Football Fatwa
There must be a mole at the Guardian. Prince Charles would frown wonderingly in the manner of Ned Welch if he read this article – HRH would be most unamused. But that’s his problem.
As part of a government drive to eliminate frivolous fatwas, the Saudi newspaper Al Watan recently published a stone-cold sober one on football. If you can read it without collapsing in helpless laughter – I have bad news for you: you seem to be deceased.
International terminology that heretics use, such as “foul,” “penalty”, “corner,” “goal”, “out” and others, should be abandoned and not said…Do not follow the heretics, the Jews, the Christians and especially evil America regarding the number of players. Do not play with 11 people. Add to this number or decrease it…Play in your regular clothes or your pyjamas or something like that, but not coloured shorts and numbered T-shirts, because shorts and T-shirts are not Muslim clothing.
Okay. I’m beginning to form a picture. Teams of either five people or eighty seven people wearing pyjamas gather together in a field and mill aimlessly around because they have abandoned the word and with it the concept ‘goal.’
Do not play in two halves. Rather, play in one half or three halves in order to completely differentiate yourselves from the heretics, the corrupted and the disobedient.
Yeah! Nothing more disobedient than talking nonsense about two halves. Talking about three halves so much more obedient and submissive. And pure, too.
If neither of you beats the other, or “wins”, as it is called, and neither puts the leather between the posts, do not add extra time or penalties. Instead leave the field, because winning with extra time and penalty kicks is the pinnacle of imitating heretics and international rules.
Oh that’s how you say it! You ‘put the leather between the posts.’ Cool. Except when you don’t, whereupon you leave the field, because doing the other thing is the pinnacle of heretic-imitation. Got it.
You should spit in the face of whoever puts the ball between the posts or uprights and then runs in order to get his friends to follow him and hug him like players in America or France do, and you should punish him, for what is the relationship between celebrating, hugging and kissing and the sports that you are practising?
Ah. That’s a nice touch – a pretty thought. Spitting in people’s faces – yes, that’s always pleasant and sporting, that always goes down well. Very festive, very enjoyable, very athletic and wholesome and fresh air-enhancing. Miserable lousy stinking America and France. Ptah! Ptooie! Hkkkkkkkfwop! Take that, heretic hugging bastards.
You should use two posts instead of three pieces of wood or steel that you erect in order to put the ball between them, meaning that you should remove the crossbar in order not to imitate the heretics and in order to be entirely distinct from the soccer system’s despotic international rules.
And the two posts should not be straight in the manner of despotic international posts but they should be crooked and skywompus so that they fall down a lot. And the ball should be triangular in shape and made of fava beans, so that it falls to bits as soon as it is kicked, because a ball that stays in one piece is despotic and international, both.
Do not do what is called “substitution,” that is, taking the place of someone who has fallen, because this is a practice of the heretics in America and elsewhere.
No. No no no no no. No, if someone has fallen, you should spit in his face, and then all of you jump up and down on him until he is dead (read him this fatwa to make sure – if he doesn’t laugh, you’ve done a thorough job). Then you should leave the field, declaring victory as you go, because to do anything else would be heretical and French and American and just plain crazy, man.
Awesome! Three halves? No overtime? I guess that means those guys hate the new NHL rules, too! Take that, Gary Bettman!
I wonder what Islam has to say about the two-line pass?
Are we sure this isn’t a joke? If not, it’s the funniest, most pitiful news item I’ve read in I-don’t-know-how-long.
No, not at all sure it isn’t a joke. I did almost mention the Onion. But it’s so much funnier if it’s not a joke (she said recklessly) that I decided to assume it’s not.
No, apparently it is for real.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-10-17-voa31.cfm
“Sometimes, the frivolous and the frightening overlap, such as a fatwa against soccer issued two years ago by a Saudi cleric. It sounds like satire, but it is treated seriously by Saudi clerics and newspaper columnists who say it has convinced some players that the game is un-Islamic and has been used to recruit them into the Iraqi insurgency. It urges Muslims to play the game with different rules, so as not to imitate Christians and Jews, and, what it calls, evil America.”
