Novelist Robert Ferrigno

and


the Islamic Republic of the

USA

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Novelist Robert Ferrigno imagines the Islamic Republic of America in the year 2040

MARK STEYN

The second half of the Super Bowl began right after midday prayers. The fans in Khomeini Stadium had performed their ablutions by rote, awkwardly prostrating themselves, heels splayed, foreheads not even touching the ground. . .

At the speed history`s moving right now, you gotta get your futuristic novels in fast, and Robert Ferrigno`s is the first in the potentially extensive genre of Islamotopian fiction. In Prayers for the Assassin, the fun starts on the inside cover: a map of the Islamic Republic of America in the year 2040. The nation extends over most of the north and west of the Lower 48. Chicago, Detroit and the East Coast cities are ruined and abandoned, Mount Rushmore is rubble, and Seattle is the new capital. Catholics remain as a subordinate class to their Muslim rulers. The evangelicals -- the ``peckerwoods`` -- are hunkered down in a breakaway state called ``the Bible Belt`` (the old Confederacy), where they still have the Second Amendment and the original Coca-Cola formula: up north, they have to make do with Jihad Cola, which sucks big time. South Florida is an ``independent unaligned`` area, the Mormon Territories have held out, and the Nevada Free State remains a den of gambling, alcohol and fornication. And in the most intriguing detail on the map, there`s a dotted line heading through Washington state to B.C. marked ``Rakkim`s route to Canada`` -- the new underground railroad along which he smuggles Jews, gays and other problematic identity groups to freedom across the forty-ninth parallel. I can suspend almost all disbelief at the drop of a hat, but the notion of our already semi-dhimmified Dominion as a beacon of liberty is certainly among the harder conceits to swallow.

Every successful novelist has to convey the sense that his characters` lives continue when they`re not on the page: an author has to know what grade school his middle-aged businessman went to even if it`s never mentioned in the book. In an invented world, that goes double. And in a ``what if?`` scenario, where you`re overlaying an unfamiliar pattern on the known map, it goes at least triple. Saying ``Imagine the U.S. under a Muslim regime`` is the easy bit, creating the ``State Security`` apparatus and Mullah Oxley`s ``Black Robes`` -- a Saudi-style religious police -- is only marginally more difficult. It`s being able to conceive the look of a cul-de-sac in a suburban subdivision -- what`s the same, what`s different -- that determines whether the proposition works or not. Ferrigno has some obvious touches -- the USS Ronald Reagan is now the Osama bin Laden -- and some inspired ones -- the Super Bowl cheerleaders are all male -- but it`s the rich layers of detail that bring the world to life. In one scene, a character`s in the back of a cab and the driver`s listening to the radio: instead of Dr. Laura and Dr. Phil, it`s a popular advice show called ``What Should I Do, Imam?`` It doesn`t have any direct bearing on the plot but it reinforces the sense of a fully conceived landscape. There`s no scene set in 2028, but if you asked Ferrigno what Character A was doing that year he`d be able to tell you. If you said ``What`s Dublin or Brussels like in this world?`` he`d have a rough idea.

The Islamic Republic came into being 25 years earlier in the wake of simultaneous nuclear explosions in New York, Washington and Mecca: ``5-19-2015 NEVER FORGET.`` A simple Arabic edition of the Koran found undamaged in the dust of D.C. now has pride of place at the House of Martyrs War Museum. On the other hand, the peckerwoods retrieved from the wreckage the statue of Jefferson, whose scorched marble now graces the Bible Belt capital of Atlanta. But what really happened on that May 19? Was it really a planet-wide ``Zionist Betrayal``? Ferrigno`s story hinges on the dark secret at the heart of the state, which various parties have kept from the people all these years. Car chase-wise, it`s not dissimilar to Fatherland, Robert Harris`s what-if-Hitler-won-the-war novel, in which a 1960s Third Reich is determined to keep its own conspiracy hidden. And in the sense that both plots involve the Jews, plus ça change -- in life as in art.

