#footnote 72

[mythserene]

Call him “Epstein” – How far is Mark Lewisohn willing to go to force a false narrative?

 “I don’t care what you think of Klein, call Klein something else. Call him ‘Epstein’ for now, and just consider the fact that three of us chose ‘Epstein.’”

John Lennon to Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone, May 14, 1970 

I keep asking “Why do you want me to believe John —(or George or Paul or or or)—said this?” And I keep asking because that is the question that keeps coming out of my mind, my mouth, and my keyboard.

It's the obvious question. (Spoiler: audio below of Lewisohn answering it for this quote.)

When you’re going to so much trouble to quote shop and quote twist, you have a purpose that you are torturing all these words to back up. You are trying to prove a point and there’s no real quote to support your position, so instead of changing your position, you act like Beatles’ words are appetizers in a buffet.

THREE OF US CHOSE EPSTEIN.

This premeditated and purposeful OBSCENITY has been sitting there for ten years. Two ladies with a podcast found it.

However, John remembered Paul’s attitude to Brian being very different. John was always emphatic that Paul didn’t want Brian as the Beatles’ manager and presented obstacles to destabilize him, to make his job difficult … like turning up late for meetings. “Three of us chose Epstein. Paul used to sulk and God knows what … [Paul] wasn’t that keen [on Brian]—he’s more conservative, the way he approaches things. He even says that: it’s nothing he denies.”(72)

I will never—NEVER— get over this one. There may be more shocking things to come, but it was this revelation that made me look at every one of Mark Lewisohn’s “author interviews” differently.

This is when I realized that there is nothing I would put past him.

Listening to that part of Episode 7 is so funny to me now. Daphne and Phoebe kept trying to stick to the outline and ask “Does this quote back up Lewisohn’s thesis?” but it was very difficult because they were in such total disbelief at Mark Lewisohn’s deception. (My label, although it’s a pretty inarguable one.) It is genuinely almost unbelievably dishonest. AKOM had a whole show filled with whoppers to get through, and they kept trying, but it took them awhile to move on because air-quotes-Epstein was like a magnet that kept pulling them back. So yesterday, to get out of editing some of my own mess, I put together a few of the times that the shock sucked them back in.

“I find that kind of shocking, really.” Tiny compilation of Phoebe and Daphne in disbelief over Mark Lewisohn’s purposeful misrepresentation of a quote of John Lennon talking about Allen Klein to attempt to show that John thought Paul was trying to thwart Brian Epstein. (Episode 7)

And most of us strongly suspect where Mark Lewisohn is going with this. He wants to rehabilitate Allen Klein because John can literally never be wrong—or perhaps an even stronger motive—he wants Paul to be very, very wrong. But whatever his motives, we can see what he’s doing. And we don’t have to just suspect, because he has already told us that he is going to use some of his most unforgivable lies to shape that narrative.

And there’s only one reason to do that: because there are no real quotes to back up the narrative he wants to push.

It tells us, in no uncertain terms, that the narrative he wants to push is quite literally unsupportable.

To make it work, Lewisohn has to lie about what John Lennon actually said.

*This post was first going to be about both the “quotes” that Mark Lewisohn references here, but in the end I couldn’t not give “call him ‘Epstein'” its own post. Which means I have actually shortened a post. (Please clap.)

Every ‘quote’ in the “spanner in the works” section is bullshit. Every. Single. One. I’m not going to the thesaurus for a fancier word. They are bullshit. Complete and utter, doctored, twisted, bullshit. The man is lying. And what really chaps my ass is that he is flat out telling us that he is going to use those same lies to push his bullshit narrative of the breakup. Like damn, that takes a lot of nerve.

Here is Mark Lewisohn telling us, straight out, that it’s these same bullshit quotes that he plans on using again to fool us. And he should be a laughingstock when he does. Not in some quarters. In all.

He must think we are such dupes. Although he’s gotten away with it so far, so up until now he hasn’t been wrong.

(There’s a bit more to this part of the Q & A and it’s all bad, but for this post I decided to leave it at Mark Lewisohn telling us that he is going to use the exact same sources he used for the “spanner” section to push this lie in the upcoming books.)

Fool me twice…

Would John and George have seen the parallel between Epstein and Klein in 1969?  LEWISOHN: ❝Yes. I’m sure the answer to that is yes, because John mentioned it in interviews, probably in Wenner’s, maybe the one with McCabe and Sconfeld— Schonfeld. Yes.❞ (📍Nothing is Real)

Transcript:

Q. In Hornsey Road you were talking about the three-to-one Allen Klein split, and I was saying to you that it seemed to me that it paralleled what is mentioned in Tune In about, uh, the appointment of Brian Epstein. That- that Paul was sort of holding back or was not keen to move forward with Brian Epstein. And I suppose my question was, is there a direct parallel there? And would, in 1969, John and George in particular have been conscious of that parallel?

LEWISOHN: Yes. I’m sure the answer to that is yes, because John mentioned it in interviews, probably in Wenner’s, maybe the one with McCabe and Sconfeld– Schonfeld. Yes. John recognized that.

Nothing is Real Podcast • October 16, 2019, Episode 15 • Mark Lewisohn, Part II

---

And just remember that this is only one half of a hellacious Frankenquote.

(But I kept it short. 🎊 )

----

Even though I have given you zero reason to go there, it's also on my blog.

[celebduwen]

TWI volume 10 spoilers ahead (minor, non-main story/side chapter, not major plot point or anything at all)

Ok so it was a couple chapters ago now, but can I just mention how well the Hedault thing was tackled (at least in my opinion)

He practically comes out as aroace, or well, at least aro and like ahxownfowbfowb

He says that his lack of romance and that pesky sexual attraction doesn’t take anything from his life, but enriches it, lets him truly focus on what he burns for.

Pirateaba did this scene wonderfully. Especially when another conclusion some people would have made, him being gay, is explicitly denied. They literally say (I don’t remember whom) “it’s okay to like men” (not verbatim) and he says that it’s not it.

This is the kind of representation that we (at least I) want, it says what it is, doesn’t feel the need to use terminology, which frankly wouldn’t exist for an identity that even our world, lesser and younger it may be, only was thought of to exist quite recently in the grand scheme of things.

It denies the “oh, not straight, let’s ship them gay then”

It says “putting this character in a relationship is the same as putting a canonically solely gay character in a straight relationship” in my mind. Even though that might not be the actual meaning of it I want to feel that way, for however much it may be worth.

A lot of our rep, (the stuff that is explicitly stated or implied and everything and whatever) is often just glanced over and people say “oh yeah, they’re gay now.” Yes you’re entitled to your ships, yes ships often just explore character dynamics (perhaps), but when you have so little, even in queer media, you start grasping at the little straws, even as they’re taken out of your hands by your bigger more well known and accomplished sibling.

[maeve-is-annoying-about-books]

House of Leaves, Chapter 5

Why is there the most effectual, heartfelt literary analyses of Echo in my spooky house book? I know why its here, I'll get to that in a bit, but can I just talk about how empowering Zampanò's view¹ of Echo is? Painting her as an insurgent, working against her curse of repetition as best she can, to give those words her own life and sorrow. I don't care if it's the point of the book or not, being able to read this bit was kind of a treat. Like I was reading a proper dissertation on the mythical nymph. The various call and answers given are also fun bits or literature and curiosity.

Echo as something comforting, as something human and whole and most especially, emotive, is a really strong point for the horror inherent to the house. What's scarier than a well that takes a long time to hear the echo from? One where you can't, of course. Vastness, once again, reigns over the story. And it makes sense so much time was spent here since Zampano is blind. Echo is his sight, no wonder he has such an opinion on this line² purportedly penned by Miguel de Cervantes and echoed by Pierre Menard. There is something there only he can see so feelingly.

Or... is there? I wonder if I might be following in Johnny's steps a bit too much, taking this fake story about a fake movie with fake references too much at face value. Trying to untangle it and becoming tangled in it. It might be a good perspective to keep going forward.

Speaking of that asshole³ there is one hell of a footnote by him⁴ with another of his rambling run-ons. I had to read it three times and it gives me a headache trying to make sense of it. Because of its proximity to the line "flung down hallways long past midnight", I'd almost dare to say it was noise for noise's sake.

But then we get to this... Yeah it's an echo. No, it's the absence of one. Johnny's fling with Thumper⁵ ends in silence. It's marked by the absence of things. By that same token, Karen and Will's relationship devolves into quiet as well. An absence of speaking, of the children yelling and playing, of what it already did to Karen at 15⁶. We were introduced to this concept with Echo and now we're bereft of her and I feel it so sharply.

And now the book's format begins to deteriorate. It's slight, it's in these purposeful blanks⁷ and then this impossible clusterfuck of names⁸. And of course it's in time with Will being lost in the Hallway. An excess of useless, nonsensical information my brain wants to make sense or find a patter in. But instead it's just here, obfuscating the flow of the story. I want to call it the impenetrable darkness itself but even I wonder if I'm reading into the formatting too much.

What I do know though, is that Johnny's final interlude about his panic attack⁹ sure echoes his first. It keeps happening, and never when he's near the book. It's always when he's... "not at home".

Sorry, this was a long one but it feels like such a dense chapter. I expect these will get harder as the formatting breaks down.

[nondelphic]

You think your thesis is solid? Please. I've read more primary sources before breakfast than you've skimmed in your entire undergrad career. I’ve defended more obscure literary theories in 3-hour seminars than you’ve had coherent thoughts. You don’t even know the pain of a peer-review rejection email, do you? Don’t talk to me about methodology until you’ve stayed up for 72 hours formatting footnotes in Chicago style. I’ve got enough citations to bury you. Next time, come prepared with an argument that actually holds water, junior.

[mariacallous]

Medicine may be about to achieve a long-sought goal: a “morning-after pill” to prevent sexually transmitted infections. It could sharply reduce soaring rates of illness and huge health care costs.

The effectiveness of this pill—and it literally is a pill, a 200-milligram tablet of the antibiotic doxycycline—has been studied for a decade, and people have taken it covertly for years. But study results published in The New England Journal of Medicine look likely to tip the pill into clinical practice. In the study, conducted in San Francisco and Seattle, participants who took a single dose within 72 hours of having sex without a condom were only a third as likely to contract chlamydia, gonorrhea, or syphilis as those who didn’t take the pills.

As with everything in medicine, there are footnotes to the findings, and risks to balance the benefits. The study was conducted only among gay and bisexual men, along with transgender women and nonbinary people assigned male at birth. Within those groups, it was limited to people who had been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection (STI) in the past year. The study didn’t include cisgender women; in past studies, the preventive antibiotic has not worked as well for them. And the study noted, but didn’t explore in depth, the possibility that routinely administering an antibiotic could provoke resistance either among the bacteria that cause STIs or others carried in participants’ bodies.

All that said, the results have created real excitement among physicians and people who would be eligible to take what’s being called doxyPEP (for doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis)—even though health authorities, such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, haven’t yet made formal recommendations for its use. 

“I think this is a real game-changer,” says Paul Adamson, an infectious disease physician and assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We have a huge amount of bacterial STIs in the US. Gay and bisexual men who have sex with men are disproportionately burdened by them. And we have not had a lot of tools that we can use to help.”

To understand why doxyPEP could be so significant, it’s important to consider what’s been happening with STIs. Briefly: They’re skyrocketing. Since 2017, according to the CDC, the most important of these diseases have reached historic highs: Gonorrhea has increased by 28 percent, and syphilis by 74 percent. And while chlamydia diagnoses haven’t quite returned to their pre-Covid levels, the agency worries that might be due to pandemic disruptions to care, rather than to an actual decrease in transmission. All of those infections have profound long-term consequences if they are not diagnosed and treated, including making people more vulnerable to HIV infection. Collectively, they cost the US health care system more than $1 billion per year.

Meanwhile, congenital syphilis—passed from mother to infant at birth, a sign that the pregnant person never received adequate prenatal care—caused 220 stillbirths and infant deaths in 2021, the last year for which there are national figures. Gonorrhea is gaining resistance to the last antibiotics currently available to treat it.

In medicine, prevention is almost always preferable to treatment: Vaccines and other prophylactic measures are less expensive, and can be planned in advance. So it has been a research goal to find uncomplicated prevention for STIs—something that, like the morning-after pill for pregnancy, can be taken a short time after sex and doesn’t rely on the user making decisions in the moment. 

The first test of doxyPEP, a small US trial that took place in 2011 and 2012, was published in 2015, and showed that HIV-positive men who took the post-exposure dose cut their rate of STIs by three-fourths. Fairly soon after that, social networks of men who have sex with men picked up on the findings, and began sharing knowledge about using preventive doxycycline off-label. A large 2017 French study of men using pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV, known as PrEP, included within it a study of STI rates among men taking post-exposure doxycycline; it showed that doxyPEP could cut rates of syphilis and chlamydia infection by almost 70 percent. And last summer and this spring, the two largest international HIV conferences included presentations that confirmed the doses were successful in most circumstances.

Several of those presentations were drawn from the San Francisco and Seattle study just published in NEJM. Its results were so dramatic that the authors stopped the trial earlier than planned, in May 2022: They revealed that, among 501 men who were either living with HIV or taking HIV PrEP, consuming that single dose of doxycycline within 72 hours of sex without a condom reduced the combined incidence of the three major STIs by roughly two-thirds. 

“Our goal was to understand this in a real-world setting, in a heterogeneous population of people taking HIV PrEP but also living with HIV—which biologically aren’t different populations, but may be different in terms of sexual behaviors, sexual networks,” says Anne Luetkemeyer, one of the study’s principal investigators and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Combined with the French research, she adds, “we now have two studies that really showed very remarkably similar efficacy in this population.”

Those two sets of results may be enough to let doxyPEP enter mainstream medicine. In some places, it already has. Last October, San Francisco’s public health department became the first local department to support doxyPEP use in its jurisdiction. And after the NEJM paper, individual physicians tweeted they would begin prescribing doxyPEP because the results looked so solid—something they can do off-label because the Food and Drug Administration already approved the drug decades ago to treat a range of infections. 

When a new way of controlling a disease seems likely to enter the US mainstream, the CDC is expected to weigh in. So far, the agency hasn’t published official guidelines regarding the use of doxyPEP. Following the release of preliminary data at conferences, the CDC published “considerations for individuals and healthcare providers,” a strategy for sharing what’s known so far, as well as an acknowledgment that doxyPEP already is being used off-label. A CDC spokesperson told WIRED by email that formal draft guidance for physicians could come “by the end of the summer.” 

When that guidance does arrive, it isn’t expected to recommend doxyPEP for everyone. “We should consider offering this to people who have an elevated risk” of STIs, Luetkemeyer says. “And that group is men who have sex with men, on PrEP, or living with HIV, who've had a history of STIs. I think that's a reasonable group.” 

And eligible people may not want to take it. Like almost all antibiotics, doxycycline has side effects: sun sensitivity, diarrhea, serious nausea. And it hasn’t worked equally well for everyone. In the trial done in French men, the antibiotic did not suppress gonorrhea infections, even though it had a dramatic effect on reducing syphilis and chlamydia. In the one trial done so far among cis women, launched in Kenya in 2021, doxycycline prophylaxis (known in this case as dPEP) had no effect on suppressing STIs.  

That was disappointing; women who are at high risk of STIs need prevention as much as men do. Equally, it was mystifying for the researchers, who now are poring through their data to see what might have made a difference: whether the 449 participants had difficulty taking the drug at the right time, for instance, or whether doxycycline behaves differently in female organs than in men’s. “We had more than 200 women show up to hear the results, and they were so shocked and disappointed,” says Jenell Stewart, the study director and a physician-scientist and assistant professor at Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis. “We are very focused on understanding these results before we say this doesn’t work for women.”

One thing that might have played a role in Kenya and France—and is raising red flags for doxyPEP use in the US—is antibiotic resistance. Stewart says 100 percent of the gonorrhea isolates tested so far from women who became infected while on dPEP showed high levels of resistance to tetracycline, the drug family that doxycycline belongs to; at the time of the French study, the background rate of resistance in gonorrhea there was 56 percent. In the US, where doxycycline isn’t the first-line treatment for gonorrhea, the rate of resistance is only 20 percent. That may provide a clue to why doxyPEP worked better in the US trial than in any other. But it also immediately raises the concern that if doxyPEP goes into wide use, it might make resistance worse.

The US study could not provide an answer: Though some men in the trial did contract gonorrhea while taking doxyPEP, not enough testing was done to confirm whether their strains were resistant to the medication and thus not knocked out by the single dose. Tests did suggest the drug might be affecting other bacteria in participants’ bodies, but the results were contradictory.  Those taking doxyPEP ended up harboring 40 percent less staph bacteria—something that all of us carry—than those not taking the drug; but the staph they were still carrying showed “modestly higher” resistance. Whether killing some bacteria was more beneficial than making others potentially hazardous, the trial didn’t last long enough to say.

So the calculation inherent in doxyPEP may not be risk versus benefit, as much as it is risk versus risk: preventing an infection while provoking resistance through small doses, or contracting an infection that requires larger doses over a longer period of time. “We’re not comparing doxyPEP to no antibiotics,” says Adamson, who researches drug-resistant gonorrhea and has prescribed doxyPEP for some patients. “We’re comparing doxyPEP to potentially significant amounts of ceftriaxone, or penicillin, or doxycycline perhaps, if somebody’s getting infections a lot.”

It’s a question that research will have to answer—because, no matter how the CDC weighs in, doxyPEP use is moving ahead. Joseph Osmundson, a microbiologist and author in New York City—where STI rates are rising just as they are nationally—recently sought a prescription from his regular physician. As a queer sexual-health activist, he says, it only made sense, not only to prevent infections and antibiotic side effects for himself, but also to keep from increasing infection rates in an already overburdened city.

“When people want an intervention to have a healthier sex life, you cannot not give it to them,” he says. “Withholding the intervention will not prevent people from having the kind of sex that they enjoy. The question is: Are they going to be provided with as many interventions as possible to have that type of sex with less risk of infectious disease?”

[adarkrainbow]

Queering kinship in "The Maiden who Seeks her Brothers" (B)

Continuation of the previous post! I will point out that I am not copying everything there (for example I won't include all the footnotes). If you are interested in more then you'll have to buy the book (or its PDF) :p

The manner in which the king discovers the heroine is also questionable in ATU 451. In “The Twelve Brothers,” a king comes upon the heroine while out hunting and fetches her down from the tree in which she sits; in “The Six Swans,” the king’s huntsmen carry her down from a tree after she throws down all of her clothing except for a shift, after which she is taken to the king. The implication that the heroine is actually the king’s quarry subtly exposes the workings of courtship as a hunt or chase with clearly prescribed gender roles. In both cases, the king weds her for her beauty, and the heroine silently acquiesces. The heroine is slandered in her own home, and, tellingly, her marriage is not stable until her brothers are returned to human form. As Holbek notes, “There is an intriguing connection between the brothers and the king: the heroine only wins him for good when she has disenchanted her brothers” (1987, 551). This suggests that issues with the natal family must be worked out before a new family can be successfully formed.

Anthropological methods also help to illuminate the kinship dynamics of this tale. In particular, the culture reflector theory is useful, but only to a degree, as ethnographic information about nineteenth-century German family structure is limited. More generally, European families in the nineteenth century were undergoing changes reflecting larger societal changes, which in turn influenced narrative themes at the time. Marilyn Pemberton writes, “Family structure and its internal functioning were the keys to en[1]couraging the values and behavior needed to support a modern world which was emerging at this time” (2010, 10). The family in nineteenth-century Germany faced upheavals due to industrialization, wars, and politics, as the German states were not yet unified. Jack Zipes situates the Grimms in this historical context: “The Napoleonic Wars and French rule had been upsetting to both Jacob and Wilhelm, who were dedicated to the notion of German unification” (2002b, xxvi). And yet the contributors to a book titled The German Family suggest that the socialization of children remained a central function of the family structure (Evans and Lee 1981). The German family was the main site of the education of children, with the exception of noble or bourgeois males who could be sent to school, until the late nineteenth century (Hausen 1981, 66–72). Thus we may expect to see in the tales some reflection of the family as an educational institution, even if the particular kinship dynamics of the Grimms’ historical era are still being illuminated.

Two Grimm-specific studies support this. August Nitschke (1988) uses historical documents such as autobiographies and novels to demonstrate that nineteenth-century German mothers utilized folk narratives from oral tradition to interact with their children, both as play and instruction. Ruth Bottigheimer’s (1986) historical research on the social contexts of the Grimms’ tales shows how by the nineteenth century, women’s silence had come to be a prized trait, praised in various media from children’s manuals to marriage advice. This message was in turn echoed in the Grimms’ tales, with their predominantly speechless heroines, a stark example of a social value reflected in the tales. Additionally, Bottigheimer notes that it “was generally held in Wilhelm’s time that social stability rested on a stable family structure, which the various censorship offices of the German states wished to be presented respectfully, as examples put before impressionable minds might be perceived as exerting a formative influence” (1987, 20). Thus, rigid gender roles and stable families came to be foregrounded in the Grimms’ tales.

