her idol" (10). Groupie? How did this Americanism get into the mouth of a Somali child?

 

Then there is the problem of misplaced events, objects, and historical chronology: Arbaco, a barely sedentarized "floater," makes this remarkable analogy: "If you make it into the big league, they pay you a lot [. . .]" (222). Did she learn about the terminology of American sports lingo among the camels in the desert?! And Kalaman holding forth on the superiority of his moral probity over the warlords: ". . . f I were one the vigilantes [sic] or besotted with the idea of power like the cowboy politicians?" Instead of "cowboy," why not "camelboy" (since the camel reigns supreme in Somalia) so as to ground the sentiment in the local color of its environment, instead of borrowing an Americanism? It is this kind of consistent failure to contextualize that undermines the text. Equally extraordinarily, Madoobe, or Blackie, is portrayed as having made "his living taming wild horses, which he exported to the Middle East and out of which, it was rumored, he made a mint" (10). Only one problem: there are precious few horses, wild or domestic, left in Somalia. I've written at length about horses and horse culture in Somalia, and while there used to be a great horse population in the country, it is all but extinct nowadays from the combination of the increasing dessication of the environment and the introduction of motorized transport that has made the horse irrelevant. Today there are about three spots where horses exist in any appreciable numbers: the valley of Nuggal in eastern Somalia, the coastal region around 'Eel-Buur, and the environs of Harrodigeet in Ogaa.deen country. For the rest, nothing--certainly not in Afgoi.

 

In the nineteenth century, the American navy imported camels from Morocco for transport use in the American southwest, but the project failed on account of the inhospitable climate, and the last solitary camel was sighted wandering listlessly in the desert wilds of New Mexico. Now imagine that an American novelist in a work set in New Mexico (circa 1900) has a character "making a mint" out of breaking camels! And this: "I hurt in the eyes," he said. "Summer one moment, and on its heels a sudden winter, with frostbite more bitter than any the world has known." There is no summer or winter in Somalia, indeed none of the four seasons of European culture; there are only the dry and wet seasons--more dry than wet. (And "frostbite" in equator-sun-scorched Somalia where there is not even a word for snow, let alone frostbite.) And yet Farah's Somalis are projected as seasoned Alaskans waxing sagely on the existential angst of "frostbites."

 

Still more intriguing: Grandpa Nonno admires grandchild Kalaman's teeth: "As I prepared myself to light a cigarette, I remarked how, with the [End Page 139] residual tobacco stains removed, Kalaman's teeth looked TV-commercial clean." There has never been a TV-station in Afgoi, indeed only briefly in Mogadishu, in the mid-eighties. Where would the village-bound Nonno have seen TV commercials? And the barely literate Arbaco delivers herself of this pointer: "It will be great fun to fill the tyrant's boots. It is good for my CV." Only one rub: the word "CV," as well as the concept, does not exist in Somali culture, and only the small staff in the ministries who are able to read Italian or English--which Arbaco is not--would have come across it. In Farah's pen, pastoral Somalia is made to sound, amazingly, like a Manhattan-style bureaucracy! And Grandpa Nonno pontificates:

"The Prophet Mohammed [sic] was once asked to define Allah. Responding to the question, the Prophet said God is different from any Ident ity kit that a human being is capable of constructing!" (104)

 

Identikit: identity + kit--a darling twaddle of the anti-narrative brigade--in the mouth of Muhammad? Why, Farah's Prophet Muhammad sounds, remarkably, like a latter-day postmodernist steeped in the argot of deconstructionism!

Then there is the matter of "Complexification." Farah's style is characterized by an alternation of brilliant verbal executions that achieve the poetic, and a barrage of rancid mouth-fillers that deteriorate into pompous verbosity. A sample of the former:

I suggested Arbaco and I find a place out of his earshot so we could talk in peace. I drove away fast, the tires of my vehicle stirring so much dust you would have thought that a horde of hippopotami was having a wrestling bout with elephants. (229)

 

Or:

 

When Arbaco reemerged she wasn't alone. A man with whom she had a kind of conspiratorial harmony was with her, the type of harmony informed by corruption. I could tell that they didn't trust each other either, like accomplices in a murder having no faith in one another. The man, who was sixty if a day, had about him the air of a blackmailer. (227)

 

Even the sternest detractor has to concede that by such passages as the above Farah achieves verbal deftness of immeasurable elegance. Secrets contains many such literary gems. At his best Farah so deploys language as to construct breathtakingly bucolic lyrics, a stunning achievement in which not a syntax, not a syllable, nay, not even an accent, misses the mark. At such moments the reader must feel immensely rewarded.

