One of the best tv shows *ever*

due South.

No, I will hear no arguments about this. This was a fun, fun show. Admittedly, my favorite seasons are season 3 and season 4 because Callum Keith Rennie.

CKR should be in every show.

All of them.

But I digress.

due South - bizarre, fun and with subtext that is beautiful to contemplate.

Their *faces*, people. This is the look of two men who have just boarded a modern pirate ship using an accurate recreation of the HMS Bounty on Lake Michigan.

No, it's not a quarter past one in the morning here and I'm not up writing fic because that would be ridiculous.

Stop looking at me like that.

due South.

*runs off into the morning humming the theme song*

All-American Muslim Ep 4. - Friday Night Bites

It's a bit late, sorry. I was doing other things!

Baby! Whee! His name is Naseem. :)

Seriously, babies are gross looking when they come out. All covered in blood and that white gunky stuff. What is that?

The part with Nader just talking to him is so sweet.

*sniffles* Nader whispering the call to prayer to Naseem is so *touching*.

So I read somewhere that the show got started because one of the people on it got the idea and shopped it out to TLC. I will lay even money that that person was Suehaila. (Whose name I always have to double check the spelling on.) Hey, so she's a judicial executive/court clerk! I work with people who have that job.

It's not really only in their community that females who are unmarried are expected to live at home. It's that way around here. It's probably more acceptable around here but it's not the norm.

I have to admit to being surprised that Nina and Suehaila are friends.

It's not just that you don't wear hijab Nina, you dress like a club girl. All the time. I expect to see mob guys surrounding you at all times.

And at least half the women at that table are drinking. I assume that they're all Muslim, given the show. Yes, it bothers me. Shut up. I know I'm being judgy.

Nawal cackles because she doesn't have to fast...:)

For the record, every second of this show with Naseem in it I just go coooooooooo....

blahblah...Nina...yadda...mosque...where's the baby again?

Seriously. Can't stand Nina.

Nina - your wardrobe *is* over the top and it is sexy.

'I don't know what those things are called'...it's an abaya sweetie.

I actually think Nina just has an eye-twitch. She just has this weird look.

Oh, hey, Nina's flirting with the cops. *Married* Nina is flirting with the cops. Judgy Amber is judging...

So, what? The 'Night of Power'? If you pray on this night it makes up all the prayers you've ever missed? Is that true?

Return of Naseem! Cute sleeping baby!

Oh, okay. So they were having night practices while school was out. Now that it's back in they've had to switch back to day practices and still fast. Rough.

Why do guys hang out at high school football practices? Or, no, I think this is just for the show. A set up thing because there's no one else there.

I do feel bad that Nina maybe won't be able to open her club because of family and community reputation and pressure. It's not right that men can own the same sort of business and not get a bad reputation but a woman wants to do it and it's oh, no! Not appropriate! *raspberry* And that's what I think about that.

What's more important? The tenets of your religion or football?

Right. For the record, Mike has lost points with me for putting football before the faith of the players. I'm fairly certain God doesn't give a rats behind about football. But if he commanded a fast then I think he cares about that. Or are there football exemptions in the Qur'an that I missed?

That being said, this game has been kind of a slaughter which is too bad. I wanted Fordson to win.

I want to hug Suehaila right now.

More baby!

Nawal is very controlling, I think I've said that before? And I can see it giving her trouble with Naseem now. A lot of figuring out what's what and not being able to do everything herself.

I also want to hug Samira.

The guys hanging out and exchanging baby stories is nice.

I really do feel for Suehaila.

Aw, sweetie, if the guys are intimidated by you, they aren't man enough. You'll find someone! *throws self at her through the tv to hug her*

Um. This 'virgin stories' thing that comes on afterward. Uh. She's never seen a penis? That's crazy. Pick up a medical book or a porno. They're not that scary. Actually, they're pretty ugly. Going on looks of the genitalia alone, I would never bother with guys. And that's your 'it's way too late for me to be up' piece of information for the day.

You're welcome.