The local colour is more compelling than either the plot or the characters: there`s a guy -- maverick ex-fedayeen -- and a girl -- plucky, and dangerous with a chopstick -- and a sinister old villain with the usual psycho subordinates. Standard fare, but in a curious way the routine American thriller elements lend the freaky landscape a verisimilitude it might not otherwise have had. Writing into the future, a novelist has to figure out what will have been invented in 35 years` time. Projecting from, say, 1890 to 1925 takes some skill: who`d foresee that telephones and automobiles would be everyday items and that nations would have things called ``air forces``? By comparison, from 1970 to 2005, the look of our world has barely altered: the changes are significant but visually marginal -- email and computers. Technologically, Ferrigno`s 2040 seems little different from today, but he has a persuasive explanation for it: nothing works unless it`s foreign-made. American inventiveness has shrivelled and the country`s already mired in the entrepreneurial arthritis that afflicts most of the Muslim world. As one character says:

``Marian and I used to discuss the fact that the nation is coasting on the intellectual capital amassed by the previous regime, and we`re running low on reserves. Islam dominated Western intellectual thought for three hundred years, a period when Muslims were most open to the contributions of other faiths. This is the caliphate that should be restored, not some military-political autocracy.``

In a Muslim America, there are not just fundamentalists but moderates and ``moderns,`` and, though the Islamic Republic is a land in decline, it`s not a totalitarian dystopia. Ferrigno is too artful to give us an ``Islamophobic`` rant. If you`re familiar with his earlier work, you`ll know he`s an efficient writer of lurid Californian crime novels full of porno stars, junkies and a decadent elite: in other words, everyday life in the Golden State. At one level, the Islamic future is a corrective to that present. ``You were too young to remember what the country was like before, but let me tell you, it was grim,`` a Catholic cop tells the young Muslim hero. ``Man against man, black against white, and God against all -- that was the joke, but I sure never got a laugh out of it. . . . Your people are big on the punishment part of crime and punishment, and they don`t take to blasphemy. I like that. The old government actually paid a man to drop a crucifix into a jar of piss and take a picture of it. Don`t give me that look, I`m serious. He got paid money to take the picture, and people lined up around the block to look at it. So I`m not exactly pining for the good old days. . .``

It`s not an unprecedented arc: Hitler followed Weimar -- or, for fans of Cabaret, prison camps followed transvestites in cutaway buttocks. There`s an extremely fine line between ``boldly transgressive`` and spiritually barren, and it`s foolish of secular Western elites to assume their own populations are immune to the strong-horse pitch. There`s a reason that Islam is the fastest-growing religion in Europe and North America, while, say, the Anglicans are joining Broadway up a chi-chi gay dead end. In Europe, it`s demography that`s ushering in the Islamification of a continent. In America, Ferrigno posits conversion:

``Jill Stanton`s proclamation of faith while accepting her second Academy Award would have been enough to interest tens of millions of Americans in the truth of Islam, but she had also chosen that moment in the international spotlight to announce her betrothal to Assan Rachman, power forward and MVP of the world champion Los Angeles Lakers. Celebrity conversions cascaded in the weeks after that Oscars night. . .``

Ayatollah Khomeini`s designation of ``the Great Satan`` at least acknowledges that America is a seducer -- which makes it considerably more sophisticated an insult than that of Canadians who sneer at the U.S. as the Great Moron. What gives Prayers for the Assassin an unsettling compelling power is the premise behind that fictional Oscar speech. As that cop says, ``Muslims were the only people with a clear plan and a helping hand.`` If it`s a choice between the defeatism and self-loathing of the Piss Christified West and a stern unyielding eternal Allah, maybe it`s Islam that will prove the great seducer.

Re: # 15
>>>>The fellows eat western food ..(namak) and bite the hand that feeds them...
typical shameless wretches & hypocrites that they are<<<<<<<<




http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006 06 11 story_11-6-2006_pg3_6

Sunday, June 11, 2006

VIEW: Pakistan: foreign aid or band aid? — Ahmad Faruqui


......................In addition to World Bank aid, Pakistan is expected to receive some $600 million of US aid annually, split equally between economic and military applications. According to the US Congressional Research Service, Pakistan has received a total of $15 billion in US foreign aid since independence. Between 2002-05, it also received $3.6 billion in US aid for counter-terrorism operations, most probably as a grant requiring no repayment of principal or interest. Between 2001-07, Pakistan is estimated to receive $4.4 billion in US aid, of which 29 percent will be for financing military supplies..................

