Jew-hatred all around: the Edinburgh Theatre Festival (the mainstream one, not the one on the fringe) is featuring an original piece of anti-Jewish agit-prop, commissioned especially for this year's festival.

http://www.eif.co.uk/E27_Prayer_Room.php

Posted by: scaramouoche at August 15, 2005 8:41 AM

You think that is a bad play?

Look what other delight the Edinburgh Festival is serving up this year:

Prayer Room by Shan Khan

A witty and provocative new play about multicultural life, commissioned by the Festival from the Scottish playwright Shan Khan.

There was a place, where The Christians and The Muslims existed in relative peace. Everyone was more or less happy, except for The Jews - who were few and had to be thankful to their Christian Overlords, for the little space they were accorded.

Then one day more Jews came, and it soon became apparent to them that they'd need their own space. So they got their own space - but at The Muslims' expense. The Muslims of course are fuming. The Jews feel they're perfectly within their rights. And The Christians are trying to take a back-seat and let the other two share the blame. This place is a multi-faith Prayer Room in a British college.

'Except for the Jews'...

Dont you just love the British theatrical establishment? Their brave 'anti-Zionism', their plays about Rachel Corrie, their 'brave' 'transgression' of 'taboos'?

Where would we be without our luvvies?

Where would be without our luvvie half-wits pompously lecturing the world about what to do?

Where would we be without our luvvies to 'bravely' produce 'witty and provocative' plays about 'the Jews' marginalising the Muslims from the prayer room of a British college? (Ah yes, those benign Muslims on campuses - no Hizb ut Tahrir and other fascist organisations harassing and bullying Jews, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs in England - no, not at all, it is all, in fact, the Jews fault)

Luvvie-Darlings where would we be without our luvvies?

Posted by: Zico at August 15, 2005 8:49 AM

scaramouch

What a coincidence! We were posting about the same thing at the same time. Great minds think alike and all that.

Here is more on the playwright:

Prayer Room promises to be bigger than Office in every sense, but with the same quick-fire language and deft grasp of colloquial speech which led him to be compared to Tarantino and Mamet, the same young, hip energy. In his prayer room, it's the Jews who are left without a space of their own, though they manage to get one at the Muslims' expense. Then it's prayer books at dawn, while the Christians keep their heads down to make sure the others get the blame.

It has a certain metaphorical quality, I suggest, as regards a certain global situation. Khan is unflinching. "The problem of Israel and Palestine is the biggest one on earth that needs to be sorted out. That is what will stop the terrorists, as a Muslim I will say that. Sort that out, and there will be a domino effect, everything else will fall into place." Instead of a solution we have "double standards on all sides", a lot of ineffectual hand-wringing and a refusal to talk about what matters.

"I'm trying to look at it not from an Islamic point of view. I would like to think that Prayer Room doesn't say, 'Jews get out' or 'Israelis get out', I'd like to think it says 'This is a f***ing world of shit, and no-one is in the right, no-one is in the wrong, what we need to do is open up a good and proper debate, a debate that has never been opened before'. Instead of saying 'Look at these stupid idiots (in Palestine) blowing themselves up', you need to ask, 'What have you done to drive these people to blow themselves up?'

Wow, how transgressive and brave. I cansee why all those limp wristed luvvi half-wits fall at the feet of this kind of 'plain speaking' 'brave' playwright - Muslim bigots are hot stuff these days (in more ways than one)

Posted by: Zico at August 15, 2005 8:55 AM

Ah, the star-crossed lovers. Leyla, the "Palestinian" girl, whose Jewish lover -- so very realistic, this script -- must be left so that she can return to become a suicide-bomber. Yet strangely, in this play, not a single phrase from Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira are recited. One would hardly know that something called Islam exists. No, it is all just the Montagues and Capulets, only this time one side uses explosive belts.

Who plays the Nurse? Who gives this "Palestinian" Juliet advice on how to behave? And hark, what idiocy in yonder stage-set dawns.

Why not put it on here, and there, and everywhere? The healing power of art, which serves to transcend those little misundrstandings that prevent all of us from being One Big Happy Family of Man. And especially those crazed Israelis, who would deny the "Palestinians" their teeny-tiny understandable demands. Catharsis. Art. All that.

