Bad dhimmi! You have used the wrong name! From Reuters:
TEHRAN - Iran banned National Geographic reporters and sales of the magazine until it corrects an atlas it published using a disputed name for waters off the Islamic Republic’s south coast.Iran insists on calling the waters the “Persian Gulf.” However, the saltwater body also touches the shores of eastern Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain. Many people in these other states refer to the waters as the “Arabian Gulf.”
Iran’s culture ministry said the atlas published by U.S.-based National Geographic labelled the waters as the “Persian Gulf,” but also included the “Arabian Gulf” name in parentheses on the map.
“As a reaction, we are banning their journalists from entering Iran and the distribution of their publications until they correct this,” the culture ministry’s foreign media director Mohammad Hossein Khoshvaght told Reuters.
Arabian Gulf or Persian Gulf
Hmmm...maybe they should call it the "Human rights black hole" instead.
What a bunch of Islamic crybabies. "You called it the Arabian Gulf! You hurt our feelings! Waa! Wa! Wa! You insulted Islam! Now we have to blow you up! Wa! Wa! Wa!"
Get over yourselves already, Iran. The day you can produce anything of the intellectual caliber of National Geographic is the day we'll care about your opinion.
I've always known it as the Persian Gulf.. it should stay.. it's kinda like changing the Gulf of Mexico.. or maybe adding palestine to a map...
Wonder how they'll feel if Iran gets renamed "Parking?"
I don't know what they're whining about; they renounced their own superior civilization for the abomination that was spawned in Arabia. They adopted Arabian culture and religion, embraced its depravity and helped spread this anathema far and wide.
They wouldn't be Shi'ite muslims if not for Arabia, depite their little disagreement and split centuries ago.
They have Arabia to thank for what they are today, although were it me, I would despise the Arabs for entirely different reasons.
Let the Iranians make their own maps. Let them invent their own medicine, physics, chemistry, mathematics, economics, social sciences, engineering, semiconductors, etc. In short, let them remain on their neo-Malthusian path that leads to the "perfection" of the 7th century.
Persian Gulf -- Sinus Persicus -- it was and is, and here one should take the side of Iran, even if that same Islamic Republic of Iran itself supports a good many other renamed toponyms -- such as "West Bank" after 1948 -- for like the Romans two thousand years before, the Arabs wanted to efface the Jewish connection to a certain land, and replaced "Judea" and "Samaria" (though these terms were in the Bible, and used by Jesus) with "West Bank." Curious that the Egyptians did not bother to rename "Gaza" as well; possibly they felt the word was not as "Jewish" as "Judea" and "Samaria." In any case, it is always amusing to see the kind of comment in the press about how the Israeli "settlers" use the "Biblical terms" Judea and Samaria -- why shouldn't they, after all? Would it not be strange to adopt the brand-new, obviously political "West Bank" that tells us nothing? And why is this use of toponyms of long lineage any different from the Italians using the word "Rome" or the English the word "London" (from Londinium)?
We all understand that when Saigon becomes Ho Chi Minh City, or Cambodia Campuchea, or Ceylon Sri Lanka, something is going on -- something about politics, and a claim is being made.
It is no different with "West Bank" or "Arabian Gulf." A deal -- we will be careful not to permit this "Arabian Gulf" from being used to efface the historic presence of Persia, and of Persian civlization (islamized, and almost arabized, by the Muslim invaders) in the Gulf, the Persian Gulf. But it will be done in the same spirit in which the Iranians, after their next, and more sensible -- because they will, however temporarily, be coming to their senses about Islam -- revolution, will promise not to use the Arab-inspired "West Bank" but those terms which go back several millennia, and which can be found on all the maps of classical antiquity, and on the later maps, throughout the Western world, of English, French, Italian, Dutch, German, American cartographers, throughout the Western world -- Judea and Samaria.
So, Iran -- do we have a deal? Isn't it time to let the toponyms express what Iranians and Israelis want to remind the world, and the Arabs want that world to forget -- that the Arabs do not own the MIddle East, that the MIddle East is not the same thing as that "Arab world" we hear so much about, and Berbers, Kurds, Copts, Jews, Persians, and a great many other smaller communities of those peoples who were subject to conquest, and slow asphyxiation, by Muslim Arabs, have a right to their own recognition, the survival of their own culture and languages, and this time, with "Arabian Gulf," the world will reply -- not so fast, buster.
