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writingwithcolor · 8 months ago

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Sri Lankan Fairies and Senegalese Goddesses: Mixing Mythology as a Mixed Creator

[Note: this archive ask was submitted before the Masterpost rules took effect in 2023. The ask has been abridged for clarity.]

@reydjarinkenobi asked:

Hi, I’m half Sri Lankan/half white Australian, second gen immigrant though my mum moved when she was a kid. My main character for my story is a mixed demigod/fae. [...] Her bio mum is essentially a Scottish/Sri Lankan fairy and her other bio mum (goddess) is a goddess of my own creation, Nettamaar, who’s name is derived from [...] Wolof words [...]. The community of mages that she presided over is from the South Eastern region of Senegal [...] In the beginning years of European imperialism, the goddess basically protected them through magic and by blessing a set of triplets effectively cutting them off from the outside world for a few centuries [...] I was unable to find a goddess that fit the story I wanted to tell [...] and also couldn’t find much information on the internet for local gods, which is why I have created my own. I know that the gods in Hinduism do sort of fit into [the story] but my Sri Lankan side is Christian and I don’t feel comfortable representing the Hindu gods in the way that I will be this goddess [...]. I wanted to know if any aspect of the community’s history is problematic as well as if I should continue looking further to try and find an African deity that matched my narrative needs? I was also worried that having a mixed main character who’s specifically half black would present problems as I can’t truly understand the black experience. I plan on getting mixed and black sensitivity readers once I finish my drafts [...] I do take jabs at white supremacy and imperialism and I I am planning to reflect my feelings of growing up not immersed in your own culture and feeling overwhelmed with what you don’t know when you get older [...]. I’m sorry for the long ask but I don’t really have anyone to talk to about writing and I’m quite worried about my story coming across as insensitive or problematic because of cultural history that I am not educated enough in.

Reconciliation Requires Research

First off: how close is this world’s history to our own, omitting the magic? If you’re aiming for it to be essentially parallel, I would keep in mind that Senegal was affected by the spread of Islam before the Europeans arrived, and most people there are Muslim, albeit with Wolof and other influences.

About your Scottish/Sri Lankan fairy character: I’ll point you to this previous post on Magical humanoid worldbuilding, Desi fairies as well as this previous post on Characterization for South Asian-coded characters for some of our commentary on South Asian ‘fae’. Since she is also Scottish, the concept can tie back to the Celtic ideas of the fae.

However, reconciliation of both sides of her background can be tricky. Do you plan on including specific Sri Lankan mythos into her heritage? I would tread carefully with it, if you plan to do so. Not every polytheistic culture will have similar analogues that you can pull from.

To put it plainly, if you’re worried about not knowing enough of the cultural histories, seek out people who have those backgrounds and talk to them about it. Do your research thoroughly: find resources that come from those cultures and read carefully about the mythos that you plan to incorporate. Look for specificity when you reach out to sensitivity readers and try to find sources that go beyond a surface-level analysis of the cultures you’re looking to portray.

~ Abhaya

I see you are drawing on Gaelic lore for your storytelling. Abhaya has given you good links to discussions we’ve had at WWC and the potential blindspots in assuming, relative to monotheistic religions like Christianity, that all polytheistic and pluralistic lore is similar to Gaelic folklore. Fae are one kind of folklore. There are many others. Consider:

Is it compatible? Are Fae compatible with the Senegalese folklore you are utilizing?

Is it specific? What ethnic/religious groups in Senegal are you drawing from?

Is it suitable? Are there more appropriate cultures for the type of lore you wish to create?

Remember, Senegalese is a national designation, not an ethnic one, and certainly not a designation that will inform you with respect to religious traditions. But more importantly:

...Research Requires Reconciliation

My question is why choose Senegal when your own heritage offers so much room for exploration? This isn’t to say I believe a half Sri-Lankan person shouldn’t utilize Senegalese folklore in their coding or vice-versa, but, to put it bluntly, you don’t seem very comfortable with your heritage. Religions can change, but not everything cultural changes when this happens. I think your relationship with your mother’s side’s culture offers valuable insight to how to tackle the above, and I’ll explain why.

I myself am biracial and bicultural, and I had to know a lot about my own background before I was confident using other cultures in my writing. I had to understand my own identity—what elements from my background I wished to prioritize and what I wished to jettison. Only then was I able to think about how my work would resonate with a person from the relevant background, what to be mindful of, and where my blindspots would interfere.

I echo Abhaya’s recommendation for much, much more research, but also include my own personal recommendation for greater self-exploration. I strongly believe the better one knows oneself, the better they can create. It is presumptuous for me to assume, but your ask’s phrasing, the outlined plot and its themes all convey a lack of confidence in your mixed identity that may interfere with confidence when researching and world-building. I’m not saying give up on this story, but if anxiety on respectful representation is a large barrier for you at the moment, this story may be a good candidate for a personal project to keep to yourself until you feel more ready.

(See similar asker concerns here: Running Commentary: What is “ok to do” in Mixed-Culture Supernatural Fiction, here: Representing Biracial Black South American Experiences and here: Am I fetishizing my Japanese character?)

- Marika.

Start More Freely with Easy Mode

Question: Why not make a complete high-fantasy universe, with no need of establishing clear real-world parallels in the text? It gives you plenty of leg room to incorporate pluralistic, multicultural mythos + folklore into the same story without excessive sweating about historically accurate worldbuilding.

It's not a *foolproof* method; even subtly coded multicultural fantasy societies like Avatar or the Grishaverse exhibit certain harmful tropes. I also don't know if you are aiming for low vs high fantasy, or the degree of your reliance on real world culture / religion / identity cues.

But don't you think it's far easier for this fantasy project to not have the additional burden of historical accuracy in the worldbuilding? Not only because I agree with Mod Marika that perhaps you seem hesitant about the identity aspect, but because your WIP idea can include themes of othering and cultural belonging (and yes, even jabs at supremacist institutions) in an original fantasy universe too. I don't think I would mind if I saw a couple of cultural markers of a Mughal Era India-inspired society without getting a full rundown of their agricultural practices, social conventions and tax systems, lol.

Mod Abhaya has provided a few good resources about what *not* to do when drawing heavily from cultural coding. With that at hand, I don't think your project should be a problem if you simply make it an alternate universe like Etheria (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power), Inys (The Priory of the Orange Tree) or Earthsea (the Earthsea series, Ursula K. Le Guin). Mind you, we can trace the analogues to each universe, but there is a lot of freedom to maneuver as you wish when incorporating identities in original fantasy. And of course, multiple sensitivity readers are a must! Wishing you the best for the project.

- Mod Mimi

#asks #multiracial #multicultural #south asian #sri lankan #senegalese #west african #identity #representation #worldbuilding #fantasy #mythology #folklore #fairies #deities #adoption #identity issues #mixed experiences #coding

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serpentface · 6 months ago

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Two questions regarding the Wardi religion:

In addition to the bull and the lioness, what are the seven faces of god/sacrificial animals?

Given that white animals seem to be sacred, does that influence how albino humans/other sophents are treated by society?

The seven faces of God are as follows:

-the lunar, horned, or 'wild ox' face of God, which presides over the moons, and the fertility of the land, animals, and people. In pre-imperial times, this was functionally the most central face of God (replaced by the lion face/odomache). The most ideal sacrifice is a wild ox (especially white or albino) that has never been bred. -the ‘ox’ face of God, presides over agriculture and labor, as well as the domestic sphere. The most ideal sacrifice is a healthy plow oxen or khait who has never been yoked or bred (if the sacrifice is towards Ox-Face as the domestic sphere, this should be a heifer). -the lion face of God, presides over sovereignty, statehood, military might, and is most associated with the health and continuing existence of the imperial entity. The most ideal sacrifice is a maned lioness (functionally white, though this is a trait of the captive population). -the ocean or skimmer face of God, presides over the seas, winds, as well as fortune and mercantilism. The ideal sacrifice is the skimmer gull or an albatross, especially one taken from one of the sacred rocks in the 'mouth' of the Viper sea. -the serpent face of God, presides over the cosmos and divine Mysteries, associated with funerary rites and death. Also has a wildly disparate association with royalty (which is derived from entirely separate traditions and has not yet fully been reconciled into the faith). The ideal sacrifice is a two headed or melanistic snake, especially a venomous one (both would be MOST ideal, but this is rare beyond any practicality) -The solar face of God, presides over the sun, stars, and fire, also heavily associated with khait and mounted warriors. (this is a VERY direct import from the chief solar god in the Burri pantheon (who rides and/or is a khait with the sun between its horns), hence the seemingly random khait association). The ideal sacrifice is a healthy riding khait (especially with a white spotted coat), or alternatively a golden eagle. -The river face of God, presides over fresh water, seasonal flooding, and the rains. The ideal sacrifice is the migratory reed duck (which arrives at the onset of the wet season) or a freshwater hesperornis (ideally taken from one of the sacred waters). An-Nechoi are also occasionally given.

Though the core religion is monotheistic, each face of God is functionally a syncretic fusion of older ethnic Wardi beliefs, the Burri pantheon, and other regionally native traditions, which have not all been fully reconciled (the process of fusion is more or less still ongoing). Each face in of itself has dozens or more epithets with distinct features. For example, the river face has a specific epithet for each major riverway, each venerated as a distinct aspect of the Godhead. Functionally, common practice of the Wardi faith is pretty indistinguishable from polytheism, and most of the religious authority does not care as long as required orthopraxy is maintained (the central dogma of the religion does not care How you believe, but that the correct practices are enacted).

Also for reference, these are the specific animals taken on the pilgrimage in the story (transporting seven rare animals cross country can be fraught, so each had at least a few backups):

A pure white aurochs calf, found naturally born in a wild herd.