#14...(wrt #13)....
Arjun_m these guys are really addicted to the opiate called religion..
Like the japanese who learnt the hard way...about americans....These jehadists will too...
Japan at least ``stood on its legs`` ...(manufactured its own aircraft carriers / planes/ subs..all way back in 1940s.

These guys have only scowls , inflated egos and ideology as weapons!
Like zarqawi, these buggers will fry ``they wont know what hit them (and from where)``..to use mushy`s own words!

The fellows eat western food ..(namak) and bite the hand that feeds them...
typical shameless wretches & hypocrites that they are.

Jayen

#13 by echoboom on June 11, 2006 10:42am PT

aww..the mounties busted paki terrorists...poor paki`s feelings were hurt, were they?


Muslims are also told to ``take responsibility`` for their deviants, ``root out the extremists,`` ``weed out the radicals,`` etc.
How are they supposed to do that? By becoming vigilantes?


by ratting on the saudi preacher who preaches jihad..It`s like Sean Connery says in ``The untouchables``..everyone knows where the booze is..

muslims are to blame for sure..they know who the people buying/selling the jihad videos are..

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/06/08/amiruddin08062006.html

Teacher witnessed transformation of some bomb-plot suspects

Amiruddin says Khalid used to come to his mosque to pray, sometimes in the company of Zakaria Amara and Fahim Ahmad, two of the alleged ringleaders.

``They would enter into the mosque to pray, and they would pray in a very aggressive manner, and they would come in military fatigues and military touques and stuff. It looked to me that they were watching a lot of those Chechnyan jihad videos online and stuff.``

Amiruddin is a teacher of Sufism, a traditional brand of Islam that rejects the ideology of jihad. Amiruddin says the group was seduced by hardline propaganda financed by the Saudi government and promoting a strict, Wahhabi brand of Islam.

He says the Saudis have flooded Canada with free Qur`ans, laced with jihadist commentary.

``In the back of these Qur`ans that are being published in Saudi Arabia, you have basically essays on the need for offensive jihad and the legitimacy of offensive jihad and things like that. Very alarming stuff,`` he said.

Amiruddin said many mainstream Muslim organizations in Canada are really part of the problem, standing by as extremist propaganda spreads in the mosques.

He cites the Al-Rahman centre in Mississauga, Ont., which he links to the Al-Maghrib Institute, which runs a popular educational website. It`s nominally run out of Ottawa, but Amiruddin says it`s really a Saudi operation.

School Ties Link Alleged Plotters

Gradually, they gravitated to the Al-Rahman Islamic Center, a storefront mosque in a small strip mall in Mississauga. There they met Qayyam Abdul Jamal, 43, a taciturn Pakistani native with an angry view of the world. He cleaned the rugs and took out the trash at the mosque. For those services, the directors tolerated his vitriolic speeches that portrayed Muslims as oppressed by the West, according to people familiar with the mosque.

Haroon Siddiqui:
Editor for over 20 years of Canada`s oldest, largest, and most respected Newspaper.
Recipient of Order of Canada.

Received master`s in english from URDU-university Hyderabad; a Hafiz-i-Quraan, Madresaa educated ( entire family hafiz-i-Quraan--an ancestoral tradition); Starts speeches with Bismillah & Quraani Aayaats.

Did not study english in Canada. Speaks in thick original pristine Hyderabadi-Urdu accents.
Is admired by one & all for his knowledge, wisdom, and for retaining his language & culture.

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Each & Every `` Great`` produced in Pakistan & Prepakistan was educated at a Madressa; even Jinnah ( Sindh Madresa-tul-Islam , Karachi & Anjumani-Islam Bombay). The totaa mainaa schools have only produced SERVANTS to operate corporations & bureacracies...where brains are secondary & ass-kissing paramount; for ``progress`` and ``advancement``

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Muslim-bashing dilutes our democratic values
Fears spans bigotry, which endangers Canadian values, says Haroon Siddiqui
Jun. 11, 2006. 01:00 AM
HAROON SIDDIQUI



Bigotry increases in times of trouble, as we have seen in our own age.
An anti-French backlash was palpable in English Canada when bilingualism was introduced in 1969 and a year later we had the FLQ crisis. I felt it in the Prairies when the paper I worked for, The Brandon Sun, had the foresight and courage to support the Official Languages Act and oppose the War Measures Act.