Moving from the general reflection of social values to kinship structures in folktales, I would like to draw a parallel between German culture and Arab cultures based on how many of the tales in the Grimms’ collection feature a close brother-sister bond. The folktales Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana collected from Palestinian Arab women almost all feature close and loving brother-sister relationships. Muhawi and Kanaana read these relationships in light of their hypothesis that the tales present a portrait of the Arab culture, sometimes artistically distorted, but still related. Based on anthropological research, they note that the relationship between the brother and the sister is warm and harmonious in life, and it is one of the most idealized relationships in the folktale. Clearly I am not trying to imply in a reductionist fashion that German and Palestinian Arab cultures are the same, though a number of their folktale plots overlap; rather, I am stating that if we have evidence that the tales reflect kinship arrangements in one culture, then perhaps something similar is true in a culture with similar tales. Perhaps the Grimms’ tales, collected and revised in a society where families still provided an educational and nurturing setting permeated by storytelling traditions and values, contain information about how families can and should work. Sisters and brothers may have needed to cooperate to survive childhood and the natal home, and behavior that the narrative initially constructs as self-destructive might guarantee survival later on.

Hasan El-Shamy’s work on the brother-sister syndrome in Arab culture provides a second perspective on siblings in Arab folktales. In his monograph on a related tale type, ATU 872* (“Brother and Sister”), El-Shamy summarizes a number of texts and analyzes them in the context of an Arab worldview.8 What these texts have in common with “The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers” is that the sister-brother dyadic relationship is idealized and provides the motivation for the plot.9 However, since the brother-sister relationship is so strong emotionally as to border on the potentially incestuous, the desire of the brother and sister to be together must be worked out narratively through a plot that makes sense to its tellers and the audience so that “the tale reaches a conclusion which is emotionally comfortable for both the narrator and the listener” (1979, 76). Thus in Arab cultures, this tale type makes meaningful statements about the proper relationships between brothers and sisters, both reflecting and enforcing the cultural mandate that brothers and sisters care for one another

The brother-sister relationship in the same tale or related tales in different cultures can take on various meanings according to context; as discussed previously, Holbek interprets ATU 451 as a tale motivated by sibling rivalry, while El-Shamy interprets related tales as expressing a deep sibling love. Both scholars interpret the tales drawing on information from their respective cultures and yet reach different conclusions about the psychology underlying the tales. The importance of cultural context is thus paramount, and in the case of the Grimms’ inclusion of three versions of “The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers” in their collection, the life contexts of the collectors also feature prominently

The life histories of the Grimm brothers themselves influenced the shaping of this tale in very specific ways. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm came from a family that was once affluent but become impoverished when their father died, and for much of their lives, Jacob and Wilhelm struggled to provide an adequate income on which to support their aging mother, their sister, and their four surviving brothers. Jacob never married but rather lived with Wilhelm and his wife and children (Zipes 2002b, xxiii–xxviii; see also Tatar 1987).10 The correspondence between Jacob and Wilhelm “reflects their great concern for the welfare of their family,” as did their choices in obtaining work that would allow them to care for family members who were unable to work (Zipes 2002b, xxv). Hence one reason “The Brothers Who Were Turned into Birds” appears in their collection three times could be that its message, the importance of sibling fidelity, appealed to the Grimms. Zipes comments on the brothers’ revisions of the text of “The Twelve Brothers” in particular, noting that they emphasize two factors: “the dedication of the sister and brothers to one another, and the establishment of a common, orderly household . . . where they lived together” (1988b, 216). Overall, the numerous sibling tales that the Grimms collected and revised stressed ideals “based on a sense of loss and what they felt should be retained if their own family and Germany were to be united” (218).

Though the love between (opposite-gendered) siblings is emphasized in the Grimms’ collection as a whole, as well as in their three versions of “The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers,” there is also ambivalence. As fundamentally human emotions, love and hate are sometimes transformations of each other, as misplaced projection or intensified identification.11 Thus Holbek’s and El-Shamy’s seemingly opposing interpretations of brother-sister tales can be reconciled, since each set of tales, in their cultural context, grapples with the question of how brother-sister relations should be. The Grimms’ tales veer more toward sibling fidelity, but there is a marked ambivalence in “The Twelve Brothers” in particular. When the sister sets out to find her twelve brothers, she encounters the youngest one first, who is overjoyed to see her. However, he tells her that the brothers vowed “that any maiden who came our way would have to die, for we had to leave our kingdom on account of a girl” (Zipes 2002b, 33). The youngest brother tricks the older brothers into agreeing not to kill the next girl they meet, after which the older brothers warmly welcome their sister into their midst. The initial hostility of the brothers toward their sister, though narratively constructed and transformed, could also represent the Grimms’ ambivalent feelings about their family: as a family that frequently suffered hardship and poverty, there must have been some strain in supporting all of their siblings. As eldest, Jacob in particular bore many of the responsibilities. Zipes notes, “It was never easy for Jacob to be both brother and father to his siblings—especially after the death of their mother, when they barely had enough money to clothe and feed themselves” (9). Including and revising brother-sister tales may thus have been a way for the Grimms to navigate their own complicated feelings toward their many siblings by achieving a narrative resolution for an initial situation fraught with resentment.

The message of sibling fidelity also upholds social norms in a patriarchal, patrilocal society, for brothers and sisters would not be competing for the same resources. In contrast, many of the Grimms’ tales (and fairy tales in general) feature competition between women for resources, a struggle that ultimately disempowers women. Maria Tatar comments on the heroines in the Grimms’ collection who, lowly by day, beautify themselves at night in dresses “that arouse the admiration of a prince and that drive rival princesses into jealous rages” (1987, 118). Classical texts of ATU 510A (“Cinderella”) in particular tend to present women competing for eligible men, portrayals that have drawn attention from feminist critics (Haase 2004a, 16, 20). Kay Stone’s reception-based research on gender roles in fairy tales reveals that readers are aware of the competition between women featured in the tales, “a competition our society seems to accept as natural” (1986, 137).

