Would you dare to write....

Garpy, it is impossible to write a book that doesn't offend someone.* The best you can do is to make sure you aren't ignorantly offending reasonable people (defined here as "people who aren't looking for a reason to be offended by your book").

* For example, you might write a book that, miraculously, is embraced by all Muslims, and have your house firebombed by the KKK.

Rushdie survived a fatwa - you can always hide!

I don't worry about this. Someone is always going to be offended by something. As far as modifying WIPs to fit with the political climate, I think some of the best literature challenged norms and mores of the time, so I don't worry about that either.

It seems like I don't worry about much...why am I so stressed out again?

Aconite said:

Garpy, it is impossible to write a book that doesn't offend someone.* The best you can do it to make sure you aren't ignorantly offending reasonable people (defined here as "people who aren't looking for a reason to be offended by your book").

* For example, you might write a book that, miraculously, is embraced by all Muslims, and have your house firebombed by the KKK.

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Hahahahahaha!
Purpose of offending people?
Please explain.
Religion?
Please explain?
Politics?
Please explain?
Social groups?
(you know what I'm gonna say...I mean, type!)
Oops!
Sorry. Did I need to apologize?
Hope i spelled it write (*with a r instead. I know THAT! So...who cares and does it matter?).
One path to Creator=can u hear him/her/IT?

Good luck w/imeanwith your writing!

Every time you write about a people you don't know you risk offending them simply because your understanding of your society will never be as complete as theirs.

Garpy said:

....a book that might offend muslims?

Given recent events, I have decided its time to find out what I can about the Muslim faith. To try and understand their point of view about us, the western world. The more I have researched the more convinced I am that the next book I write should look at the yawning gap between us and try to find out whether there is a middle ground that we could all live on. After all there are many core values that I have found that I can identify with within the Islamic faith. For example, how materialism and greed is frowned upon. I personally think that the western way of life has sadly become hijacked by Big Business, and that everything now boils down to making money...and THAT is singularly the biggest problem with the western world. ALL of our social problems, I believe, stem from this, and it does seem that the Islamic faith is the antidote to that with the emphasis of charity, spiritual reward, simple non-materialistic pleasures.

What worries me however, is that I might write something in the future, that could be interpreted by some Imam as being offensive, I might be at personal risk.

Widening the question a little bit....have you felt the need to modify your WIP to fit the current polarized political climate?

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Big business isn't the problem, it's just the way people are. Business doesn't want or need anything. It's the people in businesses who want money. So do people outside business. So do Muslims, just as much as anyone else. I think all religions warn against the power of money.

Islam, Christianity, and Judaism all believe in the Old Testament, and Islam generally believes in the New. One of the things Islam holds against the Jewish people is that they believe Jews rejected the Prohpet God sent to them in the form of Christ, while Muslims accepted the Prophet God sent them in the form of Mohammed.

The religions all teach against the power of money, and many of the people of all religions, Islam included, ignore this warning. It is, I suppose, simply human nature. Far more people are interested in profits than in Prophets.

The world has an awful bunch of extremely rich Muslims, including a fair number of multi-billionaires, and as many businessmen as any country, and as many people who want to be as rich as possible as any country or any religion.

Having said this, a writer's job is to write the truth as he sees it. This is what writing is all about, whatever that truth may be, whoever it offends.

Garpy said:

For example, how materialism and greed is frowned upon. I personally think that the western way of life has sadly become hijacked by Big Business, and that everything now boils down to making money...and THAT is singularly the biggest problem with the western world. ALL of our social problems, I believe, stem from this, and it does seem that the Islamic faith is the antidote to that with the emphasis of charity, spiritual reward, simple non-materialistic pleasures.

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To nitpick and go on a tangent both at once:

The Christian faith, (if you study the holy book and what it should be, as opposed to what several branches really are), also emphasises these same things.

And just like Christianity, far too many branches of Islam seem to forget that charity, Spiritual reward, etc. are the areas that should be emphasized and go on to focus on other things.

Lenora Rose said:

To nitpick and go on a tangent both at once:

The Christian faith, (if you study the holy book and what it should be, as opposed to what several branches really are), also emphasises these same things.

And just like Christianity, far too many branches of Islam seem to forget that charity, Spiritual reward, etc. are the areas that should be emphasized and go on to focus on other things.

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Yes, Christianity actually warns against the corrupting power of money and materialism stronger than does Islam.

But certainly money/materialism is not the root cause of all social problems. Not by a long shot. Would that it were this simple, but money/materialism is only one tree in a very large forest.

