Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet
(Original title: Le fanatisme ou Mahomet le Prophète)
A Persian translation of Voltaire’s five-act tragedy
Translated from English into Persian
by Azadeh Sepehri
Published by Forough Books, Cologne/Germany, September 2021
https://www.forough-book.com
ISBN: 978-3-96531-056-8
I admit it is quite irritating, as a deeply convinced atheist saying "Thank God". I have already lost some atheist-extremist friends of mine because of this. Others have accused me of having joined a religion. I wonder how seriously everyone takes this sentence. How often do we thank people who we actually want to slap or curse?!
I admit, thanking something that doesn't exist evokes a feeling of contentment, and even security, deep inside me. Whom or what can one really be 100% grateful because (s)he or it cannot be blamed for our or any other misery? Something that doesn't exist cannot be responsible for the prevailing conditions.
“In the beginning was the word,” says the Bible. If it really is true, then I apologize to all atheists for my role in the (further) creation of God.
On Saturday, 15 May 2021, a large crowd of pro-Palestinian Muslims gathered in the city centre of Cologne (Germany) to demonstrate their hate against Jewish people and Israel.
A video report by Gerd Buurmann:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7qyrbnP-pc
The pictures in this video show that also the younger generations of Palestinians living in Europe are intensely with Islamism infected, and that they are barely influenced by the political and cultural values of Western countries. This indicates the low level of their integration and participation in the host society.
Many pro-Palestinian Muslims in Germany are extremely antisemitic and apparently call for the extermination of Jews. In many anti-Israel rallies in Germany they chant: “Jews in the gas chambers, again!” (I was myself witness of the use of this slogan at a protest march in Bonn.) In the above video, they shout: “Germany, we are here! Bomb Israel!” It seems that they think Germany still is governed by Nazis and aims to exterminate Jewish people. With the cited slogan, for example, they want to tell Germans: “show courage, don’t be afraid, we and the whole world are supporting you in your battle against Jews, make use of your power and bomb Israel”. Obviously, they have missed the last 76 years, not only culturally, but politically, too.
The New York Times – “No other country in Western Europe has suffered as much from terrorism as France over the past decade. With more than 50 attacks that have killed nearly 300 people — including dozens of children and teenagers — the nation has borne the brunt of some of the worst attacks in Europe.
Now, France plans to memorialize this collective suffering with a new museum that will trace the development of terrorism over the ages, including the attacks on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan concert hall in Paris that have deeply shaken the country in recent years.” Continue reading
Bryan Fogel’s documentary “The Dissident” (2020) reconstructs the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was killed and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 02 October 2018. After dismembering him, the agents of the Saudi government had dissolved Khashoggi’s body in acid, so that the Turkish officials were unable to find Khashoggi’s body.
As Peter Bradshaw asserts, “Turkey’s president blew the gaff on how the dissident Saudi author was killed, providing plentiful material for this gripping documentary”.
According to Wikipedia, “the film struggled to find a distributor for eight months and was not able to run on a large streaming platform like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. It is widely believed this was due to those platforms' fear of offending the Saudi Arabian government and possibly losing subscribers”.
Links:
“The Dissident review – inside track on grisly murder of Jamal Khashoggi”, by Peter Bradshaw, Guardian, 05 March 2021:
The Dissident – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dissident
The first thing I noticed when I moved back to Germany last year, after living for four years in the UK, was the sudden increase of the number of black people in this country. I left Germany in summer 2016, and until then I had very rarely met a black person there, at least in Cologne (which is the fourth-most populous city in Germany). In the last seven years before I left Germany for the second time, from 2009 to 2016, I had only three times the opportunity to talk to a black person: two times on the street when I was asked for an address, and once with a very friendly guy who worked at a McDonald’s toilet. The low number of black people in Germany, especially in comparison with its neighbour countries Netherlands or France, and with the UK, was really ashaming.
Since I have been back to Germany, I see everyday a lot of black people everywhere in Cologne, especially in the city centre, where I live. Most of them still have no other choice than to work in low-paid jobs – many of them work as drivers, for instance. But the good thing is, that they are now hired not just by international companies like Amazon, but also by German companies like the German Post/Mail which even until a few years ago refused to employ foreign-looking people with black hair.
Today, I was waiting at a tram stop in the city centre when I saw a young black guy with a military uniform. I looked thoroughly at his uniform to find out which country he is serving. My guess was France. But surprisingly I recognised the German flag on his sleeves. This was the first time I had seen a black German soldier, and it gave me a feeling of gladness and hopefulness about the coming changes, especially as a person who has experienced the other face of Germany in the 1980s and 1990s.
Spontaneously, I decided to approach the black soldier and to tell him that I am really happy about these changes in the “Bundeswehr” (armed forces of Germany) and in Germany generally, but a German (white) homeless man who was drunk approached him before I could make a move. He checked out the black soldier’s uniform for 1-2 minutes and then, began to talk to him for about 10 minutes. I got a little bit closer to them with the hope to hear what the drunk man was telling the soldier, but there was too much noise. I just noticed that the black soldier didn’t feel very comfortable. He didn’t talk to the drunk man, and moved his head all the time in different directions to avoid eye contact with him.
After 2-3 minutes two other German (white) homeless people, who were drunk, too, had joined the other drunk guy and began circling the black soldier. Their movements and the way they talked to themselves and to others, though I couldn’t hear properly what they were saying, seemed very aggressive. The black soldier looked somehow worried. Me, too. And, I guess, some of the other people who were waiting there, too. I was thinking about what actions I should take if the black soldier got attacked, as a tram approached the stop. That was not the tram I was waiting for. I hoped that the black soldier would get with me on the same tram, so that I could tell him my slogan-like sentence I had prepared a few minutes earlier: “I am really happy for the ‘Bundeswehr’ and for Germany!”, but he took the approaching tram and left the scene.
When my grandma was dying, everybody told me you don't need talking to her (even without telling me this directly or even "really"). When I asked: "Why?!", they said: "After her death, you can talk to her ghost anyway, even all day, as you are an Atheist!" And I said: "Yeah, your nonsense makes a lot of sense. Go Fuck Yourself and let your Ghosts to rest a little bit! Specially those of already dead people like Hitler, Stalin or even Ayatollah Khomeini!" And they said: "Shut Up! You Are Dead!"...
(February 2021)