A massive, unbred and unyoked bull draft khait (dies en route, replaced by a less physically impressive backup with the same qualities)

A lioness with a full mane, from the white captive stock

A skimmer gull taken from a nest on the sacred rock in the waters of Od-Koto.

A baby two headed cobra (which dies en-route and is replaced with its backup, a melanistic viper)

A beautiful speckled riding khait mare whose horns form a near perfect circle (which is stolen en-route and replaced with its sister)

A rare wild hesperornis (haven't come up with an in-universe name yet) taken from the reeds of the Brilla river delta.

Anyway the sacrifices listed above are considered the absolute IDEALS when working with a specific face, but a great variety of animals will be sacrificed to various ends. There’s some very specific cultural/religious components to which animals are most valued, but in practice the value of a sacrifice is pretty close to 1:1 with the animal’s monetary value, at an intersection of utility and rarity.

So a young, healthy bull plow oxen who has never been bred or yoked is a more valued sacrifice than an old, experienced plow ox who has already sired offspring. You are giving up an extremely valuable animal and all its unused potential in a very practical sense, which makes the sacrifice more potent and valued. The 'virginal' status of the animal is key when the rite is SPECIFICALLY related to fertility, in the sense that the animal itself is sacrificing its unused fertility, allowing for the sacrifice-rebirth cycle to perpetuate. (Animals which Have been bred may be preferred in certain cases and rituals).

An animal with a rare coloration is usually going to be more valuable than one with more common genetics. This is the core root of why albino animals are of high value. It's less that white animals themselves are valued, just that rare genetics such as albinism = valuable sacrifice.

There are some specific exceptions where the color itself is significant (rather than just an extension of its rarity). God is specifically supposed to have taken the form of a white aurochs (itself emerged from the foam of the sea) during creation, so white oxen and wild oxen SPECIFICALLY have especially high value. Melanism or black scales are valued to the serpent face of God, which is associated with the cosmos and void behind the stars. (this stems from much, MUCH older beliefs in a cosmic serpent god in the region).

Animal sacrifice is a very significant part of the religious framework and involved in most rituals and prayers intended to affect significant change and transformation. (This is due in part to a deeply ingrained belief in the world being perpetually sustained in a cycle of sacrifice and rebirth, and in God Itself being the physical mechanism of rebirth and requiring sacrifice to be sustained). While blood itself is seen as potent, the nature of sacrifice isn't just 'spill blood and make thing happen', it's got a self contained value system and is very calculated and intentional in nature. You aren’t going to just grab a random rat and bleed it and pray, there needs to be a perceived ‘loss’. Sacrifice via killing is also not the only form, the most common day to day sacrifice is in (very minor) bloodletting and offerings of food and drink- the key is allowing a personal loss to sustain a greater cycle.

That being said, there is a HUGE trade system built up around the breeding and selling of animals solely for sacrifice. The industry revolves mostly around birds (doves are the cheapest, but also poultry, waterfowl, some birds of prey, a few select songbirds and ornamental birds), goats, sheep, and horses (the small, premodern kind). Cattle and camelids are a higher tier, and khait are among the highest of common sacrifices due to their great value.

Other animals that have no direct utility but are sacred are also bred or captured for sacrifice (hesperornis, lacetor, gulls and albatrosses, several kinds of snake, a bunch of wild ungulates, nechoi, etc). Some '''‘exotic’''' animals are imported specifically for this purpose, mostly as a means of displaying the wealth and reach of the state, with their sacrificial value rooted in the difficulty of acquisition. Animals taken from sacred sites are also prime candidates (ie cattle bred and grazed on the foothills of the Sons of Creation are VERY valuable).

---

So all that being said the importance of albino animals has come off a little overstated on my part, and doesn't have any particular impact on how albinism in people is regarded. It’s valued mainly for its rarity in the context of animal sacrifice, which would not have direct translations to how it’s perceived in people.

Albinism in people doesn’t have a super well defined significance in broader Imperial Wardi culture, but perspectives mostly skew negative and towards seeing it as a sign of ill fortune (physical differences in people tend to be seen as a result of being cursed in the womb). Imperial Wardin is culturally diverse (united mostly by a identity based in shared religion), so exact nuances would vary and this statement should not be taken as a universal.

Imperial Wardi population is mostly human (with its citizen population being MAYBE 5% elowey, 2% qilik, and a decimal point of caelin). Overall sentiment towards other sophonts by the human majority is not outright hostile, but is human-centric and tinged with xenophobia (as most qilik and elowey in the region are immigrants, with the only elowey ethnic group historically inhabiting the region (the Jazait) being regarded as 'heathens'). Albino elowey or qilik might be similarly seen as products of a curse, or may be given a 'wow how beautiful' treatment (in a heavily patronizing capacity) and seen as a curiosity, or otherwise just subject to varying perspectives on albinism in the region.

The one other thing I have established in this vein is that the semi-mythological hero Janise (sworn brother of other semi-mythological founder hero Erub) is said to have been albino. While he is positively regarded, he is supposed to have died young of a snakebite (assumed to be the product of a curse from his enemies) and this would not improve perceptions of albinism being related to ill fortune.

#For a while I was typing aurochs as aurox. And this WAS intentional but I don't know what the point was because neither word would #be used in-universe (it's just translated as 'wild ox' in text) and it's not indicating a distinction with a real animal (like 'tyger' is).#So yeah it's back to just 'aurochs'.#Also Janeys is named after the historical Janise ('Janeys' is a more contemporary variant and is also a SUPER common name)#(variants include Janis Janes Jannes Janey Jani Jane Janus.....etc)#There's also like 10 trillion people named Erub or Erubi or Erubin or Erubnos or Urib or Urbi or Urbin .. etc #Super committed to realism by having several characters in the same story with the same name. There's like 4 background #characters with Erub names and 2 other Janeys variants. Which is hard on the reader and kind of bad writing but suffer with me. etc.#None of this is related to core post questions I just can't not elaborate on various niche details #OH ONE SEMI RELEVANT THING. Hesperornis is not extinct in this setting but only freshwater species survive in the contemporary #They don't get as big as the marine species we know from Real Life but they're still pretty big and flightless and only live in #large healthy river in this region (therefore are increasingly diminished) and are considered sacred #I got a couple drawings on deck that involve them but I don't think they've come up on here before #the white calf #imperial wardin

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falmerbrook · 8 months ago

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Snow Elf culture?

*pulls up a chair*

Perhaps...

A wee disclaimer that I'm not particularly good or creative with developing cultures or societies, but my brain has just latched on to the snow elves in a way where I can't stop myself. But anyway

I developed a lot of this because of a big ass draft for a fic I've been writing on and off about Gelebor and Vyrthur, so a lot of my headcanons are religion heavy. I'll start there:

Gelebor seems to place Auri-El and the Chantry of Auri-El as having significant importance to the Snow Elves over the other gods/temples. He's probably got a bit of bias in that regard since he's devoted his life to Auri-El, but in order to differentiate their religion from the other elven ones I like to think that their religion in general worshipped Auri-El as not even just as the figure head of their pantheon, but almost monotheistical, while the other gods (Trinimac, Syrabane, Jephre and Phynaster according to Gelebor) were like minor divine figures or just legendary heroes even more than in Altmer myth, depending on the interpretation. My idea is that if their culture had been allowed to continue on, it would've eventually become monotheistic, but by the arrival of the Nords they were in a bit of an awkward transition period with it.

I also like to lean into the sun motif with Auri-El that they established in Dawnguard and with Auriel's Bow, partially because it's another thing to make their depiction of him more unique, and in part because it makes some very juicy irony for Vyrthur. Some ideas include:

- The more religious folk tend to pray at noon when the sun is at it's highest. - The two biggest snow elf festivals happen on the summer and winter solstices. As far north as they are, the summer solstice is during a time of year where the sun barely sets and the winter one is during a time of year where it barely rises. The summer one is more jovial and celebratory, with a grand feast. With almost 24 hours of daylight, the festivities last up to three days straight, with folks commonly staying awake for over 24 hours. Most of it is spent outside, with the celebration being focused on making the most of the weather and daylight hours to spend as much time in the sun and the light of Auri-El as possible. The winter festival is as large scale but lasts longer and is lower-key. It also involves a feast but features more winter foods and meat and alcohol. It is more pensive. At this point in the year, there is no full daylight, and so this season is seen as a test of one’s faith and mental fortitude. This festival acts as a break from this trying time, taking time to relax, build community (a strong community will allow them to make it through the winter and strengthen their minds), and bond with family and friends. It is about a weeklong break, where leading up to the festival everyone works harder to prepare for it and allow themselves to have the break. There are activities and festivities, but they remain indoors for the most part and are smaller. - I've referenced this before, but with long winters with little sunlight (due to harsh weather and short days), they see that time of year as a reflective test of will and faith.

Due to their proximity to dragons, it was hard to miss the connection between Auri-El (/Akatosh) and dragons, and so their depiction of Auri-El is either much more influenced by the iconography of dragons, or is a dragon (although their depiction of dragon Auri-El is much more benevolent than the Nord/Atmoran one). I got the idea for this one from this Reddit post (i know I dog on Reddit a lot but this one has got some fun stuff in it, even if it's a bit out there)

^On that note, later in the timeline (post Dragon War (the timeline is very fuzzy on when this and the Night of Tear happens. They are both sometime vaguely in the late Merethic Era I believe, but it's unclear which happens first or how long each conflict is)) some Snow Elves see a sort of unreturned, unofficial comradery with dragons, seeing themselves as both on the receiving end of the Nord's/Atmoran's brutality (disregarding whether it was warranted or not in the context of the Dragon War).

Ok here's some more general cultural ones:

I mentioned my reasoning for this in this post, but I like to think their general settlements were not as permanent, with a larger focus on wood and building into the sides of hills (good for warmth), while their temples tended to be made of stone and much more permanent. This is why there are so few identifiable Snow Elf ruins across Skyrim. Their cities and towns were easy to wipe out, scavenged for resources, or were in good places for Nordic cities (perhaps Bromjunaar was originally the site of a Snow Elf city?), and their temples were either very hidden (e.g. the Chantry of Auri-El) or eventually converted to Nordic temples.

