#Literally consulted my arab friend for that translation

[masasibling]

Working on my nile coloring but the lineart is fully done wohooo

[mrsq8geek]

Seventy-three Things “Wrong” with When Stars Are Scattered

First: I say “wrong” because this is, of course, completely subjective, and arguably you can do whatever you want with your writing.

Second: I received this story from a friend who wanted to know what I thought about it.  I don’t know anything about the author; this was a cold read, so I won’t be taking into account the context surrounding the writing or authorial intent because… well, I don’t know any of those things.  

Third: End note: As I read I got some idea of authorial intent, so my responses get less and less serious as the story goes on.  Sorry about that.

When Stars Are Scattered will take you to the story on Tor.com

1. Right away the synopsis tells you that Ahmed is an atheist.  Not just any atheist pretending to be a Muslim, but someone born Muslim and given a Muslim name who then became atheist.  Because why would you want to write about a Muslim who likes being Muslim. (Later it’s specified he’d been an atheist since he was twelve.)

2. Why is “the imam” in the hospital?  "Imam" isn’t some kind of religious title like “priest”.  Anyone can be an imam.  It just refers to the person leading the prayer.  That’s it.  They’re regular people who have day jobs and families and lives.  Sometimes the imam is also a religious scholar, in which case the title “sheikh” might be used.  "Sheikh" is used to denote superiority in knowledge or status, which is why we also use it to refer to country leaders and ruling or royal families.

3. “Ahmed forced himself to exhale slowly. Damn, did this guy ever love the word genocide.”  I’m the one who’s exhaling slowly here.  Immediately the imam is cast as a religious extremist.  In today’s global political climate.  I wonder what the author is trying to say here.

4. “If only God would tell us what to do.”  Okay, this is the first of several lines of dialogue spoken by the Muslim characters that tell me the author didn’t do their research.  I understand the intent of the sentence, wanting divine guidance, but the way it’s said as if it’s going to come directly just by wishing it is… “wrong”.  Islam literally has a prayer called “istikhaara” dedicated to asking God to help you choose between two choices.  If it’s not a matter of choices, then you just make duaa.  You consult people in their field of expertise.  The imam is written like a religious leader, he should know this stuff.  I’d understand if it were coming from a layman Muslim, but the guy who’s written like a priest?

5. “the Muslim missionaries who came to “guide” the kites” Muslim missionaries?  The Arabic word for “missionary” is practically never used except to refer to Christian missionaries, and the Crusades in particular.  This also a) radicalizes the Muslims, because they’re here to spread Islam, not to lead their own lives, and b) Others them from the Nova Christos, who they are “opposites” from, and that leads to the question… why are they immediate opposites?  Anyway, I’m not touching the “guide” in quotes, the context there is that the protagonist feels alienated.

6. “Christians killed them like pests, and the Muslims brought them to prayers” So the Christians, the Nova Christos, who are referred to by their religion and presumably have the same agenda as the Muslims, start by not showing compassion?  Both religions are bad and the atheist is the only one who’s right?  Given this rhythm, I’m sure if there were a Jewish character, they’d be horrible too.

7a. “Ibrahim is, like his namesake, a father of many nations. Twenty-four children.”  Again, I understand the idea, but Ibrahim only had seven children, and the biggest conflict only arises from two: Isaac, son of Sarah, and Ismael, son of Hajar.  Plus, the whole thing about converts changing names?  They’re only supposed to do that if their initial given name had something that went against Islam.  Besides that, converts are free to keep their old names.

7b. So my proofreader recognized this reference: Genesis 17:4-5 KJV “[4] As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. [5] Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.”  So this Muslim woman is a. familiar with the Bible to some degree, and b. assuming the Muslim man she just met and doesn’t yet know is atheist will also know this specific Bible reference.  

8. Arabic and “Standard” aka “Common”.  This is its own topic and it’s been written about extensively by people better qualified than I am.  Here’s one example.

9. The alien says: “Friend, sadeaki, allahu akbar, inshallah.” Aaaand there it is, Muslims only ever speak one sentence and it’s “allahu akbar”, without even capitalizing the A in Allah.  “The little thing babbled in Arabic through the whole blood draw” If you’re going to be repeating Arabic to yourself during something that worries you like a blood draw, the phrase is “bismillah”, “in the name of God”.  Bismillah is prevalent throughout Muslim culture because you say it like a million times a day, while praying, before eating, etc.  And “not a native speaker” is not an acceptable argument either, because non-native speakers of any language can usually make more sense than “friend, friend, god is great, god willing”.  

10. “The old kite muttered more in Arabic. Ahmed caught the word “jihad.””  How convenient that the protagonist doesn’t know a lot of Arabic but knows one of the most politically-charged words.  In space.  Even atheists who started out as Muslims generally don’t leave Islam because of “jihad”.  They become atheists for the same reason people leave Christianity or Judaism or any other religion– the people surrounding that person make them hate the religion.  “He supposed everything must look like “the struggle” right now to the kites.” Ah, the direct translation of the word, to explain it to the reader.  The word is handled from the perspective of an outsider.

11. “We praise God five times a day,” she whispered. “It is to remember what God has done for us.”” We pray to God five times a day.  We praise God whenever it suits us.  “To remember what God has done for us” is an adult concept.  When you teach children about God, you’re more likely to say something like, “You pray to God so that God will love you and take care of you”.  Children will often think of their deity like a parent, an invisible parent if you will.  This isn’t character exploration, this is an opening line for the next thing: ““What has God done for us?” Ahmed asked.” Which, again, I get that he becomes an atheist when he grows up, but that question is used by adults, not children.

12. “I’ll get the stain out, habibi” So Arabic is a gendered language, and the male form can be used to address women if there’s a mix of men and women.  Think of it like French.  In some dialects, it’s also okay to use the male form “habibi” when addressing a female, but it has to be a very close relationship.  So yes, mother and daughter qualifies.  But given how weakly the rest of the Arabic has been utilized so far, I’d say it was used out of Not Doing the Research.

13. “Doctor, this is Khadija Sofia” I don’t understand what’s happening here.  Does she have a compound name like Mary-Anne? If so, where’s the hyphen?  If not, is it supposed to be a middle name?  Because Islamic naming conventions don’t have a middle name.  More from my proofreader: If they’re using Latinx naming convention, they’re both her name… so why isn’t she called Khadija throughout the story?

14. “On a Nova Christos world it wouldn’t be enough to avoid pork, booze, and loose women; they wanted a Qur’an-quoting, happy member of the ummah, who would help resolve disputes and argue the meaning of scripture.  Ugh.” HolyBook-verbing used in a derogatory manner, now where have I heard that before.  Also, news flash, the common garden variety Muslim doesn’t know enough scripture to argue the meaning.  Most Muslims will know just enough to pray with and that’s it.  Ugh indeed.

15. “He reached into the crumpled lab coat and grabbed the flask of whiskey, splashed a bit of it into a fresh cup of coffee and gulped the mixture with a deep, satisfied sigh.” …under the assumption that, what, whiskey doesn’t smell like alcohol on one’s breath, or that coffee would mask the smell?  Muslims stand shoulder-to-shoulder in prayer.  Believe me, you can smell what the person next you had for lunch hours ago, along with whatever toothpaste they used.  Also, since he’s pretending to be a HolyBook-verbing Religionman, he should know by this point that Friday prayer is the one prayer you go to like you’re going to a wedding.  So that includes taking a bath, putting on your best clothes, and yes, brushing your teeth and not going to prayer with coffee on your breath.  I’m not even going into how is it Friday on this planet, because I’m sure Muslims have found a way to calculate that stuff using our scientists.  

16. “It was an especially godforsaken place to inspire so much debate about the guy.” More disrespect coming from the narrator rather than the character.  It’s almost like a self-insert.

17. “Allah, I see that you have brought me another man who knows everything.” When addressing “Allah”, you don’t just say “Allah”, you are as respectful towards your God as you are intimate.  “Ya rabbi”, “O my God”, would have been a better choice here.  At the very least, if it really must be used as an Othering device, it would be more likely to include the calling device “Ya”, ie “Ya Allah”, which is used in Real Life Arabic.  We do say God when speaking English, you know.  Excuse me, I mean Standard.

18.  “Well, mashallah.” This isn’t wrong, just so forced it’s cringe-y.   It’s like when you read anime fic and the author uses Japanese where it wasn’t really necessary.

19. “Yes, well, if something is important, I want you just to say it. Don’t worry what I will think. I need your help, and I appreciate the good nursing.  I apologize again if I devalued your opinion.” She actually blushed. “I…well thank you.”” So Said the Enlightened Atheist to the Oppressed Muslim Woman, “I’m not like your husband, whom you can’t speak freely around for fear of being beaten.” This is barely a quarter of the way into the story.   ““Say exactly what you’re thinking.” Even if it was religious nonsense, it didn’t pay to ignore a nurse.”  Ah, more devaluing the intelligence of Others.

20. The mosque is a. an octagon and b. “The riches of the mosque were a sharp contrast to the poor colony outside.” A. I get it, because octagons are often used in Islamic patterns, right?  It’s not like that would be impractical and wasteful of space, space that is precious because we’re in a space colony.  It couldn’t just be a square or a rectangle like most mosques are.  That would be too normal.  B. And now the mosque is written like a church.  Yes, there are fancy mosques, but they are built by people who can afford it.  You can pray on any clean piece of ground.  The only reason a particular building is designated as a mosque is practicality, so people don’t step in there with their shoes and bring in the dirt.  That’s it.  Full stop.  You can even pray in your shoes if you’re praying outside.  “Ahmed supposed that the only mosque on the continent, maybe the whole planet, had some kind of duty to impress.” Again, this is HIGHLY unlikely, because you can pray anywhere, and there’s probably a tiny mosque out by the fields somewhere, and another near the market, and another somewhere else.  Any “riches” that were in the mosque in an environment like this one happened because of a surplus of resources at that point, not because The Religious Institution Steals From The People, Who Are Poor.

21. “We were taking kites with us on hajj next year, all the way to Earth.” Did you know there are Muslim astronauts?  Not just Muslims, but Saudis, one of the strictest places when it comes to Islam.  Scholars came up with new rules for prayer in space.  Here’s something I quickly Googled: https://www.infoplease.com/askeds/how-long-mars So this Planet is presumably a little ways farther than that.  Going to Earth for hajj sounds like it would take a long time.  I’m no scholar, but under those circumstances, it might be dropped, just like other core rules can be dropped.  If you’re too sick to fast Ramadan, you don’t have to.  Also, one of the rules of hajj is that you have to be able to afford the trip yourself.  If you can’t afford it, you don’t have to go.  It’s why you see so many old people from the poorer parts of Asia and Africa at hajj– because they’d spent their lives saving for that trip.  So I don’t know why hajj was chosen as a topic of conversation.  Islamic atmosphere? (Later there’s a “In the hundred years of faster-than-light travel” so I stand corrected, there’s faster than light travel within a hundred years’ time– but the other reasons remain.  The kites don’t sound like they can pay someone for the trip.)

22. “Ahmed pulled a prayer rug from the wall, rolled it out, and sat, trying not to show his irritation.”  If the mosque is filled with “riches”, then the whole place is already covered in rugs or one big carpet.  This is just writing consistency.  Also, I doubt the author has seen an actual prayer rug.  They’re not “rolled” like a yoga mat, they’re folded, because they’re made of fabric.  What does that even mean, pulling a rug from the wall?  If anything they’d be stored on shelves or in boxes or something.

23. “Jose, the imam, took the stand, clutching a Qur’an.” If he’s the imam, he already knows the Holy Book back to front and again.  He doesn’t need to hold it, why is he holding it?  He’s not a priest?

24. The Friday sermon is about jihad, because of course it is.  My dude, have you ever heard a Friday sermon?  Unless something of interest is happening in the area, it’s not about ~grand topics~ like jihad.  It’s usually more like “be good to your parents, give to the poor, have patience upon your temper, have faith in God when you encounter difficulties in your life”… just boring, everyday things.  Oh, but this is to incite jihad on behalf of the kites?  Look, I wouldn’t put it past human beings to fight wars on remote planets, we’ve proven ourselves to fight about everything.  But if you’re going to use Islam to incite a war, at least set it up right.

25. “The Qur’an asks us all a question. Will you not fight in the cause of the oppressed?” Okay, now the author’s just making stuff up.  The Quran exists in English.  You can look it up.  You can google the phrase “Will you not fight in the cause of the oppressed” in quotes and there is only one instance of it, and it’s in this story.  Was that not meant to be a quote from the Quran?  Then why is it preceded by the question and implied as such?

26. “The congregation rose to pray. “Allahu akbar.” Choking voices. Weeping voices. “Allahu akbar.””  Again, have you seen a Friday prayer, my dude?  It’s pretty boring.  Common Muslims aren’t terribly faithful, they’re just average people doing their thing.  No weeping, no choking.

27. “and nearly fell over while she was praying. One of the other women took her arm and whispered, “Get some sleep! You were up all night! We’ll watch your son.”” So this other woman interrupted her prayer to talk? You can’t talk during prayer.  Nearly fell over means what, she swayed a little?  So what?  I’d maybe understand if she’d actually fallen over unconscious, then maybe one woman might cut her prayer to see what’s up.  But besides that, no.

28. A Nova Christos woman is introduced.  She’s a hick.  A Space Bible-Belter.  Aren’t stereotypes convenient?

29. “Couldn’t this empty-worlder read? Each pack declared its weight. Probably not, Adéla realized. A life coaxing crops from Isach, perhaps following life as an asteroid miner—neither was conducive to much reading.” The weight would be written as “five” or “5”.  My nearly-illiterate gramma could read that much.  This woman is a farmer who might have once been a miner?  She can read numbers.  She’s poor, not stupid.

30. ““Ya Allah,” she whispered. “Keep us safe.”” See point 17.

31. ““Good meat on a cricket,” Ahmed deadpanned. She didn’t laugh. “We ate bugs last year. The first shipment flooded and we had no food at all. The kites showed us where the good grubs were, along the creek. I know they’re haram and everything, but my papí said that God would understand.””  a.  I don’t know whether all bugs are haram or not, but crickets in particular are not haram.  Quite the opposite, they’re a delicacy.  Well, they are with the older generations, I’ve never tried them even when given the chance because creepy-crawly.  b. “God would understand”?  God made a rule saying if the choice is eating any of the haram things or death, eat the thing.  You’re starving somewhere and there’s nothing but pig?  Eat it.  You’re at a restaurant and you’re choking and someone hands you a glass of wine?  Drink that glass like your life depended on it, because it does.  Isn’t this girl’s father the imam/priest?  He knows this.

32. “She looked as if she wanted Ahmed’s approval for eating haram bugs. He nodded in what he hoped was a reassuring way. It seemed to work.” I didn’t want to pull out Orientalism, but there you go.  Hispanic, Muslim Female Child seeks approval of Previously Muslim Atheist Man Of Indeterminate Race But Probably White Because That’s the Default.

33. “Habibati.”  Okay, that’s good, that’s the right word to address a woman you love, except nobody pronounces that second A, it’s only there as punctuation.  This stuff is easy to Google.

34.  “She rubbed cold water into the bags under her eyes and began re-pinning her hijab.”  She’s alone with her husband in their room, why is still wearing her hijab?  The whole reason they got married is so she can take it off and they can get it on.