It’s a recruiting tool?
So much for satire.
It’s for real, then?
[falls out of chair laughing hysterically]
My apologies in advance that this doesn’t come close to being as hilarious as the football fatwa. Still, what possibly could?
I don’t think any explanation is required, however, as to why I’m posting it here. Enjoy?
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/640946.html
Nice one, Stewart. And so much for that godless lesbian, El-len DeGeneres. ;P
No non-Jewish-sounding names – no Donna or Shirli.
Now, me, I would rule out all those ridiculous brand-name names, like Tiffany. Unless they’re downmarket. Tang okay, Weetabix okay, but Tiffany right out. And ridiculous upmarket place names, too. Chelsea’s got to go. Morden, Mitcham – those are okay, if anyone wants to, but no Chelsea. Nor no Belgravia nor Kensington nor Hampstead, neither. Brixton, Balham, Tooting, okay.
And don’t get me started on the names of cars. Explorer, Bronco, Pathfinder – oy. Why not just name them all Penis and be done with it!
How about naming your girl child after classy French words like Finesse, Toute Suite, and Aubergine? So far it’s only girls who get these classy names, but I’m gonna buck the trend by naming my boy Le Petit Mort.
Yes, but then you’d have car salesmen asking “Cetainly sir, which Penis would you like?” all the time, so I think the answer is: to rule out confusion.
I think it was your Tang reference that just reminded me of the Tampax joke (is that alliteration?) about the kid who’s been watching too many TV commercials and is asked what he’s going to do with the two dollars he’s just been given. He answers he’s going to get a box of Tampax. Why? He’s not quite sure how it works but he knows that with Tampax you can go swimming, horseback riding, skating, any time you want to, which is good value for two dollars.
Toute suite. I think I’ll rush out and kidnap a child so that I can name it Toot sweet.
Tampax joke hilarious.
I wonder if Camilla knows that one.
Oh, that’s cruel.
I don’t know why they’re so hung up about what the Americans do.
Everyone knows the Americans play football wrong. With crash helmets and stuff.
Check with your rabbi first. Maybe the naming rules get more complicated if you kidnap.
There is no right thread for this, but since you mentioned Camilla –
Is the reason that I don’t see an itinerary for Charles to visit anti-American Muslim leaders to explain the US to them that he believes they already understand it correctly?
Good question. And by the same token, is the reason we don’t see news items about Charles’ trip to anti-women Muslim leaders that he thinks they have a dam’ good point?
I bet you don’t talk like that, Ophelia – I bet you say “Charles’s trip”; so why the fuck don’t you write it? It is no more difficult to say or write “The princess’s hair” than it is “The princess is here”; and the same goes for Moses, Jesus, Jones, Venables, Menzies, Father Christmas, et al. And PBS’s is the possessive of PBS, etc. You appear to have muddled such as these with plural possessives. You may think me rude, but I do find it such an irritant.
_
I made up the bit about Aubergine, but I really have met a Finesse and a Toute Suite (yes, Toute with an “e”…everyone called her Tootsie, of course). I’ve also met a Dutchess (yes, with a “t”) and more than one Bijou (and also a Bixoux, yes with two x’s). My daughter, however, will be named Merdine, because I haven’t heard that one yet. She’ll be unique (but not Unique, because that name too has been done before).
Uh oh, Adam. If we start critisizing each others (other’s? others’?) typoes (typos?) and grammertical erers, then we’ll never get any work done around here. Let it be, man, let it be.
I fully agree, Karl – and you will never find me indulging in nitpicking. I was putting forward a reasoned argument against an irrational and irritating practice that, as far as I can see, has nothing to support it.
_
But if you succeed in eradicating irrational and irritating practices that, as far as you can see, have nothing to support them, B&W will no raison d’etre and Karl and I will have nowhere to go. We don’t want to wake up some morning and see the Saudis playing football with two halves because “Adam’s had a word with them.” Next thing you’ll be talking to the Iranians. It may start with little things like possessives and apostrophes, but it can get out of control and pretty soon you’ve fixed everything that’s wrong with the world. Just a friendly reminder that this kind of thing can snowball (especially if you take care of global warming, which I actually wouldn’t mind).
