Self-reference, page 28: "He could go downstairs and look for one of the books he has read the first thiry pages of" (the reader might stop reading this book after 28 or 30 pages...)
Core of Islam, page 39:
"Did the Imam ever suggest," he asks, letting the chair's recoil lean him confidentially across the desk, "that a bright boy like you, in a diverse and tolerant society like this one, needs to confront a variety of viewpoints?"
"No," Ahmad says with surprising abruptness, his soft lips bunching in a point of defiance. "Shaikh Rashid did not suggest that, sir. He feels that such a relativistic approach trivializes religion, implying that it doesn't much matter. You believe this, I believe that, we all get along - that's the American way."
"Right. And he doesn't like the American way?"
"He hates it."
Jack Levy, still sitting forward, braces his elbows on his desktop and his chin thoughtfully on his intertwined fingers. "And you, Mr. Mulloy? You hate it?"
The boy shyly casts his eyes down again. "I of course do not hate all Americans. But the American way is the way of infidels. It is headed for a terrible doom."
He does not say, "America wants to take away my God."
How does tolerating a variety of different viewpoints take away Ahmad's God? He can still have his God, but he can't force it on others. That is not taking away his God, because he can practice his religion unmolested, which means he has no reason to be violent, since even his prophet says that the lesser jihad of violence should only be used when unbelievers are taking your homes.
Page 76:
This past week the imam showed a short temper with his pupil in a discussion of a verse from the third sura: "Let not the infidels deem that the length of days we give them is good for them! We only give them length of days that they may increase their sins! and a shameful chastisement shall be their lot." Ahmad dared ask his teacher if there wasn't something sadistic in the taunt, and in the many verses like it. He ventured, "Shouldn't God's purpose, as enunciated by the Prophet, be to convert the infidels? In any case, shouldn't He show them mercy, not gloat over their pain?"
The imam presented half a face, the lower half being hidden by a trimmed beard flecked with gray. His nose was thin and high-arched and the skin of his cheeks pale, but not pale as Anglo-Saxons or Irish were, freckled and quick to blush, like Ahmad's mother (a tendency the boy has regrettably inherited), but pale in a waxy, even, impervious Yemeni way. Within his beard, his violet lips twitched. He asked, "The cockroaches that slither out from the baseboard and from beneath the sink - do you pity them? The flies that buzz around the food on the table, walking on it with the dirty feet that have just danced on feces and carrion - do you pity them?"
Ahmad did, in truth, pity them, being fascinated by the vast insect population teeming at the feet of godlike men, but, knowing that any qualifications or signs of further argument would anger his teacher, responded, "No."
"No," Shaikh Rashid agreed with satisfaction, as a delicate hand tugged lightly at his beard. "You want to destroy them. They are vexing you with their uncleanness. They would take over your table, your kitchen; they will settle into the very food as it passes into your mouth if you do not destroy them. They have no feelings. They are manifestations of Satan, and God will destroy them without mercy on the day of final reckoning. God will rejoice at their suffering. Do thou likewise, Ahmad. To imagine that cockroaches deserve mercy is to place yourself above ar-Rahim, to presume to be more merciful than the Merciful."
It seemed to Ahmad that, as with the facts of Paradise, his teacher resorted to metaphor as a shield against reality. Joryleen, though an unbeliever, did have feelings; they were there in how she sang, and how the other unbelievers responded to the singing. But it was not Ahmad's role to argue; it was his to learn, to submit to his own place in Islam's vast structure, visible and invisible.
Contrast Jainism, which holds that everything has a soul that should not be interfered with on its path towards enlightenment.
Even by the words of Islamic scripture, man does not appear to be justified in foreshadowing the "chastisement" that God will perform. The Imam in saying Ahmad should not "presume to be more merciful", does not by that statement alone prove that he should kill the creatures. Isn't that God's job? Where does God say that a man should do the "chastisement"?
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Page 108:
"[...] read for me, please, verse fourteen from the sixty-fourth sura, 'Mutual Deceit.'"
Ahmad fumblingly finds the page in his dog-eared copy of the Qur'an, and makes his way aloud through "ya ayyuha 'lladhina amanu inna min azwajikum wa awladikum 'aduw-wan lakum fa 'hdharuhum, wa in ta'fu wa tasfahu wa taghfiru fa-inna 'llaha ghafurun rahim."