35. ““What would the ummah say if they knew the imam offered to wrap his wife’s hijab?” They’d say, what a kind gesture, the imam is good to his wife.  Also he’s got great coordination.  Then they’d give their husbands some stink-eye and ask why they don’t treat them as nicely as the imam treats his wife.

36. “She wished someone else had asked first. The doctor, or Sofia, or the other Muslims, or even a kite. Jose would feel betrayed if she didn’t tell him first. But he’d also…I need to tell him first. He’s not just my husband; he is the imam. The community has to know. She wished she didn’t have to use that kind of logic so often. “I saw a homesteader.”” I don’t relate to this woman at all.  Why didn’t she run and tell people the minute it happened?  If there’s such hostility between the two groups, they need to figure out how that person got through whatever defences they had.  I’m not even touching the order of wishing, first the new doctor, then her teenage daughter, then “the other Muslims”– who are other Muslims?  Surely she has a close friend?  A relative?  Or is she just a plot device who isn’t a person?

37. “"I can’t believe it! Here! In the camp! In our own camp? They came in here!” Jose stalked out of the kitchen, toward the closet where he kept his home office. “I have to call the men together.“ The cupboard was full of bullets. Packs of bullets, in small, oiled-cloth wrapped, flat packages, stacked atop each other.” Not like that.  Is that what the author really thinks happens?  That this is how Muslims think?  Or that this is how wars start, for that matter?  They’re in space; even if they were enemies, both groups would posture a lot and want to avoid open conflict.  Is this supposed to be jihad?  He hasn’t even asked about his beloved wife’s safety, and the very previous scene had them being a sweet couple together.  Is the imam, priest of the Muslims, so barbaric that the first thing that comes to his mind is I’m gonna take a gun and shoot those bastards?   Oh no wait, it’s for… “hunting”, wink wink.  The sweet thing was just a façade, this is the real guy.

38. “Have you thought about our children? She wished she could believe that would make a difference. What will change?”  More evidence the imam is just a ticking bomb.

39. “Adéla put her arms around herself. It wouldn’t take long. She would walk back in there, and ask him what he was planning, and he would talk about how helpless they were, watching the kites die. She would ask him to be patient, to wait and find out what the doctor could find out, to not do anything rash, and he would say they were already out of time, and he would leave to pray, because he was a good man, one who never raised his voice or showed his rage, saved it all for his prayers, and sometimes she would have sold her blood to know what he said in those prayers. And what answers he received.” The woman, this sweet oppressed woman, needs to be saved from her violent husband, who is such a ridiculous caricature of a person, even the author’s getting sarcastic about.  Brown women are hot.  They need to be saved. And then maybe one thing can lead to another.  More from my proofreader, who’s more familiar with the Latinx community: This plays to the stereotype that Latino men are violent, thugs, murderers, or rapists.  

40. “We call them thugs, because they fight each other endlessly. Don’t worry, they’re halal. They’ll maul each other, but they eat bugs and grass.” I’m not even trying to take this seriously at this point.  See, it’s funny, because the violent man is making fun of the animals for fighting each other.  Get it??

41. “Little habibi.” Habibi is not a noun.  You can either say something like “little darling” or “habibi ilsgheer” but not both.  Ask any bilingual person and they’ll tell you how pidgin languages form.  There are rules to combining languages, established rules that exist, because Arabic-English bilingual people exist.  Some of them are atheists.

42. A scene where the enlightened doctor is trying and failing to allay the fears of the paranoid imam’s conspiracies.  

43. “It was the stupidest thing to say in the whole galaxy. But it came out of Ahmed’s mouth anyway. “Don’t be so quick to consult God. No matter which way you look at it, He’s responsible for the virus.”  Sofia, Jose, and Adéla all stared at him. Sofia looked shocked. Jose looked angry. Adéla put her face in her hands. Was she laughing?”  See?  I told you this knight in doctor armour would enlighten the brown woman.  See how he makes her laugh with his blasphemy?  Let’s not even talk about Jose’s views.  Of course God is responsible for the virus.  But as Muslims, we’re meant to do what we can with that, like we do with real diseases.  It’s almost like Islam’s attitude on diseases is documented in the Quran and Sunnah?  Nah.

44. ““Don’t question,” Adéla snapped. “Trust me.” Sofia nodded quietly. “Okay, Mamí.”” This just in: Muslim teenagers are so brainwashed, they don’t even backtalk to their parents! Astounding!

45. “She took a drink from the flask.” Yooo, he did it!  He charmed the Muslim woman!  Years of practicing faith because she believed in it can do nothing in the face of this handsome doctor’s assets!  You go girl, drink that haram!  “First time in quite a while” Oh never mind, she was never religious to begin with.  Of course she’s the one with sense.  Plot twist!

46. “He could smell her breath, sour with whiskey.” Funny, déjà vu.  See 15.

47. “Quicker than he would have thought possible, she unpinned her hijab and removed it, letting it fall to the ground. Her black hair fell around her shoulders. She leaned over and her hair brushed his ear. “Please, tell me what to do.”” Okay, we’re past establishing that he’s saved her, now let’s focus on how this woman can wear her hijab without tying back her hair.  Like a sexy librarian, she removed her hijab and her hair just flows.