OB, clearly you and I need to have a talk sometime about your unresolved issues vis-a-vis the harmless folk of south-west London, who scarce deserve the opprobrium.
Well, let’s leave the irrational and irritating practices to the shitheads, shall we? – there’s no good reason, as far as I can see, for any of us to join them.
_
Adam,
I think it is a little irrational, to say the least, to get so intensely het up about a use of punctuation that is generally accepted as correct. In fact, I think it makes you sound like a twat.
Sincerely,
Outeast
OB
On-topic, my scepticism about this led me to search more. It does indeed appear to be ‘real’ in that it has been disseminated and accepted as genuine by some people (indeed, it has widely led to calls for the authors to be prosecuted under Islamic law). The original Western source for this story appears to be the Middle East Media Research Institute, incidentally, and this site has the most comprehensive coverage of the story that I’ve been able to find.
Apparently it originally turned up on an Arabic online forum and no authorship has been verified. An attribution to one ‘Sheikh Abdallah Al-Najdi’ has been reported; however, even with varied spellings this ‘sheikh’s’ name only appears in reports of this article (maybe someone could do some research on Arabic-language websites?)… My search did turn up a ‘Sheikh Abdullah Bin Ibrahim Bin Sayf Al-Najdi’, which fits the name but is an unlikely author of this fatwa since he died in the 12th century (see here.
Where that leaves the status of this I don’t know.
Actually, OB, I think you’ll ‘enjoy’ that MEMRI website; this story, for example, describes the different pronouncements made by one Sheikh to a German newspaper and on an Arabic-language website. Hypocrites? In Islam?
outeast:
There was already quite a long thread on the relative merits of and reservations about MEMRI a few months ago. OB can probably fish out the link more easily than I can, so that future comments don’t needlessly repeat. Regular B&W search engine doesn’t seem to include all our comments. That said, the reservations then expressed, as I recall, were more about slant than accuracy.
Outeast – he’s started a twatwa.
Stewart
I guess that one passed me by:) I didn’t neglect to research the source; while MEMRI does appear to be marginally controversial, it is as you say – the consensus seems to be that their translations and reports are accurate. In the context of this report I thought that the institutions seeming selection bias did not seem relevant, since the debate was over the fatwa itself and not over the mediated response thereto.
Nick S
He he:)
Jeez, Adam – take a chill pill. To use a faded hackneyed phrase for ‘do you think you might be over-reacting [or is it overreacting – now don’t get in a rage about that too, will you] just a tad?’. I don’t like Charles’ much either. I never do like making possessives with words that end in s, because they look wrong whatever you do. I avoid them when possible, and when it’s not possible, I sigh heavily and make them. I don’t expect my misery then to be compounded by readers having temper tantrums over my choice of where to put the apostrophe or whether to add another s or not. Jeez. Calm down.
Charles’s’s’s’z trip. Okay? Happy now?
Funny. I once had a reader go completely ballistic at me in email, because I ended a sentence with a proposition somewhere on B&W. I told her I simply think that ‘rule’ is a silly pseudo-rule – one made up out of nothing in the 18th century (I think) by some pedant who thought English should match Latin, which can’t end sentences with prepositions because the prepositions are attached to the verbs. Well so the fuck what? In English the prepositions are (thanks to God’s mercy and an intervention by the angel Gabriel) not attached to the verbs, so (O freedom! O-o-o freedom!) we can put the preposition somewhere distant from the verb if we want to. Can so, can so, can so, nyah! I didn’t say all that – I just said the ‘rule’ is bogus and the result is often clumsy and ridiculous, and quoted the notorious Churchillian example. She replied more ballistic than ever. The Churchill example is apocryphal, the rule is Important, good language is important, care and precision and rule-following are important, froth foam gnash. I answered that, amusingly enough, I’m a considerable pedant myself, and I ‘correct’ a lot of things that other people don’t bother with – but the preposition at the end of a sentence isn’t one of them. I just think it’s stupid, and that it doesn’t change the meaning, and I find it very difficult to defend or justify grammatical pedantries that have no relation to meaning (I can defend the subjunctive, for instance, because it does change the meaning). She replied with more rage. This went on for quite awhile. It never got anywhere. Most amusing.