Inasmuch as “The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers” depicts a woman leaving her birthplace and getting married, it upholds the patriarchal mandate that anthropologist Gayle Rubin (1975) identified as “the traffic in women.” According to Rubin’s theory, men cement their homosocial bonds by exchanging women as wives, essentially as commodities. Yet in each of the versions of this tale type in the Grimms, the sister continues to live with her brothers at the tale’s conclusion. The brothers do not necessarily take wives of their own, which in two versions leads to an odd arrangement where the brothers live with their sister and her husband. The nuclear family is replicated, but with the addition of the bachelor brothers, thus altering the original family that was present at the opening of the tale. This familial constellation, which may have been recognizable to the extended family structures of nineteenth-century Germany, nonetheless does not conform to heteronormative ideas of the ideal nuclear family.12 Instead, it parallels the extraordinary image of the littlest brother in the third tale left with a wing instead of an arm because his disenchantment was incomplete—a compelling icon of fantasy penetrating reality, demanding to be made livable. The brothers form a queer appendage when added to the family unit of the heterosexual couple plus their children, and the visibly liminal status of the winged littlest brother highlights the oddness of the brothers’ inclusion

This third tale, “The Six Swans,” is more specifically woman centered and queer than the other two, as it begins with female desire (the witch ensnaring the father/king to be her daughter’s husband) and female inventiveness (the father/king’s new wife sewing and then enchanting shirts to turn the king’s sons into swans).13 The sister then defies the father/king’s authority by refusing to come with him, where the new wife is ostensibly waiting to dispose of the remainder of the unwelcome offspring. The sister wanders until she finds her brothers and undertakes to free them by remaining silent for six years while sewing them six shirts from asters. Her efforts are nearly thwarted by her new husband’s mother, who steals her children and attempts to frame her for murder. It is notable that the women in this tale who are the most active—the witch, the witch’s daughter who becomes stepmother to the siblings, and the old woman who is mother to the sister’s husband—are the most villainous. The sister, in contrast, turns her agency inward, acting on herself in order to remain silent and productive. Her agency, the most positively portrayed female agency in this tale, is thus queer in the sense that it resists and unsettles; it acts while negating action, it endures while refusing to respond to life-threatening conditions. That agency should be complex and contradictory makes sense, for, according to Butler, “If I have any agency, it is opened up by the fact that I am constituted by a social world I never chose. That my agency is riven with paradox does not mean it is impossible. It means only that paradox is the condition of its possibility” (2004, 3). The sister’s agency, so quiet as to be almost unnoticeable, is nevertheless not congruent with being silenced.

The queerness of this tale also manifests in transbiology. Judith Halberstam discusses the transbiological as manifesting in “hybrid entities or in-between states of being that represent subtle or even glaring shifts in our understandings of the body and of bodily transformation” (2008, 266). More specifically, transbiological connections “question and shift the location, the terms and the meaning of the artificial boundaries between humans, animals, machines, states of life and death, animation and reanimation, living, evolving, becoming and transforming” (266). The transitions and affinities between humans and animals in “The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers” interrogate the very notion of humanity as a discrete state. If the heroine’s brothers are birds, how can they still be her brothers? The tale seems to affirm a kinship between humans and animals, allowing for the possibility that family bonds transcend species divisions. The heroine herself is close to an animal state, especially during her silent time sewing in the forest. Viewing the heroine’s state from a transbiological perspective helps illuminate Bottigheimer’s statement linking muteness and sexual vulnerability, when she describes how, in “The Six Swans,” “against all contemporary logic the treed girl tries to drive off the king’s hunters by throwing her clothes down at them, piece by piece, until only her shift is left” (1987, 77). This scene does in fact make sense if the heroine is read to be in a semi-animalistic state, having renounced some of her humanity. Shedding human garments is akin to shedding social skins, layers of human identity, though her morphological stability betrays her when the king perceives her as a beautiful human female and decides to wed her

However, the fact that this remains a human-centered tale renders its subversiveness incomplete. We never learn what the brothers think and feel while they are enchanted; do they keep their sister company as she silently sews shirts for them? Do they retain any fragments of their human identities or memories while in swan or raven form? The fact that the brothers fly to where their sister is bound to a pyre, about to be immolated, suggests that they acknowledge some kind of tie to her. The brothers’ inability to use their bird beaks to form human speech parallels the sister’s silence, rendering both brothers and sister unintelligible in human terms. For the brothers to become human again, they must be framed as legibly human. Bear notes the importance of “publicly dressing the swans as human beings” in order to disenchant them in certain versions of “The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers” (2009, 55). In “The Six Swans,” the heroine tosses the shirts she had sewn onto the swans as they fly near the pyre to which she is bound. In “The Twelve Brothers,” the brothers as ravens swoop into the yard where the sister is about to be burned at the stake, at which point the seven years of the sister’s silence elapse. Exactly at that moment, “just as they touched the ground, they turned into her twelve brothers whom she had saved” (Zipes 2002b, 35–36). In “The Seven Ravens,” the brothers assume human form after flying into their home as ravens, and when they go to their table to eat and drink, they notice signs of the sister’s presence and exclaim, “Who’s been eating from my plate? Who’s been drinking from my cup? It was a human mouth” (92). The sister’s presence is enough to disenchant the brothers, but it is significant that her humanness causes them to comment and initiates the transformation. Thus, in each of these three tales, the brothers must reengage with human activities—wearing clothing, acknowledging their relationship with gravity and the ground, and eating in human fashion—in order to become human once again.

To explore the issues presented by these tales further, I return to the comparative method, asking why three versions of this tale type really needed to be published in one collection, and what the differences between the versions can tell us. Queer and anthropological perspectives on the brother[1]sister relationship each illuminate the meanings of tales where brothers and sisters love each other excessively—both as taboo and survival strategy. Parental love is almost always destructive, whether it is excessive fatherly love or a stepmother’s desire to be the sole loved object. We learn from the anomalous ending of the text “The Seven Ravens” that neither silence nor heterosexual marriage is required for this tale type to work as a story, to make sense narratively. In that tale, the sister disenchants her brothers when she arrives at their domicile and drops a ring into one of their cups as a recognition token, at which point the seventh brother says, “God grant us that our little sister may be here. Then we’d be saved!” (Zipes 2002b, 92). After the brothers are transformed back into humans, they “hugged and kissed each other and went happily home” (93). Here, enfolding back into the nuclear family is the happily ever after—the only price was the sister’s little finger and her sacrifice to seek her brothers. In the texts where marriage does occur, it is queered by danger and ambivalence. According to my allomotific analysis, silence is but one method of disenchantment. A sacrifice of another sort will do: the sacrifice of a “normal” marriage, the sacrifice of a reproductive future. Yet these things seem a small price to pay for the reward of a family structure, however unconventional, bonded by love and loyalty

As I’ve shown, the Grimms’ versions of “The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers” affirm some family values on the surface, but the texts are also radical in their suggestions for alternate ways of being. The nuclear family is critiqued as dangerous, and the formation of a new marital family does not guarantee the heroine any more safety. Greenhill describes a parallel phenomenon in the tales she analyzes in her essay: “‘Bluebeard’ and ‘The Robber Bridegroom’ queer kinship by exposing the sine qua non of heterosexual relationships—between bride and groom, husband and wife—as explicitly adversarial, dangerous, even murderous” (2008, 150). The husband in “The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers” (when he appears) is not dangerous through action so much as inaction, by allowing his mother to slander and threaten his wife. Both men and women are alternately active and passive in this tale type, making it difficult to state to what degree this tale type exhibits female agency, a task made even more difficult when the heroine voluntarily gives up her voice. The sister’s agency lies partially in negation and endurance, which is one way that the tale queers the notion of agency, despite the fact that in each of the three tales the sister takes the initiative and sets out on a quest to find her brothers. By simultaneously questioning the family and making it the sought-after object, the Grimms’ three versions of “The Maiden Who Seeks Her Brothers” complicate the notion of kinship, presenting myriad possibilities for how humans and non-humans can relate to and live with one another. As a story that explores and opposes lethal and idealized families, this tale investigates themes of attachment, ambivalence, and ambiguity that were central to the Grimms’ cultural context and life histories and remain relevant today.