48. “Are you using me for a convenient way to divorce?” Wait, is the assumption here that adultery automatically equals divorce?  Because that’s a whooole other topic that’d take a long time to explain even for Muslims.  Rules on adultery are complicated.  The first of which is there has to be witnesses.  Four witnesses.  Unless four people are looking in through the window, which I don’t know, I’m not writing this.

49. “And Jose never sleeps. He prays, and he reads the Qur’an and hadith. All night long sometimes. Prays and reads and prays.”  Hmm.  What did I say about the imam knowing his religion?

50. “I suppose it would be a horrible scandal if I asked simply to sleep here?  Simple sleep. I don’t want to be alone.”  See, the thing is, he’s the doctor and she’s the nurse.  It would have been so easy for her to ask to sleep on of the patient beds, to rest.  But nooo, she had to throw herself at him.  Kinky.

51. “How can you not believe? The universe is such a cold place if you assign everything to chance.”  “It is a colder place when you have to know why a merciful God would do horrible things,” Ahmed said.  “You got me there.”  Well, the atheist won with his superior logic that hasn’t at all been debated for literally centuries.  Game over, gg.

52. “the Muslims, knocked down doors, forced other humans out of the buildings with the crosses on them” Yeah, that’s what Muslims do in this story.  They’re the villains, you see.  The protagonist is brave because he has to pretend to be one of these evil, soulless men.

53. “The friends, the Muslims, made prayers, allahu akbar and bismallah.” See 9.

54. “Muslims shot homesteader after homesteader.” The homesteaders have guns, they are not helpless.  Where are the guns?

55. ““Ibrahim,” Ahmed said. The barrage of chirpy Arabic would have been impossible for even a linguist to understand. But this was good. Ibrahim wanted to pray, and he had the faculties to do so—that meant the old kite was actually recovering.”  Again, you can’t just talk to people while they’re praying, and even if you did it not realizing, they’re not just going to stop and talk to you.  Also, you do of course know one of the reasons the Quran was revealed in Arabic is because it’s one of the most complex, nuanced languages in the world?  "Impossible”?  For a linguist of Arabic?

56. “What did you do last night?” He waited too long to answer her. “Cut myself, for one.” Really, now he’s lying?  The zealot is lying?  Shouldn’t be proud of what he’s done?  He’s so fond of the word genocide, after all, he should be happy.  Characterization!

57. “I did what Islam decrees— It was justified! They were warned!” Look, is this guy sure of what he’s doing or not?  If he is, he doesn’t need to defend himself, he needs to ask her why she’s questioning him.  If he’s not, then he’s uncertain of what his faith supposedly tells him to do, and Islam is all, well, “wrong”.  Not even going into how convenient that phrase is “what Islam decrees”.

58. “she realized that her hijab was gone” …she’s been a Muslim for at least thirteen years, Sofia’s age.  She’s been wearing the hijab all these years.  Any human doing any habit all that time would not simply “forget”.  Truly the powers of the doctor are great.

59. “threw her arms around him” Well they’ve already slept in the same bed, I shouldn’t be surprised at this woman’s sense of personal space.

60. “The missile hit the mosque.” I told you the Christians had weapons!

61. “No! I’m not going to wrap him—put him in the death, in the cold, I’m not…” Where’s the faith she wanted so badly a moment ago?

63. “Salaam.” Not what you say when someone dies, but at this point it’s pretty clear authenticity isn’t the point.

64. “One of the Arabic hangings, on woven grass, had blown into the square, torn right through the swooping characters invoking the name of God, tearing Bismillah in half.” Poignant imagery, reminiscent of how when mosques are attacked in real life, people focus on the ruined decor.  Of course.

65. Another poignant symbolic scene where the atheist climbs up the top of the minaret to announce that science triumphed and religion was wrong after all, his worldview safe from challenge.

66. “He crossed the carpets, woven with fine patterns in Arabic, praising the name of God. He walked across blessings of mercy, praise for He who had made the universe, made man from a blood clot.” And then the doctor couldn’t even bring himself to take an extra two steps to avoid these people’s religious symbols, because they are all bad men and evil murderers.  Never mind the “blood clot” part that’s just wrong, not “wrong”, actually wrong.

67. “So you drive these people insane and make them fight? Ahmed said. This is part of your good, merciful plan? This is what you taught Jose? Something whispered No. You’ll teach them.” Y’all. God spoke to the atheist.

68. “The words parted like curtains and revealed a huge T cell, a shining version of the antibodies he had seen in Ibrahim’s blood.” SCIENCE.  The anti-religion!

69. “finally Ahmed brought out his flask and passed it around” That’s how you know the Christians are bad people too, because they drink.

70. “Salaam alaykum” said the Muslim to the Christian, not like they have Standard to communicate it, no it has to be symbolic.

71. “Ahmed put an arm around her.  She leaned into him. Their dry lips touched, locked in a long embrace.”  Still married.  Divorced not implied.  She could have divorced him but she didn’t.  Yes, it does have to be explicit.  It’s not complicated.  Also, even if not married, still a Muslim woman.  She knows he’s an atheist.