The recession of the early 1990s stoked anger at multiculturalism and helped spawn the anti-immigrant Reform party.

The 1990 Oka crisis, the 1999 Mi`kmaq fisheries dispute in Nova Scotia and the Nisga`a land deal in British Columbia led to charges that ``race-based rights`` for First Nations would undermine common Canadian values.

On all those occasions, as also during the recent standoff in Caledonia, pessimists said racism lurks just below the surface and can bubble up any time. Congenital optimists like myself dismiss such episodes as aberrations, confident that the Canadian social equilibrium will always reassert itself.

The post-9/11 period, even while helping Canada become more Canadian, is slowly Americanizing our public discourse. It has fanned an anti-Islamism that resembles the old anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism.

The arrest of 17 Muslims on terrorism charges has made matters worse, and also rekindled the debate on multiculturalism: Are we being too tolerant of different cultures? Do we instill enough ``Canadian values?`` Should we make newcomers sign a code of ethics?

Quebec once flirted with just such ``a social contract`` between immigrants and ``the host society.`` But it had to give up the hare-brained idea.

We already have a social contract. It is the rule of law. That is our common holy parchment, bonding the native-born and the foreign-born together. Anything else is populist humbug. Or an attempt by the powerful to dictate to the weak.

The latest hand-wringing on multiculturalism and its first cousin, immigration, in reality is a debate about Muslims.

When some people say we must rethink immigration, they are not talking about the problem of economic integration of newcomers. They are pointing fingers at Muslims: Do these bearded men and burqa-clad women — their infinitely small number magnified by the media — belong in Canada?

Yes, they do. Similar doubts were raised earlier about Catholics, Orthodox Jews and others.

Muslims are no less integrated than other comparable groups. In fact, evidence points to higher levels of education and lower rates of crime among them.

Yet there`s a drumbeat of Muslim-bashing, conflating the criminality of a few with all. This assertion of collective guilt takes many forms.

Any time some Muslims somewhere commit an atrocity, a chorus of voices demands of Muslims everywhere: ``What do you have to say about this?``

They should have to say nothing more than Christians or Jews or Hindus must for the wrongs of their co-religionists. As Lieutenant-Governor James Bartleman rightly said: ``We would not condemn the Italian community because of the Mafia. We would not condemn the Irish community because of the IRA.`` Or Serb Canadians for the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia in the name of religious nationalism.

Muslims are also told to ``take responsibility`` for their deviants, ``root out the extremists,`` ``weed out the radicals,`` etc.

How are they supposed to do that? By becoming vigilantes?

Which self-appointed busybodies will use what yardstick to define ``a radical,`` an ``extremist`` or ``a Wahhabi?``

George W. Bush`s first attorney-general, John Ashcroft, an openly Islamophobic Christian fundamentalist, proposed a program to ask Americans to snitch on fellow citizens. It was condemned as a totalitarian tool reminiscent of the old Communist states — and was dropped.

Yet, here we are, suggesting about the same thing in Canada.

That some Muslims also support it does not make it any more right. They may want their own version of ``liberal`` Islam to prevail. Some of us might want it, too. But it is no business of the state, or the media, to take sides in theological turf wars.

It is laudable that many Muslim leaders and groups are, voluntarily, offering to help in figuring out an early detection system to identify militant deviancy, especially among the young.

But it is the responsibility of the state to ferret out and prosecute criminals, whether they invoke religion or not.

Fear spawns bigotry. Whatever hurt it might be causing the beleaguered Muslim community, it poses a greater danger to the principles that make Canada what it is: the envy of the world.

---

Haroon Siddiqui, the Star`s editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiq@thestar.ca.