[dailyanarchistposts]

Footnotes, 51-100

[50] Martin Crutsinger, “United States Cites China and Other Nations in Report on Unfair Trade Practices,” Associated Press, March 31, 2006.

[51] Dale Maharidge, “Rust and Rage in the Heartland,” Nation, September 20, 2004, www.thenation.com.

[52] Pam Belluck, “To Avoid Divorce, Move to Massachusetts,” New York Times, November 14, 2004, as quoted in Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming, 67.

[53] By 2010, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, if the proposed federal cuts remain in place, elementary and secondary education funding will be cut by $11.5 billion, or 12 percent; 670,000 fewer women and children will receive assistance through the Women, Infants and Children Supplemental Nutrition Program; 120,000 fewer children will be served through Head Start; and 370,000 fewer low-income families, elderly people and people with disabilities will receive rental assistance with rental vouchers. See Sharon Parrott, Jim Horney, Isaac Shapiro, Ruth Carlitz, Bradley Hardy, and David Kamin, “Where Would the Cuts Be Made under the President’s Budget?: An Analysis of Reductions in Education, Human Services, Environment, and Community Development Programs,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, February 28, 2005, www.cbpp.org.

[54] Dale Maharidge, “Rust and Rage.”

[55] Arlie Hochschild, “The Chauffeur’s Dilemma,” American Prospect 16: 7 (July 2005), 53.

[56] Ibid.

[57] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community (New York: HarperCollins, 1954), 330.

[58] D. James Kennedy, Evangelism Explosion, 4th ed. (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1996), 59.

[59] Ibid.

[60] Ibid., 60.

[61] Ibid., 137.

[62] Ibid., 2.

[63] Ibid., 139.

[64] Ibid., 103.

[65] Ibid., 22.

[66] Margaret Thaler Singer, Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 114.

[67] Robert Jay Lifton, cited in Denise Winn, The Manipulated Mind (Cambridge, MA: Malor Books, 2000), 21.

[68] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2002), 187.

[69] “Staff Biography: ‘Dr. James Kennedy,’” Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, www.reclaimamerica Us.aspx?pg=djk.

[70] “Dr. Kennedy’s Profile,” The Kennedy Commentary, www.kennedycommentary.org; Truths That Transform, Coral Ridge Ministries, www.truthsthattransform. org/ITT.asp?page=about; “About the Coral Ridge Hour,” The Coral Ridge Hour, www.coralridgehour.org page=crh.

[71] Terry Gross, “Closing the Gap Between Church and State,” Fresh Air from WHYY, May 18, 2005.

[72] Ibid.

[73] Bob Moser, “The Crusaders,” Rolling Stone, April 7, 2005, www.rollingstone.com =1140382586732&has-player=false.

[74] Ibid.

[75] Ashley Fantz, “Cross Purposes: The Rev. D. James Kennedy Teaches That Homosexuality Is a Sin. Richard Murphy Loves Him Anyway,” Broward–Palm Beach New Times, May 2, 2002.

[76] Worthy Creations, www.worthycreations.org.

[77] Rob Boston, “D. James Kennedy: Who Is He and What Does He Want?” Americans United for Separation of Church and State, www.au.org.

[78] Kennedy, Evangelism Explosion, 72.

[79] Ibid.

[80] Ibid., 73.

[81] Ibid., 84.

[82] Ibid., 42.

[83] Ibid.

[84] Paul Tillich, “You Are Accepted,” in The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), 155.

[85] Kennedy, Evangelism Explosion, 48.

[86] D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe, The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1996), 135.

[87] “Aggregated Grants to Coral Ridge Ministries, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and Evangelism Explosion” (grants cover January 1998 to February 2004), Media Transparency, www.mediatransparency.org.

[88] Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 1:218.

[89] Francis FitzGerald, “A Disciplined, Charging Army,” New Yorker, May 18, 1981, 53, quoted in Robert Smart, “The Passion of the Christ: Reflections on Mel’s Monstrous Messiah Movie and the Culture Wars,” Jump Cut 47 (Winter 2005), www.ejumpcut.org.

[90] Karen McCarthy Brown, “Fundamentalism and the Control of Women,” in Fundamentalism and Gender, ed. John Stratton Hawley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 176.

[91] Ibid., 182–183.

[92] “Dobson’s Choice: Religious Right Leader Becomes Political Power Broker,” People for the American Way Foundation, February 24, 2005, www.pfaw.

[93] James Dobson, Dare to Discipline (New York: Bantam, 1977), 23.

[94] “Dobson’s Choice.”

[95] “Right Wing Organizations: Focus on the Family,” People for the American Way Foundation, www.pfaw#.

[96] “Dobson’s Choice.”

[97] James Dobson, “The Gender Gap,” Focus on the Family, www.family.org.

[98] Mark Edmundson, “Freud and the Fundamentalist Urge,” New York Times, April 30, 2006.

[99] Ibid.

[100] Susan Friend Harding, The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 176.

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

The Man From Y.I.L.I.N.G.

Chapter 3 - RESEARCH FOOTNOTES

Jin Guangyao's motorcycle is a Chang Jiang 750 M1, manufactured by the China Nanchang Aircraft Manufacturing Company between the late 50's to the early 60's. The M1 model was essentially a clone of the 1956 Soviet Irbitski Mototsikletniy Zavod M-72 which was itself based on a 1938 German BMW R71. Source:Wikipedia

2. This ¥10 banknote that Nie Mingjue takes such offense to was in circulation between 1965 and 1980. Source:Leftovercurrency.com

[xenopoem]

OFFICIAL REPORT ON THE INTRANSITIONALIST CHRONOTOPOLOGIES OF KENJI SIRATORI: APPENDIX 8.2.3

Andrew C. Wenaus "A year ago I was corresponding with the glitch writer Kenji Siratori about collaborating. We finally decided on an anthology of theory-fiction footnotes to a glitch novel (that he'd compose). Anyway, Kenji - being no longer human- pumped out a glitch novel in about 48 hours, and I started reaching out to some writers and critics who were interested in experimental art. After reaching out to about eight people, mania got the best of me, and I decided to reach out to *lots* of people. My assumption was that one out of ten people would be interested. Within 72 hours, I'd lined up over 50 contributors from various backgrounds (establishing award-winning authors/poets, experimental undergroundists, critical theorists, psychoanalysis, medical professionals, media theorist). People were into the idea after all. By December, I realized that we'd need to find a publisher. Before sending out proposals, I contacted Colin Herrick and Maria Chenut at the boutique music label Time Released Sound to see if they'd be interested doing some cover art for the project. TRS specializes in singular, unique, analogue small-run prints of music in short, Colin is an outstanding analogue artist. When I mentioned this to Colin, he loved the idea and proposed TRS as a publisher: we'd go for a standard edition with original soundtrack *and* a limited run of handmade deluxe copies. So, this wasn't at all what I had in mind when I reached out... but when Colin proposed this, I thought: a perfect idea and a great publisher to collaborate with! With Mike Corrao working with Colin to do the typeset and prepare the book for printing, about ten billion ideas were passed back and forth. We've now settled and here's the first preview of what this strange anthology will look like. It is a collision between digital Al writing and hand-crafted analogue art: a swarm of human writers writing a "footnote" to a combinatorial, algorithmic alien text. So, here's a sneak peaks of the book, OFFICIAL REPORT ON THE INTRANSITIONALIST CHRONOTOPOLOGIES OF KENJI SIRATORI: APPENDIX 8.2.3, collectively authored by the members of the top-secret agency, The Ministry of Transrational Research into Anastrophic Manifolds."