I love this journal in general for gleaning ideas for Snow Elf headcanons for, but one interesting this is the use of "Old Ones" and "Young One". They're treated like established titles. From that I like to think they place a lot of emphasis on the respect of those older than you. The social hierarchy and whose opinions are most valued is heavily influenced by age. Folks call anyone older or more revered “Old Ones” as a term of respect, and anyone younger than them “Young Ones”. Old One is almost never used in a demeaning way, but Young One can be (not always). Typically, “Old Ones” is used in the third person (e.g. you wouldn’t refer to someone directly as “old one”) whole “Young One(s)” can be used as an epithet for someone directly or in third person.

When thinking about death/"burial" customs (needed for some scenes in the fic I'm planning), you have to consider that there probably wasn't a lot of land in a place like Skyrim where someone can be buried. Nords intern their dead in crypts or burn them to get around this, and I like to think Snow Elves participated in something akin to sky burials (at least sometimes). After preparation, the departed's body is left outside on a ledge, cliff, or the temple balcony to be scavenged by birds. This is seen as a metaphorical return to Aetherius, while their soul literally returns to it. They do this even in poor weather or deep winter. If it doesn’t thaw and rot/be scavenged until months later, so be it. The length it takes to rot is considered indicative of how long it takes for the spirit to let go and move on (not in a bad way though. It’s interpreted more in the way of the soul or body grieving). It's seen as if they may wish to wait until spring to finally rot if they want to experience one more warm, sunny day.

Food (I mostly wrote this in my notes in the context of the Forgotten Vale and Chantry of Auri-El, but I think it could work elsewhere as well to an extent): Plant-based food is grown in gardens in the spring and summer, and that that is able to be stored is carefully preserved through the fall and winter. Winter foods include some nuts, dried vegetables, and dried and preserved/fermented grains (like wheat, barely). These foods must be eaten slowly throughout the winter to last, and winter diets are more meat based. Summer foods include apples, cabbage/lettuce, leeks, tomatoes etc. Snowberries can be found in the wild out of season of most other fruits, and provide fruit in very early spring. Occasionally, fungus from caves is harvested, but this is seen as a delicacy (foreshadowing).

Ok, that's it for now. I gotta go to bed. Thanks for the ask!!!! :D

#charlie its always sunny in philadelphia voice 'can we talk about falmer please ive been dying to talk about falmer all day'#mine #ask #tes #skyrim #the elder scrolls #snow elf #snow elves #reading my notes doc while making this and i was really cooking on some things. didnt include them all becasue some are very specific for #that fic i keep referencing #like i had to try to elaborate on the religious hierarchies and duties of each position because that was obviously gonna be relevant #but its sorta half baked rn #also i want to have some more headcanons for later in case someone asks again :)

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dragoneyes618 · 26 days ago

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"Islam was the second religion to emanate from Judaism, but as its founder was not a Jew and as it was not originally a Jewish sect, Islam's encounter with Judaism was significantly less bitter than Christianity's. As Salo Baron notes: "It was, therefore, from the beginning, a struggle between strangers, rather than an internecine strife among brethren." Largely because of this factor, Jews in the Islamic world were rarely persecuted as violently as their brethren in the Christian world. S. D. Goitein, perhaps the twentieth century's leading historian of Jewish life in the Arab world, concludes: "when the known facts are weighed, I believe it correct to say that as a whole the position of the non-Muslims [Christians and Jews under medieval Islamic rule] was far better than that of the Jews in medieval Christian Europe."

Goitein's assessment is valid, but it tells us much more about the Jews' condition under Christians than about their treatment by Muslims. For while the Jews of the Muslim world may have rarely experienced the tortures, pogroms, and expulsions that typified Jewish life under medieval Christian rule, their life under Islam was usually a life of degradation and insecurity. At the whim of a Muslim leader, a synagogue would be destroyed, Jewish orphans would be forcibly converted to Islam, or Jews would be forced to pay even more excessive taxes than usual.

Like Christianity's, Islam's anti-Judaism is deeply rooted. Islam too was born from the womb of Judaism; it too was rejected by the Jews whose validation was sought; and it too suffered an identity crisis vis-a-vis Judaism.

When Islam was born in the seventh century, there was a substantial Jewish population in Medina, where the first Muslim community arose. The Jews of pre-Islamic Arabia were active advocates of their religion, to such an extent that several kings of Himyar, now Yemen, converted to Judaism. Contemporary inscriptions described Dhu Nuwas As'ar, the last Jewish king of Himyar, as a believer in one deity whom the king called Rahman, the Merciful One, as called in Judaism and later in Islam.

During his early years, Muhammad related well to the Jews of Arabia, and their religious practices and ideas deeply influenced him. As Goitein noted: "The intrinsic values of the belief in one God, the creator of the world, the God of Justice and mercy, before whom everyone high and low bears responsibility came to Muhammad, as he never ceased to emphasized, from Israel."

The profound influence of the Jews, their Bible, and their laws on Muhammad is clearly expressed in the Koran, the Muslim bible, and in Muhammad's early religious legislation. Indeed, Muhammad saw himself as another Moses. In the Koran, he writes of his message (Sura 46, verse 12), "Before it the book of Moses was revealed....This Book confirms it. It is revealed in the Arabic tongue." Moses is a dominant figure on the Koran, in which he is mentioned over one hundred times.The Jewish doctrine that most deeply influenced Muhammad was monotheism: "There is no God but God." Muhammad's monotheism was so attuned to the uncompromising nature of Judaism's monotheism that though he had also been influenced by Christian teachers, he rejected the Christian trinity and the divinity of Jesus as not monotheistic: "Unbelievers are those that say, 'Allah is one of three.' There is but one God. If they do not desist from so saying, those of them that disbelieve shall be sternly punished" (5:71-73).

Jewish law also deeply influenced Muhammad. In the early days of Islam, Muslims prayed in the direction of the Jews' holy city, Jerusalem, and observed the most solemn Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Only later, when Muhammad reluctantly concluded that the Jews would not embrace him as their prophet and convert to Islam, did he substitute Mecca for Jerusalem, and the fast of Ramadan for Yom Kippur. Similarly, Muhammad based Muslim dietary laws upon Judaism's laws of Kashrut: "You are forbidden carrion, blood, and the flesh of swine; also any flesh...of animals sacrificed to idols." The five daily prayers of Islam are likewise modeled on the three daily services of the Jews.

Second in importance only to his adoption of the Jews' God was Muhammad's adoption of the Jews' founding father, Abraham, as Islam's founder. In Sura 2, verse 125, Muhammad writes how Abraham and his son Ishmael converted the Kaaba, the holy rock of Arabian paganism, into the holy shrine of Islam.

Believing himself to be the final and greatest prophet of Mosaic monotheism, and having adopted so much of Jewish thought and practice, Muhammad appealed to the Jews of Arabia to recognize his role and to adopt Islam as the culmination of Judaism. "Even Luther," the late renowned philosopher Walter Kaufmann wrote, "expected the Jews to be converted by his version of Christianity, although he placed faith in Christ at the center of his teaching and firmly believed in the trinity. If even Luther...could expect that, how much more Muhammad, whose early revelations were so much closer to Judaism?" Muhammad's deep desire for Jewish recognition reflected the similar needs of Jesus and his followers. No group could validate Muhammad's religious claims as could the Jews, nor could any so seriously threaten to undermine them.

The Jews rejected Muhammad's claims as they had Jesus', holding in both cases that what was true in their messages was not new, and that what was new was not true. Islam may have served as a religious advance for Arabian pagans, but for the Jews it was merely another offshoot of Judaism.

One major factor that rendered Muhammad's prophetic claims untenable to Jews was his ignorance of the Bible. In large part because Muhammad never read the Bible, but only heard Bible stories, his references to the Jews' holy text were often erroneous. In Sura 28:38, for instance, he had Pharaoh (from Exodus) ask Haman (of the Book of Esther) to erect the Tower of Babel (which appears at the beginning of Genesis).

Another obstacle to Jewish acceptance of Muhammad was the moral quality of some of his teachings. They did not strike the Jews, or the Arabian Christians, as equaling, let alone superceding, the prophetic teachings of Judaism or Christianity. In 33:50, for example, Muhammad exempts himself from his own law limiting a man to four wives, and in 4:34 he instructs men to beat disobedient wives. Walter Kaufmann notes that "there is much more like this, especially in the 33rd Sura," and that "it must have struck the Jews as being a far cry from Amos and Jeremiah, and the Christians as rendering absurd the prophet's claim that he was superseding Jesus."

Finally, Muhammad's suspension of many Torah Laws invalidated him in the Jews' eyes.

For these and other reasons, the Jews rejected Muhammad's prophetic claims and refused to become Muslims. This alone infuriated Muhammad. But it was even more infuriating that the Jews publicly noted the errors in Muhammad's biblical teachings and may have even ridiculed his claims to prophecy. Goitein concludes, "it is only natural that Muhammad could not tolerate as a neighbor a large monotheistic community which categorically denied his claim as a prophet, and probably also ridiculed his inevitable blunders."

As a result Muhammad turned against the Jews and their religion, and never forgave them for not becoming his followers. And just as early Christian hostility to the Jews was canonized in the New Testament, so Muhammad's angry reactions to the Jews were recorded in the Koran. these writings gave Muslims throughout history a seemingly divinely-sanctioned antipathy to the Jews.

In the Koran, Muhammad attacked the Jews and attempted to invalidate Judaism in several ways. First, and most significantly, he changed Abraham from a Jew to a Muslim: "Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian. [He] surrendered himself to Allah....Surely the men who are nearest to Abraham are those who follow him, this Prophet" (3:67-68).

