..and i read this last night, hilarious! “UnValentine”s day” : What we really need is a festival to celebrate love”s many torments..

“This week, millions of people across the country will celebrate the crippling delusion known as “love” by sending flowers, booking restaurants and placing stomach-churning small ads in newspapers. Valentine”s Day - the only national occasion dedicated to mental illness - is a stressful ordeal at the best of times.”

the comments ( as is generally the case on comment is free ) are just as amusing..

Past Present Future is getting a much needed facelift..please bear with me!

I have also updated my profile page.

Some books i have been reading lately:
Agatha Christie: An english mystery - Laura Thompson (2007)

A biography of my favourite author so I read this with great interest: it”s a good complement to agatha”s own writings about her life ( she published two sets of autobiographical writings) - and goes into a lot that Agatha doesn”t reveal about herself. the disappearance in 1926, her first marriage etc.) I particularly enjoyed reading about her early life, i always do about people”s lives and the minutiae of everyday life in a bygone era.

Desertion - Abdulrazak Gurnah ( 2006)

Published in 2006, by a man who is an english lit professor at the univ. of kent and originally from the beautiful sounding island of zanzibar - i found this really fascinating. ( if only for the details and insight into life in zanzibar, that exotic place, in the 50″s, and Mombasa, at the turn of the century) the two sets of tales are intertwined.

You can”t keep a good woman down - Alice Walker (1982)

Fourteen short stories, provocative, sharp and poignant. I read that this never got the kind of acclaim that The Color Purple received..ah well, there”s no accounting for taste, is there?
Dancers in Mourning - Margery Allingham (1937)

perhaps because i spent my childhood onwards devouring Christies, Margery Allingham was a crime writer i didn”t bother to delve into very much. i found an old penguin edition in the library, and having heard lots about Albert Campion over the years, picked it up. I found the narrative interesting, and sparkingly amusing, but i didn”t find it on par with a Christie, assuming I were comparing, of course.

Miss LonelyHearts and A Cool Million - Nathanael West (1933)

this man clearly had a wicked sense of humour, and a ripping sense of satire: black comedy about the Depression years. A random find at the library, the author sounds like an intriguing character, I must read more about him. America is such a crazy place, i”m interested in finding writers who touch upon that insanity.

I”ve been doing some more reading - one of my thoughts was to create a section on the sidebar with resources/writings on religion I have used and perused along the way, should others want to have a look through. A lot of this recent thinking was kicked off by a post on Pickled Politics titled Feminism and Islam, back in February -which really revived a bit of my old militant feminist spirit - and got me thinking about the problems of religion again. (I found some really interesting stuff on Islamic feminism and related thinking & isms -along the way, which i thought was very pertinent from the point of view of religious reform)
Now some of the commentary out there on religion is likely to be “biased” and I think it would be pretty obvious that some are what a some people would consider “islamophobic”, etc. and some of it is clearly biased on the “religious” side, so on and so forth.

More reading into what are the primary sources, is probably a good idea, and what i”ve been doing a lot of this recently. I thought i”d spend more time with the Hadiths - mainly Sahih Muslim and Bukhari from the very useful USC MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts, (and in all good time, of course, the Quran. ) Very interesting reading to say the least! I can”t imagine if one went to a class on Islam, or dawah classes: how would the teachers get past questions, queries etc. I suppose out of those of us born Muslim - most are probably not going to get the nerve up to ask any smarmy questions.

A lot of the tales which appear to be quite superstitious. From a social and cultural history perspective - this is all very interesting for me, and rather revealing.

Some tidbits to share:

Sahih Bukhari :Volume 4, Book 55, Number 545: Um Salama said, “Um Salaim said, “O Allah”s Apostle! Allah does not refrain from saying the truth! Is it obligatory for a woman to take a bath after she gets nocturnal discharge?” He said, “Yes, if she notices the water (i.e. discharge).” Um Salama smiled and said, “Does a woman get discharge?” Allah”s Apostle said. “Then why does a child resemble (its mother)?”

Volume 4, Book 55, Number 546:Narrated Anas: When “Abdullah bin Salam heard the arrival of the Prophet at Medina, he came to him and said, “I am going to ask you about three things which nobody knows except a prophet: What is the first portent of the Hour? What will be the first meal taken by the people of Paradise? Why does a child resemble its father, and why does it resemble its maternal uncle” Allah”s Apostle said, “Gabriel has just now told me of their answers.” “Abdullah said, “He (i.e. Gabriel), from amongst all the angels, is the enemy of the Jews.” Allah”s Apostle said, “The first portent of the Hour will be a fire that will bring together the people from the east to the west; the first meal of the people of Paradise will be Extra-lobe (caudate lobe) of fish-liver. As for the resemblance of the child to its parents: If a man has sexual intercourse with his wife and gets discharge first, the child will resemble the father, and if the woman gets discharge first, the child will resemble her.” On that “Abdullah bin Salam said, “I testify that you are the Apostle of Allah.” “Abdullah bin Salam further said, “O Allah”s Apostle! The Jews are liars, and if they should come to know about my conversion to Islam before you ask them (about me), they would tell a lie about me.” The Jews came to Allah”s Apostle and “Abdullah went inside the house. Allah”s Apostle asked (the Jews), “What kind of man is “Abdullah bin Salam amongst you?” They replied, “He is the most learned person amongst us, and the best amongst us, and the son of the best amongst us.” Allah”s Apostle said, “What do you think if he embraces Islam (will you do as he does)?” The Jews said, “May Allah save him from it.” Then “Abdullah bin Salam came out in front of them saying, “I testify that None has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah.” Thereupon they said, “He is the evilest among us, and the son of the evilest amongst us,” and continued talking badly of him. Volume 4, Book 55, Number 552: Allah”s Apostle said, “Whenever a person is murdered unjustly, there is a share from the burden of the crime on the first son of Adam for he was the first to start the tradition of murdering.”

Hmm - a bit original sin-y that last bit? and what”s with this Gabriel is the enemy of the Jews, ahem! that sounds like maybe this is where some of the more dangerous thinkers get their funny ideas from?

On a more positive note ( yep!) I always think it”s a good idea to find out what others are thinking - and to not always focus in on the negative impressions out there - but see what positive ideas/thoughts etc. religious texts are inspiring in others. A new initiative ( and a great one i think - not too many others out there are doing the same) is the Quran Blog -which is a collaborative blogger effort, and the idea is that the writers share a particular verse that they have been reading, and their thoughts and insights and interpretations. I”m looking forward to reading more entries and posts - i”m hoping it will help me in being a bit more clear/reflexive about my own reactions to the same verses etc. so on and so forth. In any case, it is something to see this kind of thinking being documented.

Gaza: Brilliant wonderful news - BBC reporter Alan Johnston has been finally released, after much worry and an agonising, 114 days in captivity.

Read all about it on the BBC

and the Guardian

What will be interesting to see as we get more information - is what role Hamas have played in this release, and how the world reacts to this, how this affects the dynamics of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and certainly Hamas-Fatah dynamics.