Release in this summer.

[randomshipperhere]

Alright peeps-

This post is going to focus on an obscure reason why I don’t have high expectations for the AquAka ship.

Writers intentionally do things with a purpose in mind. As a preface, we’ll use Mem-cho to establish this point. She was given a (?) next to her age when she was interviewed for Love Now and we know later on that she lied about it.

Later on when drawing the “love triangle” the arrows between the two of them go both ways and had a (?) over it. Like they both are unsure how to feel about each other.

I still firmly believe that the love triangle should have Kana as center. Go my shoujo queen!

Then there’s this damning moment in Chapter 72…

Where even she is unsure of her feelings towards him. Is it love? Is it admiration? What we do know is she cares deeply for him. Its hardly ever seen in a romantic light though.

There are many people pointing out other more realistic reasons but I’m bringing up one that is rarely ever brought up in shipping discussions. This post is essentially a (*) or footnote to a long essay.

[hybridmindthoughtsreloaded]

Adrenochrome is oxidized adrenaline. When adrenaline becomes oxidized, it becomes inert. The whole QAnon Adrenochrome harvesting from children is bullshit. I've seen this conspiracy theory gain more and more traction over the years and now that the star of "Sound of Freedom" Jim Caviezel has been making the rounds on right-wing podcast, the whole "child harvesting of adrenochrome" has had a new push. The whole adrenochrome as a drug came from Hunter S. Thompson and was used in a book he wrote as a plot device.

Hunter S. Thompson mentioned adrenochrome in his 1971 book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This is the likely origin of current myths surrounding this compound, because a character states that "There's only one source for this stuff ... the adrenaline glands from a living human body. It's no good if you get it out of a corpse." The adrenochrome scene also appears in the novel's film adaptation. In the DVD commentary, director Terry Gilliam admits that his and Thompson's portrayal is a fictional exaggeration. Gilliam insists that the drug is entirely fictional and seems unaware of the existence of a substance with the same name. Hunter S. Thompson also mentions adrenochrome in his book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. In the footnotes in chapter April, page 140, he says: "It was sometime after midnight in a ratty hotel room and my memory of the conversation is hazy, due to massive ingestion of booze, fatback, and forty cc's of adrenochrome."

In reality, adrenochrome is synthesized, solely for research purposes, by biotechnology companies.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ja01129a531

https://patents.google.com/patent/US3445478A/en

https://science.howstuffworks.com/adrenochrome.htm

[hzaidan]

2 Religious Icons, Barnaba da Modena and Veneto-Cretan Icons of the Madonna and Child, with footnotes #27

Please follow link for full post

The Nursing Madonna, Virgo Lactans, or Madonna Lactans, is an iconography of the Madonna and Child in which the Virgin Mary is shown breastfeeding the infant Jesus. In Italian it is called the Madonna del Latte ("Madonna of milk"). It was a common type in painting until the change in atmosphere after the Council of Trent, in which it was rather discouraged by the church, at least in public contexts, on grounds of propriety…

Art,Paintings,Bible,Realism,Religion,Icons,Barnaba da Modena,biography,Cretan School,History,Madonna Lactans,Zaidan,Jesus,Mythology,Classical,Icon,footnotes,Christ,

Art #Bible #biography #History #Jesus #mythology #Paintings #religion #Saints #Zaidan #footnote #fineart #Calvary #Christ

[mibeau]

[Book Review] 🚩BID’AH HASANAH: THE MISUNDERSTOOD TERMS🚩

🧮Score: 3.9/5.0 . “Moderation upon the Sunnah is better than exertion upon Bid’ah.” - page 72. . ■ This book is also available in Bahasa Melayu. A much-needed book in our society, where most people thought Bid’ah Hasanah is a good thing and not a threat to Islamic teachings. I appreciate the existence of this book and how it is rich with footnotes and citations.

■ The author takes into account much evidence from the scholars of Mazhab Shafie to appeal to local communities. .

■ Many examples from the lives of the sahabah and predecessors are produced, of them rejecting any good deeds that are not based on the sunnah. After all, they are the best generations to follow after Rasullullah has passed on. It also includes the opinion of famous modern scholars like Dr Yusuf al-Qadarawi. .

■ It seems that this book adapts the Arabic style of content structure presentation. Everything is academic and pretty straightforward. It is like a portion or a subtopic of a textbook is taken out and discussed in a smaller book. It is catered more towards knowledge seekers, not so much for leisure reading. . ■ The writing style is almost similar to Al-Jibaly’s. Full of many useful proofs and explanations. But all are just statements. I did not feel any encouragement or interaction that may convince the readers much. It does not give the feels we get after reading books by Al-Jibaly. It is like “I’ve presented the facts, so now it is up to you to take it or not”. I .

■ Overall, I would say this is a good comprehensive booklet on the bid'ah hasanah issue. ---

● Buy a used copy from:

● Buy new copies from:

[quransurahverses]

33:69

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ لَا تَكُونُوا۟ كَٱلَّذِينَ ءَاذَوْا۟ مُوسَىٰ فَبَرَّأَهُ ٱللَّهُ مِمَّا قَالُوا۟ ۚ وَكَانَ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ وَجِيهًۭا ٦٩

O believers! Do not be like those who slandered Moses, but Allah cleared him of what they said. And he was honourable in the sight of Allah.[1]

— Dr. Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran

[1] The Quran does not specify how Moses was slandered by some of his people. Some narrations suggest that he was either falsely accused of adultery (see footnote for 28:76), killing his brother Aaron (who died a natural death), or having a skin disease since he, unlike others, used to bathe with his clothes on.

Ya ayyuha allatheena amanoola takoonoo kallatheena athaw moosafabarraahu Allahu mimma qaloo wakanaAAinda Allahi wajeeha

— Transliteration

Wahai orang-orang yang beriman, janganlah kamu menjadi seperti orang-orang (Yahudi) yang telah mencaci Nabi Musa, lalu Allah membersihkannya dari segala cacian yang mereka katakan; dan adalah dia seorang yang mulia di sisi Allah.

— Abdullah Muhammad Basmeih

33:70

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ وَقُولُوا۟ قَوْلًۭا سَدِيدًۭا ٧٠

O  believers! Be mindful of Allah, and say what is right.