Second, he condemned the Jews and delegitimized their law by advancing a thesis similar to Paul's, that the many Torah laws had been given to the Jews as punishment for their sins: "Because of their iniquity we forbade the Jews good things which were formerly allowed them" (4:160).

Third, Muhammad charged the Jews with falsifying their Bible by deliberately omitting prophecies of his coming. For example, in the Koran (2:129), Muhammad has Abraham mouth a prophecy of his (Muhammad's) coming. Muhammad charged that the Jews "extinguish the light of Allah" (9:32) by having removed such prophecies from their Bible.

Fourth, Muhammad asserted that Jews, like Christians, were not true monotheists, a charge he substantiated by claiming that the Jews believed the prophet Ezra to be the Son of God. "And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah...Allah fights against them. How perverse are they." (9:30).

These anti-Jewish fabrications, articulated by Muhammad as reactions to the Jews' rejection of him, have ever since been regarded by Muslims as God's word. Though originally directed against specific Jews of a specific time, these statements often have been understood by succeeding generations as referring to all Jews at all times, and thus form the basis of Islamic antisemitism.

One common example is 2:61: "And humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully.j That was for their disobedience and transgression." This Koranic description of the Jews of seventh-century Arabia has often been cited by Muslims to describe Jews to this day. *

(* In a speech before his army officers on April 25, 1972, the late Egyptian President Anwar as-Sadat cited this Koranic verse, and then added: "The most splendid thing our prophet Muhammad, God's peace and blessing on him, did was to evict them [the Jews] from the entire Arabian peninsula...I pledge to you that we will celebrate on the next anniversary, God willing and on this place with God's help, not only the liberation of our land but also the defeat of the Israeli conceit and arrogance so that they must once again return to the condition decreed in our holy book: 'humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them'...We will not renounce this.")

Muhammad and the Koran thus laid the basis for subsequent antisemitism just as the early Christians had - and for basically the same reason: Jews remaining Jewish constituted a living refutation of Islamic beliefs. Thus, under Islam, just as under Christianity, Jew-hatred was ultimately Judaism-hatred. Any Jew who converted to Islam was accepted as an equal.

Christians under Muslim rule fared little better. Muslims and their laws generally dealt harshly with both Christians and Jews.

As long as Christian communities survived in the Muslim world, discriminatory legislation also applied to them as well. However, whereas Jewish communities often flourished as vibrant Jewish communities, Christian communities for the most part did not survive the intense Muslim hostility. Under the yoke of MUslim laws against Jews and Christians, hundreds of thousands of people in some of the oldest and strongest Christian communities in the world converted to Islam.

No fact better underscores the intensity of Muslim persecution of dhimmis (non-Muslim monotheists) than this disappearance of so many Christian communities under Islam. The fact that under similar conditions many Jewish communities flourished bears witness to the Jews' tenacious commitment to Judaism, not to Muslim benevolence toward them. This is often lost sight of when favorably comparing Muslim antisemitism with Christian antisemitism. Yet the conversion to Islam of nearly every pre-Islamic Christian community in the Muslim world (the Copts of Egypt constituting the most notable exception) eloquently testifies to what Jews had to endure in their long sojourn through the Muslim world.

The two guiding principles of Islam's treatment of Jews and Christians are that Islam dominates and is not dominated, and that Jews and Christians are to be subservient and degraded. Nonmonotheists were usually given the choice of conversion to Islam or death.

The Muslim legal code that prescribed the treatment of Jews and Christians, or dhimmis as they are both referred to in Islam, was the Pact of Umar, attributed to Muhammad's second successor, but assumed to date from about 720. Its key characteristic was the requirement that dhimmis always acknowledge their subservient position to Muslims. Jews and Christians had to pledge, for example, "We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it." The subservience that dhimmis were required to show publicly to Muslims is analogous to the behavior once expected of Blacks in the Jim Crow American South: "We shall show respect...and we shall rise from our seats when they [Muslims] wish to sit." They also had to pledge "not to mount saddles," since riding a horse, or, according to some Muslims, any animal, was considered incompatible with the low status of a dhimmi. The dhimmis also had to vow "We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims nor shall we raise our voices when following our dead."

Anti-dhimmi legislation did not end with the Pact of Umar. In the Koran, Muhammad had urged Muslims, "Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture...and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low" (9:29). Accordingly, Muslim officials often insisted that when paying tribute, dhimmis must be "brought low," that is, humiliated.

An early Muslim regulation precisely prescribed how to humiliate Jews and Christians when they pay tribute: "The dhimmi, Christian or Jew, goes on a fixed day in person to the emir, appointed to receive the poll tax, who occupies a high throne-like seat. The dhimmi stands before him, offering the poll tax on his open palm. The emir takes it so that his hand is on top and the dhimmi's underneath. Then the emir gives him a blow on the neck, and a guard, standing upright before the emir, drives him roughly away The same procedure is followed with the second, third, and the following taxpayers. The public is admitted to enjoy this show." The public was not merely "admitted" to this humiliating spectacle, but as Baron observes, "Public participation was, indeed, essential for the purpose of demonstrating, according to the Shafi'ite school, the political superiority of Islam."

In the course of time Muslim rulers developed additional ways to humiliate dhimmis. Baron describes one of them: "Equally vexatious was the tax receipt, which in accordance with an old Babylonian custom, was sometimes stamped upon the neck of the 'unbelieving' taxpayer. This ancient mark of slavery...expressly prohibited in the Talmud under the sanction of the slave's forcible emancipation, occasionally reappeared here as a degrading stamp of 'infidelity.'"

These humiliating and painful procedures had a terrible effect on the Jews: "An Arab poet rightly spoke of entering the door with bent heads 'as if we were Jews.'"

Another law designed to humiliate dhimmis required them to wear different clothing. The purposes of this law were to enable Muslims to recognize Jews and Christians at all times, and to make them appear foolish. In 807, the Abbasid Caliph Haroun al-Raschid, legislated that Jews must wear a yellow belt and a tall conical cap. This Muslim decree provided the model for the yellow badge associated with the degradation of Jews in Christian Europe and most recently imposed by the Nazis.

A Jew living in Baghdad in the days of Al-Muqtadir (1075-96) described additional measures passed by the vizier, Abu Shuja, to humiliate Jews: "each Jew had to have a stamp of lead...hang from his neck, on which the word dhimmi was inscribed. On women he likewise imposed two distinguishing marks: the shoes worn by each woman had to be one red and one black. She also had to carry on her neck or attached to her shoe a small brass bell...And the Gentiles used to ridicule Jews, the mob and children often assaulting Jews in all the streets of Baghdad.

During the same century in Egypt, the Fatimid Caliph Hakim ordered Christians to wear a cross with arms two feet long, while Jews were ordered to wear around their necks balls weighing five pounds, to commemorate the calf's head that their ancestors had once worshiped.

These clothing regulations were not only enforced in the Middle Ages. Until their departure from Yemen in 1948, all Jews, men and women alike, were compelled to dress like beggars.

In fact, Yemen offers us a unique opportunity to understand Muslim attitudes toward the Jews. For it was the one Muslim country with a non-Muslim minority (Jews) that was never ruled by a European power. It was therefore able to treat its Jews in the "purest" Muslim manner, uninfluenced by non-Muslim domination.

In 1679, Jews in most of Yemen were expelled from their cities and villages. When allowed to come back a year later, they were not allowed to return to their homes, but were forced to settle in Jewish settlements outside of the cities. During their expulsion the synagogue of San'a, the capital, was converted into a mosque, which still exists under the name Masjid al-Jala (the Mosque of the Expulsion).

Among the many indignities to which the Jews of Yemen were constantly subjected was the throwing of stones at them by Muslim children, a practice that was religiously sanctioned. When Turkish officials (the Turks occupied Yemen in 1872) asked an assembly of Muslim leaders to see that this practice be stopped, an elderly Muslim scholar responded that throwing rocks at Jews was an Ada, an old religious custom, and thus it was unlawful to forbid it.

The greatest recurrent suffering that Yemenite Jews experienced was th e forced conversion to Islam of Jewish children whose fathers had died. This was practiced until the Jews fled Yemen in 1948, and was also based upon Islamic doctrine. Muhammad was believed to have said, "Everyone is born in a state of natural religion [Islam]. It is only his parents who make a Jew or Christian out of him." Accordingly, a person should grow up in the "natural religion" of Islam.

When a Jewish father died, there was often a "race" between Jewish communal leaders who sought to place the man's children with Jewish parents and the Muslim authorities who wanted to convert the children to Islam and place them in Muslim homes (in the Yemenite Islamic culture it would appear that the surviving mother was regarded as irrelevant). The Jews often lost. Goitein reports that "many families arrived in Israel with one or more of their children lost to them, and I have heard of some widows who have been bereaved in this way of all their offspring."

Yet as persecuted as the Yemenite Jews were, they were also denied the right to leave the country.

By the nineteenth century, the Jews' situation under Islam went from degradation to being recurrent victims of violence - as these examples from Jewish life in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine illustrate.

Egypt

In his authoritative book, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyyptisns, Edward Lane wrote that, at the time of his study (1833-35), the Jews were living "under a less oppressive government in Egypt than in any other country of the Turkish Empire." He added, however, that the Jews "are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims in general." Lane explained: "Not long ago, they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are less oppressed; but still they scarcely ever dare to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering idsrespectful words against the Kuran (sic] or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his jaded ass, and after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by calling the beast a Jew.

That this was the Jewish situation in Egypt, "a less oppressive government" than elsewhere in the Muslim Arab world, tells us a great deal about Muslim antisemitism in the nineteenth century - prior to the Zionist movement.