I don't even know. It's 2:17 am here and I'm still up because I was writing something for someone. That's done, so I answered a few emails and now I'm going to bed.

I'm determined to get the whole Mere Christianity posts going again. Now that I'm off of vacation and have less time to do them - it would have made sense to do them last week when I was off, but that didn't happen. I did Florida things and when it was rainy I sat in the house and read Stephen King novels. And then I watched scary movies just to help freak myself out. Moving on...

Actually, I'm not moving on. That's it. Bed now.

Sleep is god. And in addition. I watched this show about ten people who went out to live like cave people for 10 day. Or maybe it was 11 people. Whatever. I want to do that! It needs to be like one of those retreats people go on. So I can go out and run around and see if I've got hunter/gatherer instincts left. and also so I can erase the shame of almost all of the women on the show being whiny lazy people who didn't help with the hard work. Like, three of them did work, after periods of asshatery. One even helped kill the elk. But two of them sat and did fuck all and whined because the freaking fish still had it's head on it and then she wouldn't eat the elk because it used to be alive and all. Whinebitchmoan.

Looking for Book Recommendations for someone else

The daughter of a friend of mine is looking to start reading again. She's an adult and she doesn't like mysteries.

I'm thinking of recommending anything by Jodi Picoult or Nicholas Sparks. My friend told me she thinks her daughter would like romantic dramas or just dramatic fiction. I know, I know. All fiction is dramatic. Moving on.

Apart from those two authors I was thinking:

The Red Tent
The 19th Wife
The Help

Any other ideas?

The Invasion

I was going to go to sleep, but now I'm not quite sleepy enough to sleep. So let's see if this is coherent.

Lewis opens by reiterating that atheism is too simple. So is, he says, a version of Christianity he calls 'Christianity-and-water' - a view that says that there is a good God in Heaven and everything is all right. Ignoring all of the difficult doctrines. He calls both of these views 'boys' philosophies'.

He goes on to say that asking for a 'simple' religion is ridiculous. The world, after all, is not simple. So how could a religion be simple and have anything to do with the world we live in?

Don't most religions claim to be simple, at least at their core? Certainly the actual living out of the faith is never simple, but I think most of them view themselves as based on simple principles. Similar to the way the world and the universe, all of reality even, can be said to be based on simple principles, the laws of nature. Physics. 'Simple' can be a very relative term. That being said, I can see Lewis' point. If a religion or a philosophy is too simplistic it has no weight, no depth or flavor. It is useless in real life because it tends not to be flexible enough. Then again, overly detailed philosophies have the same problem.

Lewis also says that reality is odd. Which is why he finds Christianity believable. It mirrors reality. It is both complex and odd.

Well, yeah. But that doesn't mean that it's divinely inspired or anything. If reality is complex and odd, then wouldn't people, left to their own devices, project those same characteristics onto their religion and gods?

He then goes on to contrast Christianity's view of the world with Dualism. Christianity, according to Lewis, views the world as something good that has gone wrong but still retains a memory of its goodness. Dualism, on the other hand, says that there are two equal beings/forces. One Good, one Evil. They are both eternal and separate, depending on nothing for their existence, but forver opposing the other.

Lewis says that this is problematic because one can be good merely for the sake of goodness, but not bad for the sake of badness. People love good and will do things only because they are good. He does not believe that people ever do bad simply because it is bad. There are always other reasons, greed, pain, sorrow, anger, etc.

And in another bid to lose me, he says in the middle of this: 'The nearest we can get to it is in cruelty. But in real life people are cruel for two reasons - either because they are sadists, that is, because they have a sexual perversion which makes cruelty a cause of sensual pleasure to them' - I'll just be over here, hitting my head into my desk. I know, I know, time and context. Lewis did not have the understanding that we do now. It still gripes me.

Lewis' point is that the Evil force cannot be wholly independent of the Good force because the Evil force is predicated on the rejection of the Good. We're judging one better than the other because it adheres to a standard of goodness. But where did the universe get that standard of goodness for the Good force to adhere to? So there must be a third being, one who generated the other two. Otherwise, the Good generated the Evil as a contrast to itself and that still knocks the power balance out of whack.