``I did not know what to feel about the death of the most dreaded murderer and terrorist. I thought I should feel something``(author)

``the most dreaded murderer and terrorist``!

well sir -- that is a almost a compliment for a small time thug and hit man trained to slit throats by its once upon a time God father Uncle Sam in Murder Inc. Afghanisten --

.....for Iraq really the misplaced compliment should belong to its rightful owner -- the Haditha killer and the Fallujah demolisher -- George Bush...

for Zarqawi one can only say what Ghalib would say -- Jaan dee dee huwee usee ki thee -- Bundagee meiN meraa bhalaa nu hoowaa...

translation: the Lord (Uncle Sam) giveth and the Lord (Uncle Bush) taketh away -- that`s all...

Paki parliament and paki government sponsored terrorist group mourned the terrorist zarqawi..color me shocked!!

EDITORIAL: Our quest for a ‘soft image’ and our love for Al Zarqawi don’t square

President Pervez Musharraf on Friday directed the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and other relevant departments to highlight the “soft image” of Pakistan in the country and abroad. As he spoke, the National Assembly was busy doing just the opposite. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) demanded that the house offer fateha for the soul of Abu Musa’b Al Zarqawi. MMA legislators Maulana Ghafoor Haideri and Dr Farid Paracha wanted to call down blessings on Al Zarqawi. The speaker prevented the embarrassing situation from getting out of hand by quoting the rules, which say the house could offer fateha only on the demise of a present or former member of parliament or his relatives.

In Lahore, however, President Musharraf’s “favourite” jihadi outfit, Jamaat ud Dawa, offered a special namaz-e-janaza in absentia for the Shia-killer from Jordan and condemned the statement by the Foreign Office that the death of Al Zarqawi was an important milestone in the war against terrorism. The prayer was led by the Dawa leader Hafiz Saeed while the congregation cried their heart out for the dead man.

That Al Zarqawi killed Shiites in Iraq did not matter, which in itself is quite revealing. Those who mourned him forgot that he also killed some Pakistanis working in Iraq. This is the kind of internal extremism that hurts Pakistan and demonstrates how most of us are involved in sectarianism despite our assertions to the contrary. The Shia party inside the MMA should have protested the folly of Maulana Haideri and Dr Paracha in asking the National Assembly to bless the memory of the man. But it didn’t. And this is not all.

The High Court in Karachi recently acquitted two doctors of helping Al Zarqawi “because the police failed to make a good case against them”. Dr Akmal Waheed and Dr Arshad Waheed had kept Al Zarqawi in their house in Karachi and looked after him and then sent him to South Waziristan for his journey to Afghanistan. The two Karachi doctors were revealed as Jandullah members by the Jandullah leader, Ataullah. The doctors had admitted that they were members of Jandullah and that they had provided medical aid to Al Qaeda and sent men to be trained as Al Qaeda activists to Nek Muhammad in Wana through his brother. The doctors had also admitted that they had maintained their relationship with the Jamiat Talaba Islam till late.

It is our bad luck that, apart from President Musharraf, no one else in the PMLQ or opposition wants to “soften” Pakistan’s image. The opposition is advocating defiance in the face of “American imperialism” and, since the “soft image” routine is alleged to be linked somehow to the enterprise of sucking up to the United States, everyone wants a “hard image” instead. Of course, very little attention is paid to the national economy which desperately needs a “soft image” internationally to flourish. In many ways the national economy clashes with the objectives of the Pakistani national polity and its textbook nationalism. The emotion behind all nationalisms is isolationist and all nationalisms seek an external enemy to achieve internal cementation through the vision of a just war.

The economy wants peace at all cost; it abhors isolationism, and will not accept the condition of war. Also, where nationalism rejects self-analysis, the economy works only through self-analysis. The truth is that our “hard image” is not projected falsely by “Western media”. Our image is what we are, as proved by the Al Zarqawi incident above. No one is clear about what Pakistan should be — not even President Musharraf, who talks of a “soft image” but doesn’t show the will or ability to roll back the hard image and its manifestations. *

#3 by echoboom on June 11, 2006 2:04am PT



Should the Taleban have been allowed to remain in power over Afghanistan? “Well, it’s their country,” he replied.


You could say the same thing about Nazi Germany..

Micheal Berg is a fruitcake using his son`s death as a sword to attack critics and as a shield when he`s criticized..

The author gave non-judgemental piece of article.