So anyway, Adam, find somethng else to get in a lather about.
That was fun.
Thanks, outeast. I’ll have a look at those in a bit. (Such a lot of early morning chores I always have.)
Yeah, there was a lot of discussion about MEMRI awhile back, and no I don’t think I can find it any more easily than anyone else. At any rate I think it’s a useful source, but I also like to have corroborating or parallel sources when possible.
Dave – yes, let’s do have a talk about my issues with the people of poor old southwest London.
No actually it’s just that I spent time in a far SW corner when I was in London last year. So I darted through places like Morden and Mitcham, so now I have to tease them.
“so intensely het up” “rage”
“temper tantrums” “lather”
No, dear friends, none of this – simply making a point about an irrational & irritating bogus practice that’s always clumsy & ridiculous, and responding to responses. I simply think it a silly pseudopractice – one sometimes made up out of confusion with plural possessives, and having no good purpose.
_
Okie doke. Here’s a new arbitrary grammatical rule then. If you’re not in a lather, don’t ask people why the fuck they do whatever it is you’re not in a lather about. That should clear things up nicely!
I’m sorry, Ophelia, for my inappropriate way of expressing irritation with the practice; I allowed it to appear personal when through you I was trying to address the English-speaking world.
_
Ah – that’s okay, Adam. I do that a lot myself.
I agree that it’s silly, but to me they both look wrong, so I try to do neither. Chuck’s trip – that’s it. Chucko’s jaunt. Chuckie’s hol.
OB
Always dangerous to end a sentence with a proposition. Boy, did I learn that the hard way …
“She replied more ballistic than ever.”
Shouldn’t that be “replied more ballistically than ever”?
Shocking lapse, OB. Simply shocking.
And while we’re in high dudgeon: What does Ophelia have against using question marks for little end-questions (is it, didn’t we, aren’t they). Why does she always do this. Doesn’t she know any better. It’s an outrage? And it must be stopped? Immediately?
No because ballistic there isn’t an adverb, although admittedly it looks like one. It’s more like: She replied, more ballistic than ever. Or: She (more ballistic than ever) replied. The ballistic applied to the replier’s state of mind. She replied in a more ballistic mood than ever.
Don’t lots of people say ‘Funny, isn’t it.’? Sure they do. It’s universal practically almost.
So – Don – did an alligator bite you because you asked it where it was from? Or what?
Comma-omitter!
We’ve had this discussion before about not using question marks for those little end-questions, and you know bloody well what these seemingly trivial omissions will lead to, you decadent, East-Coast, Ivy-League-educated, liberal, intellectual elitist, you! Panic in the streets, that’s what. The loss of all moral standards, the destruction of our entire social fabric, and the appalling effrontery of serving a ’69 Bordeaux at a fish fry! Think of the children, you monstrous creature!
Never met a ‘gator I didn’t like.
She was thinking of the children, Karl. Who did you think she was going to kidnap and name Toot Sweet?
For what it’s worth, the use of an apostrophe with no ‘s’ to make a possessive for most words and names ending in ‘s’ is not ‘a silly pseudopractice’ – at least, it certainly is no more so than any other rule of spelling or grammar. (It’s certainly one of the rules defined in the Oxford Guide to Style, which if nothing else indicates that it is generally accepted and well-established.)
As to ending sentences with prepositions, my own position (in this case unendorsed by any authority) is that although originally a ‘bogus’ rule it has been widely accepted for so long that in the context of formal written speech it has come to look clunky: as such, thus ending sentences ought to be avoided in any situation in which this does not lead to a lack of clarity. As to Churchill’s supposed rebuttal of that law, well – a good writer can easily sidestep the issue by an appropriate choice of vocabulary.
