Terminology: ISIS vs. ISIL–Everything You Always Wanted to Know and Much, Much More

The esteemed Dr. Justice has an excellent post about the term ISIS vs. the term ISIL–two different translations for the same name of the organization in Iraq.

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Click this messy-looking link to read to your heart’s content: http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/06/isil-vs-isis.html

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This is an issue because ignoramuses keep staying stupid stuff, as ignoramuses will do. Here’s overpaid bobblehead Chuck Todd: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/chuck-todd-knows-why-obama-prefers-isil-to-isis/

Here’s a New (to Me) Guy with a Fake Name

http://wonkette.com/555064/deleted-comment-of-the-day-cool-cigar-guy-is-cool-panhandlers-are-terrorists#more-555064

Wonkette has a post about this guy who had the super brilliant idea of asking panhandlers for money. Whatever, but the important thing is, this tool calls himself Abdul Hakim-Shabazz, and refers to himself as Abdul.

As you know, Abdul means “worshipper of the,” and is therefore only half of a name. And that hyphen there, that hyphen should be between Abdul and Hakim, not between Hakim and Shabazz.

But since Shabazz is a made-up name that Malcolm X thought sounded cool and Arabic when he invented the name and the fake backstory to go with it, I can’t be surprised.

Mr Hakim-Shabazz, or Abdul, appears to be about middle aged, so it’s possible that he has nothing to do with this travesty of name he’s carrying around. Maybe his parents foisted that on him. It happens.

Arabic Students and Speakers, Laugh Along With–errr–*at* Ergun Caner

You know how you might have a friend who lies really often and well, and you just can’t hate the guy because his incredible all-out embrace of lying as a way of life kind of perks you up? This is not that guy, because he is unlovable, but he is the most audacious liar I’ve ever seen in action in my life.

Check out the video of this guy, Ergun Caner. Now, you find all kinds of information about how he lied about his heritage, his birthplace, his early childhood, his late childhood, his dad’s career, etc., but I just want to point and laugh at his “Arabic.”

(Speaking of his curriculum vitae, he’s been a professor and president at more than one “university” and there’s nothing about his education, whatsoever, on his Wikipedia page. How can that be?)

How do you suppose he conducts his daily life these days so as to make sure he never accidentally encounters anyone who actually speaks Arabic? It probably helps a lot to be in GA, but I know there are at least some Arabic speakers there.

Is anyone else bothered as much as I am by his affected accent?

Is “Lying for Jesus” already a tag?

 

Fun-Times Friday: Fake Ex-Muslim Speaks Fake Arabic

A friend told me about this guy, Ergun Caner, today, and I couldn’t wait to look him up and find out what he’s about. Here’s a youtube video of him giving an earnest speech to a gullible Christian Islamophobe audience, with plenty of fake Arabic.

If you don’t know Arabic, this may not be funny to you, but maybe it is!

Nelson DeMille’s The Panther, Part 2 (and the end)

If I hadn’t committed myself to blog about this book, I probably wouldn’t have finished reading it. But I realized that most of my complaints are about the storytelling, and not Arabic or Arab culture.

The idea of an al-Qaeda hit list and, better yet, a CIA hit list (of American law enforcement personnel) have nothing to do with Arabic or Arab culture, so I guess there’s no point in talking about how ludicrous it is. And the fact that this book is so steeped in testosterone I felt like I should go sit around in my OBGYN’s office for a few hours to normalize is irrelevant, too.

But to go back to a couple passages I marked:

“Right. And don’t forget that The Panther is an American. So maybe he thinks more clearly and logically than most of these whacked-out jihadists.”

I mean, that’s annoying as hell, but it’s spoken by a character, not an omniscient narrator.

And also not relevant is the protagonist, John Corey, epitomizing mansplaining as he talks to a medical doctor:

“That’s about it.” I reminded her, “Aim for the center mass of the target. Heart is on the right.”

“Left.”

“His left, your right, Doctor.”

More insight into our protagonist here:

And not a bad technique. Like, “Hey Abdul, let’s talk about camel grazing rights. And by the way, how much do you want for your wife?”

har har

So, that’s all I have. Can’t recommend the book, even just for laughs. And to think I really loved Plum Island.

Nelson DeMille’s The Panther, part one

A couple days ago I started reading The Panther by Nelson DeMille. “Yay,” I thought, “Finally another book to write about on my blog. Almost nobody writes novels with Arab villains these days.” But Mr. DeMille came through.

Rather than wait until I finish it, I’m going to start with my thoughts so far, as they are many, plus I just got to something that really tickled my funny bone.

I’ve mentioned in my previous posts about Nelson DeMille’s Arab-related novels that he really seems fascinated almost to the level of having a fetish about Arab names. The villain of two of his previous novels was named Asad Something or Other. Asad is a very common proper name and it means lion, and throughout both books the author or perhaps the narrator just couldn’t stop comparing the human being to a lion.

Arab names are a lot more likely to be words still in use in Arabic, unlike names in English, which come from all kinds of languages so that we often have no idea what their original meaning was. Nevertheless, being named Asad in the Arab world is very much like being named Mike or Jim or Dave in the US. No big deal.

Protagonist John Corey killed “The Lion” in a previous novel. His new nemesis is “The Panther.” In the case of this new guy, his given name was something else, and he actually chose to be called “the panther,” or al-numayr. (Al Numair in the novel). Numayr is a word I didn’t know, so I looked it up. I did a Google image search. I looked at over 100 image results without seeing a single picture of any kind of big cat. I saw lots and lots of pictures of Arab human beings named Numayr. (I searched on النمير, for those who wish to recreate my experience).

And what’s killing me is that John Corey can NOT think of this guy without mentally calling him “The Panther” and comparing him with a big cat. You know how you do, like when you watch golf and compare Tiger Woods to a real tiger, or listen to Charlie Parker and muse on how much like a bird he is?

Later I hope to piece together my thoughts on John Corey’s casual racism (but Arab isn’t a race!) and his Iraqi-American Muslim pal who denigrates Islam, but for now I must rush to page 208. Up to this point, John Corey has mentally or verbally referred to “The Panther” at least two dozen times (I’m estimating), and remember, the man nicknamed himself al-Numayr or Al Numair, not “The Panther”–and from what I know after 20 years of Arabic plus a lengthy google search, it is not at all a common word for panther–when he is introduced to Dr. Fahd.

Corey has nothing to say about Dr. Fahd’s name, or how much Dr. Fahd resembles any given animal. No internal musings on the prey-predator relationship or nocturnal habits or hunting ranges or anything…because John Corey doesn’t know what Fahd means. Fahd is just a man’s name.

Guess what Fahd means. “Panther.” A Google image search brings up mostly pics of cheetahs, I saw one of black leopard, and I’ve also told it can mean ‘lynx.’

All-Arabic Version of “America the Beautiful” Here

Last night’s Super Bowl included a commercial by Coca Cola in which “American the Beautiful” was sung in a few different languages along with English. I didn’t hear any Arabic in it, but here is Coke’s version in all-Arabic. This clip also includes some conversation with the delightful little girl who sang it.

Also, for a small sample of what America’s bigots, racists, and morons said on Twitter about the commercial, go to Public Shaming:

http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/

Super Cute Boy Band on Arabs Got Talent

This clip is from September, but hey, it’s new to me.

Arabic Horror Movies

Found this thoughtful article from 2012 about horror movies in the Arab world.

http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/13233

“Supernatural tropes are common in our horrors.This makes sense when dealing with what subconsciously scares our societies. It is within the foundation of Islam – and even among Arab Christians in a cultural sense. It’s not something you can grow out of. People grow old and still believe in exorcisms,” Tarek Jammal, a Lebanese filmmaker and hardcore movie enthusiast, explained to Al-Akhbar.

He pointed to the example of zombies, popular figures in American horror, to clarify his point. “Why are there no zombies in Gaza?” he asked.

“Zombies are not as terrifying as an Israeli bombing, and other real life horrors and tragedies. Zombies are commonly representative of various fears arising within affluent societies. People who are under constant attack by Israelis or whomever else aren’t going to be frightened by zombies.”

Jassim al-Nofaly, Egyptian-Omani filmmaker and zealous horror buff, shared a similar viewpoint during a separate conversation with Al-Akhbar:

“Jinn and black magic are foundational to our cultural beliefs. We are afraid of what we do not understand and what we do not see. Some people educate their children from the point of view of an omnipresent invisible being that is constantly watching you; quite horrifying when you think about it,” he said.

I found it a fun read. I’ll be back to read Al-Akhbar again.

Send Me Movie & Book Suggestions

Back at the end of 2006 I started this blog partly because I had recently learned of the existence of blogs and partly because I was reading a book in which the author did a hatchet job on Muslim Arabs, and I wanted to talk about that.

 

Well, it’s not stylish to spout off bogeyman nonsense about Arabs and Muslims anymore, so I don’t stumble across good stuff to blog about very often. It has become mainstream to point out racism and bigotry, which is good! It just doesn’t leave me with much material to blog about.

 

So please send me tips about novels and comics and tv shows and movies that I could investigate. Just comment on this thread. Thanks!