 

But at his worst, Farah plunges into the muddy pond of verbal gobbledygook. Take any page of Secrets and you will find, guaranteed, the weirdest of sentence-constructions since Adam babbled his first halting syllables in the Garden of Eden. Sample: Young Kalaman is instructing us on how his name was coined: "The K was joined to an L, then marked with the appropriate vowel-point for the sound he wished to achieve: accents of [End Page 140] focus, of a skirmished relevance" (238). What in Allah's name--or Waaq's (sky-god), for that matter--is "a skirmished relevance"? And: "The ants marked my body with polygonal and polyhedral messages." Polygonal and polyhedral? What purpose do these mouth-jammers serve, other than to complexify?

 

Farah seems to have a thing for the big and obscure word--i.e., for "weeping" he deploys "lachrymose"; for "car," "jalopy"; and for "general manager," "factotum." A corollary of the itch to complexify is the urge to overwrite, and overwrite, and overwrite. Child Kalaman explains his gullet's reaction to a chilled drink of tamarind: "My larynx loosened up, so did my pharynx, my voice organs bounced into action, with the Adam's apple jerking to life, functioning with the ease of a recently greased engine" (3). This child talks too grown-up; also the sentence might have worked more effectively if Farah stopped it right after "loosened up" and deleted the frothy coda. Indeed it is frothy codas that have conspired to ruin Secrets. Undoubtedly Farah would have benefited by his editors cutting out every third sentence at random to make the effort learner, tidier, and therefore aesthetically more rewarding.

 

The second major issue that arises out of reading Secrets relates to the absence in it of a sustaining core--a skeleton around which to hang the various strands of thematic devices in order to propel the story forward. So the text keeps falling back on itself in a circular tangle of overwriting. In the first half of the account, Farah seeks an anchoring center in phantasmagoria. Hence the allegorical naming of his characters: Kalaman (split mind), Nonno (Italian for grandfather), Damac (Desire), Qalin (Pen), Fidow (Evening), and so on; and the providential name-giving crow that comes down from the sky as a Somali deus ex machina to cry out "Kalaman!" on the instant of the child's birth. There are also various and sundry allusions in the rehashing of the Somali myth of the Milky Way, or Dhabaha 'Irka. But he leaves out (maybe doesn't know of) the key component of the Road-of-the-Sky cosmology, namely, Awrka 'Irka, or the Camel of the Sky whose tail got pulled off from the weight of so many folk hanging from it, causing an entire clan to plunge down to earth--this a Somali version of the Biblical myth of the Tower of Babel.

 

When the Milky Way myth fails to rescue Secrets, Farah tries magical realism, of a sort reminiscent of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. There are invading armies of locusts, termites, birds of all manner doing bizarre things, geckos, lizards, snakes, and the ubiquitous scorpion--conundrums. The elephant in Secrets that crosses "international boundaries" to avenge himself on the poacher Fidow is every bit as fantastical as the "Jews of Amsterdam" invading García Márquez's mythical South American forest republic. But the Buendia clan in One Hundred Years do rather better as an incarnation of allegory than do the Nonnos in Secrets. When the magical realism in its turn doesn't work, Farah dusts up astrology, this perhaps as a concession to the Psychic Friends Network, but it, too, doesn't do the trick, so resort is had to numerology (last thirty pages or so), and when the numbers, too, don't add up, Secrets collapses into a soupy Islamic theology. Altogether a work in despair. [End Page 141]

 

Another cause for alarm is the growing cancer of bestiality in Farah's recent fiction. In 1990 (1991?) in St. Louis at the ASA's annual convention, a party of Somalis (including me) went to cheer him on. We were all rooting for him pridefully, as a native son made good. To the discomfiture of the Somalis in the audience--maybe to others, too--Farah, reading an extract from one of the books--Maps?--embarked on an extended graphic description of a stud of a man banging away at a cow. The reading went on ad nauseam, replete with gruntings, groanings, mooings, and mumblings--in short, all manner of man-cow love noises . . . until the fellow beside me lurched forward and whimpered in a shaky voice, "Where is the men's room? I fear I want to vomit." In Secrets Farah has this:

 

Now his nakedness was prominent with an erection. In a moment he was standing behind a heifer, saying something, his voice even. The nearer I got to him and the young cow, the clearer his voice was, only I couldn't decipher his words, maybe because he was speaking to the cow in a coded tongue, comparable to children's private babble. Was he appeasing the cow's beastly instincts by talking to her in a secret language? (16)

 

One cannot cavil at the employment of bestiality as a thematic technique; after all, a fictionist has his fictional license, but the bestiality here does nothing for the narrative structure. It is merely a paste-on. In any case, if Farah wishes to present the Somalis as a race of recidivist bestialists, it is his authorial prerogative to do so. But then he should not have picked on the poor cow, a minority species in the land, but rather on the proud camel since Somalia is decidedly a camel country.

 

There are, too, the gratuitous crudities: does not the reader weary of being reminded of grandpa Nonno's "large member"? For his part Nonno is an octogenarian Peeping Tom who delights in secretly--and voyeuristically--eyeing the jerkings off of grandchild Kalaman. Then Kalaman reminisces of childhood when a bad head cold oppressed him and father Yaqut came to the rescue: "When I couldn't breathe because my nasal passages were clogged, my father took my nose in his mouth and, at a single drag, sucked the unease out of me, phlegm and mucus and all." I called my doctor to inquire if this was technically possible. He assured me it was not. Which means Farah sojourns in the realm of the unbelievable even in relating an obscenity. The objection here is not to the crudity per se: no African work is ever cruder than Ayi Kwei Armah's classic The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born or a European effort earthier than James Joyce's Dubliners. The difference is that the crudities in the latter text are part of a craft designed to lift them off to sublime beauties. Farah's is just lumped on.

 

Farah is hailed by the publisher of Secrets as having "a life-long project"--that of "keep[ing] my country alive by writing about it." Would that he had done so. The Somali civil war (in its clan massacres, mass starvations, international interventions, in the muddlings of Operation Restore Hope, the draggings of the dead bodies of American Rangers--in short, in its evocation of the very apocalypse) constitutes an epic tale crying for an oracular pen to give it a tongue. It remains the untold secret. [End Page 142] Which introduces the subject of secrets in Secrets. The word "secret" jumps out at the reader practically in every page, indeed almost every paragraph. In Farah's telling, the universe is crawling with secrets: locusts have secrets, as do termites, as does the scorpion, as does the "belly" of a dead hippo, as does Sholoongo's culture of "lice in a jelly jar," as do her monthlies, as does the gang-rape of Damac, as does Kalaman's birth from this violation, and so on . . . until upon the word the wearied reader screams out with Horatio: "There needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us this, my lord!" Only in the last sentence of the last page do you discover the god-awful secret--that there are no secrets in Secrets.

 

All in all, this is a fiercely non-Somali novel. But what does this matter beside the charging juggernaut of a fearsome will power? Calvin Coolidge: "Press on. Nothing can take the place of persistence. TALENT will not; the world is full of unsuccessful people with talent. GENIUS will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. EDUCATION alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." Farah has persistence and determination in abundance. And therein lies the guarantee of his fame.

 

Said S. Samatar is Professor in the Department of History at Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey.

 

http://www.aayaha.com/viewpage.php?articleid=4107

[LayZie G.]

From the outset let me reveal that I have not had the pleasure (or displeasure) of reading any of his books. I truly don’t know how good or bad this writer is. I also have no idea what messages he tries to convey in his books. My gripe is only with the way you chose to dismiss him and his books. You neither gave a review of the book, in which you pointed out why you thought that particular novel you read was bad. Nor did you clearly explain why you dislike the author! What you did instead was to criticise someone for the characters in his novel and the actions of those characters!

You are questioning someone who read 10 pages, Vs You, who don't know anything of the subject ?

 

You are questioning her displeasure of the little she read, when you yourself read nothing close to a word?

 

Unlike u, the 10 pages she had read gave her the right to critize and show her displeasure of his work without going further along the pages of the book in queston, where as you, just love to talk and talk, I bet you like seeing yourself write so much.