72. “Like you said. The universe looks different when you have to ask why a loving God would do horrible things.” Because as a Muslim, you couldn’t have possibly had those thoughts on your own.

73. “When the sky is torn, when the stars are scattered, then a soul will know what he has given and what he has held back.” Quran reference.  So there is research, but where it goes into is erratic?

Some final notes:

1. The writing itself is good, my inner editor only found two issues, one misplaced comma and one run-on sentence.  The pacing could use some work, but it was okay compared to the length of the story.  The author does seem to struggle with consistency, in particular when it comes to characterization.  The research is wanting.  I say that objectively– if your story is based on a real thing that exists, regardless of the spin, agenda, or context of the narrative, the story has to maintain both internal consistency and some degree of accuracy.  

2. Both my proofreader and I were surprised at Tor for publishing blatant hate.  We’ve both owned many Tor books and this is, well, not up to their usual standard.  Not just because of the hate, either, but because that story had to get past at least one, if not more, of Tor’s editors, who could have and didn’t check the research, spot consistency issues, or point out that misplaced comma.

3. At least when OSC shat on Islam in his fiction, he was halfway subtle about it.  And it was done with great technical skill, there’s a reason he’s considered a master of his craft.  

This ended up being way longer than I expected.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: The Ancient Greeks knew: “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.” No less a figure than the late Zbigniew Brzezinski and the CIA made use of this saying by recruiting the Muslim Brotherhood to fight a proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which led to the withdrawal of the Soviets from the Hindu Kush. Since then, the CIA used the mercenaries to fight more proxy wars in the Balkans, Chechnya, and Azerbaijan. Due to the wars of aggression against Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen the US and its vassal states created sectarian violence that led to civil wars. Right now, the CIA and the Muslim Brotherhood are present in the form of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. No one has studied this triad more intensively than F. William Engdahl who is a renowned geopolitical analyst, risk consultant, author, and lecturer. Engdahl was born in Minneapolis/MN, and grew up in Texas. After earning a degree in politics from Princeton University, and graduate study in comparative economics at Stockholm University, he worked as an economist and investigative journalist in the US and Europe. He was named Visiting Professor at Beijing University of Chemical Technology and delivers talks and private seminars around the world on different aspects of economics and politics with the focus on geopolitical events. For the last 30 years, Engdahl has been living in Germany. He has written numerous best-selling books on oil and geopolitics: The Lost Hegemon: Whom The Gods Would Destroy, The CIA as Organized Crime, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, and not to forget: Target China to name only a few. His books are translated into 14 foreign languages. His latest book on the role of the NGOs focuses on their involvement in US regime change operations and in steering up fabricated mass protests to facilitate the efforts of the US Empire and the CIA to replace resilient national oriented governments by obedient ones that will execute the Washington agenda. All this happens under the pretext of democracy à la US-American style. The following interview focuses on Engdahl’s latest book in German Secret files NGOs (Geheimakte NGOs). Ludwig Watzal:  I guess we could agree upon the fact that the CIA is the world’s worst terror organization. After WW II, hardly any coup d’état or organized uprising happened without the helping hand of the CIA. As I understood your book, in the last 25 years, the CIA got quite a few so-called little helpers in the form of NGOs. Please, could you elaborate on that? William Engdahl: During the Reagan Presidency very damaging scandals were becoming public about CIA dirty operations around the world. Chile, Iran, Guatemala, the top secret MK-Ultra project, the student movement during the Vietnam War to name just a few. To take the spotlight away from them, CIA Director Bill Casey proposed to Reagan creating a “private” NGO, a kind of cut-out that would pose as private, but in reality, as one of its founders the late Allen Weinstein said in a later interview to the Washington Post, “doing what the CIA did, but privately.” This was the creation of the NGO named National Endowment for Democracy in 1983. Soon other Washington-steered NGOs were added like the Freedom House or the Soros Open Society Foundations, the United States Institute of Peace and so forth. The money was often channeled via USAID of the State Department to hide its origin. Every major regime attack by the US Government since then including the Solidarnosc in Poland, the Yeltsin CIA-backed Russia coup, the 2004 Ukraine Orange Revolution, the 2008 Tibet riots, the Arab Spring of 2011 to today—all have been done by this group of very select “democracy” NGOs. Little wonder that countries like Russia and China or Hungary act to ban them as “undesirable NGOs.”    LW: You quote Allen Weinstein, co-author of the founding act of the NGO National Endowment for Democracy (NED), saying; “Much of what we do today was done 25 years ago by the CIA.” Are the US NGOs such as NED, CIPE, USAID, NDI, not to speak of the Soros network, the fifth column of the CIA? WE: As I indicated above, I would say so in my opinion. Invariably their NGO agenda fits the given agenda of Washington foreign policy. Coincidence? I don’t believe so. LW: Your critic focused mainly on a few US NGOs or would you include all non-governmental organizations in general? Aren’t all these NGOs driven by a good mind and noble deeds to spread democracy and freedom around the world? WE: This is the devil in the concept of Bill Casey. Hiding very black dirty anti-democratic CIA operations behind private political NGOs waving the banner of “Human Rights” has been very effective for Washington’s global agenda of toppling un-cooperative regimes around the world. In effect the CIA has weaponized