He seems to be saying, almost, that Christianity is 'corrected' Dualism. Because it's put the Evil power into the proper context of having been a created being who chose to be Evil in opposition to the Good.

'Some Objections'

The chapters are short so far. The second chapter is about objections that Lewis received to his theory of the Law of Human Nature.

He ended the first chapter by saying that the foundation of 'all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in' are two facts. One, 'that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it.' Two, 'that they do not in fact behave that way.' People all know the Law of Human Nature, but they ignore it and go against it when they choose to. He views this second chapter at firming up his claim.

Lewis says that he received letters asking him, 'Isn't what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like all our other instincts?' He doesn't argue that humans have this herd, or community instinct to take care of the collective group to ensure the survival of the species, but he says that this is different from the Law of Human Nature.

Lewis says that, in any given situation, a person will have two instincts. For example, you hear someone calling out for help. One instinct will tell you to go to their aid. The other will tell you to avoid the danger to preserve yourself. What he calls the Law of Human Nature, this absolute Right, is the thing that tells you, even when the desire for self preservation is stronger, that you *should* go and try to help. *That* is the instinct for Right that everyone has within them and it cannot be the same thing as the 'preserve the community' instinct because how could it encourage you to strengthen itself?

I don't know that I agree. This argument doesn't seem to take into account the cultural conditioning that goes into the creation of morality. We have the two instincts, both of which serve in some way to preserve the community. One by trying to save another member of it, the other by preserving yourself, as a member of the community as well. Those are natural. It's the third thing, what he calls the Law of Human Nature that is morality. We are *taught* that the 'right' thing to do is to try and save the other person. And *that* is where the strengthening of one instinct over the other comes from. Not an absolute, cosmic Right, but the morals of the culture that we are raised in.

For instance, in our culture, if we saw someone beating his wife, we know that the right thing to do is to stop them. Whether that involves doing something ourselves or calling the police, we know that it is *wrong*. Why? Because that's the culture we've been raised in. Go back fifty years or so and a man 'disciplining' his family was not a 'problem'. It was a private matter. The morals have changed. They've changed for the better, don't get me wrong, but they have changed.

Lewis' argument in this chapter seems to boil down to the idea that if there is no absolute Right, then there's no point in arguing that one group is more moral or less moral than any other. And...that's actually kind of right. It is impossible to judge a group's morality in a vacuum. But we compare that other morality not to some absolute Right, but to *our* morality and judge them from that. Even if you say, oh, but we judge ourselves based on Biblical standards of morality.

Fine. But those were created in a specific time, place and culture as well. Some of them remain useful. Some not so much.

And just to really win my affection, he ends with this:

"I have met people who exaggerate the differences, because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, 'Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?' But surely the reason we do not execute witches now is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did - if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers to kill their neighbors or drive them mad or bring bad weather - surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did? There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do no think they are there."

So, for all those people out there, *coughyouknowwhoyouarecough* who believe that there really are women out there making deals with devils for powers, it's okay for you to kill them. Because that's the moral thing to do. But only if you *really believe*. *blink*

But don't our advances in understanding the world around us also create advances in morality? I think they do.

The Hall of JusticeChristianity

I've started reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. One of those books that everyone says to read and I've had on my shelf for forever. But it's time has finally come! The Fates have decreed that it is the title I pulled from the Bag of Non-Fiction!

I've just finished the preface, which is Lewis explaining his intentions for the book (which actually began life as radio broadcasts, something I did not know!) and why he left some things out (because he didn't feel qualified to speak on them). I found the last few paragraphs of the preface very interesting.

"I hope no reader will suppose that 'mere' Christianity is here put forward as an alternative to the creeds of the existing communions - as if a man could adopt it in preference to Congregationalism or Greek Orthodoxy or anything else. It is more like a hall out of which doors open into several rooms. If I can bring anyone into that hall I shall have done what I attempted. But it is in the rooms, not in the hall, that there are fires and chairs and meals. The hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. For that purpose the worst of the rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable. It is true that some people may find they have to wait in the hall for a considerable time, while others do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do get to your room you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light; and, of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and panelling. In plain language, the question should never be: 'Do I like that kind of service?' but 'Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me toward this? Is my reluctance to known at this door due to my pride, or my mere taste, or my personal dislike of this particular door-keeper?'