 

I mean, what on earth made you comment about the girl and her comments regarding "the author's characters" unless, it revealed something within u, like Wine ka hoos hoos u cabtid aa guilty kaa dhigaaya.

 

Do yourself a favour and quit while u are ahead.

 

Get his books, get your read on and then gabadha u imow and question her or better yet, jump at her throat, but until then, afkaaga dadka ka cesho.

 

your defination of Islam = "jalbabaad" ?

JB, that was funny, but you have to understand, people like TALIBAN AND THAT KID WHO IS FOREVER CHANGING HIS HANDLE are all talks, I mean if they truly believed what they are preaching daily on these forums, then they would have fought the cause of islam, they would have joined their mujahidiin brothers and fought along side them instead of hiding in their homes and talking about things they have no business talking about?

 

There are alot of muslims out there, who are knowledgeable and fear allah as much, if not more than you bunch (aka taliban and his brother with the many handles) that don't wear jalabiib, and never wore it and cover up modestly, before all the extremist ideas were put forward post 9/11.

 

For you to sit there and say jalabiib this, jalabiib that just makes you look retarded, because what you wear doesn't define your religion or your faith.

 

As long as all of us muslims are doing our duties as muslims, dressing modestly and fearing allah, then that is all we can do, until judgement day.

 

If some of you want to burn in a piece of clothing that has no base aka jalabiib, that is your progative, but don't force pple's throats as to what they can or can not wear as a muslim, you are not allah, you don't dictate what a muslim should do or wear, that is between them and their maker.

 

People like taliban and the other dude, inta aa enegry inta kudhameyneysiin, tiina kasoo baxa, I'm sure you two have alot of work ahead of you to get through as far as the religion aspect of your lives among other things, so tiina kafiirsada, and leave the rest to their own. Heck if they want to run down the road naked, thats on them, it won't reflect on u.

 

and lastly, I want to address another creature who wrote this:

 

So you cannot discuss with us on such issues Mr. JB self-confessed kaafir!

Nacalad aa kugu taalo. Nacalaa la urbadan tahay. Shuban dhiig allaah kugu rido, caloosha allah kaaga baryay iney ku fariisato and your intestines iney bararto, aamin dheh, you son of a gun.

[Taliban]

Originally posted by LayZieGirl:

you are not allah

Subhanallah! How can you equate a human to Allah? How can you even suggest that? Please reconsider your statement.

[Johnny B]

Selective quoting is least desireable in a healthy and decent exchange, her words " you're not Allah " in context, that is, stand to reason.

 

It's upto you to prove the contrary.

 

Go ahead , the floor is yours, and while you're on it,please, help us understand how Nudarin gets paid of the " Anti-Islam " fund for stating that a "Jalbabaad" is not culturally Somali, and accompanies Ayan in whatever" Anti-Islam " campaign she may run.?

 

Just remember,nobody is intrested in your personal vacuous indices,wrapped in an out of context verses.

 

You'll need to give the Islamic account( not the Talibanic account , mind you) of where Nuradin steps out of the Islamic fold by stating that "Jalbabaad is not culturally Somali".

 

now, put upp for the gallery or shut upp.

We've had more than our share of Cyber sanctimony.

[NGONGE]

Oh look! The lazy one leaps in again! Calm down, dear. You had the gall to quote me yet did not understand a word of the words you quoted. I suggest you go back and read those words again before you assault me with your italic drivel.

 

The young lady did confess to reading ten or so pages of the book, and whilst one could easily have shot at her with the clichéd old saying of ‘not reading a book by its cover’, I thought it best to explain to her that a book is also not only judged by the actions of its characters.

 

Again, my hasty young mare, to comment on her words I didn’t have to read the book in question at all. It was a matter of understanding novels and the reason they’re written. Taliban above, posted a critique by professor Samater of one of the books of our disputed author. It was an enjoyably readable review too! Now, had I picked on the professor’s words and tried to tell him that he was wrong (without me having read the book) you would be correct in your criticism of me. However, though I have some reservations about the professor’s critique, I honestly can not question his assessment (for I have not read the book). Indeed, where he differs from our sister above is in the fact that he clarified his opposition to the novel and pointed out the parts where he thought the author went wrong. He did not simply say the book was rubbish just because he did not like some of the characters. Instead, he drew our attention to the flaws of those characters and how unimportant the inclusion of their vices were to the story.