And while we're at it, let's stop being silly and use -- and use again and again -- those toponyms "Judea" and "Samaria." Go ahead -- you will feel awkward and self-conscious at first. But after a while, after many repetitions, if enough people do it, those placenames will simply be escorted back into use. And at the same time, now that the Inventor of His People is dead, let's stop using, uncritically, that absurd fabrication the "Palestinian people" --- possibly first with the use of quotations to indicate doubt ("Palestinian" Arabs), and then simply -- the "local Arabs."
It is a lot easier to see things clearly if they are phrased properly. Consider the example below:
"The Israelis claim that the occupied West Bank and other Arab lands of the Palestinian people belong to them and will not agree to a two-state solution."
Rewrite, please:
"The Israelis claim that they are justified in holding onto Judea and Samaria, but will offer the local Arabs as much autonomy as is consonant with Israeli security needs."
Now back to our regularly-scheduled program:
"Tensions broke out in the Persian Gulf today a week after the Arab League declared its suppport for the "legitimate rights of the Khuzistanian people" could no longer be denied by the so-called "Iranian" government in lands that rightly belong, as part of the former Abbasid Caliphate, to the Arabs...."
One more thing about the National Geographic. It specializes in pretty pictures, and bland text. It emphasizes, therefore, local color and the exotic, over an understanding of what goes on in the minds of men. Pictures of mosques, of men at prayer, of a woman scurrying past a beautiful facade in Afghanistan, the Iznik tulip tiles, and so on -- this has been its Islamic specialty. Of course, this coffee-table book approach to Islam -- also much favored by Esposito and Oxford University Press -- gives us all the Beauty and none of the Beast. We are ravished, temporarily, by the ornate calligraphy and geometric designs -- forgetting, for the nonce, the far more spectacular creations of Western, or for that matter Far Eastern Art. That calligraphy, those blue mosques, go a long way, in the world of National Geographic, to prevent our thinking overmuch about what, exactly, makes these people tick? What is Islam all about, anyway? The pretty pictures are not aids, but obstacles, to thought.
Robert Azzi was for years a kind of Society Photographer of Saudi Arabia for National Geographic -- he was not unknown in certain American ruling-class circles either. The noble Bedouin, right out of Wilfred Thesiger, the Arabian steed out of Carl Raswan, the endless dunes (looking like breasts in of those 1940s Edward Weston nudes), the Rulers at -- you guessed it -- the "majlis" (you know, with a title like "Democracy Saudi-Style"), it was all so silly, so misleading, and seemingly, at the time, so unimportant to many. The assorted Governors and Grosvenors who ran the National Geographic were well-disposed to the Saudis and other rich Arabs -- they were their sort. One thinks of a few Washington names -- Kermit Roosevelt, Selma Roosevelt, Miles Copeland, and others who helped create that genteel Washington atmosphere in which Saudi Arabia, with its primitive society, and inculcated hate toward all Infidels, could nonetheless be depicted as something other than what it is (for more on this, read J. B. Kelly's essay "Of Valuable Oil and Worthless Policies" or google "jihadwatch" and the title, and "Posted by Hugh" and relevant passages from that essay will appear).
It would be hard for National Geographic to actually inform us about Islam -- that least visual of religions. Pictures here simply get in the way. One wants, instead, quotations from Qur'an, hadith and sira. Perhaps a photograph of an imam delivering a khutba at Friday prayers, with the full text carefully transcribed? But that would not be in the National Geographic line. If you can't take its picture, it really doesn't exist.