"Good. I mean, good enough. We must work harder, of course, on your accent. Can you tell me, Ahmad, quickly, what it means?"
"Uh, it says that in your wives and children you have an enemy. Beware of them. But if you, uh, forgive and pardon and are lenient, God is forgiving and merciful."
"But your wives and children! What is 'enemy' about them? Why would they need forgiveness?"
"Well, maybe because they distract you from jihad, from the struggle to become holy and closer to God."
"Perfect! What a beautiful tutee you are, Ahmad! I could not have put it better myself. 'ta'fu wa tasfahu wa taghfiru' - 'afa' and 'safaha', abstain and turn away! Do without these women of non-Heavenly flesh, this earthy baggage, these unclean hostages to fortune! Travel light, straight into Paradise! [...]"
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Page 142:
It was Islam, Shaikh Rashid had more than once explained, that had preserved the science and simple mechanisms of the Greeks when all Christian Europe had in its barbarism forgotten such things. In today's world, the heroes of Islamic resistance to the Great Satan were former doctors and engineers, adepts in the use of such machines as computers and airplanes and roadside bombs. Islam, unlike Christianity, has no fear of scientific truth. Allah had formed the physical world, and all its devices when put to holy use were holy.
Compare Adbullah in Stranger to History:
"[...] it is not so easy to say that technology is OK. [...] we have to discuss the camera itself. Good or bad? [...] 'It's something Western civilization made. We have to discuss that camera. What does it represent?"
Apparently original Islam had no problem with Western technology, and modern terrorists have no compunction about using Western technology to further their goals, but some Muslims, such as Adbullah, want to condemn at least some technology because it's from the West.
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Page 148:
"I seek to walk the Straight Path," Ahmad admits. "In this country, it is not easy. There are too many paths, too much selling of many useless things. They brag of freedom, but freedom to no purpose becomes a kind of prison."
That is for each individual to decide!
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Page 167:
His mother is, he sees now, looking back, a typical American, lacking strong convictions and the courage and comfort they bring. She is a victim of the American religion of freedom, freedom above all, though freedom to do what and to what purpose is left up in the air.
Yes, that is the point of freedom.
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Page 168:
Ahmad sometimes has to suppress a suspicion that his teacher inhabits a semi-real world of pure words and most loves the Holy Qur'an for its language, a shell of violent shorthand whose content is its syllables, the ecstatic flow of "l"s and "a"s and guttural catches in the throat, savoring of the cries and the gallantry of mounted robed warriors under the cloudless sky of Arabia Deserta.
"semi-real world of pure words" - yeah, that's where I like to live too :) Not islamic words, but words nonetheless...
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Pages 187-188:
"[...] George W. Bush is innocent, a simple reformed drunk from Texas who loves his nice wife and naughty daughters. Yet, out of all this innocence, somehow evil emerges. The Western powers steal our oil, they take our land--"
"They take our God," Ahmad says eagerly, interrupting his mentor.
Charlie stares for a second, then agrees slowly, as if this had not occurred to him. "Yes. I guess so. They take from Muslims their traditions and a sense of themselves, the pride in themselves that all men are entitled to."
This is not quite what Ahmad said, and sounds a bit false, a bit forced and far removed from the concrete living God who stands beside Ahmad as close as the sunshine warming the skin of his neck.
How does American society take away God from Muslims? Only if that God conflicts with the unalienable rights enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and the enumerated rights in the Constitution. The rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, free speech, etc. trump Islam; if Muslims cannot accept those rights in others, they are free to speak out. If they use violence, they should be imprisoned.
If Western powers take Muslims' land, that is one possibility where it is understandable if they fight. But it will be ultimately useless, because American freedom creates the technology to defeat them on the battlefield. It is much better for them to use nonviolent means of persuasion.
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Pages 198-199:
"They believe," Charlie carefully restates, "in action. They believe that something can be done. That the Muslim peasant in Mindanao need not starve, that the Bangladeshi child need not drown, that the Egyptian villager need not go blind with schistosomiasis, that the Palestinians need not be strafed by Israeli helicopters, that the faithful need not eat the sand and camel dung of the world while the Great Satan grows fat on sugar and pork and underpriced petroleum. They believe that a billion followers of Islam need not have their eyes and ears and souls corrupted by the poisonous entertainments of Hollywood and a ruthless economic imperialism whose Christian-Jewish God is a decrepit idol, a mere mask concealing the despair of atheists."
Technology can solve the problem of starving Muslim (or any other kind of) peasants, by providing them with food from the vast surpluses produced. The Bangladeshi child can be rescued, the floods can be controlled, or the Bangladeshis relocated. The Egyptian villager can receive the best medical care we available, through telemedicine for example. The Palestinians, if they use nonviolent noncooperation, will defeat the Israelis as Gandhi defeated the British in India. We must create resources for everyone in the world, liberate ourselves from scarcity through aggressive investment and pursuit of advancement in knowledge and technology. Those who do not want to be subjected to poisonous entertainers can turn off the TV, use other technological filters to block them out. Economics can be revised so that governments create money and give it directly to people, freeing them from "economic imperialism".
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Page 201:
"The lines of battle [are clear]. The armies of Satan versus those of God. As the Book affirms, 'Idolatry is worse than carnage.'"
Unalienable rights precede the Qur'an. And there are many interpretations of the Qur'an that allow it to exist peacefully within the US.
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Page 224:
Listen: the deal is you can fuck me, but not grill me.
"grill" meaning to quiz, interrogate. Seems like anachronistic slang. The first thing I thought of when I saw "grill" was teeth...
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Page 247:
This bone-white truck savors of such poverty, such pathetic attempts to keep up in America, to join the easy seventy-miles-per-hour mainstream. His mother's maroon Subaru, with its Bondo-patched fender and its red enamel abraded by years of acid New Jersey air, was another pathetic attempt.
There's another way of looking at this: you can drive a battered old car in America, without wanting to join the mainstream. You can be poor and drive on the same roads as the rich and say up yours! You are free in America to be unapologetically poor in the face of all the opulence, to be yourself, to be an individual, to reject the message of materialism preached in TV commercials. Why doesn't Ahmad consider this other point of view?
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Page 249:
The other unidentified man adds, "Cairo, too." He smiles that engaging smile of square, spaced, tobacco-stained teeth and strikes his chest with his fist and tells Ahmad, "Egyptian."
"So was my father!" Ahmad exclaims, yet in exploration of the bond can only think to ask, "How do you like Mubarak?"
The smile fades. "Tool of America."
Prophetic?
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Page 258:
"My trouble is," the Secretary blurts, helpless in turn, "I love this damn country so much I can't imagine why anybody would want to bring it down. What do these people have to offer instead? More Taliban - more oppression of women, more blowing up satues of Buddha. The mullahs in northern Nigeria are telling people not to let their children be given polio vaccine, and then the kids are brought in paralyzed to the health-aid clinic! They wait until they're totally paralyzed to bring them in, after they've gone all the way with the local mumbo-jumbo."
"They fear losing something, something precious to them," Hermione says, trembling on the edge of a new degree (the degrees are subtle, and are negotiated within the strict proprieties of a thoroughly Republican and Christian administration) of intimacy. "So precious they will sacrifice their own children to it. It happens in this country, too. The marginal sects, where some charismatic leader seals them off from common sense. The children die, and then the parents cry in court and are acquitted - they're children themselves. It's frightening, the power of abuse adults have over their children. It makes me glad, frankly, I never had any."
There's a lot in this passage dealing with the interpersonal relationship between the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and his aide, a lot of extraneous stuff indicating the intrusiveness of the human element in any governemntal activity; but the core issue I want to focus on is, "Why is there terrorism?" What is it terrorists fear losing? It seems they fear losing their ability to dominate others, for example (as talked about in the quoted passage) their children. Ideally, the unalienable rights to life and liberty should extend to children and they should be able to decide for themselves whether to get vaccines or not. If the terrorists can't accept those unalienable rights, if they want to alienate them, they are contrary to the principles enshrined in the Constitution, and should be prosecutable.
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Page 273:
But God,speaking in His magnificent third-person plural, brushes their perplexity aside: "Will they not look up to the heavens above them, and consider how We have reared it and decked it forth, and that there are no flaws therein?"
Surely, Updike meant first-person, not third-person plural?
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Page 286:
The jihad and the Revolution waged the same kind of war, Charlie explained - the desparate and vicious war of the underdog, the imperial overdog claiming fouls by the rules he has devised for his own benefit.
I empathize with this sentiment a lot.
He punches the radio off again. In this devilish society there is nothing fit for a man in his last hour to hear. Silence is better. Silence is God's music.
I would have tried to find some jazz...Ahmad is not interested much in music. Music represents another way out of the "devilishness" of western materialism that Ahmad ignores.
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Pages 287-288:
It's Mr. Levy, wearing a brown suit coat that doesn't match his gray pants. He's dressed for school on this Monday but instead is standing outdoors a mile south of Central High.
The unexpected sight stymies Ahmad. He fights to clear his racing mind. Perhaps Mr. Levy has a message from Charlie, though he didn't think they knew each other; the guidance counselor had never liked his getting the CDL and driving a truck. Or an urgent message from his mother, who for a while this summer would mention Mr. Levy a little too often, in that tone of voice that meant she was embarrassing herself again. Ahmad will not stop, no more than he would for one of those writhing, importuning monsters, made from plastic tubes blowing air, that bewitch consumers into turning off a thoroughfare.
However, the light at the corner changes and the traffic slows and the truck has to halt. Mr. Levy, moving faster than Ahmad knew he could, dodges through the lanes of stopped traffic and reaches up and raps commandingly on the passenger's window. Confused, conditioned not to show a teacher disrespect, Ahmad reaches over and pushes the unlock button. Better have him inside next to him, the boy hastily reasons, than outside where he can raise an alarm.
This is where the book takes an unbelievable turn, for me. When he let Mr. Levy in, he basically decided not to go through with the bombing.
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Page 291:
Ahmad is being tailgated by a midnight-blue Mercedes driven by an impatient man too young to have earned a Mercedes, unless it was in stock manipulation at the expense of the less fortunate. Such men live expensively in the so-called bedroom towns of New Jersey and jumped from the towers when God brought them down. Ahmad feels superior to this Mercedes driver, and indifferent to his tooting and swerving back and forth as he seeks to dramatize his wish that the white truck were moving less sedately in the middle lane.
I feel superior to such ppl too. But it was men, not God, who brought down the towers. In resorting to violence, the terrorists usurp the role of God, assume that they know his will. My way of fighting the stock manipulators is with words, and by example. I refuse to acknowledge their power :) I try to use words wherever I can, on the internet, wherever, to bring down their houses of cards and confront their overbearing egos with the erosive force of water :)
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Page 294:
"Who says unbelief is innocent? Unbelievers say that. God says, in the Qur'an, "Be ruthless to unbelievers." Burn them, crush them, because they have forgotten God. They think to be themselves is sufficient. They love this present life more than the next."
You can be ruthless to unbelievers in nonviolent ways. If you are physically violent, you violate inalienable rights, and are therefore subject to prosecution.
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Page 306:
In the fifty-sixth sura, the Prophet speaks of "the moment when the soul of a dying man shall come up into his throat." That moment is here. The journey, the "miraj," Buraq is ready, his shining white wings rustling, unfolding. Yet in the same sura, "The Event," God asks, "We created you: will you not credit us? Behold the semen you discharge: did you create it, or We?" God does not want to destroy: it was He who made the world.
[...]
This was the will of the Beneficent, the Merciful, ar-Rahman and ar_Rahim, the Living, the Patient, the Generous, the Perfect, the Light, the Guide. He does not want us to desecrate His creation by willing death. He wills life.
To fight terrorism most effectively, we need to study Islamic texts and use their words while engaging Muslims in debate.
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What will happen to Ahmad after he turns himself in? I think this is another reason he would have gone through with it. Realistically, the authorities would not forgive him as Mr. Levy says. He would expect being sent to Gitmo or tortured or worse. The failure of Updike to mention these likely possibilities is second point where the book becomes unbelievable to me.