"When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house."

Augustus - I mainlined the rest of the book

Title says it all. I was pacing myself and then Antony and Octavian started trying to kill one another and it was all over. Let's see...

Antony's over in Egypt with Cleopatra, making motions that looked a whole lot like putting Caesarian in a position to be hailed as Caesar's legitimate son. Octavian, back in Rome, starts pushing the facts about Antony's misbehavior with Cleopatra, playing on the Roman prejudice against mixed marriages.

They snark back and forth for a while, insulting one another. The thing with Octavian calling Antony a sexual deviant is that Octavian was hardly a model citizen in that respect himself. He had his affairs, just like every other Roman male. Here's one of Antony's replies to Octavian's insults:

"What's come over you? Is it that I am screwing the Queen? But she isn't my wife, is she? It isn't as if it's something new, is it? Or has it actually been going on for nine years now? What about you then? Is Livia the only woman you shag? Good luck to you if, when you read this letter, you haven't also shagged Tertulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia, or all of them. Does it really matter where and in whom you insert your stiff prick?"

But all the personal insults really served to highlight the fact that the alliance between Antony and Octavian was at an end. Political disagreements at the time were often expressed through slanderously personal insults and attacks.

"Each triumvir claimed that he stood for a restoration of the Republic, and the other for tyranny by one man. Neither was telling the truth. Ten years after the murder of Cicero, the Republic was a thing of the past, irretrievable. The choice was simply between two kinds of autocracy - tidy and efficient, or laid-back and rowdy."

Time rolls on and Octavian's forces and Antony's (and Cleopatra's) have their showdown. The battle of Actium decides things, though Octavian follows Antony and Cleopatra on their retreat back to Egypt. Both of them eventually commit suicide. Antony falls on his sword, a traditional Roman method. Cleopatra's death is a little more questionable. The traditional story holds that she had an asp brought to her in a basket of figs and caused it to bite her.

The problem with that being that asps are kind of large and noticeable, even in a basket of figs. Oh! of interest: she spent her last days locked into a mausoleum. At first it was her hide out, but once Octavian came it became her prison. Some people speculate that two courses of action are likely: 1) Octavian had people drop hints around Cleopatra of what he intended to do with her. Namely, drag her off to Rome and humiliate her, driving her to suicide. 2) He had her killed and the story spread around that she killed herself. Both seem likely enough. Taking Cleopatra back to Rome was risky and more trouble than it was worth.

Octavian had Caesarion and Antony's only adult child killed, taking the others, including the children Antony and Cleopatra had back to Rome with him and gave them into the care of his sister Octavia. They were too potentially useful in future marriage arrangements to discard just yet.

Once Octavian was the victor, and he owed that victory to his friends, especially Agrippa, stories began to be spread around the Republic of all sorts of signs and portents that had followed Octavian since his birth. A nice little bit of retroactive prophecy. Now, Agrippa. Octavian, in the beginning, was a terrible military commander. Because of his health, he'd never gone off to any battles as was usual for a young man in his position. Agrippa was the one who kept Octavian from failing spectacularly and getting his men killed in the beginning. Octavian learned military proficiency, but Agrippa remained the better of the two at military strategy.

Right. So, three years after he's 'saved' the Republic from Antony's autocracy, Octavian (at 36 years old), abdicates his power. He returns power to the Senate, sets up a constitutional blueprint and announces that he's retiring. It's a huge gamble, but he does it because he's learned from the mistakes of his 'father'. One man can't seize power. People will always resent him as a dictator, no matter how benevolent he may believe himself to be. But if you make them dependent on you, presumably within the bounds of the law and propriety and then leave, they'll beg for you to come back if they're still feeling uncertain enough of their futures. Which is what happened.

