Forbidden Texts

Prof. Al-Tikriti's FSEM

Category: Anti-religion

“The Satanic Verses” Reflection

December 13, 2019 /

The Satanic Verses is a very enjoyable book. I love the
writing style; it involves a lot of brainwork to determine whether something is
happening in reality or is happening in the minds of the characters—or is from
their pasts. The magic realism in the book is also a very effective way to tell
a story about religion.

I did not realize why the novel caused such an uproar when
it was published until I had read more about its context. I found out through
this story that Mahound is a derogatory way to refer to Muhammad and that the
characters and places in the novel correspond to people and places in Muslim
history. Reading his novel was pretty educational concerning Islam, even though
it was also confusing due to my own lack of knowledge on the subject. Reading
the book itself, it surprises me that there was so much pushback against its
author. But after researching it a bit and realizing that the whole thing is basically
satirizing Islam and the Quran, it is less astonishing that there was a hit on Salman
Rushdie by the Iranian government.

Researching the author of the Satanic Verses is actually about as entertaining as reading the book itself. Salman Rushdie has not only had a bounty put on his head by Isis, but has also been knighted by the Queen of England for his contributions to literature and, as I mentioned earlier, has had a hit put out on him by the Iranian government that technically has yet to be lifted.

The plot of the Satanic Verses suggests that, when the Quran prophet Muhammad spoke to the angel Gabriel, the angel himself did not have much idea what he was talking about at all. The book casts him as a man who somehow dreams himself into the archangel and gives Mahound council without knowing why or of what he speaks. I can see why this would be problematic—to say the least—but I am left wanting to learn more about the religion itself before making judgments.

The Holocaust Museum Reflection

October 1, 2019 /

I knew that going to the Holocaust Museum would be heavy, but that did not stop it from being an emotionally exhausting day. The photos and narratives are extremely well put-together and, although I have grown up learning about the Holocaust and all of the horrible atrocities involved in it, I still learned things while exploring the museum that I did not even know about.

The exhibits within the museum are dark and haunting, filled with the ghosts of the endless victims of the Holocaust. I think that what makes the experience so powerful is that there are so many individuals whose stories are told in vivid detail. Every survivor who has told their story is an individual who has faced one of the most infamous horrors in history; it makes for an enormous pool of harrowing tales from which to pull. Even the small snippets below a photograph carry an entire life within them, filled with happiness and fear and tragedy. The fact that we have photographs, videos, and living survivors of the Holocaust is what give us such an expansive amount of knowledge of it and causes it to live on so vividly in our memories.

Knowing so much about the event itself and still having learned more in one day of exploration, it makes me think about all of the lost parts of history out there. There are tragedies from which we do not have photos, videos, or survivors, whose histories we have only the shadow of an image of. It is my firm belief that all of history should be remembered as accurately as possible so that we can learn from the mistakes and successes of our past. There is no other way to ensure that we will not repeat our mistakes if we do not remember them, and although there is no precise way to prevent things like the Holocaust from taking place again, anyone who has entered the museum is much more likely to resist anything that may lead to a repeat of such a horrific event.

“Mein Kampf” Reflection

September 24, 2019 /

My first impression of Mein Kampf was that it is less insane and tangential than expected; this was the manuscript of a man that went on to commit genocide against six million Jewish people, plus gypsies, homosexuals, and the disable. One would think that his autobiography would be the ravings of a madman; however, it is much more intellectual and precise than I reallt thought that it would be. That being said, his thoughts on how he is superior to the entire world, headstrong and ambitious, and that everyone else is too weak-minded to understand him are so arrogant that it is difficult to read. Not only that; he is hypocritical as well. A part that particularly stands out to me is one in which Hitler claims that he is a man of freedom. When faced with the horrific facts of the Holocaust and the lack of freedom that this man imposed on all of Europe, this claim is really what shows just how unreliable the book is about telling the facts of Hitler’s life. If there was ever any doubt that Mein Kampf is completely skewed toward its author and is just as much propaganda as any posters made during World War II, the way that Hitler promotes himself should refute it.

Hitler is exceedingly
arrogant. He explains his several “realizations” as he critically analyzes the
world as no one else can, and wishes to teach the world the “correct” way of
life. He is nonchalant about his hatred of the Jewish religion and believes himself
to be completely rational. This, to me, is the most intolerable aspect of the
book. He completely disregards anyone else who may have an opinion about his
actions or another idea about what the world should be and appears unstoppable
in what be believes to be the correct way of the world; if he had, could there have
been a chance that he might have stopped before reaching genocide? From his
show of pompous confidence, it is not so difficult to imagine that he became
such an influential dictator.

It makes me angry that
the entire time, Hitler never considers anyone besides himself. He clearly sees
other people, especially Jewish people, as nothing more than insects, and he is
completely unapologetic for it. I am actually very curious about a study on his
psyche; I have heard that he was a narcissist, that he had Parkinson’s Disease,
that he was a psychopath; is there some mental illness behind his lack of
empathy? Or is there simply no explanation besides his own sinister ideologies?
I may end up deciding to research this for my final paper. For now, though, Mein
Kampf shows Hitler to be exactly the kind of person one might imagine.

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