Nor is there anything wrong with having money, even when you have a lot of it. It's how you earn the money, and how you use it, that make the difference. There is no nobility in being poor, and no sin in being rich. It's the actions of the person, teh values that person subscribes to, that makes him good or bad, not the dollars in his pocket, or the lack thereof.

Garpy said:

I must also add the caveat that that it's not a dig at the American Way, since corporatism pervades ALL our western nations.

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It's not just the West, and it's nothing modern.

Long, long ago, in the mists of prehistory, an archaeology prof of mine told us a story of capitalism as human nature. US soldiers moved into frontier territory, built a fort, and fired cannons to scare the natives into submission with a display of force. A few hours later, the natives showed up, offering to sell the canonballs back to the fort.

Jewish tradition tells the story of what happened when that part of human nature was removed from people. Essentially, people weren't motivated to do anything, and things got bad until that part was put back. The lesson there is that the instinct isn't bad, but how it's manifested can be.

I don't think there is a yawing gap between us, I think as you study it more you'll realize that.

That is from personal experience.

Too many are focusing on the religion and not on the politicans, both Iraqi and US politicos are creating the gap. Notice how I said Iraqi and Us NOT Islamic and Christian. People forget that there are Jewish and Christian Arabs, Iraqis and Afgans etc. People forget that the Baathist's were a Christian organization.

Having said that I see no point in "modifying" writing to please the politcos. What would be the point. Either write it or don't, Don't waffle around cause then you're just wasting time.

problems

Garpy said:

Yes, I agree that there needs to be the freedom in which one can trade. But, I feel the whole free market thing has gone a little too far. As with most things, the best solution lies somewhere in the middle of two extremes....for my money that would be a moderately...dare I say....socialist, libertarian, secular society. And one can point to several Scandinavian countries that have roughly got it right.

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It isn't about socialism, libertarianism, and certainly not about anything secular. It isn't about Christianity, Islam, Catholicism, or any other religion. If people actually followed the teaching of any religion there would be few problems of any kind. I know all your complaints about money/materialism would disappear overnight. But it simply is not about political systems or religious systems, it's about human nature.

And would you really want to live under any system, political or religious, that forced people to live in a certain way? I wouldn't. Freedom always brings problems, and yu handle these problems as best you can when they arise. But whatever the problems of freedom, the problems of force are always far more damaging, and far more difficult to handle.

Every system of goverbnment has it's problems, and I wouldn't trade the problems of democarcy and capitalism for the problems of socialism on a bet.

Free trade may have swung too far, but if so, it will probably be corrected. And much depends oon which side of the window you're looking trhough. I strongly suspect there are a lot of third world countries, and a couple of billion dirt poor people therein, who believe free trade is still nowhere near free enough

It's about the people. Some people will always do bad things, and that's just how it is. Some poeple will always abuse power and prviledge, and that's just how it is. When that abuse reaches a certain point in a certain area, teh laws take over.

But I am hard pressed to say freedom is ever wrong, or that people as a whole need controlled by government or by religion.

And to be perfectly honest, I do not, for example, give a rat's whisker about how much money someone like Bill Gates has. Good for him. Nor do I think the people who have received portions of the billions he's given away care how much money he has. I'm certain all those suffering from aids in a frica are very thankful someone had enough money to give them, and had the willingness to give it.

But I don;t care whether or not he gives away his money or keeps it. It's his money, not mine. I think it noble of him to give so much away, and our local librray has 60K in new computers because of him, but either way, I don't care.

The poor are not poor because Bill Gates is rich, teh suffering are not suffering because Bill Gates is rich, and all the problems and ills of society do not in any way belong on the doorstep of money and materialism. There are far worse problems in the world, both socially and politically.

But in the end, it all boils down to a simple checkpoint for me. . .should people be free, or should people be controlled? And if they are controlled, then just what is it about the people doing the controlling that makes tham any better, any more trustworthy, than the people they are controlling?

As someone once said, you can't change human nature, but you can change the nature of a human. I just do not like the idea of any group of people sitting on high, telling me what I can do and can't do, how much I can earn and can't earn, who I can do business with and who I can't. I think we all deserve freedom, not control.

And even if you eliminated every social ill caused by money/materialism, you'd only find you've also stopped all teh ways it can help people, and that a hundred or a thousand other social ills and probelms were still facing you.

Onelast note on this. I don't think a good writer insults or flatters, condemns of condones, except indirectly.

Nor do I think a good writer intejects his opinion, or makes statements. NOt a fiction wirter, at any rate.

I believe the job of a fiction writer is simply to tell a true story. He siomply shows something that actually happens, an dthen he lets readers make up their own minds abut what this story means. The writer doesn't answer questions, he asks them. It's up to the reader to answer them.