Never, never, never, never, never.

Posted by: Hugh at August 15, 2005 9:07 AM

Zico--thanks for that article. I'm going to post about it in my blog (and give you a hat tip).

Posted by: scaramouoche at August 15, 2005 9:09 AM

In the above link I provided to the interview with the playwright Shan Khan, he states:

The problem of Israel and Palestine is the biggest one on earth that needs to be sorted out. That is what will stop the terrorists, as a Muslim I will say that. Sort that out, and there will be a domino effect, everything else will fall into place."

Then at the end of the interview we get this wonderful and moving testimony to the human spirit and British multicultural tolerance and diversity:

He sees the London Underground, target of this month's terror attacks, as emblematic of this.

"I get on the tube in London, I look around and see a brown man, a black man, a Chinese man, a Polish man, and it fills my heart with joy, because that's the way the world should be. I'm a realistic idealist. I understand that maybe the world ain't like that, but I wish it was."

So wrapped up in his Jew hatred is he that he cannot ask why it was that Muslim boys from Leeds (What? Is Leeds Zionist Occupied now) blew themselves up on his beloved Underground - it does not occur to him to ask why it is that it is British Muslims like himself who want to slaughter infidels and kill kill kill people of all those diverse races - not Jews, not whites, not blacks, not Hindus, not Sikhs, not Buddhists, but MUSLIMS who want to blow themselves up and slaughter innocents in the multicultural Underground he loves so much.

But his answer is simple - solve Israel-Palestine and terrorism will cease. But this idiot savant is incapable of inspecting or worrying over the fact that his logic is either legitimised or de-legitimised by the fact that his fellow British Muslims are slaughtering British citizens in the name of their ideology.

And did the journalist inteviewing pick him up on this point? Naah. He is a radical take-no-prisoners kind of guy, you see.

A brave playwright? About as brave as a teddy bear. A really brave playwright would examine the reasons for the fascist grip in the British Muslim community - instead he writes plays about the damn Jews.

Pathetic - truly deeply wretchedly pathetic. The British theatrical establishment is a den of buffoons, hypocrites, cowards, moral imbeciles, and useful idiots for anti Semites and terrorist apologists.

You could not make it up.

Posted by: Zico at August 15, 2005 9:18 AM

ah, yes. the "brave" anti-jewish playwright. brave. like sheep. brave like the anonymous coward in a lynch-mob.

you want to be brave? do something original, write a play investigating the infantile inability of muslims to comprehend the concept of personal responsibility, their inability to create anything but more muslims and their apparently genetic ability to turn all they touch into a stinking rubbish heap.

"Isreal and palestine....sort that out...there will be a domino effect...."

Now THAT, i believe. Now THERE, i agree with you and think you speak the truth. But don't think for a minute that i am so G*ddamn stupid that I believe it in the same bizarre, ghoulish, and sick way that you do. can you spell taqqiya?

Posted by: t-ham at August 15, 2005 9:36 AM

"The problem of Israel and Palestine is the biggest one on earth that needs to be sorted out. That is what will stop the terrorists, as a Muslim I will say that."
-- from an interview with Shan Khan, playwright of "The Prayer Room," shown at the same Edinburgh Festival

The Muslim from Pakistan Shan Khan (who may or may not now be a citizen of the U.K., but it hardly matters -- his loyalty is to Islam to the umma al-islammiyya, his views are completely colored by Islam; he is a Muslim who happens to live in the United Kingdom, and may even happen to possess, British citizenship, but that is a trivial and accidental detail of his existence, though it is not so trivial to the non-Muslim British among whom he lives, and who must now endure his presence and that of many others who see the world, as he does, through the prism of Islam, a distorting lens, a lens that automatically leads to a misapprehension of the universe.

Of course, the Shan Khans of this world will not be touched, though they work busily to propagandize on behalf of the Jihad, whether that is the "little Jihad" against Israel, or the "greater Jihad" against all non-Muslims everywhere, but especially against the most powerful and determined Infidel power, the United States. And Shan Khan, though he is a Jihad-promoter with words, attempting to mislead the Infidels about the nature of Islam and the nature of the Muslim inability to coutenance Israel's existence, will not be touched. For unless he (and those like him) are caught openly supporting or committing acts of terrorism, they are safe. This, surely, is setting the rules on Muslim deportment far too low, and the rules for deporting Muslims from Infidle lands far too high.