Heck, now we’ve all gone ballistically, isn’t there something we should be getting on with? Like deciding what is the good we’re on the side of? Or against? Next it will be split infinitives, Great Cosmic Spaghetti Monster help us!
“irrational & irritating bogus practice “
Completeley inappropriate use of the word ‘bogus’. That really sucks’.
What Dave said. We are never going to get total agreement on this, what with contributors coming from at least two sides of the Atlantic, not to mention the occasional non-native user of English. Adam’s already apologised for using the F-word in his comment, so how about everybody does their best in expressing themselves and refrains from nitpicking that might be considered gratuitous? I’m sure nobody wants to see a footnote in some history book of the future to the effect that B&W’s “arguments about grammar are to this day considered the main reason for Saudi domination of football.”
P.S. Sorry to nitpick myself, Dave, but it is officially Flying Spaghetti Monster. You don’t want to wake up to find yourself excommunicated, do you?
Roger that Stewart.
“so how about everybody does their best”
NO, NO, NO! “Everybody does his or her best”!
Why the FUCK can’t people get this straight!
ARRGGGGHH!!!
ARRGGGGHH!!!
[pounds head on table, smashes fist through monitor in towering homicidal rage over this gross insult to the God of English Grammar]
His Noodliness is actually the Flying Linguine Monster, he conveyed it to me through his noodly appendage, those fuckers who call him the FSM piss him off, they will be first against the wall, apparently.
Wow. Out there, guys.
“Wow. Out there, guys.”
Okay, I’m looking out my window, Nick. So, what exactly is it I’m supposed to see that’s so Wow?
Or are you suggesting that there are things more deserving of our towering rages than the fine points of punctuation? If so, what could they possibly be? I scoff in advance at your answer.
“So, what exactly is it I’m supposed to see that’s so Wow?”
Not a lot really I guess. Actually I am deeply depressed at the lack of respect afforded to the semi-colon these days. Say, when we all get back from Lilliput, perhaps we could mount a protest like those af’can boys in Paris ? “Stop the text-messsage led rape of our once proud language” ? Build it, they will come… (bangs up another amp of LSD)
[Enters stage left and looks at the metaphorical devastation in front of him]
What happened? I went away for a day and this thread has become a grammatical warzone. You can’t turn your back for one minute….
This sketch is getting silly!
“I am deeply depressed at the lack of respect afforded to the semi-colon these days.”
Maybe that’s because there is, in fact, by definition, nothing in existence that is as half-assed as the semi-colon.
half-assed, semi-colon.
Nice one. Is that a Stewart original?
Yes, Outeast, we all know it’s a common practice (of the uncritical and few others), but I still haven’t heard one good reason in favour of retaining it. I usually prefer reasons to rules, but for brevity: Keats’s poetry, Sobers’s batting, The Times’s style – The Times; If the word is a proper noun and ends in s, add an apostrophe and an s. (This is the part people get wrong) Yeats’s poem, Ross’s riddle, Chris’s crisis – The Princeton Review.
_
It is indeed and my conscience is still troubling me as to whether having unleashed it on B&W means I have to delete it from the embryonic stand-up routine. You can’t win anyway. I just saw that someone else independently came up with the “wanted to do self-deprecating humour but wasn’t good enough at it” idea.
All in all, though, I think the risks of mouthing off are outweighed by the benefits of not censoring oneself.
Dave was right, you have all gone ballistically. Well done.
Thanks, OB. That will come in handy for the science fiction rewrite of “Cabaret,” that bit in the title song where Sally Bowles confides her secret desire to have her ashes shot into outer space:
“I made my mind up
Rather mystically
When I go-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
I’m going ballistically
Start by
Admitting, etc…”
We could re-write a lot of stuff.
Go and catch a falling star ballistically.
Get thee to a nunnery, go, ballistically.
Go ballistically tell it on the mountain.
Etc.
The MEMRI thread is here.
The MEMRI thread is here.
Karl,
“the appalling effrontery of serving a ’69 Bordeaux at a fish fry!”
Indubitably. The ’83 would be much better!