Can a book be haram? This is a complex question. Intrinsically, books are simply words on a page, notes strung together, images.
C. Scott Jordan
What delivered me to the dinner table of Saliha Sardar is the sort of thing that vilifies the timeless cliché that ‘things happen for a reason’. And God has a keen sense of poetic irony and justice, crafting the whole story and not necessarily catering to your liking.
For the uninitiated, the Koch Brothers is the household moniker given to two of the four sons of Mr Fred C. Koch. Charles and David were kings of the Koch Mountain.
Capital is a force. But it need not be seen as a force or power unto itself.
Many questions have kept me from the release and peace that follows my head hitting the pillow at night. More recently, I have spent many a twilight hour pondering if Russian President Vladimir Putin has ever read Sylvia Plath.
ome 250 years of American history is long enough time to go without a revision of some of its foundational tenets.
begin by praying over the corpse. This requires some unpacking.
Some of the lesser-known instances of those erased from history, covered up, and whose story was stolen by others.
I want to let you in on a little secret. So you know what to expect when you are watching a film or reading a novel and suddenly the protagonist comes across an organisation or club or grouping of individuals – usually all wearing matching uniforms – that wants to employ his or her assistance. You know, they tend to walk in step with one another, like to repeat a lyrical motto, and justify their philosophy and actions in the name of preserving, establishing, or re-establishing some sort of stated Order? Well, there is a good chance these folks are actually antagonists. This trope, presently bordering on being a cliché, is being employed with an alarming frequency amongst ‘creative’ writers. Traditionally, this trope was applied to some allegory for Nazis or Commies, and because these entities were fairly universally seen as bad, there was no need to labour the point. More recently, writers have been attempting to apply this trope as a trick, a bait-and-switch. Certain writers think they can pull a fast one, introducing this group as the ‘good guys’ only to pull the rug out from under you with a mid-second-act reveal that they are, in fact, fascists and they have been using our protagonist to unwillingly see out some seriously evil stuff. I see this, over and over, and think what is going on? This is not a twist, is it not obvious? Sure, they tone it down a bit, cutting out comical salutes, blue-eyes with blonde-hairdos combos, and the wearing of arm cuffs, but Hitler in sheep’s skin is still Hitler, right? The unoriginality alone boggles my mind. I mean, it is a bit ridiculous. There has been a wholly unoriginal obsession with using this trope (I assume because it is an easy way to make your film meta) with some form of ‘time police’, fanatically bent on maintaining ‘the timeline’. This is used in three ongoing series I can think of, right off the top of my head, Rick and Morty, The Umbrella Academy, and Loki, and I am sure there are plenty more. The one remotely clever thing they will do to make this trope a twist is to make the protagonist morally dubious. But we have known for decades that the days of perfect superheroes are long gone. How could these writers break a key principle: do not insult the intelligence of your audience?
Let’s start with a distinction. It is not essential but it would clarify a common mistake. The distinction is between parody and satire.