human rights. Curiously useful regimes for Washington such as Saudi Arabia go unbothered by calls for democracy. Their oil billions finance Washington’s global terrorism agenda. Take the recent case of the fake democracy White Helmets NGO in Syria doing propaganda in intimate cooperation with ISIS, to justify the US-led war against the duly elected Assad regime. White Helmets get money reportedly from Soros Foundations, from the US and UK governments and were created by a former British Army Intelligence officer James Le Mesurier. Their atrocity videos have repeatedly been exposed as fake, staged by actors. Their alleged Sarin gas video showing unprotected White Helmets “first responders” handling alleged Sarin gas victims with no protective HAZMAT protection is a joke, a fake as was exposed widely after by a number of HAZMAT Sarin gas experts. The Washington–or EU in some cases—political NGOs are effective because they can attract many innocent good-willed people. I recently received a very touching personal letter from a European Medical Doctor who had been 18 months working with the best humanitarian intention with Doctors without Borders in South Sudan before their US-backed independence. She was so grateful after reading my NGO book as she could understand all the seeming irrational directions their American Doctors Without Borders leader gave the staff. She quit because of burnout and now said she understands why. Honest doctors were being used by Washington for secret political agendas. South Sudan was target because China was receiving a major share of her oil from there via Khartoum. Of course, not all NGOs are doing the work of the CIA. I focus on the ones with a hidden political agenda, who, as I describe in the book, have weaponized human rights and the word democracy for devious ends. LW: In 1984, the hedge fund-Billionaire George Soros, established in Budapest the Soros Foundation. His first target was Poland. Pope John Paul II and US President Ronald Reagan met in 1982 at the Vatican to discuss the destabilization of the Communist Bloc. In this endeavor, has there also been an involvement of the Soros Foundation? WE: The Soros Foundation established the Stefan Batory Foundation in Warsaw in 1988 to train activists to ultimately topple the Communist regime. They played a major role “building democracy” and immediately after the collapse in Poland of the government of General Czesław Kiszczak in August, 1989. Soros brought Harvard University “Shock Therapy” economist Jeffrey Sachs into Poland to push privatization of state enterprises, create a hyperinflation and open choice Polish state assets for auction to western investors like friends of Soros for pennies or then, for pfennig. LW:  The two chapters on the plundering of the former Soviet Union by the CIA, Soros and his Harvard Boys in cooperation with the Yeltsin clan and former KGB official is quite shocking. Please, elaborate on this Mafia-like undertaking. WE: I have to refer readers to the book as the treatment has been cross-checked and is exhaustive. In brief, the CIA under the direction of then-President George H.W. Bush managed to corrupt several very high-ranking KGB generals who recruited a network of young Komsomol or Communist Union of Youth proteges such as Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky to become their hand-picked “oligarchs” to plunder the State assets for pennies compared to their true worth. This was the infamous “voucher” scandal that valued the entire state assets including oil and gas, machine-making companies, high-tech, all at a little under $16 billion. They literally raped Russia for personal gain. And the CIA and its network of Western banks such as Riggs Bank in Washington allowed them to launder the money out of Russia. Even I was shocked to verify the details. It was criminal. Yeltsin was their boy. Some said so long as his supply of good Vodka was guaranteed he would do anything Soros and his Harvard economists demanded. The interesting point to note is that President G.H.W. Bush, former director of the CIA, ordered three simultaneous NGO destabilizations in the same year, 1989.  The three were Russia, China in Tiananmen Square and Yugoslavia. The book documents this in great detail. LW:  After Vladimir Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin as Russia’s President, he immediately stopped the robbing of Russia. Do you think that could be one cause why the political class in Washington hates and demonizes him to such an extent, which is irrational? WE: Putin came from a Russian nationalist faction (as opposed to what were called cosmopolitan or internationalist faction) of the KGB and its successor. They knew they had to act with stealth until their grip was secure in 2000 when Yeltsin was forced to quietly “retire” or face revelations and Yeltsin was convinced to name Putin acting President. There has been an undeclared war against a stable nation-state in Russia since well before 1917. The founder of Stratfor, George Friedman, one of the better informed American analysts of geopolitics and former consultant to the Pentagon and CIA among others, recently gave an interview after the CIA Ukraine “coup d’ etat” which Friedman called “the most blatant coup in US history.” That if you recall was the one where Viktoria Nuland as US Assistant Secretary of State went to Kiev and handed out candy bars to the protesters in Maidan Square and telephoned her contempt for the EU to the US Ambassador in Kiev. Friedman noted what I have documented in my various other books such as Mit der Ölwaffe zur Weltmacht, that the foreign policy of the United States of America for at least the past century as the USA emerged on the decline of the British Empire, the US foreign policy priority has been to prevent at all costs the merging of economic interests and cooperation between especially Germany and Russia. The world has undergone two world wars because of this unfortunate geopolitical dogma of US foreign policy, a dogma taken over from the British and from the father of British geopolitics, Sir Halford Mackinder. Washington hates and demonizes Putin for the reason he has moved deliberately to stabilize Russia as a great nation, which it truly is as I can attest from almost 25 years of personal experience. And as a result of Washington’s demonization, Putin’s influence in the world seems only to grow stronger—first with China, then Eurasia nations, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, even the Philippines and Latin America. The world is becoming fed up with the endless agenda of overt and covert USA wars everywhere. We need to look closely behind the Trump words and very soon we find the same old, degenerate oligarchs and their so-called deep-state of unelected bureaucrats at work.   