The reader sees a true story, and the question that's asked is, "Do you beieve this is a good or a bad thing?" The reader answers this question and answers accordingly.

If you tell the story of poor migrant workers, of illegal aliens who slip across the border, you do not fill that story with your opinion on anything. You simply tell the story, you show the reader what these people face, what these people feel, what these people dream and hope. The reader then makes up his own mind about what it all means, and whether or not changes should be made.

Doing this will insult and enrage some people, and fill others with hope.

But just like "show, don't tell" in technique, yu have to show people how things are, not tell them. Telling people how you think something should be done just makes them made. Telling peole how to fix problems just makes them mad. Telling people you think something should be this way and not that just makes them mad.

But showing people how things really are, and letting them reach their own consclusions, can bring about change.

It's almost a cliche now, but I really do believe the job of a writer is simply to hold up a mirror to society, to let people see their own reflection. After this, people make the decisions. If you've done your job properly, you can help them make the "right" decision, but you do so by showing, not by telling.

Garpy said:

Given recent events, I have decided its time to find out what I can about the Muslim faith. To try and understand their point of view about us, the western world. The more I have researched the more convinced I am that the next book I write should look at the yawning gap between us and try to find out whether there is a middle ground that we could all live on.

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Garpy:

I say, write it.

You’re thinking of writing about group of people who represents almost half of the world’s population and territory. Though they are multi facetted, there different facets are quite different from each other. We have on one hand, the true Muslims who are peaceful; on the other hand, we have the radical Muslims, who really don’t follow the Koran as the peaceful ones do.

The radical ones have fought with each other and their neighbors since time began. They are, and have been at war and will ever be at war. There’s no way anyone will be able to step half way up to the plate and play ball with those who have refused to live a peaceful life with the world since long before Christ was born.

We have the peaceful Muslims in our neighboring cities that get married, raise children, have jobs, and go to church on Sunday, just like us. Out of their ranks we may have a radical member, or members who chose another path of life. It is almost the same with the wondering Bedawin, or Bedawi tribes of Syria and the bread maker in Kabul Afghanistan and those who habitat the teahouse in Karbala Iraq. It would seem it is the same with everyone, but there is one slight catch. Comes now the PLO of Israel and Lebanon, the Lebanese Hezbollah, The Taliban, the al Qaeda, and we can go on and on. For goodness sake, write your book, but realize that there is no way any person is going to get right up next to these people who war, and have been at war with the world for so long and refuse to settle in and life peacefully. It took two World Wars in my lifetime to see the Huns settle in and I don’t know how long that will last.

I fully expect to see those crazies lob a bomb in on the Hopi Indians of Arizona; after all, the Hopi’s (the ancient ones) (The Peaceful People) are infidels too.

But I’m not talking about my Muslim friends. I’m talking about those radical Muslims who will kill my Muslim friends, our neighbors, and their children.

It is for this reason I’ve taken on the task to write my novel, “The Life of a Terrorist Assassin”.

---------------------------------------------

The FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group labeled Ara Hasimi, The Ghost, and the ghost came alive, appearing suddenly, here and there, wreaking havoc, and then disappearing into the depths of the cities of England and the US...hiding.

At the age of 16, Ara Hasimi fled from the Israeli forces in Beirut Lebanon during the end of the Lebanese Civil War in the 1980s. Her life changed significantly as she fled in the night, running in the shadows, reaching for safety over the Lebanese mountains to the Syrian boarder. She was directed to Sab Abar Syria and then on to a terrorist training camp at Karbala Iraq, for training. It was there they had learned of her abilities, she had become an assassin for the Al-Qaida Network. Her assassin pursuits were all successful, her destructive pursuits failed drastically. To end her prohibited destructive activities, her own people assassinated her, thus saving America from a nuclear death. She died on her 28th birthday.

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Perhaps it will open the eyes of the non-believers that there is nothing that will detour those who have taken on a life of destruction. The question is, are we to be killed, or do we kill to keep from being killed?

Garpy said:

I believe we have a finite amount of resources on the planet. If one group/nation/person is immensely rich, in a world of limited resources that means somebody else is going to be poor.

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I don't think this makes any sense. I think the opposite is true. That when there are rich people, then the people around them will become richer. It just takes time. There are millions upon millions of people very well off in the western world. Think back only 100 years- how many were well off then. The finite resources in the world lead to a certain amount of wealth a hundred years ago and the same resources today lead to, what, a hundred times more wealth. Places like India, China, Thailand have started becoming a lot wealthier over the last 20 years. I think there will always be a wealth divide but that there can be a situation where no one lives in poverty at the same time. I think Western Europe, in particular, is a good model for this. It's not there yet though.

Islam teaches against wealth. So does Christianity. You still have some pretty wealthy oil barons in the middle east and you have big business in the western world.

In terms of writing your story, I think it is a very challenging for anyone from the western world to understand the psyche of the muslim world, to get inside their heads. To therefore write a true story. I remember reading a book called the Raj, by Leon Uris (who normally writes about the Jewish struggle) and was impressed at the way he did it.

stranger said:

Islam teaches against wealth. So does Christianity.

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No, they don't. They take stands against greed, not wealth.

Riches and Greed?

They want to control the world.

Right now, there’s a brutal Muslim Al-Qaida Network in Somalia who have brutalized and murdered many Foreign run aid workers and pirated a ship at sea.

These are a bunch of brutal Muslims I don’t want to get close to them and give em a hug. Not long from now, they could have the world in their power...walking down your street, doing whatever they want. Telling you, how they want you to do. Right now, they’re roaming the streets of the US and London’s streets.

>> See more <<

http://www.isn.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=12233

http://menewsline.com/stories/2005/july/07_18_4.html

http://menewsline.com/index.html

Aconite said:

No, they don't. They take stands against greed, not wealth.

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Well, I don't know a huge amount about Islam and there are many flavours of Christianity but it's harder for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven according to one famous person.

stranger said:

Well, I don't know a huge amount about Islam and there are many flavours of Christianity but it's harder for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven according to one famous person.

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No, according to whoever wrote the gospel (not Jesus), and every theologian worth their salt will tell you that greed is the problem, not having money per se.

In terms of writing your story, I think it is a very challenging for anyone from the western world to understand the psyche of the muslim world,

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Tell that to Karen Armstrong.

Garpy: If you're interested in the similarities between the three big monotheistic faiths (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity), read The History of God by Karen Armstrong.

I think it extremely unlikely that you will be in physical danger from Muslims, no matter what you write. Patricia Crone wrote a book that argues that Mohammad never existed, John Wansborough claimed that textual evidence shows that the Qur'an was compiled many years after Mohammad's death and Joseph Schacht basically proved that the Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet, the second source of Islamic law) are unreliable. All these people used historical sources to argue against the basic tenets of Islam, and none of them ever had a fatwa issued against them. No matter what you write in a novel, I don't believe it could be as controversial and dangerous (from the standpoint of a believer) as what these scholars have written.

And I believe - although I'm not 100% sure - that the fatwa against Rushdie was based on his apostasy from Islam, not some kind of blasphemy. I know this is true for other authors whose writings have been banned in various places, and for the professor in Cairo who lost his job. Whether it's true or not in Rushdie's case, in Satanic Verses, the source of revelation is, at least partly, someone other than God. Again this is something that goes to the very heart of Islamic beliefs. I'm not sure exactly what your novel is about, but there have been many, many novels written in English that have portrayed Muslims and Islam in an unfavorable light - and none of those authors have ever had fatwas issued against them.

That said, I think it is very possible to offend Muslims through a novel that is unsympathetic (not saying you shouldn't write this, just pointing it out) or inaccurate, in the same way that you could offend anyone else. But really, there's no more reason to think you'd be in physical danger than if you wrote a book about Native Americans, or the Chinese community in Vancouver or Germans - or for that matter, New Yorkers - without doing proper research.

Garpy said:

The more I have researched the more convinced I am that the next book I write should look at the yawning gap between us and try to find out whether there is a middle ground that we could all live on.

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It might be an idea to co-write this with someone who considers themselves Muslim. Not only will it halve the amount of writing to do, but it will also provide built-in research and differentiate this book from the writings of the other ten thousand political pundits.

If I look at discussions of evolution by creationists, it is clear that they have NO idea of what the other side truly believes. The same applies to evolutionists discussing creationism. I suspect my views on Islam/Muslims etc are the same.

Another problem to avoid is the assumption of a uniform 'us'. Even a simple question as to whether Christianity teaches against materialism will give ten different opinions - and that's a religion that most of us are reasonably familiar with!

Someone who has grown up in a Muslim community will be able to distinguish the wheat from the chaff a whole lot easier - and have credibility to talk on their half of the issue.

It's harder for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven according to one famous person.

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I can see the cause of the mixup now. You are confusing the teachings of Christianity with the teachings of Jesus. A simple mistake, but a mistake that is rarely made these days ...

Mac
(And yes - I appreciate that there are a thousand variations of Islam, just like 'Christianity' varies from David Koresh to Quakers to people who don't actually believe in God, but still are emphatic that they are 'Christian'. And that's before we get to the variations of Western Civilization which aren't even Christian!!! And yes, the KKK believe that they are a Christian organisation too!)