— Dr. Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran

Ya ayyuha allatheena amanooittaqoo Allaha waqooloo qawlan sadeeda

— Transliteration

Wahai orang-orang yang beriman, bertaqwalah kepada Allah, dan katakanlah perkataan yang tepat - benar (dalam segala perkara),

— Abdullah Muhammad Basmeih

33:71

يُصْلِحْ لَكُمْ أَعْمَـٰلَكُمْ وَيَغْفِرْ لَكُمْ ذُنُوبَكُمْ ۗ وَمَن يُطِعِ ٱللَّهَ وَرَسُولَهُۥ فَقَدْ فَازَ فَوْزًا عَظِيمًا ٧١

He will bless your deeds for you, and forgive your sins. And whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger, has truly achieved a great triumph.

— Dr. Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran

Yuslih lakum aAAmalakumwayaghfir lakum thunoobakum waman yutiAAi Allahawarasoolahu faqad faza fawzan AAatheema

— Transliteration

Supaya Ia memberi taufiq dengan menjayakan amal-amal kamu, dan mengampunkan dosa-dosa kamu. Dan (ingatlah) sesiapa yang taat kepada Allah dan RasulNya, maka sesungguhnya ia telah berjaya mencapai sebesar-besar kejayaan.

— Abdullah Muhammad Basmeih

33:72

إِنَّا عَرَضْنَا ٱلْأَمَانَةَ عَلَى ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ وَٱلْجِبَالِ فَأَبَيْنَ أَن يَحْمِلْنَهَا وَأَشْفَقْنَ مِنْهَا وَحَمَلَهَا ٱلْإِنسَـٰنُ ۖ إِنَّهُۥ كَانَ ظَلُومًۭا جَهُولًۭا ٧٢

Indeed, We offered the trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they ˹all˺ declined to bear it, being fearful of it. But humanity assumed it, ˹for˺ they are truly wrongful ˹to themselves˺ and ignorant ˹of the consequences˺,

— Dr. Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran

Inna AAaradna al-amanataAAala assamawati wal-ardiwaljibali faabayna an yahmilnahawaashfaqna minha wahamalaha al-insanuinnahu kana thalooman jahoola

— Transliteration

Sesungguhnya Kami telah kemukakan tanggungjawab amanah (Kami) kepada langit dan bumi serta gunung-ganang (untuk memikulnya), maka mereka enggan memikulnya dan bimbang tidak dapat menyempurnakannya (kerana tidak ada pada mereka persediaan untuk memikulnya); dan (pada ketika itu) manusia (dengan persediaan yang ada padanya) sanggup memikulnya. (Ingatlah) sesungguhnya tabiat kebanyakan manusia adalah suka melakukan kezaliman dan suka pula membuat perkara-perkara yang tidak patut dikerjakan.

— Abdullah Muhammad Basmeih

33:73

لِّيُعَذِّبَ ٱللَّهُ ٱلْمُنَـٰفِقِينَ وَٱلْمُنَـٰفِقَـٰتِ وَٱلْمُشْرِكِينَ وَٱلْمُشْرِكَـٰتِ وَيَتُوبَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَى ٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَٱلْمُؤْمِنَـٰتِ ۗ وَكَانَ ٱللَّهُ غَفُورًۭا رَّحِيمًۢا ٧٣

so that Allah will punish hypocrite men and women and polytheistic men and women, and Allah will turn in mercy to believing men and women. For Allah is All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.[1] 

— Dr. Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran

[1] This is a guarantee from Allah that if the hypocrites and polytheists ever turn to Him in repentance, He is always willing to forgive them.

LiyuAAaththiba Allahu almunafiqeenawalmunafiqati walmushrikeena walmushrikatiwayatooba Allahu AAala almu/mineena walmu/minatiwakana Allahu ghafooran raheema

— Transliteration

(Dengan kesanggupan manusia memikul amanah itu maka) akibatnya Allah akan menyeksa orang-orang lelaki yang munafik serta orang-orang perempuan yang munafik, dan orang-orang lelaki yang musyrik serta orang-orang perempuan yang musyrik; dan juga Allah akan menerima taubat orang-orang lelaki yang beriman serta orang-orang perempuan yang beriman. Dan sememangnya Allah Maha Pengampun, lagi Maha Mengasihani.

— Abdullah Muhammad Basmeih

[exploringislamjourney]

Alleged Contradictions: #9

Do Christians go to Heaven or Hell?

a. Christians shall enter Paradise (2:62, 5:69)

b. Christians shall go to Hell (5:72, 3:85)

2:62: Indeed, the believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabians---whoever truly believes in God and the Last Day and does good will have their reward with their Lord. And there will be no fear for them, nor will they grieve.

5:69: Indeed, the believers, Jews, Sabians and Christians---whoever truly believes in God and the Last Day and does good, there will be no fear for them, nor will they grieve.

5:72: Those who say, "God is the Messiah, son of Mary," have certainly fallen into disbelief. The Messiah himself said, "O Children of Israel! Worship God---my Lord and your Lord. " Whoever associates others with God in worship will surely be forbidden Paradise by God. Their home will be the Fire. And the wrongdoers will have no helpers.

3:85: Whoever seeks a way other than Islam, it will never be accepted from them, and in the Hereafter they will be among the losers.

Footnotes(s) for 2:62:

"22: The Sabians are an indigenous group that believes in a supreme being and lives mostly in Iraq.

23: This verse should be understood in light of 3:19 and 3:85. For more details, see the Introduction."

Footnote(s) for 5:69:

"251: See footnote for 2:62."

Footnote(s) for 3:85:

"142: i.e., full submission to the will of God."

Full submission to the Will of God (Islam) requires acknowledging God as God, and God alone. That means no partners or offspring, as also stated in the Quran. This seems to take the wind out of Christianity's sails, since the core tenet (to the best of my memory) treats Jesus as the Son of God, who was sent to spread the Word until the day of his crucifixion. Then came his resurrection and ascendancy three days later. The only thing I can think of, that could send a Christian to Paradise while keeping a belief in Jesus, is if they didn't tout him as God or God's son. If they know and believe he existed, and that he returned to God without needing to be crucified (enter: the imposter implanted for death, by God), then that would make them supplicants to God. But even then, if the core idea of Christianity revolves around Jesus dying for our sins, as an outreach of God through divine paternity and identity, wouldn't that send them to Hell? Maybe if they just pray to God, and not Jesus, they'd be saved?

In the Introduction, it says that, "Muslims believe that Jesus is the Christ and the Messiah. They also believe in his virgin birth, ascension, and second coming." The titles of "Christ" and "Messiah" make Jesus out to be a leader/savior to a group of people, and as one anointed by God. With all this taken into consideration, it seems Christians can go to Paradise, as long as they don't place Jesus in a role other than those given by God (prophet, anointed one, etc.) and don't' associate him with God in worship. Then again, who am I to case judgment? To the best of my understanding, there is no contradiction here.

[debushit]

35, 55, 72 🫶🏻

thanks 🥰

35 - Heather -Conan Gray

55 Scott Street -Phoebe Bridgers

72 Footnote - Conan Grey