Syria

In 1840, some French Catholics introduced the blood libel into the Arab world. After a Capuchin monk in Damascus vanished, Ratti-Mention, the local French consul, told police authorities that the Jews probably had murdered him to procure his blood for a religious ritual. Several Damascus Jews were then arrested, and under torture, oneo f them "confessed" that leaders of the Jewish community had planned the monk's murder. Many other Jews were then arrested, and under torture more such confessions were obtained. French officials pressured Syria'sruler, Muhammad Ali, to try the arrested men, and it was only after an international protest organized by Jewish communities throughout the world that the Jews who survived their tortures were released.

The blood libel immediately became popular among Muslims, who attacked Jews as drinkers of Muslim blood in Aleppo, Syria, in 1853, Damascus again, in 1848 and 1890, Cairo in 1844 and 1901-2, and Alexandria in 1870 and 1881.

The blood libel played a decisive role in unsettling the lives of nineteenth-century Syrian Jews, and since then it has been repeatedly utilized in Arab anti-Jewish writings.

Palestine

Jews have lived continuously as a community in Palestine since approximately 1200 BCE. The only independent states ever to exist in Palestine have been Jewish. After the destruction of the second Jewish state in 70 CE and the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE, Jews always maintained a presence in Palestine, awaiting the reestablishment of the Jewish state. But these Jews often had to live under degrading conditions.

In nineteenth-century Palestine, which was under Ottoman Muslim rule, Jews had to walk past Muslims on their left, as the left is identified with Satan, and they always had to yield the right of way to a Muslim, by "stepping into the street and letting him pass." Failure to abide by these degrading customs often provoked a violent response.

In Palestine as elsewhere, Jews had to avoid anything that could remind Arabs of Judaism; therefore, synagogues could be located only in hidden, remote areas, and Jews could pray only in muted voices. In addition, despite the widespread poverty among Palestinian Jews, they had to pay a host of special protection taxes (in actuality, a form of extortion). For example, Jews paid one hundred pounds a year to the Muslim villagers of Siloam (just outside Jerusalem) not to disturb the graves at the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and fifty pounds a year to the Ta'amra Arabs not to deface the Tomb of Rachel on the road to Bethlehem. They also had to pay ten pounds annually to Sheik Abu Gosh to to molest Jewish travelers on the road to Jerusalem, even though the Turkish authorities were already paying him to maintain order on that road.

These anti-Jewish laws, taxes, and practices had a rather intimidating effect on the Jews. The British consul James Finn, who lived in Jerusalem in the 1850s, described in his book Stirring Times how "Arab merchants would dump their unsold wares on their Jewish neighbors and bill them, safe in the knowledge that the Jews so feared them that they would not dare return the items or deny their purchase."

Muslim antisemitism continued to be brutally expressed through the twentieth century. Albert Memmi, the noted French-Jewish novelist, who grew up in North Africa, cites a few examples:

"In Morocco in 1907, a huge massacre of Jews took place in Casablanca, along with the usual embellishments - rape, women carried away into the mountains, hundreds of homes and shops burned, etc....In 1912 a big massacre in Fez...In Algeria in 1934, massacre in Constantine, twenty-four people killed, dozens and dozens of others seriously wounded....In Aden in 1946...over one hundred people dead and seventy-six wounded, and two-thirds of the stores sacked and burned....In June, 1941, in Iraq, six hundred people killed, one thousand seriously wounded, looting, rapes, arson, one thousand houses destroyed, six hundred stores looted....[In Libya]: November 4th and 5th, 1945, massacre in Tripoli; November 6th and 7th in Zanzour, Zaouia, Foussaber, Ziltain, etc: girls and women raped in front of their families, the stomachs of pregnant women slashed open, the infants ripped out of them, children smashed with crowbars....All this can be found in the newspapers of the time, including the local Arab papers."

Memmi summarizes the Jewish status under Islam in the twentieth century: "Roughly speaking and in the best of cases, the Jew is protected like a dog which is part of man's property, but if he raises his head or acts like a man, then he must be beaten so that he will always remember his status."

It is the Jews' refusal to accept an unequal, inferior status that lies at the heart of the Arab-Muslim hatred for Israel. (It is this, not the Palestinian refugee issue, that has been the basis of Muslim antisemitism. Without minimizing the personal difficulties of the Palestinians, as Memmi notes [on page 35 of his book Jews and Arabs]: "The Palestinian Arabs' misfortune is having been moved about thirty miles within one vast Arab nation.") As Yehoshafat Harkabi, a leading scholar of the Arab world's attitude toward Israel, put it: "The existence of the Jews was not a provocation to Islam...as long as Jews were subordinate or degraded. But a Jewish state is incompatible with the view of Jews as humiliated or wretched." The call for a Palestinian Arab state in place of Israel is for a state in which once again 'Islam dominates and is not dominated."

This hatred of Jewish nationalism was so intense that during World War II, most Arab leaders were pro-Nazi. Among them was the head of the Muslims in Palestine, the mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini (who in 1929 had helped organize the large-scale murders of the ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist Jews of Hebron).

An ardent supporter of Hitler, the mufti spent much of the war in Nazi Germany; on November 2, 1943, at a time when the Nazis were murdering thousands of Jews daily, the mufti declared in a speech: "The overwhelming egoism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God's chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other peoples are animals...[makes them] in capable of being trusted. They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals....The divine anger and curse that the Holy Koran mentions with reference to the Jews is because of this unique character of the Jews."

Though many Arab nations formally declared war against Germany in 1945, when German defeat was imminent, in order to be eligible for entry into the United Nations, extensive Arab sympathy with the Nazis continued even after Germany's surrender. The Egyptians and Syrians long welcomed Nazis to their countries, offering them the opportunity to further implement the "Final Solution," by assisting in their efforts to destroy Israel and wipe out the Jewish community living there.

Among many Arabs the Holocaust has come to be regarded with nostalgia. On August 17, 1956, the French newspaper Le Mongde quoted the government-controlled Damascus daily Al-Manar as observing, "One should not forget that, in contrast to Europe, Hitler occupied an honored place in the Arab world....[Journalists} are mistaken if they think that by calling Nasser Hitler, they are hurting us. On the contrary, his name makes us proud. Long live Hitler, the Nazi who struck at the heart of our enemies. Long live the Hitler [i.e., Nasser] of the Arab world."

On June 9, 1960, after Israeli agents captured Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who had supervised the murder of six million Jews, the Beirut daily Al-Anwar carried a cartoon depicting Eichmann speaking with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Said Ben-Gurion: "You deserve the death penalty because you killed six million Jews." Responded Eichmann: "There are many who say I deserve the death penalty because I didn't manage to kill the rest."

On April 24, 1961, the Jordanian English-language daily Jerusalem Times published an "Open Letter to Eichmann," which concluded, "But be brave, Eichmann, find solace in the fact that this trial will one day culminate in the liquidation of the remaining six million to avenge your blood." At the UN sponsored "Conference Against Racism" in September 2001, an Arab pamphlet displayed at the Durban Exhibition Center featured a picture of Adolf Hitler with the caption, "If I had won the war there would be no...Palestinian blood lost."

Arab Jew-hatred also has brought about the resurrection of the blood libel. In 1962, the Egyptian Ministry of Education reissued Talmudic Sacrifices by Habib Faris, a book originally published in Cairo in 1890. The editor notes in his introduction that the book constitutes "an explicit documentation of indictment, based upon clear-cut evidence that the Jewish people permitted the shedding of blood as a religious duty enjoined in the Talmud."

On April 24, 1970, Fatah radio, under the leadership of Yasir Arafat, broadcast, "Reports from the captured homeland tell that the Zionist enemy has begun to kidnap small children from the streets. Afterwards the occupying forces take the blood of the children and throw away their empty bodies. The inhabitants of Gaza have seen this with their own eyes."

Even more disturbing, the blood libel accusations have been made by the most prominent figures within the Arab world. In November 1973, the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia said that it was necessary to understand the Jewish religious obligation to obtain non-Jewish blood in order to comprehend the crimes of Zionism. A decade later, in 1984, the Saudi Arabian delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission Conference on religious tolerance, Marouf al-Dawalibi, told the commission, "The Talmud says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity." In The Matzah of Zion, a book that has remained in print since its publication in 1983, Mustafa Tlas, the Syrian Defense Minister since 1972, wrote, "The Jew can kill you and take your blood in order to make his Zionist bread." A 2000 article about Tlas's book in Al-Ahram, Egypt's largest, and government-controlled, newspaper, reported, "The Bestial drive to knead Passover matzahs with the blood of non-Jews is [confirmed] in the records of the Palestinian police where there are many recorded cases of the bodies of Arab children who had disappeared without being found, torn to pieces, without a single drop of blood. The most reasonable explanation is that the blood was taken to be used in matzahs to be devoured during Passover." As one American journalist commented: "If this is 'the most reasonable explanation," can you imagine an unreasonable one?" The Al-Ahram article went on to report that an Egyptian movie company is planning to shoot a multimillion dollar film version of The Matzah of Zion, which will retell, as truth, the story of the Damascus blood libel.

And still the blood libel goes on. A 2001 cartoon in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustour depicts an Israeli soldier presenting his mother with a Mother's Day gift of a bottle containing the blood of a Palestinian child. At about the same time (November 2001), Abu Dhabi Television depicted a caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon preparing to drink a cup of blood taken from a Palestinian. A March 10, 2002, article in Saudi Arabia's Al-Riyadh, the government-controlled newspaper, by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faisal University, creates a new twist to this ancient libel, claiming that Jews use blood for Purim pastry and not just for Passover matzo: "Let us now examine how the victims' blood is spilled. For this, a needle-studded barrel is used; this is a kind of barrel, about the size of the human body, with extremely sharp needles set in it on all sides. [These needles] pierce the victim's body, from the moment he is placed in the barrel. These needles do the job, and the victim's blood drips from him very slowly. Thus, the victim suffers dreadful torment - torment that affords the Jewish vampires great delight as they carefully monitor every detail of the blood-shedding with pleasure and love that are difficult to comprehend."