What is it Shan Khan and all the Shan Khans everywhere, wish us to beleive? They wish us to believe that the Qur'an, the Hadith, and Sira, do not exist, or do not contain the passages we find in them, or that those passages have been misinterpreted or misunderstood by Infidels. They wish us to believe that there is no desire to spread Islam until it covers the globe, no deep inculcated desire to ensure that "Islam dominates and is not to be dominated," no division of the universe between dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb, or between Believer and Infidel, no desire to ensure that dar al-Harb is swallowed up by dar al-Islam -- no, that's all irrelevant, or made-up, in the taqiyya-and-tu-quoque world of Shan Khan, playwright, and author of "The Prayer Room."

Instead, we Infidels are asked to believe that it is only the "dispute" between Israel and a place called "Palestine" which causes so much disturbance among Muslims world-wide, and if things are sorted out to Muslim satisfaction -- and we know what that means -- all manner of things shall be well. And since the Israelis will not go quietly, and the Jihad against Israel, so demurely described as a "dispute," will continue forever until Israel disappears, one can continue to deflect Infidel attention from the larger Jihad to the smaller Jihad, and to pretend that if only the demands made in that smaller Jihad were to be met, the larger Jihad would evanesce, disappear. A comforting thought, for some Infidels -- and a snare, and a delusion.

Now before answering the general matter, let us stop to examine that phrase "between Isreal and Palestine." Notice please the reification of the "Palestinian" Arab demands, the "Palestinian" Arab control of something called the "Palestinian Authority," into a state. That state, of course, does not exist. There is no state called
"Palestine." But if there were to be such a state, it would overlap, and indeed be coterminous with, Israel. For the very word
"Paslestine" was used by the Romans to efface the Jewish connection to the land, and it was used, more neutrally, by Western Christendom, simply as the name for that area, extending from the Mediterranean across the Jordan River, deep into what is now called The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (and which contains all of Eastern Palestine, as "Palestine" was always defined for nearly 2000 years, until the Arabs came along and insisted that "Palestine" only referred to the area west of the Jordan River, and the world decided to believe them). This toponym "Palestine" was a name borrowed from the Greeks by the Romans, who called the area "Palestine" -- a clearly adjectival form -- from the longer "Syria palaestinorum" or "Syria of the Philistines," after an Aegean sea-tribe that had landed on the southwest coast, established five small cities, and then disappeared in Biblical times). It was chosen by the Romans to efface the Jewish connection to the land which the place-name "Judea" made more obvious. Subsequently, Western Christendom, while aware that the area was "Judea" or "Israel" (Eretz Israel) to the Jews, used the name "Palestine" at times, but more often simply the phrase "Holy Land" (Terre Sainte) was used, by everyone from the profane Petrarch (Itinerarium ad terram sanctam) to the sacred Riccoldo da Montecroce (Liber peregrinationis -- recently put into French in a very pretty edition, with the Latin en face). This was natural; this was not a political statement.

The Pakistani playwright (who may or may not have obtained, by birth or otherwise, British citizenship, but his heart belongs to Allah) would like us to believe two things simultaneously:

1) there is a "dispute" between "Israel" and "Palestine" which is solvable, because it is merely a matter of adjusting borders, a land dispute between two tiny peoples, each struggling for its etc.... This "dispute" has NOTHING To do with religion, NOTHING to do with Islam.

2) On the other hand, at the very same time, the world's Muslims, from Kashmir to the Moro Islands to the Moluccas, to the southern Sudan and northern Nigeria, to the subways of Madrid and London, to the bridges over canals in Amsterdam, to the schoohouses in Beslan and theatres in Moscow, will calm down, will have no more quarrels, will feel good about themselves and ready to fully participate as loyal citizens of Infidel nation-states -- if only, if only, that "dispute" between "Israel" and "Palestine" which -- let it be clearly emphasized by Shah Khan and all other Muslims everywhere, has NOTHING TO DO WITH ISLAM, but somehow will have a greater effect on the world's Muslims than anything else that could possibly be conceived.