He was renamed Imperator Caesar Augustus, called princeps as a title, and was 'persuaded' to take governorship of Spain, Gaul, Syria and Rome. Augustus made the people make him emperor without them realizing what they were really doing.

Through various technicalities and sneakiness, he grew his power and maintained it, sort of behind the scenes for the rest of his life. The people all thought that the Senate ruled, but in reality, it was Augustus. It was just that no one knew the extent of his involvement. Which was in everything.

In 23 BC, when Augustus had been secretly reigning for eight years, there was a flood and a food shortage in Rome. The people, seeing the Senate as ineffective, wanted Augustus to take absolute control. Seeing as how he pretty much had it, only without the trouble of being seen to have it, he rejected it. It was illegal. And just asking for someone to come after him later on as a tyrant.

"When facing disgrace a Roman would tear his clothes in public, and this was what the princeps did to dramatize his refusal to be moved. He went up to the crowd, bared his throat, and swore that he would rather be stabbed to death by its daggers than accept the appointment."

Augustus took control of the food supply and put an end to the shortages, sometimes paying to make up any shortfall out of his own pockets.

Augustus kept trying to reform the Senate system, trying to get the number of Senators down to a manageable level. The Senate was so large that they couldn't ever get anything done. He never quite managed that, but his own powers continued to grow, out of sight of the Roman people. There were, of course, one or two assassinations. People who were inconvenient.

In public, in Rome, Augustus and his family lived very austere lives. This was in keeping with Augustus' platform, a return to traditional Roman values. In private, out of sight, he had a palace built on an island thirty miles or so west of Naples where he could take close friends and family.

One of the few things that marred Augustus' reign and must have pissed him off mightily was that fate kept interfering with his plans for his successors. He had several adopted sons and grandsons, boys that he raised to be his perfect successors. He doted on them and gave them every advantage he could think of. Unfortunately, all the ones that were best suited, theoretically, died before they could assume power. In the end, Augustus was left with Tiberius. Not a bad choice, but not his first, second or third.

"It was not Augustus' fault that fate kept unpicking his arrangements for the succession, but his ruthless rearrangement of the lives of his close relatives led to one after another refusing to serve and perhaps even conspiring against him - Agrippa perhaps, Tiberius, Gaius, the two Julias, Agrippa Posthumus. The consequence was the almost complete destruction of the divine family as an effective, mutually loyal group. The only survivors were the patient wife and her suspicious son."

Augustus died at the age of 76, only a few months short of his 77th birthday. He ruled the Roman Empire for 44 years. There is speculation about his death, of course. Some stories hold that he arranged for his beloved wife, Livia, to poison him to help ensure the smooth transference of power to Tiberius. Others believe that Livia poisoned him all on her own. Livia, deserved or not, was accused many times through her life of killing people who got in her way by poison. There is, of course, always the possibility that Augustus, having never been a particularly healthy man, simply died of old age.

One of the last things he did - it was actually carried out after his death - was, presumably, to order the assassination of his own grandson. There are, as always, theories as to whether or not it was on his order, but the other suspects are Tiberius, who ordered the Senate to investigate Agrippa Postumus' death (not the action you'd expect if he'd had him killed), and Livia. Who, as a woman, would have had a hell of a time getting soldiers to obey her. The most likely and capable person to have had it done is Augustus himself. Again, presumably, to ensure that there were no further battles for his empire.

Final analysis: Augustus was a magnificent bastard. And I love him for it!

More Augustus

I'm slow going through this book because I've been oversleeping in the mornings! Probably because I'm staying up too late!

And I keep getting so caught up in reading the book that I forget to make notes or mark pages or anything. So, general reflections.

I keep being surprise by how sick Augustus was as a child. There's at least half a dozen instances where his weak constitution nearly killed him before he became an adult. His mother, even after he was officially an adult, kept him very firmly under her thumb. Partially, it seems, out of concern for his health and partially out of worries that his great-uncle Caesar's enemies would strike at him.