Dear friends, those who feel courageous see the full video of a sample beheading of Zarqawi.

http://www.ogrish.com/archives/ken_bigley_video_kenneth_bigley_beheading_video_Oct_10_2004.html

Zarqawi is a beast, a criminal who was operating behind the excuse of religion. He was beheading Shias in the same way. He also beheaded many many people from Iraq, Turkey, Egypt as well (all are Sunni Arabs). To make it worse Zarqawi, the beast and his cronies cry Allah Ho Akber and flaunt the head of the dead victim. Anybody from Jamat Ud Dawah (Pakistan`s over-ground terrorists) who believes that Zarqawi is a good man should undergo the same process and feel.

All human beings believe in one thing, i.e anthropocentrism. Beheading is the cruellest form of killing. Any person who does this is not fit to be called a human beung. Infact Zarqawi he`s lucky that he died without knwoing that he`s dying.

For strange reasons of subcointinetal follies this beheading became silamic. Talibans are now doing this routinely.

This is like drug addiction. Even when intellectually you are aware that it is harmful to you,
you still can not stay away from it and find excuses for it.

Even when you are aware of the wrongs done, you can not admit to it because it is hard wired into you brain from childbirth that anything done in the name of Islam can not be wrong.

Come out and say `I am glad that S O B who brutally killed so may people on camera is dead and thankfully can not shed innocent blood any more`.

[I did not know what to feel about the death of the most dreaded murderer and terrorist.]

Perhaps you SHOULD have known - then there would be one less thing wrong with your thinking.

#all
Now ..now..
here is one more ``ordinary good and upright`` muslim tying himself up in knots..

For what?
To be able to say ...(without feeling guilty in his conscience) ...that killing zarqawi was somehow wrong!!

The guy is all ``mushy`` about it...
His ``intellect`` is NOT allowing him to ..so all this wordy stuff before coming to the conclusion his ``muslim heart`` wants..

``Oh you impious kafir guys``...
``Zarkawi has been killed...(sob)!!``
``But you see he may have painfully beheaded many...so what...``
``he was a human being too..``
(quote for emotional support michael berg who is obviously suffering from the severest for of stockholm syndrom and has gone into the peace mode permenanently)..
``So there too bad we have ended up killing a (muslim) human being..so what if he was a jehadi wretch?``...
sob & more sobs..bohooo etc

Wah bhai mante hain in islamiyaon ko!
Itne pakke ``islamic world view ke goggles hon to aur kya chahiye?``
No spin doctors needed...

And these are ``oh so ordinary upright`` good muslims!!

Hai na kamal ki baat?
Wonders never cease in this ``thru the looking glass`` world of Islam..
jayen

Re: # 4
Zia ul Haq=got what he deserved
Zalzala zadgan=victims of mother natures vagaries
Zarqawi=mass murderer, better late than never.....

Zia-ul-Haq=Shaheed
PAF Fokker Crash=Shaheed
Nishter Park 57=Shaheed
Zalzala Zadgan=Shaheed
Many more died accidently or killed by dacoits etc=Shaheed

BUT

Zarqawi=Hilaak

The media is free to define who is hilaak and who is Shaheed.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2215854,00.html


Sergeant Nazim Abdul Karriem, 87, a veteran of the Second World War, prays in the newly dedicated Islamic Prayer Center (MICHAEL TEMCHINE)

Marines open Islamic prayer centre

By Tom Baldwin

The military is hoping that prayers and education may help to restore some of its reputation

Excerpt:
He singled out Nazim Abdul Karriem, a former US servicemen who was seated in the front row and took part in the D-Day landings in Normandy 62 years ago. Mr England asked the 87-year-old veteran to stand and take a bow, but he might have been a little more circumspect if he had spoken to Mr Karriem first. Mr Karriem converted in 1956 and later became involved in Malcolm X’s Nation of Islam.

What did he think about the Iraq war? “I see it as a war against Islam. We have had this before with the Crusades. We have occupied land which does not belong to us,” Mr Kariem told The Times. Should the Taleban have been allowed to remain in power over Afghanistan? “Well, it’s their country,” he replied.

Dear Tahir,

Here`s another paradox: A much stronger nation bombs your family and relatives then tells you they are there for your benefit, how do we resolve this conflict?