LW:  The dismantling of Yugoslavia was a catastrophe. The Germans under the chancellorship of Gerhard Schroeder and his infamous foreign minister Joschka Fischer joined forces with Clinton to overthrow the Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. In this coup-like operation, were there also NGOs involved? And what was their strategy? WE: Yes. Follow the subsequent career of Mr. Fischer. A street thug from the 1968 Frankfurt protests becomes crowned by the USA and its mainstream media as a statesman, apparently the reward for delivering the Green Party vote for bombing Yugoslavia in 1999. After office, Fischer got an honorary teaching post at my Alma Mater, Princeton. Later George Soros invites Mr Fischer on to his new European council on Foreign Relations think tank. In terms of the toppling of Slobodan Milosevic, the US government and its select NGOs including NED and Soros foundations, organized, financed, and trained key student leaders and others in a successful coup, under the name Otpor! (Resistance!), with the now -ubiquitous logo of the threatening clenched fist. Serbian translations of Gene Sharp’s writings on nonviolent action were used and the key leaders were personally trained by Sharp’s associate US Army colonel Robert Helvey in secret meeting places to avoid police. Otpor! got by some estimates as much as $30 million from U.S. government-linked organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), and US Agency for International Development (USAID). The destruction of Yugoslavia was orchestrated since the 1980’s by Washington, first Bush Sr. then Clinton. The aim was to create a war in Europe to justify the continued presence of a NATO whose raison d’être after the collapse of the Soviet Union was hard to justify to American taxpayers or to the Europeans who were planning an independent European Defense Pillar apart from NATO. For Washington and the influential US military industrial complex such independence was tabu!. The second aim was to establish a huge US military presence later in Kosovo called Camp Bond Steel. LW:  When the Arab masses went into the streets of Tunis, Cairo and Tripoli, the Western media, and political class were thrilled. Finally, democracy, freedom, and human rights found their way into the Arab world. Were these uprisings spontaneous or were they organized and orchestrated from outside forces? WE: The entire Arab Spring was secretly planned and financed by Washington and US-financed NGOs. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was a key figure along with her bizarre Muslim Brotherhood assistant Huma Abedin. The RAND Corporation, which is a Pentagon think tank responsible for developing the technique of mob “swarming” like bees, as a way using facebook and social media to steer protests, played a key role. The protest student groups in Egypt were US-trained, again using translations of Gene Sharp, they were brought to Europe to be secretly trained by the leaders of Otpor!. In the case of Libya’s Qaddafi, a more urgent regime change was deemed necessary as the now-famous DCLeaks and Wikileaks emails of Hillary to her private adviser Sidney Blumenthal reveal. Qaddafi, who contrary to his demonized image had built up Libya with the highest living standard in all Africa, was about to unveil creation of an alliance of Muslim central banks and introduction of a Gold Dinar currency for oil sales not US dollars. He was doing so together with Ben Ali of Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt. As Hillary wrote to Blumenthal, that had to be blocked by whatever means. The means to “block” were the illegal bombing of Libya and the assassination of Qaddafi and turning Libya into a field of rubble. The original Pentagon-CIA-State Department plan called for the immediate toppling of another thorn in Washington’s side immediately after Qaddafi, that was Bashar al Assad in Syria. That has not worked out well for the Washington planners and a great human tragedy unnecessarily has grown out of 6 years of what essentially is a US-led war there. LW:  In the old days, the conquerors brought in its wake the missionaries. Today, the Western neo-colonial powers come with hundreds of NGOs who teach the indigenous population how Western democracy is supposed to function. Do you think the NGOs serve the interest of these people? What about the German NGOs who especially carry a lot of ideological ballast, for example, in the form of gender mainstreaming with them? What do you make of that? WE: I think your analogy with the “Christian” missionaries of the past and the “Human Rights” or “democracy” NGOs today is very fitting. I am not competent to comment on the activities of various German NGOs. My main focus is Washington, the hegemonic power today and source of so much that is destructive, unfortunately. LW: At the beginning and at the end of your book you refer to George Orwell’s double think that means “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.” Do we live in times where the original meanings of words become different contents? Do the US Empire and its vassal states wage war in the name of democracy and destroy the nation states with the same democratic rhetoric? WE: This is why I found the Orwell quote so appropriate. His book 1984 in many ways is a description of what has been allowed to happen to our western democracies, especially in Britain and the USA. LW: If you could give the NGOs a piece of advice, what would you tell them? WE: For the honest persons who may have got caught up in nice rhetoric about values, human rights and such, I would suggest looking more closely at the money trail feeding your given NGO. For the NED or Soros foundations I would suggest they would all do mankind a favor by shutting their doors permanently. That you allow nations and individuals to decide their own sovereign future without your unwanted meddling. I would say, to paraphrase Cromwell to the British Long Parliament, ”You human rights NGOs, Go! You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!” LW: Mr. Engdahl, thanks for the interview. WE: Thank you for your interest and excellent questions. http://clubof.info/