The interesting part is that Augustus didn't really have anything to do with Caesar until a couple of years before Caesar's assassination. He must have really impressed Caesar with something, his intellect most likely, since Augustus was never in a battle until after Caesar's death and Caesar had a new will written up before his death making Augustus his adopted son (a really common practice back then, to 'adopt' grown sons of other families in order to facilitate peace between them) and his legal heir.

Something I think it's important to remember is that, much as I love Augustus, his reign and everything that he accomplished was built on top of what Caesar did. Without Caesar, there would have been no Augustus.

The long running fight between Antony, Augustus and the Senate is really very interesting. Antony and Augustus were both Caesarians but they had to let the men who had killed their friend, their leader and their family (in the case of Augustus) go in order to secure their own power. But pretty much the first thing they did, when they formed the Second Triumvirate and took power in Rome was to have those who had killed Caesar assassinated. Plus all their political enemies. The funniest part of that is that the assassinations were kind of done in 'broad daylight'. They came up with a *list* of people who needed to be killed, negotiated between themselves, giving up friends and family that one or the other hated in order to get someone they wanted on the list. And then the list was posted in the middle of Rome! So that anyone could take up the job and, upon completion, be paid for it.

It's like writing up a list of people who have pissed you off, posting it on your FB and saying, I will pay anyone who kills any of these people x dollars, no questions asked. And there's no *penalty* for this, because while in office, no one is able to be brought up on criminal charges in the Roman republic (which is already dead and just doesn't know it yet).

The More Things Change

See if any of this sounds familiar:

"The year 49 B.C. saw the world turned upside down. The Roman Republic was facing catastrophe, thanks to a civil war in which one of the protagonists was Gaius' great-uncle.


What were the causes of the crisis? It was partly the product of stubborn political, military, and economic facts, and partly of colorful but obstinate personalities.


It was also the inadvertent outcome of astonishing success. As the patricians and the plebs fought for constitutional mastery, Rome's legions slowly fought their way through Italy in war after war until they controlled the peninsula. After a titanic struggle with Carthage in northern Africa, the Republic emerged as a Mediterranean power by the beginning of the second century B.C.


From then on, Rome increasingly acted as an international 'policeman', sending its legions to right wrongs in foreign countries - especially the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Middle East. Invited to intervene by some Greek cities, it vanquished Macedonia and eventually annexed it as a Roman province. It went on to defeat Antiochus, King of Syria, who unwisely challenged Rome to a fight. In 133 B.C., the king of Pergamum (in today's western Turkey) died, leaving his kingdom to Rome, which renamed it the province of Asia.


The Republic was now the leading power not only in the western Mediterranean but also in the Middle East. It commanded an empire stretching from Spain (which it had inherited from the Carthaginians nearly a century before) to western Turkey. A band of client kingdoms marked the boundary with the Parthian empire (today's Iraq and Iran).


The triumph of Rome has puzzled historians down the centuries. Of the many factors that accounted for the city's emergence on the world stage, the most important was that from their earliest beginnings Romans lived in a permanent state of struggle - with their enemies abroad and with one another at home. Tempered in that fire, they became formidable soldiers as well as learning the political arts of negotiation, compromise, and anger resolution. Flexible and skilled at improvisation, they developed a practical imagination. They usually tried to settle a dispute, if they could, without violence, but when military force became necessary, they applied it with a ruthless vigor.


Three important consequences followed Rome's emergence as a super-power. The first was a huge influx of wealth and slaves. Direct taxation for Roman citizens living in Italy was abolished. The lives of the ruling class became more and more opulent, the frequent festivals and gladiatorial games increasingly elaborate. With the opening up of foreign markets, cheap grain flooded into Italy, driving the native smallholder out of business and replacing him with large livestock ranches often run with slave labor.


The rural unemployed fled to the big city, which became yet bigger. Unfortunately, the job market could not expand to soak up the refugees from the countryside. The authorities began to provide free grain to quiet a febrile and uncontrollable urban population.


