Arian > Recent Status Updates

This extract details the prophet’s ﷺ persistence in his mission of openly preaching Islam. Damud Al-Azdi (one of the early converts) in response to listening to the prophet’s ﷺ speech says, ‘I have heard soothsayers, sorcerers and poets, but never have I experienced the sweetness of your words, they have the depth of the ocean.’ (Authentic narration).

West writes of Bishop Strossmayer of the Roman Catholic Church - and a pro-Croat - 'We regard him with suspicion, we look for the snake beneath the flower. All of us know what it is to be moon-struck by charmers and to misinterpret their charm as a promise... and all of us have found later that that charm made no promise and meant nothing, absolutely nothing. Hence the biographies of charmers...

So excited to read my first Dostoyevsky! William Mills Todd III writes an introduction, highlighting how Myshkin's honesty and compassion are tragically mismatched with the world's cynicism. The introduction also situates the novel within Dostoyevsky’s broader concerns about faith, beauty, and the failure of utopian ideals in a morally fragmented age.

This extract details Croatia’s internal struggle for free speech and a free press - notably against the Roman Catholic Church which had become predominantly Italian in the 20th century.

A heated debate between Valetta and Constantine.

My favourite extract so far. So so much to unpack. The highlighter has been in use more than ever before!

West’s written observation of the patients at the sanatorium is so so nuanced.

The Year of Grief, marked by the deaths of the Prophet's uncle Abu Talib and his wife Khadijah - a loss so profound that this year was described as one in which 'the Prophet ﷺ suffered successive calamities.'

This extract goes on to list the factors inspiring the patience and perseverance of the early Muslims, in spite of the torture and grief they constantly were burdened with.

Marko, addressing West. speaks of the Englishman, 'your friend, who showed no emotion at the thought of the spires of Vienna being replaced by minarets, doubtless would expect us to forgive the Austrians for building oubliettes for our heroes so long as they built us chalets for our necessities' - Marko, informing the Englishman that Ottoman Europe was an 'uncomfortably recent' threat . (1937).

West opens her extract in Croatia by introducing the reader to her three friends - Valetta, Constantine, and Marko.

Valetta, a Croat from Dalmatia, believes in an autonomous Croatia and is anti-Yugoslavian, contrary to the other two. Although Marko and Constantine are pro-Yugoslavian, to Marko, Constantine 'seems impious in the way he takes Yugoslavia for granted' as he was born a free Serb.

For openly preaching the message, the Prophet ﷺ and his early converts were persecuted. Narrations of verbal and physical abuse, mockery, and attempted murders are all authenticated.

The Quraish then try to negotiate with the Prophet ﷺ, proposing a compromise: both parties would give up some of their faith. The Prophet ﷺ responded by reciting Surah Al-Kafirun (109)…

This update the Prophet’s ﷺ birth, forty years prior to prophethood, and the early stages in his call to Islam.

An interesting extract on Muhammad’s ﷺ early life; when he was ~12 years old, he met with a Monk, Bahirah, on a trade journey to Syria with his uncle. Upon meeting the Prophet ﷺ he readily recognised him…

We are now in Jugoslovenka!

An interesting extract on the Abyssinian Christians’ attempt to demolish the Ka’bah after an Arab pilgrim smeared excrement on the front wall of the Church that was built to attract the pilgrims to the exclusion of Makkah.

The Quran (105) mentions that God sent against them flocks of birds that pelted them with stones.

The first 62 pages details the aspects of pre-Islamic Arabian society. Notably, the pagan beliefs and practices that were synonymous with the arabs before the Prophet’s ﷺ prophethood.

A brief mention of Judaism’s and Christianity’s presence in the Arabian peninsula.

Took me awhile to get through the prologue; West packs a lot in just 30 pages.

How Luccheni foreshadowed the fascist movement, then manifested by Mussolini who orders a successful assassination attempt on the King of Yugoslavia, believing that ‘with the King’s death the country would fall to pieces and be an easy prey to a foreign invader’

Finally decided to pick up this mammoth of a book.
I am reading the Canons edition, introduction by Geoff Dyer.

Afterword read.

Appendix read.
‘doubleplusgood duckspeaker’ is now in my vocabulary!

End of story. Will reserve my final comment for the review.

I am lost for all words.
The descriptive language used for the interrogation is the best I’ve ever read.

“We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him”

We’re in the endgame :(

“We are the dead”, he said.
“We are the dead”, echoed Julia dutifully.
“You are the dead”, said an iron voice behind them.

Will go over pages 205-245 after I finish.
Emmanuel Goldstein is the strangers prosecutor of 1984.

Read about the inner meaning of the Party’s slogan: ‘War is Peace’.
The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein.

Can’t wait to read more!

‘WE ARE THE DEAD’

WHAT A LINE.
WHAT A LINE.
WHAT A LINE.

‘It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.’

Strikes interrupted my reading

I want to read more from Julia. Her insight on how sexual privation can be transformed into leader-worship reads so clear to me.

‘Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.’