Arab Muslims have also reached back to classical themes of Islamic antisemitism to attack the Jews and Israel. Many Arab speakers and publications echo Muhammad's charge in the Koran (5:82) that the Jews are the greatest enemies of humankind. For example, an Egyptian textbook, published in 1966 for use in teachers' seminars, taught that Jews (not only Israelis) are the "monsters of mankind [and] a nation of beasts."

Perhaps the favorite antisemitic publication in the Arab world for over fifty years has been The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.. In an interview with the editor of the Indian magazine Blitz, on October 4, 1958, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt praised the Protocols: "I wonder if you have read a book called 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.' It is very important that you should read it. I will give you an English copy. It proves clearly, to quote from the Protocols, that 'three hundred Zionists, each of whom knows all the others, govern the fate of the European continents and they elect their successors from their entourage."

The late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia gave copies of the Protocols to the guests of his regime. When he presented the Protocols, along with an anthology of antisemitic writings, to French journalists who accompanied French Foreign Minister Michel Jobert on his visit to Saudi Arabia in January 1974, "Saudi officials noted that these were the king's favorite books."

Article 32 of the 1988 Palestinian Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) Covenant claims that the Zionist "scheme" foe takeover of the Arab world "has been laid out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there." Hamas literature repeatedly accuses Jews of controlling the world's wealth and its most important media, and using them to promote Jewish and Zionist interests, even of having established the League of Nations in the 1920s "in order to rule the world."

Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority (and therefore supposedly less extreme than Hamas), regularly contains references to the Protocols. Thus, even during the height of the Oslo peace process the paper published the following: "It is important to conduct the conflict according to the foundations which both are leaning on...particularly the Jews...such as the Torah, the Talmud, and the Protocols...This conflict resembles the conflict between men and Satan." At about the same time in Egypt, Al-Ahram, the country's largest newspaper, reported, "A compilation of the investigative' work of four reporters on Jewish control of the world states that Jews have become the political decision-makers and control the media in most capitals of the world (Washington, Paris, London, Berlin, Athens, Ankara)." As the journalist Andrew Sullivan comments, "It is worth noting that every word Al Ahram prints is vetted and approved by the Egyptian government, a regime to which the United States - i.e., you and I - contributed $2 billion a year."

It is perhaps no surprise that, as of 2002, over sixty editions of the Protocols are being sold throughout the Arab world, and this libelous "warrant for genocide" is probably more widely distributed today than at any other time in its history. In 2002, the New York Times, in a front-page story, reported that a major Egyptian television station was about to launch a forty-one-episode TV series based on the Protocols (complete with Jewish villains dressed in black hats, side curls, and beards) to run before and during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Islamic world today has combined antisemitic motifs from Nazism and medieval Christendom, as well as from its own tradition. This potent combination has made the Arabs the major source of antisemitic publications in the world today. And as in other forms of antisemitism, in the words of Yehoshafat Harkabi, "the evil in the Jews is ascribed not to race or blood, but to their spiritual character and religion." Thus, when Pakistani Islamic terrorists kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in January 2002, they forced Pearl to say, "I am a Jew," (and videotaped him doing so) before slitting his throat.

Only through an understanding of the deep theological roots of Muslim antisemitism and an awareness of its continuous history can present-day Muslim hatred of Israel be understood. Only then does one recognize how false are the claims of Israel's enemies that prior to Zionism, Jews and Muslims lived in harmony and that neither Islam nor Muslims have ever harbored Jew-hatred. The creation of the Jewish state in no way created Muslim Jew-hatred; it merely intensified it and gave it a new focus.

So long as the Jews acknowledged their inferior status among Muslims, they were humiliated but allowed to exist. But once the Jews decided to reject their inferior status, to become sovereign after centuries of servitude, and worst of all, to now govern some Muslims in a land where the Jews had so long been governed, their existence was no longer tolerable. Hence the passionate Arab Muslim hatred of Israel and Zionism, a hatred that entirely transcends political antagonisms. Hence the widespread Muslim call not merely for a military defeat of Israel, but for its annihilation.

As so often in Jewish history, it is the Jewish nation's existence that arouses hatred and needs to be ended. Despite peace treaties between Israel and Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), for most Muslims the source of their hatred remains the Jewish sate's existence, not its policies, nor even its borders.

The Muslim and Arab claim that the issue is anti-Zionism rather than antisemitism really means that so long as the Jews adhere to their dhimmi status in Arab Muslim nations, their existence as individuals is acceptable. But for a Jew to aspire to equality among Muslims, for a Jew to aspire to a status higher than "humiliation and wretchedness," is to aspire too high."

- Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, chapter nine

#joseph telushkin #rabbit joseph telushkin #dennis prager #antisemitism #history #jewish history #jumblr #why the jews the reason for antisemitism

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talonabraxas · 1 month ago

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Ra (Egyptian God) Talon Abraxas

Ra (also given as Re) is the sun god of ancient Egypt. He is one of the oldest deities in the Egyptian pantheon and was later merged with others such as Horus, becoming Ra-Horakhty (the morning sun), Amun (as noonday sun), and Atum (the evening sun) associated with primal life-giving energy.

Ra is the Egyptian word for 'sun'. As a solar deity, Ra embodied the power of the sun but was also thought to be the sun itself, envisioned as the great god riding in his barge across the heavens throughout the day and descending into the underworld at sunset. As he made his way through the darkness beneath the earth, he was attacked nightly by the giant serpent Apophis (also known as Apep) who tried to prevent the sun from rising and so destroy all life on earth.

According to scholar Richard H. Wilkinson, Ra is "arguably Egypt’s most important deity" not only because of his association with the life-giving sun but also through his influence on the development of later gods. Amun, who would become so popular that his cult was almost monotheistic in devotion and the most powerful in ancient Egypt, developed from Ra and shares much of his mythology. Horus, who was associated with the living king, followed this same paradigm as Ra was known as “king and father of the king”. He was also associated with the creator god Atum and the two deities' names are used interchangeably in some versions of the creation myths.

Ra in the Heavens Ra on the Earth Ra in the Netherworld Ra as Creator Ra as King and Father of the King

This course of study is suggested for this deity more so than others because of the scope of his powers, the important part he played in Egyptian religion, and his long history. Worship of Ra was already established by the time of the Old Kingdom of Egypt (c. 2613-2181 BCE) and continued for almost 2,000 years until, like the other Egyptian gods, he was eclipsed by Christianity.

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girlactionfigure · 3 months ago

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Two things to understand about the Druze and Hezbollah:

1. There is a reason the Druze community is so beloved in @Israel and remains fiercely loyal to the state – unlike those who fought the Jews or fled in 1948, the Druze who found themselves within the newly drawn borders made a decision to link their destiny to that of the Jewish people and demanded they be conscripted to the @IDF just like them.

To this day they remain the only non-Jewish citizens with mandatory conscription, serving at a higher proportion than even Jewish Israelis. They are also uniquely intelligent, with 4 out of the top 6 high schools in Israel belonging to the Druze community.

Who are these Druze citizens who for decades have fought shoulder-to-shoulder with Jewish, Muslim and Christian Israelis in all of Israel’s wars? They are an Arab/Arabic-speaking sect that originated from a branch of Shia Islam, although today they are not considered Muslims and maintain their own monotheistic religion that was influenced by Christianity and many others along the way.

When the ignorant masses of the world attack Israel in word and in deed, they are attacking Jews and Arabs in equal measure.

I have spent time with members of the Druze community since October 7. They can tell you the name of every single soldier who fell in battle since. They are a very close-knit people who cherish their land and those who’ve made the greatest sacrifice for it. They are an inseparable part of the State of Israel.

We owe them everything.

2. Hezbollah is not a terrorist organization. They are the Lebanese government. They sit in parliament. They run ministries. They control the country. Hezbollah is Lebanon. Lebanon is Hezbollah.

The citizens of Israel's north – Arabs and Jews – have been suffering quietly under daily rocket fire for 9.5 months as they deferred to the urgency of the southern front. That urgency has steadily been transferred from south to north, punctuated by yesterday's horrific attack on these beautiful Druze children.

The rules for state-on-state war are not the same as when fighting groups like Hamas who control an independent territory such as Gaza. Although we have no quarrel with the Lebanese people, when Hezbollah attacks it means Lebanon has attacked. There is no obligation to try and limit the fighting to Hezbollah-specific targets – all of Lebanon is fair game.

Don’t act surprised when Beirut becomes a battlefield and Lebanon goes dark.

We owe the Druze and all of Israel whatever it takes to ensure our children can be children in this land we share in blood.

#Israel #Lebanon #Majdal Shams #Druze #Hezbollah

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whencyclopedia · 4 months ago

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Plotinus

Plotinus (c. 204-270) was a Platonic philosopher born in Lycopolis, Egypt. Although the story of his life was written down by his student Porphyry, few biographical details are included because Plotinus rejected the physical world of appearances in favor of the realm of the mind, considereding trivialites such as birth date, family, and ancestry unworthy of mention.

At the age of 28, he began a course of study with the Platonist Ammonius Saccas that deeply impacted his life. Already a student of philosophy, Plotinus devoted himself fully to the discipline, absorbing Plato's Dialogues and his teacher's commentary on them. Plotinus' concept of the Divine Mind and the purpose of mortal existence exerted tremendous influence on all three of the world's great monotheistic religions and, for this reason, many consider him the most significant philosopher of the ancient world.

He is the founder of the school of thought known as Neo-Platonism; a significant number of famous ancient writers, theologians, politicians, generals, and philosophers are now recognized as Neo-Platonists, although they would not have referred to themselves by that label. Plotinus' philosophy was recorded in the Enneads by Porphyry; he wrote nothing himself. He died in Rome at the age of 66.