Second, to manage such extensive dominions demanded substantial military forces. In the old days, country smallholders were called up to fight short military campaigns as and when necessary. Now standing armies were required, with soldiers serving for long periods. These soldiers depended on their generals to persuade the Senate to allocate farms to them when they retired, either in Italy or further afield. These farms would be their 'pensions'.


Largely as a result of conquest, the state owned a good deal of land. However, rich landowners, among whom were many senators, had quietly appropriated much of it without payment. These noble squatters were, to put it mildly, disinclined to disgorge their ill-gotten gains. So the legionaries depended on their generals to bully, finesse, or persuade the Senate to free up land for their retirement farms. They developed a loyalty to their generals rather than to Rome.


The third consequence of empire was the strain that its administration placed on the ruling class, and indeed on the Republic's constitution. So large was the throughput of elected officials that it is hardly surprising that their caliber was variable. A good number were corrupt and incompetent.


Many Romans believed that their traditional virtues of austere duty and healthy poverty were being eroded, and that this decadence explained the growing violence and selfishness of political life. The picture was not quite so bleak as it was depicted, for some nobiles worked hard to maintain standards. However, others did live in extravagant, irresponsible, and self-indulgent ways, and it was they who set the tone." - p. 16 - 18, The Life of Rome's First Emperor Augustus, Anthony Everitt

VBV - Ch. 4 Pt. 12

Oh, we are finally done with this chapter. Okay. Last two sections.

Inhabitants of Paradise Joined with Family

surah Ar-Ra'd 13:23-24 - "Gardens of perpetual bliss: they shall enter there, as well as the righteous among their fathers, their spouses, and their offspring: and angels shall enter unto them from every gate (with the salutation): "Peace unto you for that ye persevered in patience! Now how excellent is the final home!""

surah Ghafir 40:8 - ""And grant, our Lord! that they enter the Gardens of Eternity, which Thou hast promised to them, and to the righteous among their fathers, their wives, and their posterity! For Thou art (He), the Exalted in Might, Full of Wisdom."

surah at-Tur 52:21 - "And those who believe and whose families follow them in Faith,- to them shall We join their families: Nor shall We deprive them (of the fruit) of aught of their works: (Yet) is each individual in pledge for his deeds."

I don't really think this part needs commentary. People who go to heaven are reunited with their loved ones who also made it into heaven. Isn't that one of the hopes of all believers?

The Majority in Hell

The only backup for this idea that the majority of people in hell are women comes from the ahadith. I'm not a fan of the hadith. They're too all over the place and so many of them contradict the Qur'an. So I'm just going to give the short version of the answer that I have been given as to the meaning of the hadith that say women are the majority in hell. I have been told that it is not because they are women that they go to hell. Men and women have equal opportunity to go to heaven. When Mohammed was speaking in these cases, assuming that he really said them at all, he was speaking to a group of women specifically. Women who were harridans, shrews, ungrateful in their lives. Mohammed was basically warning them to mend their ways before it was too late. *shrug*

sahih Bukhari 1:2:29 - "Narrated Ibn 'Abbas: The Prophet said: "I was shown the Hell-fire and that the majority of its dwellers were women who were ungrateful." It was asked, "Do they disbelieve in Allah?" (or are they ungrateful to Allah?) He replied, "They are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favors and the good (charitable deeds) done to them. If you have always been good (benevolent) to one of them and then she sees something in you (not of her liking), she will say, 'I have never received any good from you.""

sahih Bukhari 4:54:464 - "Narrated 'Imran bin Husain: The Prophet said, "I looked at Paradise and found poor people forming the majority of its inhabitants; and I looked at Hell and saw that the majority of its inhabitants were women.""

sahih Bukhari 7:62:124 - "Narrated Usama: The Prophet said, "I stood at the gate of Paradise and saw that the majority of the people who entered it were the poor, while the wealthy were stopped at the gate (for the accounts). But the companions of the Fire were ordered to be taken to the Fire. Then I stood at the gate of the Fire and saw that the majority of those who entered it were women.""

