Mujda > Recent Status Updates

Not Marozzi referring to al-Masudi as a “gossipy historian” 😭😭 (goals)

“Who are human beings? Because who we are determines the type of governing we need.”

the way this book has me hooked - I did not see this coming 😭🤙🏼

McGray chuckled. "Aye, for youse English the Frenchman is a stinky clown, the Scotsman a wild dog, the Spaniards a mighty fool, the Italians a bandit...Aye, only the English men are the pinnacle o' perfection!"
"But of course! Why else would God let the English rule an Empire on which the sun never sets?"
Nine-Nails chuckled with pleasure. "Cos even God cannae trust leaving an Englishman in the dark."

“Can’t you Scots call anyone by their given name?”
“It’s better than calling everything Victoria” Nine-Nails said “Even yer blasted cakes got the fatty’s V on them”. 😭

I feel like I’ve been reading this book for 4 years :(

“When people gravitate towards conspiracy as they get older, the culprit is usually fear. Fear of a world in which they feel confused or powerless. Fear of a world that they’re leaving their children to live in one day.”

“Taking over the power is a simple operation that can be executed by a group of adventurers and military coup amateurs at the right time. But interaction with the masses, expressing their interests and aspirations, can only be carried out by ideological revolutionaries..."

I've released my new podcast episode which borrows heavily from the current book I'm reading by Johan Franzen. Check it out!

https://anchor.fm/voicemailsfromhistory

"Great upheaval beset Iraq when the Ba'th Party seized control of the country in July 1968. Rather than the Arab 'rebirth' promised by the Resurrection Party, the new era saw Iraq moving further away from the Arab fold. Painstakingly, the Ba'th Party entrenched itself and outmanoeuvred its main rivals - the Communists and the Kurds... Behind the scenes, Saddam Hussein, consolidated and expanded his power base."

“The seemingly improved relations between the Kurds & Baghdad had, as many remembered, originated in the understanding between the Bathists and Mulla Mustafa Barzani as an unofficial ceasefire … this temporary rapprochement soon vanished as Barzani now demanded autonomy for Kurdistan.”

“Puri parts the heavy drapes and enters the confessional of the Madrid church. She kneels and her pulse begins to tick. If faith is so easy, why is confession so difficult?
Puri loves being a good Spaniard. Puri loves the Catholic Church. Puri hates confession.”

"Water flows from high to low places. That is the nature of gravity. Emotions also seem to act according to gravity. When in the presence of someone with whom you have a bond, and to whom you have entrusted your feelings, it is hard to lie and get away with it. The truth just wants to come flowing out. This is especially the case when you are trying to hide your sadness or vulnerability."

"Slowly," said Mokhov with a smile. "Sheet by sheet. Ten roubles at a time. That's when I learned something which, forgive me, you too should have learned years ago, Academician. Money will never be allowed to have the last word here. It will never be allowed to be 'active'. It will never be permitted to become an autonomous power."

“At the next corner, a giant banner rippled and flapped against the end wall of a block, with the honest face of Yuri Gagarin on it, six storeys high and underneath the words he was supposed to have said, back in April… LET’S GO. Upwards with Yuri! Up to the stairs; up Mr K.‘s ladder to the heavens, whose foot stood in a mulch of blood and bone.
The radio roared its approval.”

“The Soviet Union could give its populace some jam today, and reinvest for tomorrow, and pay the weapons bill of a superpower, all at once. The Bolshevik simulation of capitalism has vindicated itself.”

If you were young in 1953, and lucky enough to come from a family that had not yet experienced the sharp end of his rule, you had no clear idea of what you had escaped, because an old Georgian had twitched his last on a government carpet; and you didn't know, either, what there was to escape into. No other world for the inhabiting...you had always been told the inevitable, the only possible version of existence.'

“Whether or not they wanted him there, the force & capacity of the Soviet state had obliged them to let him in. Think of it! Miners had gouged at the stubborn earth, rail road men had blown on their hands at dawns colder than rigor mortis, machinists had skinned off bright curls of swarf, soldiers died in shit and mud, so that one of their own could demand to be received in this quiet, rich room as an equal.”

Love this line “Nonetheless, the fearsome inquisitors never managed to put the jinn of Arab science back in the bottle.”
and
“The verdict of history on this episode has been harsh & rightly so. The Church wilfully ignored the prescriptions of St Thomas - for the peaceful coexistence between faith & reason.”

“Such precision in identifying the source of information and the insistence where possible on personal observation .. is a hallmark of Arab science. It is also the invaluable legacy of Islamic tradition in which enormous efforts were devoted to preserving and assessing critically the chain of transmission for any recorded saying of Muhammad pbuh.”

“Caliph al-Mansur’s decision to forsake Arab-dominated Damascus and base his new capital in Mesopotamia ratified fundamental changes at the heart of the Muslim world. Already the tribal organisation was giving way to a new one … gave rise to the modern city … unrelated ethnically diverse citizens interact with another under codes of legal & personal conduct…”
a cool way of looking at Baghdad’s founding

“Europeans were able to further advance the knowledge of giants such as al-Razi and Ibn Sina. Today’s medical knowledge come largely from the West but are based on earlier Muslim traditions. The clash of civilisations narrative that is promoted by extremists on both sides neglects the examples of cross cultural intellectual traditions such as this.”

“Paradoxically, women’s better coping strategies for dealing with pain also puts them at odds with effective treatment. The literature confirms that women in fact have a greater repertoire of coping skills to deal with their pain. Yet doctors dismiss women’s emotional responses to pain, believing these mean the pain is imaginary or psychogenic.”