Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “self-pity,” came with an emailed explanation (below).
Fouad Ajami is the chap.
I’m not sure that Ajami used the phrase “belligerent self-pity”, but he was a scholar at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a big fan of the Iraq War.
And once again, Mo instantiates what he decries:
Just change Me to Mo, and most of the song is already written.
True. One example. Quote from Google.
“The word algebra is derived from the Arabic term al-jabr, originating from the 9th-century treatise Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala (“The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing”) written by Persian mathematician Al-Khwārizmī.”
They’ve lost the bird, which is telling. There used to be a bird in the bench scenes.
The phrase “belligerent self-pity” describes more than modern Islam, I think. It seems to be resonating across cultures.
“I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!”
“I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!”
Unfortunately, at the cultural level there is no five day waiting period.
Ajami wrote, “Given the belligerence and self-pity in Arab life, its retreat from modernist culture, and its embrace of conspiracy theories, there are justifiable grounds for believing there are no native liberal or secular traditions to embrace the United States and use its victory to build an alternative to despotic rule.”
https://home.uncg.edu/~jwjones/world/readings/ajami.html
If civilization A conquers civilization B, is it fair to attribute the cultural achievements of the civilization formerly known as B to A?
I think this is likely what happened with Islamic conquests.