VBV - Ch. 4 Pt. 10

A Fatalistic Salvation

surah al-Baqarah 2:284 - "To Allah belongeth all that is in the heavens and on earth. Whether ye show what is in your minds or conceal it, Allah Calleth you to account for it. He forgiveth whom He pleaseth, and punisheth whom He pleaseth, for Allah hath power over all things."

The author wants to make the point that in Islamic theology, there is no hope of salvation. She intends to pain the picture that Muslims spend their entire lives trying to earn enough good deeds to make it into heaven, even though, according to their own theology, God has already decided who is in and who is out and there's nothing they can do about it.


She starts out with the above verse. I understand what she's getting out of it, she focuses only on the last sentence of the verse. However, I don't understand it the way she does. I don't see it as a statement that God punishes whomever the whim strikes Him to punish, or anything like that. To my mind it is merely an example of the failure of human language. The entire verse is about how God is in charge of everything. Everything is His and His alone. Punishment or reward is not based on the whims of the divine, but on the laws that were set up for mankind to follow.


Anyway. She clearly has never heard of, or is ignoring, the Christian sects who believe in predestination, since she seems to believe that her (incorrect) version of Islamic theology (God deciding ahead of time who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell) only exists in Islam.


Let me lay out, briefly, her argument for terming Islamic salvation, 'fatalistic'.


All people are born muslim. Not, as she coins it, Muslim, meaning followers of the revelation of Mohammed. She quotes this hadith, sahih Bukhari 2:23:441 - "Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle said, "Every child is born with a true faith of Islam (i.e. to worship none but Allah Alone) but his parents convert him to Judaism, Christianity or Magainism, as an animal delivers a perfect baby animal. Do you find it mutilated?" Then Abu Huraira recited the holy verses: "The pure Allah's Islamic nature (true faith of Islam) (i.e. worshipping none but Allah) with which He has created human beings. No change let there be in the religion of Allah (i.e. joining none in worship with Allah). That is the straight religion (Islam) but most of men know, not." (30.30)" 

Then she quotes sahih Bukhari 4:54:430 - "Narrated 'Abdullah bin Mus'ud: Allah's Apostle, the true and truly inspired said, "(The matter of the Creation of) a human being is put together in the womb of the mother in forty days, and then he becomes a clot of thick blood for a similar period, and then a piece of flesh for a similar period. Then Allah sends an angel who is ordered to write four things. He is ordered to write down his (i.e. the new creature's) deeds, his livelihood, his (date of) death, and whether he will be blessed or wretched (in religion). Then the soul is breathed into him. So, a man amongst you may do (good deeds till there is only a cubit between him and Paradise and then what has been written for him decides his behavior and he starts doing (evil) deeds characteristic of the people of the (Hell) Fire. And similarly a man amongst you may do (evil) deeds till there is only a cubit between him and the (Hell) Fire, and then what has been written for him decides his behavior, and he starts doing deeds characteristic of the people of Paradise.""

Her argument is this. Though we are all born 'Muslim', 'knowing' the truth of Islam (and she never corrects the impression that this means Mohammed's religion, our parents corrupt us and we can live our lives incorrectly. But none of that matters. As a matter of fact, nothing that we do matters because God, at our creation, tells an angel to write down our fate. So no matter what we do, we will wind up in a pre-determined place. The end.

Only, that's not how I read the hadith. As I see it, a) they claim that people are born 'muslim', meaning that they submit to God. Not that they are Muslims. And b) the angel is sent to write down the deeds and the fate of the soul. That does not say that God decides what that fate is for the person. God *knows* it, because He is God. But foreknowledge is different from causing the thing to be.

Aside from all of this, the author believes that Islamic salvation is 'fatalistic' because no one can ever be certain of their salvation. And I find that to be a Protestant problem. They have this idea that their salvation is 100% assured if they say the Jesus prayer or whatever their particular group has decided on. That after that, they're in the clear. But that's not the way it works. Salvation is a process, one that we live out for our entire lives. The idea that a person can say that they know they will go to heaven, or to hell, or that they can tell another person where they will be for eternity is arrogant in the extreme, and takes onto a human being what belongs to God alone.