10/31/08

Camelburgers!

Getting back to the chapters in the order they were revealed, 97 & 91 are more nature worship, kind of nice. As usual its confusing, when it talks about the title of 97, night of Determination, or Majesty in some translations. That seemed like a reference to judgement day, but I was surprised to find out it meant Mo's first hallucination. It just goes to show you cant rely on this " complete, perfect and fully detailed" book piece of crap. Then 91 goes on with praising the sun and moon, for ten whole lines before it gets bloodthirsty again, reminding us of the Thamud:

11. The Thamud denied (the truth) in their perverseness

12. When among them the great wretch arose,

13. And the apostle of God had to tell them: "This is God's she-camel, let her drink." Thamud? great wretch? So that your readers can follow your story, god, you need to identify any new characters at their first appearance---Ed.

Twenty-two chapters in the future, in surah 27, he does get around to explaining it, but Kafirgirl explains a lot better than God. One thing I don't get: this Saleh the prophet character gives the Thamuddians a camel,

14. But they called him a liar and hamstrung her. So God obliterated them...

Wait,... what? These people lived in a culture that depended on camels for its very existence, out in the desert with those caravans, so I imagine they had a pretty good idea of how valuable they were and how to take care of one: so they HAMSTRUNG one? Why the HELL would they do that?

Hamstring: verb , trans.
1 : to make ineffective or powerless
2 : to cripple by cutting the leg tendons


Killing and eating it I could see but this, this would be like you giving me a Rolls-Royce and me setting fire to it. Out of twenty translations I checked, ten say hamstrung; nine say killed, and one says 'wounded/slaughtered/made infertile,' apparently hedging their bets by including every possible meaning in the dictionary. How well did these translators know Arabic; and since 90% of muslims don't know it either, how well do they understand their own book?

?

This chapter ends with a funny line “He does not fear the consequences”. Depending on who you ask, that means either a) God ain't scared, which is like ....DUHH! ...or b) God doesn't give a fuck about killing people, which isn't exactly good PR. Oh, and one translation even says it's the victims (!) that don't fear... uhh, ... hey, look, over there!

No comments: