Girl in the Tangerine Scarf Book

Parts of this book I would rate five stars and parts of it I would rate less than one. That's how it usually is with works that try to be super-duper-awesome-sauce at social justice, but stop at the bare level of analyzing the genocide that is normalized discourse. Look. Freedom of diverse religions with the emphasis on the free of all religions necessarily limiting the abusive tendencies of any: great. Freedom of diverse religions intersecting with freedom of diverse races, again with the above emphasis: great. An almost 500 page semi casual look at the huge amounts of intricacies naturally involved in a religion that's be going on for the last 1400 years or so and is/has/will be the US' current mascot enemy for an unknown number of years: superb. However, as I said in a status update and will say again: Islamic eugenics is still eugenics, and no amount of self-awareness will fix that if you still use 'sane' as a measurement of 'worthy of life'.

I don't have much interest in sane and/or able Muslims. If they're anything like sane and/or able Christians, they'll want me locked up and/or sterilized and/or dead on an instinctive level. If you're going to write a book about Islam in the Real World, it's not going to be Real if I see ten white Muslim converts running around and no Arab Muslims in wheelchairs. Or Arab Muslims with Down Syndrome. Or Arab Muslims who can't follow all the rules and rituals of speaking and standing and moving and memorizing cause frankly, the fact that the majority of people fall into some prescribed range of acceptable when carrying on the tradition of any complex institution involved in centuries of canonized discourse is a luck of chemicals, not normality. I would spend less time on this and more on the fact that this is one of the best works I've ever read in terms of the sort of valuable insight that I can usually only dig up on Tumblr, as well as on how bits and pieces of the writing of thought truly soared above and beyond its usual secular and contemporary tone, if the same horseshit qualifier didn't repeat itself over and over again of sane, sane, sane. Intelligence as necessity for morality was thrown in at the very end, as if the more you know, the less likely you're going to use what you know to keep yourself comfy.

If I have any US citizens in my friends list who are also Muslim, I'm not aware of them off the top of my head. Assuming I have far more non-Muslim US citizens in my friends list, to those of you in this category, treat this as required reading. Europe's got its own share of Islamophobia, but the US is what I know. I spent more time critiquing than praising, but this review is for my own benefit first, those of a few who I know have an active interest in my writing second, and the random pedestrian third, the last never being for Entertainment. You can bypass this recommendation if you know the intricacies of Shia-Sunni relations, Black Muslims, Assyrians, Palestinians, Syrian Jewish people, Saudi Arabia, polygamy, arranged marriages, LGBTQIA in Islam, and menstruation during Ramadan. If you're looking for mental illness with regards to orthodox religions, sorry. You'll have to join me in looking elsewhere.