A problem. So take those National Geographic photo-essays -- the spice-market in Oman, a dhow plowing its eternal way along the coast of Araby, traders from the Hadramaut, a Yemeni village perched high and seemingly unsteadily on a mountain-side, the palace of Sami Algawi, or pictures of skyscrapers in Riyadh and Jiddah, and of course the gold-market and dens of relative iniquity in Bahrain (and perhaps a glimpse of the Qatari ruler's chic wife, who no doubt will give everyone the pleasant illusion that a lot is happening to open up things for women -- why, any decade now that should be happening). And possibly a glimpse at the broadcasting headquarters of Al Jazeera, demurely described as an "Arab news satellite channel," instead of as the murderous Beobachter Zeitung-cum-TASS, responsible for deaths of American soldiers that, in fact, it is.
Regarding the "Arab news satelitte channel", and where it appears to fit in on the Islamic terrorism nexus, posted on FrontPageMag.com's warblog this morning (do not recall the original source, but it could have been rogersimon.com):
Iraqi security investigators have revealed that Al-Zarkawi’s right hand man Omar Hadid was a member of Sadam Hussein’s personal body-guards unit. Omar Hadid later joined Al Qaeda and was trained in Al Qaeda’s Afghanistan camps. Omar is the brother of the manager of the Baghdad office of Al-Jazeera news channel, which was closed three month ago.
The investigators also revealed that Omar led the terrorists in their fight for Felujah against the U.S. and Iraqi forces. Further, they suspect that he is still in Felujah. They also said that he had left Saddam’s service about 10 years ago to join Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Omar then left Afghanistan for Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Omar then returned to Iraq shortly before the war.
The sources also confirmed that Omar is the brother of Hamid Hadid the manager of Al-Jazeera news Channel office in Iraq. The Al-Jazeera office in Baghdad was closed three months ago because of their biased broadcasting, and inciting violence in the land. Omar’s second brother was killed with the rest of his family during an air attack on their house. This attack took place two hours after Omar visited his second brother’s home. We later tried to contact Hamid Hadid in Baghdad and Doha (Qatar’s capital) to confirm this information but to no avail.
Great posts Hugh, as usual. I will check out that essay. Do you know if it's in Print?
Islamic Riddle
We all know that the Star in the Jewish religion is the Star of David.
And we know that the Cross in Christianity is there because Jesus was crucified on the cross.
But do you know where the Crescent or the Moon comes from in Islam?
a) The Turkish flag
b) Pre-Islamic Allah was a Moon God
c) The Arabs were deeply impressed with the shape of the Moon
If you chose b) then you are correct.
Prophet Mohammed worshiped a God named Allah before Islam was founded. Pre-Islamic Allah had three daughters - all mentioned in the Koran and were known as the Trinity Dessert Goddesses, Al-lat(u), Menat and Al-Uzza. [1 God + 3 Gods = 4 Gods.]
All of these Goddesses would have been important to Mohammed’s family or the Quraish. Allatu was Allah’s main daughter; a Mother Goddess, known simply as ‘The Goddess’. Allatu was so popular that she was borrowed by the Greeks and became Leto – Mother of Apollo. Al-Uzza was represented as the morning star - Venus.
But more significantly Menat had a cult which was between Mecca and Medina and was worshiped in the form of a ‘Black Stone’ or the Kaaba at Mecca; the very same black stone that every devote Muslim is required to encircle during his (her) pilgrimage or Hajj to Mecca at Ramadan.
This explains how it could be that Mohammed’s own father was named Allah or Abdullah - which translates into a servant of Allah – even before Islam was created. Mohammed was born into a family known as the Quraish {Webster's Third Dictionary}, who for more than 200 years were the caretakers of the ‘Black Stone’ or Kaaba at Mecca. Before Islam, Mohammed’s religion was known as Kaaba with Allah as God.
Worshiping Moon and Sun Gods and Goddesses were common in ancient times, from the Queen of Sheba in Ethiopia to the Ancient Greeks. Historical facts seem to show that Islam has its foundation in this Mythology, with any Biblical connection being added later – perhaps to give the religion legitimacy in the face of the other powerful regional ‘One God’ religions. (Most things Islamic were developed under the Syrians, who took over Islam after killing Mohammed’s cousin.)
Seeing that for centuries, including the present, Persians and Arabs cannot tolerate the sight of each other, it's no wonder Iran is up in arms over N.G.'s calling of the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Gulf...you'd think these geniuses would know this but I guess they don't.