Early Life and Travel

Plotinus' birthplace at the Greek colony of Lycopolis, Egypt suggests he was probably Greek but this is uncertain. All that is known of his life is what he allowed his student Porphyry to record. In his late twenties, pursuing an interest in philosophy, Plotinus went to Alexandria, which was then an intellectual centre rivaling Athens. He was disappointed with the plebian philosophies he heard being taught as 'profound truths' and was steadily becoming more and more frustrated and disillusioned when a friend suggested he come to a talk by the Platonic philosopher Ammonius Saccas who was also the teacher of the Christian theologian Origen.

Plotinus went to the lecture and immediately declared that Saccas was the teacher he had been seeking all his life. After ten years of study under Saccas, Plotinus joined the military campagin of Emperor Gordian III to Persia in order to learn Persian and Indian philosophy. When Gordian was assassinated by his troops, and the campaign fell apart, Plotinus traveled to Antioch and then on to Rome where he remained for the rest of his life.

#History #529 #Alexandria #AmmoniusSaccas #WHE #[#]

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nightoffdiary · 7 months ago

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Putting on my “Religions” and “History” proficiencies in real life to use

I have a huge feeling that the Bobby Dawn is a direct descendant of the people who were responsible for translating Ankarna’s story from Giant to Common, much like there were translations of the Bible from Latin to English by individuals.

However, translation from one language to another is very rarely a 1:1 ratio.

In Hawaiian (I’m a second language learner), one word can encompass multiple meanings. A first-language speaker and listener would be able to discern which context to use which meaning. The cooler thing though, is that there is meaning in using a word and allowing ALL meanings to matter as well.

When when Portuguese and English settlers began translating Hawaiian language into English for their own records (which, fun fact, Hawaiian was entirely oral so P/E settlers had even less clue of mechanics), they did similar things.

The way Bobby Dawn acts is right on par with the dozens of religious figures of monotheistic religions (remember his pause before “deities”).

Most monotheistic religions despise polytheistic religions, and when translating, they tend to also try to translate the actual written words to be replicate their goal to eliminate polytheistic religions because while polytheistic religions can survive the entering of a new god to the pantheon, a monotheistic religion is rocked to its core and can not logically survive.

In Hawaiian, with the influence of Christianity and Catholicism, LDS— the word “nā akua” (nā = plural the, akua = divine beings) was almost always translated to Ke Akua— THE god.

Followership influences the domain of the gods. If the people of the church of Sol caught wind that their deity had participated in the wedding of Cassandra and Ankarna, it would mean Sol is NOT the only god.

It only takes one follower to change the narrative, to choose power, to rewrite the narrative. And maybe, like Hawaiians, Giants were seen stereotypically as either brutes or hedonist crazy people for having different domains and complex god systems BEYOND one-god-one-son type religions.

It seems power is huge here and no one else can coexist, like how extremists of monotheistic religions can be.

Lucy represents a giant who honored a domain so kind, but maybe her own reaching into her goddess’ powers were helping to awake the REAL Ankarna story.

Kristin being in a polytheistic world where it focuses on the interconnection of parts in order to balance and keep each other in check. Cassandra is seeking her connection to Ankarna again, to need the conviction to doubt, wouldn’t destroy Sol at all— but reveal the INSTITUTION of Sol/Helio’s followers that committed a harm a long time ago for a human grab at power over others.

Kristin I believe WILL bring her family with her, but wishes, like many, that they could all coexist and see the goal is balance and not one story that triumphs all.

#hawaiian #hawaiian history #moolelo #dimension 20 #dnd #d20 #fantasy high junior year #brennan lee mulligan #ally beardsley #kristin applebees #cassandra d20 #d20 theories

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pumpkinprincess22 · 3 months ago

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The Pantheon

Before the Divine Warriors were worshipped as the primary religious deities in Ru'aun, before they were even born, at the creation of the universe there were the Old Gods. In Aphmau's time, the time of the Phoenix Alliance these Old Gods have been largely forgotten, there are few who remember their names, but they are still there, watching, waiting.

So if you have been following @warlocks-and-phoenixes MCD Rewrite Lore you may have heard mention of a pantheon of gods (known as the Torvan gods in her rewrite lore, but simply the Old Gods in mine). You may be wondering where they came from? That would be me. I accidentally hyperfixated a little too hard on pre-divine warrior religion in Ru'aun and created a Pantheon of gods based on the Greco-Roman gods. Below is an introduction to these deities. Some of the lore differs between my original concepts and Twilight's incredible lore but here is what I came up with. (and yes some of the names are just literal Latin words for their spheres of influence, although not always pronounced that way).

Primordial Deities

Chaea (Kai-a): Deity of Chaos Ordo (Or-doh): Deity of Order Lux (Lucks): Child of Ordo and Chaea, Deity of Light Khrona (Crow-na): Daughter of Ordo and Chaea, Goddess of Time Obscurus (Obscure-us): Son of Ordo and Chaea, God of Darkness Kaela (Kai-la): Daughter of Ordo and Chaea, Wife of Rugos, Goddess of the Sky Rugos (Rue-g-os): Son of Ordo and Chaea, Husband of Kaela, God of the Sea Terera (Teh-rare-a): Daughter of Ordo and Chaea, Wife of Saevus, Goddess of the Earth Saevus (S-eye-wuss): Son of Ordo and Chaea, Husband of Terera, God of Wild Spaces, animals and the hunt Fortunus (Fortune-us): Son of Ordo, Husband of Paesis, God of Prosperity and Fortune Paesis (Pie-sis): Daughter of Ordo, Wife of Fortunus, Goddess of Peace Ragnori (Rag-nor-ee): Child of Chaea, Deity of War

Other Deities

Luna (Loo-na): Daughter of Lux, Goddess of the Moon, Patron goddess of Werewolves Sol: Son of Lux, God of the Sun, Patron god of Meif’wa, Worshipped Monotheistically in Tu’La Aeta (Eye-ta): Daughter of Lux and Khrona, Goddess of Day Praeterus (Pry-tair-us): Son of Khrona, God of the Past Praesus (Pry-sus): Son of Khrona, God of the Present Futerus (Few-tair-us): Son of Khrona, God of the Future Obitus (Oh-bit-us): Son of Khrona, God of Death and the Dead Medica (Med-ick-a): Daughter of Obitus, Goddess of Medicine Pestilentia (Pest-ill-ent-ee-a): Daughter of Obitus, Goddess of Disease Hintera (Hint-aira): Daughter of Khrona, Goddess of Winter Veria (Vair-ee-a): Daughter of Khrona, Goddess of Spring Aeasta (Eye-as-ta): Daughter of Khrona, Goddess of Summer Autumna (Or-tum-na): Daughter of Khrona, Goddess of Autumn Noctus (Nock-tus): Son of Khrona and Obscurus, God of Night Tempestus (Tem-pest-us): Son of Kaela and Rugos, God of Storms Kanos (Kah-nos): Son of Tempestus and Terera, God of Volcanoes, Fire and Natural Disasters Wyvra (Why-vra): Daughter of Terera and Saevus, Goddess of Witchcraft, Mother of Wyvrens Fae (Fay): Daughter of Terera and Saevus, Goddess of Flora, Patron Goddess of the Fair Folk Avaritia (Av-are-ee-tee-a): Daughter of Ragnori and Fortunus, Goddess of Greed Miseria (Mis-air-ee-a): Daughter of Ragnori and Fortunus, Goddess of Misery Gloria (Gl-or-ee-a): Daughter of Ragnori and Fortunus, Goddess of Vanity Amara (Am-are-a): Daughter of Ragnori and Paesis, Goddess of Love Ludere (Loo-dair): Son of Ragnori and Paesis, God of Revelry and Merriment Kaisia (Kay-see-a) - Daughter of Ragnori and Paesis, Goddess of Justice, Wife of Eduard Ro’Meave, Matriarch of the Ro’Meave line, Patron Goddess of O’Khasis Oenaria (Oi-nare-ee-a): Daughter of Paesis and Fortunus, Goddess of Trade, Travel, and Communication Matria (Matt-ree-a): Daughter of Paesis and Fortunus, Goddess of Marriage and Family, worshipped at weddings and births Archona (Are-cone-a) Daughter of Paesis and Fortunus, Goddess of Craftsmanship Messia (Mess-ee-a): Daughter of Paesis and Fortunus, Goddess of Harvest

#rose rewrites #aphblr #minecraft diaries #aphmau mcd #aphverse #aphmau #divine warriors

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tanadrin · 10 months ago

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@maaruin

Hinduism is probably a good example for how Roman-Platonist Monotheism would look like without the Jewish origin of Christianity: the theology is monotheist but to an outside observer the rituals look like they are honoring various gods, because polytheist practices have been re-interpreted in a monotheist way. Christianity is unusual not in its monotheist beliefs, but in that it required its followers to stop performing the traditional (polytheist) rituals.

I want to expand on this bc it touches something else McClellan mentions--how being the organized faith of the Empire really changed Christianity, or at least Nicene Christianity. Before it became institutionalized, there was a lot of room in early Christianity for different, contradictory Christologies (like Arianism, which was basically mainstream at one point); it's only with the Council of Nicaea that a compromise form of all these Christologies has to be hammered out (because the institutional church needs dogmatic harmony), and the boundaries of orthodox theology have to be policed--and can be, eventually with the full backing of state power. Before the most you could do was expel members of your church who disagreed with you, maybe refuse association with other churches whose theology differed too much. Once you have state backing you can use that authority to exclude heretics; and, later, once you are the official religion of the Empire, you can have heretics punished by the state.

I think this harsh ideological boundary maintenance really becomes a part of every state-backed church, but of course it's the Roman one that is by far the most powerful and most widespread; and even post-Great Schism and the fall of the western empire, the need for Catholic rulers to be in good with the Pope, and thus to enforce Christian orthodoxy within their territory, has the same boundary-maintenance effect.