 

As for the rest of your nonsense about me liking to see myself write and write or having a secret drink problem! Well, without wishing to wound your italic pride, I’d only advice you to rise above the childish twaddle and work on your writing style. I honestly have no wish or desire to engage in futile arguments with little girls (and your words portray you as one, my dear). Here, take my advice: drop the italics, for like a deluded ugly harridan that splashes her face with dollops of makeup to hide away the ugliness you hide your obnoxious and pointless words behind those italics. In both cases, everyone but you and the ugly harridan can see right through the comical façade. My second advice to you would be to ease up on the angry little girl act. Sometimes it’s comical, sometimes it’s suitable, but, all the time? That’s just juvenile.

 

My third and final advice would be to actually show some originality. Try to look at topics from a different angle and see if you can add your own thoughts, ideas and understanding to them. Let the cry around the forum go ‘here comes the lazy one with her unique wisdom’ instead of the usual ‘here comes that angry little girl displaying her furious lack of comprehension again’!

 

Having said all of that, I still believe that I’m a good judge of character and almost know that I’ve completely, utterly and totally pinpointed what your real personality is like. I wouldn’t call myself prophetic or anything but, occasionally, I stumble upon some mystic-like premonitions! My strong hunch here is that rather than hate my words and believing me to be in love with writing so much, you actually, secretly, guiltily and almost petulantly do have a soft spot for my writing and can’t help getting upset with yourself for liking what you see. Don’t fret though, my dear. Better people than you like to see me write. So, you see, we have something in common. I like to see me write and you (though you wont admit it and that’s a lady’s prerogative) like to see me write too.

[Pi]

Yo, NGONGE, you have to feed SOL kids slowly. Speaking about feeding, I was feeding my baby niece yesterday with that disgusting baby food paste. Yes, I tasted it, but that's not the point. I would put a spoonful into her mouth, and then instantly follow up with another spoonful. Apparently, once you give a baby a spoonful, you have to do it slowly, and wait to see if the little bugger spits anything out. It's laborious and takes a long time, but it's the only way to get them to eat it. LOL. I think you should apply the same rule when it comes to feeding (teaching) SOL toddlers. Slowly. One spoon at a time.

[Blessed]

You know what is much worse than his alleged comment? Making takfeer on a Muslim without giving them the chance to explain their position. We don't even know if he has made these comments for sure. He only supposedly said that it's not cultural. It isn't and it's not trying to be. Sheesh! So, why are people so eager to push the brother out of the fold of Islam? Maxaad ka faaideysaan oon danbi ahayn.

[Ms DD]

Salaam

 

There is a fine line between enjoining the good and judging someone.

 

I was watching the lecture "Avoiding the Dangers of Self-Righteousness". It is the 6th lecture from the bottom of this link.

http://alhaqq.net/AlHaqq/Khutbahs/default.aspx

 

This is something we fall into without even realising.

The starting duah is in Arabic (2min) but the rest 30min the talk is in all english.

[Jabhad]

We Muslims have failed miserably to disentangle Islamic ideals from our own cultural norms. Only Allah[sWT] knows if Nurradin is dancing for Western audience to gain few worldly objects[few prices] at the expense of great deen or he is a jahil that does not know what he is talking about.

[LayZie G.]

I didn't think it would be this much fun witnessing the calaacal of a so called nin weyn. Remind me to pick on u more often.

 

Speaking of improving my style of writing, you must be envious of my italics eh? Is cun oday yahow.

 

Who knew outing your extra curriculum activities would cause u so much grieve? If I had known sooner, would have outted you long before yesterday.

 

Not to worry oday, your sol fans would love u no matter, whether u riding Heineken or Bud Light, it makes no difference to them, you are still Ngonge the bs'er.

 

honestly have no wish or desire to engage in futile arguments with little girls (and your words portray you as one, my dear).

...yet you couldn't help yourself because why ??(truth hurts)

 

Try to look at topics from a different angle and see if you can add your own thoughts, ideas and understanding to them.

Waxaa ladhahay, xoolo ma is maqlaan, not sure if the saying is true but you need to take your own advise before you offer it to me.