Secret Passages

check

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Why in the world is this stuff with a munhoos pao`n still on the main page? It`s unbelievable what December can do to the world! The interacts are indeed amusing and relevant to the article :) The writer should be commended for putting the picture of a munhoos pao`n and driving many insane! Indeed, Writer Truly was able to achieve his objective... ... ... ...

#131

fanny hill was simply delicious.

AlephNull#131:

I dont think that the coincidence between alif-lam-meem and aum have any deeper meaning, unless you believe that the original source for both is some divine entity.

Dost-mittar #128

The overlap between ‘Ram’ and ‘Ramadan’, ‘Ramallah’ is likely to be pure incidental happenstance - like ‘Rameses’ too, I suppose - and with no deeper ramifications. Whereas the congruence between aum and alif-lam-meeem is far more likely to have its roots in shared function and common origin in a distant past.

Raw_Dust #129

Re: Ulysses, it was being serialised chapter by chapter in the US in a literary magazine, until they got to the ‘Nausicaa’ chapter (much before ‘Penelope’, the last chapter). You’ll remember the Nausicaa chapter centers around a flighty fatheaded teenager on the beach giving a floor show for Bloom, swinging her stockinged calves (take that foot fetishists!), leaning further and further back while Bloom ministers to himself – ending with a fireworks display, rockets rising in the air, exploding Roman candles, messy aftermath, etc. That episode proved too much for the Guardians of Morality and further serialisation was stopped. However the book was being illegally imported for a while. When the would-be American publisher eventually brought the case to trial, the judge (Woolsey) spent his summer reading the book and then declared in his judgement clearing publication, that in his opinion the racier passages were emetic rather than aphrodisiac. Apparently Judge Woolsey’s judgement read like a literary review.

There is a very readable account of trans-Atlantic civilization’s changing attitudes to the literary obscene – from rediscovered Greek and Roman antiquity through Rabelais, ‘Fanny Hill’, de Sade, Bowdler, Victorian pornography, Flaubert, to Joyce, D.H.Lawrence, and Henry Miller, in Kendricks’s The Secret Museum. This is where I read about Woolsey’s judgement on Ulysses.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

AlephNull,
alif-laam-meem does have a pronunciation like aum, if done in Arabic Tilawat style. The transition between the letters are supposed to be made gradual when doing Tilawat. (as far as i understand). Curious.

Joyce: Ulysses initially was banned in America because probably i figure of its last chapter, Penelope. I never read up on the details of that case and how it was later allowed to be published. Gotta be interesting read on its own. I dont know if you are familiar with the details of that case.

peace.

AlephNull#125:

alif-laam-neem = aum
sura = sur
Ramadaan = Ram + Daan
Ramallah = Ram + Allah

No wonder, the BJP calls muslim Muahmmadi Hindus. :-)

#126 by scott on December 16, 2004 8:55pm PT

The photo reminds me of the over powdered feet and the garishly over painted toe nails of the cheap mujra dancers of a grade B Indian film......

I still don`t get it. Why is the writer being beat up for his ideological preferences? Knowing his tongue-in-cheek humour he has probably posted the photo to light a fire under your collective bums.

Raw_Dust #117

You will observe that sahib slyly sidestepped your very pointed and pertinent question about a combination that recurs at the head of many suras of a book that is supposed to be ‘mubeen’. For all you know, that combination might signify that the sura in question has been abrogated, declared null and void by the ooparwala. Perhaps the missing key to unlock these secrets was to be found in those mushafs that were devoured by Marwan’s errant goat.

In any case, for what it’s worth, I’ve read somewhere that the ‘alif lam mim’ combination is the phonemic equivalent of ‘Om/Aum’ for the horrible Hindooos and might have served a similar function, inducing or signalling a meditative state, etc. Apparently ‘lam’ in certain contexts in Arabic is to be read as a vowel, ‘o’ or ‘u’. Of course that doesn’t explain the other assorted combinations such as ‘alif mim ra’, ‘’ta sin mim’, ‘ta ha’, and so on which occur at the heads of other suras.

On a different note – would like to second your recommendation of Joyce’s passage on the torments of hell, the last things etc. in Chapter Three of the ‘Portrait’. Great stuff!

hamidm #120 Do I make fun of your moral compass (the prophet George Carlin, peace be upon him, pictured below having his last supper on the dust cover of his holy book)?

The Quran is a compass - not a detailed road map as the maulvi claims. So, I gather the wisdom of the east and the west from all sorts of books - even though admittedly much of that wisdom is lost on my poor mind.

Nor does the Quran replace my responsibility to use my common sense. I would never drive the car over a fellow human being, claiming I was just doing my religious duty.

Anyway, all hail to George Carlin...

urstruly: I see you are trying to change the subject. ha! ha! The truth is too difficult for you to face!

urstruly,

....... so what are you going to do about it ?............ march on delhi or continue to sit in flint michigan writing dirty stories to get us all hot and bothered ? ........

...... but i am glad you have managed to get over the equally ignoble retreat from cardoba!

........ go out, have some fun and act out your foot fantasies - it is unhealthy to sit around stewing in anger and hatred !

** WE WILL NEVER FORGET - 12/16 **