McClellan contends that without this forced institutional compromise--which is what the Trinity is; "three persons with one substance" and stuff like "100% divine and 100% human" is not just "a mystery," it's functionally a nonsensical contradiction, and the reason why so many attempts to explain the Trinity fall into heresies like modalism or partialism is because the Trinity is wording-by-committee aimed at producing phraseology that most people at this one ecumenical council could tolerate, even if they didn't like it.

And by "most people" here we mean a very particular kind of educated Greco-Roman elite; a lot of early theology is shaped by what is conceptually acceptable to these guys, steeped in stuff like Neo-Platonism, and maybe doesn't have all that much to do with the peasant religion version of Christianity elsewhere (indeed, get your average theologically-untrained Christian of any era to try to explain something like the Trinity and I guarantee ninety-nine times out of ten they will produce an explanation that is technically a heresy).

All of which is to say I agree; a counterfactual "monotheistic" late-antiquity religion in a world without Christianity, but with the same Greco-Roman influences, would look very much like Hinduism; it would have a big split between, like, the everyday version of the religion and the theologically elucidated elite version of the religion; and I think it's the latter that would resemble Nicene Christianity on a lot of points. But then, folk Christianity often is very different from "orthodox" Nicene Christianity in the world we do inhabit, also.

#the council of nicaea is the one where santa claus went around punching heretics #(supposedly)

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sonofsatansworld · 3 months ago

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Satan is My Higher Power!

“Satan doesn’t actually exist outside the human imagination- just like God, Satan is not a conscious external, independent being, but is the internal personification of a moral code- a construct of our minds to provide character and narrative to a common morality.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam are institutions which find power in dictating human morality, regardless of the real-life consequences and without purpose other than increased power and influence. Anarcho-Satanism promotes empowering the individual through the individual’s creative practice of moral judgment, and examining the evident consequences in detail for the purpose of gradual improvements to the overall quality of life. Anarcho-Satanists seek to reclaim the right of moral judgment from God, and entitle the communities and individuals with the self-confidence to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong. The God of the monotheistic western religions is evil disguised as good, while Satan is good disguised as evil. As times change and human life evolves, this historic inversion of morality is slowly being corrected.

For hundreds and thousands of years, crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts, jihads, imperial colonization, slavery, and all other manner of organized cruelties have been carried out in the name of God. The cover of God provides the justification for the weak-minded and weak-willed to commit the worst atrocities, thinking that they will be forgiven by God rewarded in an afterlife for their mindless devotion.

When Christians Jews and Muslims are no longer able to create an illusion of eternal suffering for those who deny their God, they are no longer able to justify worship of their God as a path to salvation, as there is then nothing to be saved from, except the world which the influence of God has warped and twisted from an ancient paradise into a modern hell on earth.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam would have us believe that God is omnipotent; the source of existence and a benevolent entity, but to be all-powerful and to still allow atrocities to occur could only demonstrate the unjust cruelty of the source of these atrocities. If God had not wanted humans to suffer from rape, murder, disease, starvation, poverty, natural disasters, war, terrorism, torture and genocide, why would God create these conditions? Why would an all-powerful, omnipotent God allow such catastrophes to continually plague humanity? If it is part of God’s plan, then we as individuals must find the inner strength of our ability to reason and rightfully judge the plan as horribly flawed, or as the lack of any plan.

#spirituality #occult #hail satan #satanism #wizards of the coast #philosophy #lucifer morningstar #witches #9999 #hail satan 666 #666 satan #angel number 666 #satanist #satanic #666 aesthetic #ave satanas

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serpentface · 7 months ago

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@reijnders thank you and I'll address the questions in these tags in extensive detail right now

[heavily referencing this post]

The “Hill Tribes” is a Wardi name for a grouping of farming and pastoralist peoples in the montane regions claimed as northern Wardin.

They may informally self reference as 'Hill Tribesmen' when speaking in the Wardi context, but do not see themselves as one entity (and are frequently in conflict) and would self-identify by specific clan and tribe. Networks of allegiance between clans form a tribe, usually with a dominant clan occupying a central hill fort and coordinating affairs and territorial defense, and subordinate clans providing most agricultural labor. The chief clan only rules with the support of their subordinates, and each clan has a matriarch and patriarch that have great say in affairs regardless of the clan's relative status.

The relation to the surrounding empire varies between tribes, with some, naturally, being hostile, most being more or less neutral (or at least non-combative), and a few having long standing ties with imperial interests, often loaning out warriors or paying tribute for benefits.

Their society differs greatly in form and function from contemporary Wardi society, but there is some overlap and common ancestry involved. Some of the starkest differences - Wardi society is patriarchal, while most of the Hill Tribes are roughly egalitarian (though with fairly strict and separate gender roles). Wardi state religion is approximately monotheistic, the Hill Tribes are mostly polytheist (they have a pantheon of roughly 15 major gods, one of which is Od, the sole god in the Wardi faith).

In Brakul's case, his tribe is in a longstanding tributary relationship to the Wardi empire- their lands are of some strategic value to imperial interests (being along a waterway that functions as a trade route) and paying tribute and allegiance allows for their continued self-governance, and benefits them in local conflicts (they may be lent military support). As such they have adopted some elements of Wardi culture, including a religion that has heavily syncretised with Wardi faith (they worship Od as the central god and view the rest as lesser spirits).

In terms of the Homosexuality Issue it can be summarized as similar to Wardi perspectives on a basic level, with differing nuances. The biggest difference is that the Hill Tribes mostly don’t share the Wardi cultural fixation on ‘bodily integrity’ and its metaphysical significance. So they share an attitude that it's emasculating for a man to receive penetrative sex, but they don’t have concerns that bodily ‘violation’ can lead to literal curses or have any other metaphysical perials.

Their notion of 'emasculation' also differs from prevailing Wardi sentiments, though in a subtle way. In Wardi society, being 'emasculated' via penetrative sex is specifically seen as taking on a woman or eunuch's role (both of whom occupy a lower standing in a patriarchal society) and thus specifically being disempowered. Here, it is more simply a failure to adequately perform masculine gender roles. They still associate 'penetrator' with masculinity and 'penetrated' with femininity, but without an associated power dynamic. A man who is penetrated is failing to perform ideal masculinity, but is not DISEMPOWERED by being 'feminized'.

All of the above is speaking broadly about a culturally varied population, so there are exceptions. Brakul has grown up in a context influenced by Wardi culture, and has spent his adult life entirely entrenched in it, so he has stronger and more specific issues with Internalized Homophobia than most people of the Hill Tribes would. But his issues revolve almost entirely around social perception. His dominant concern is the very real consequences of people finding out and resulting shame and dishonor (rather than more abstract issues of power, or metaphysical 'violation', though he is impacted by these fears as well to a lesser extent). The importance of personal and familial honor are very similar between the two cultures, so he is strongly motivated to protect his own social status and that of his sworn brother.

A lot of his personal issues are based in being a relative 'outsider' to Wardi society. Wardi society is multicultural and has no innate concerns about intermarriage or the like, but has prevailing xenophobic views about certain types of 'foreigners', especially based on a) real or imagined hostility to the Wardi imperial entity and/or b) core religious differences. The Hill Tribes (and therefore Brakul) are one of many groups labeled 'heathens' (a Relatively neutral descriptor that groups wildly disparate 'foreign' northerners). 'Heathens' are not treated with the same hostility as 'barbarians' (a highly derogatory descriptor of foreign groups deemed religiously hostile), but Janeys is still under increased scrutiny for swearing brotherhood with one, and Brakul is under increased pressure to avoid bringing shame on both of them.

The Wardi cultural fears about bodily violation is also part of why Brakul having tattoos is seen as so strange and ~Foreign~. Tattooing is almost nonexistent in Wardi culture and reserved exclusively for certain priesthoods, and otherwise to brand certain accused criminals. Massive significance is ascribed to permanent body modification, so it is only done with extreme intentionality and significance, or as a form of punishment.

The nature of tattooing in the Hill Tribes varies, but its core function is a clan identifier. There are also no compunctions against tattooing purely for self-decoration, which is absolutely insane by Wardi sensibilities. IE: for Brakul, tattooing a dog over his heart is primarily a decorative artistic nod to his war name and a light joke on losing his family name, while to Wardi sensibilities it suggests he's claiming some innate doggish nature (especially given that the dog is a zodiac symbol and that the heart is imagined as the seat of personality and drive).

Janeys reconciles these conflicting notions by (correctly) understanding it as not all that serious for Brakul, and defending his honor from accusations of dog-facedness, but (incorrectly) assuming this tattoo still has profound significance as Brakul marking himself with ~the only name he has left~. (A clan sigil tattoo would be made on the sternum, so the dog isn't actually replacing his lost name- the 'joke' is more that he never got the chance to mark himself with a clan sigil so did this instead)

The facial and arm tattoos are clan identifiers and representative of ancestry and family ties. The facial lines identify his specific tribe. These exact dot and line motifs are unique, and other tribes who share this practice may have entirely different motifs or different locations in the face for tattooing.

The dots on his arms don’t actually represent specific individuals, rather they are a visual assistance for memorization of one’s family lines, which are recited orally for certain events, ritual functions, or casually showing off one’s lineage. The upper band represents the male line, the lower band represents the female line, and the middle area represents the immediate family (and is the only area where individual dots/shapes represent individual people- his mother and father, each pair of grandparents, himself, and his son). They are identical on each arm.

So when Brakul is pointing to each dot and giving examples of ancestors and relatives, it’s him recalling members of twelve generations from each line with the visuals as a mnemonic device. Janeys has missed the memo on this and mistaken it for each dot representing an individual, so it makes especially little sense to him.

Here's a diagram

#I need to make an updated map so fucking bad. I'm sorry to all the people who have asked for a map and got ignored it's because I need #to update the maps so bad it's unreal #brakul red dog #janeys haidamane

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