Now I can believe a few impossible things before breakfast. I can believe one or two before lunch. But I have now had both breakfast and lunch, and this impossible thing that Shan Khan, playright and propagandist, wishes us all to believe -- well, this is one of those impossible things that I simply cannot make myself believe.

Can you?

2) which was the name used by the Romans, and subsequently by Western Christendom, for precisely the same land known to those who had lived on it and made it famous, the Jews, as "Eretz Israel" or the Land of Israel -- so that the "dispute" is like that between two who claim to be the mothers of the same child (gee, that little story rings a Biblical bell, doesn't it?), or between the true King and the False Pretender, both of whom claim the same crown. There is no way to split the difference -- not the child, not the throne, and not the Land of Israel which its enemies have taken to calling (in part, but for the whole -- there is a sly synecdoche at work).

Please, Dear Reader, adopt what has been suggested here. Take those phrases so beloved of Karen Armstrong, about the Lesser Jihad and the Greater Jihad. But use them in a new, and more telling, and much more truthful way, as has been attempted here. Speak of the "lesser Jihad" against tiny Israel, and the "Greater Jihad" against all Infidels everywhere. Explain that a victory in the "Lesser JIhad" will whet, not sate, Arab and Muslim appetittes to continue with enthusiasm, with a sense of ultimate triumph (so often drummed-up with those phrases about the "world's fastest-growing religion" that are completely without evidence, but serve the purpose of scaring Infidels, and making Muslims think that they are on the Path to Inevitable Victory) the "Greater Jihad."

Yes, put it in terms of the "Greater Jihad" and the "Lesser Jihad" (and each local manifestation of the Jihad -- as, say, in the massacre of Hindu villages in Kashmir, is another one of these "Lesser Jihads" but for historical and geogrpaphical reaons, the Jihad against Israel is the one that is best known, though not properly identified as what it is, to the world at large).

Let it be known. Let the connection be made clear between this Lesser Jihad, and all the Lesser Jihads, that add up to the one "Greater JIhad" in which all Infidels -- Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Confucians, agnostics and atheists, and all non-Muslims whatever their faith or lack of it -- are regarded as the enemy, an enemny to be offered only three possibiliites: death, conversionh, or the status of permanent humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity that is offered to all dhimmis, everywhere, whenever Islam, unaffected by pressure form outside powers, has had its way.

The Lesser Jihad against Israel, the Greater Jihad against not the West, but All the Rest -- that is now to best define, and best comprehend, the problem.

Posted by: Hugh at August 15, 2005 12:48 PM

I don't recall a similar piece about the vainglorious killers of the IRA being lionized with operatic glee. (With the popular Northern Ireland protest song "Rubber Bullets" as the opening aria?)

Wasn't that "trouble" even closer to home, for even longer?

But the silence is telling about their own terrorists.

(And, of course, the first review for this current bit of febrile flapdoodle will be:

WHAT A BOMB!)

Posted by: BigSleep at August 15, 2005 2:35 PM

"The problem of Israel and Palestine is the biggest one on earth that needs to be sorted out. That is what will stop the terrorists, as a Muslim I will say that. Sort that out, and there will be a domino effect, everything else will fall into place."

As a secularist I will say that he means that the other kuffir will fall into their proper place - subservience. Once nasty old Israel is "sorted out".

As a solution to Middle Eastern issues, that strikes me as a subtle prod towards more of a "final" solution.

Of course, what would have stopped islamic aggression back when there was no Israel to hate?

Well, Sura 9 seems to about cover that one.

(Golly, sorry, Ia old fellow, but until Sura 9 can be dispensed with, it still sticks out like a man with feet and hands cut off on alternate sides. And allah knows least.)

Geoff

Posted by: Geoff at August 15, 2005 11:33 PM

The nice thing is that it has been critically slaughtered by the EVENING STANDARD. The STANDARD is the local newspaper for London and its critics have more influence than those of any other newspapers, including the big national broadsheets, over the West End theatregoing public. I hope I can safely say that this play will not have a long and succesful West End run.

Posted by: Paolo at August 17, 2005 3:15 PM