Last thing in the world Ferrigno expected was to start seeing his fiction turn into reality. A pretty scary thing. He's done a post on the writing of his novel and his intentions therein. Here it is:
From his website, www.prayersfortheassassin.com :
December 12th, 2005
Prayers at the Superbowl and the French Intifada
Posted by Robert Ferrigno
One of the challenges of writing Prayers for the Assassin was to create a world that was utterly different, but that retained enough familiar touch points so that the reader doesn’t get too disoriented. I thought I had found the perfect opening line:
The second half of the Superbowl began immediately after noon prayers.
I intended this to reveal the new world of the former USA as an Islamic republic, in which the faithful are called to prayer five times a day, but also one in which people still love their Superbowl. (even if they have to make due with non-alcoholic beer, and khat, a euphoric plant indigenous to North Africa.) It was this very mix of the familiar with the alien that I counted on to drop the reader into my fictional universe, make them realize we weren’t in Kansas anymore. I thought I was being creative. Until last week.
Last week the National Football League announced the Giants stadium in New Jersey would now include a special area for Muslims who wanted to pray privately during NFL games. So much for my creativity. Maybe I’ll have to settle for precognition.
While in Prayers for the Assassin the conversion of the USA (and like all mass conversions, there are differing degrees of commitment) came about after a prolonged period of economic and social dislocation, I wrote that Western Europe converted in slow motion, a victim of demographics and the surrender of the religious and cultural elite.
Enter the start of the French intifada in November, three weeks of rioting in the Muslim ghettos surrounding Paris, with 100 buildings nd over 9,000 cars torched. Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic took pains to assure us that everything’s fine now, nothing that more public sector jobs in Paris and a dose of sensitivity training for the French cops won’t cure. Don’t believe it. The riots were just the beginning. Previews of coming attractions.
The dirty little secret is that European socialism can’t grow jobs or children. Unemployment averages ten percent, officially, and for at least the last ten years France, Italy and Germany have had a flatline birth rate among white, native-born Europeans. All population growth is through immigration and the children of immigrants. Think about all those National Geographic specials where some PhD in a pith helmet is warning of the consequences of lowland gorillas or cheetahs not producing enough offspring to continue the species. What does it say about a culture where the people are too lazy, distracted or self-centered to reproduce?
Contrast the native culture with the Muslim culture in Europe. And it has to be considered a separate and distinct culture. Multi-culturalism and the basic nature of the Muslim faith assure that. Though suffering economic hardship and racism, European Muslims have plenty of children. They love children. Consider them a blessing from God. Muslims already constitute over 7.5 percent of the French population, and a dramatically higher percentage of people under the age of thirty, the result of a Muslim birth rate three times that of the native-born. The French army is fifteen percent Muslim, which may be one reason that the troops were never called in to restore order during the riots. Demographics rules.
Meanwhile, in Great Britain local banks have curtailed the centuries-old practice of giving piggy banks to children, out of deference to the Muslim abhorrence of swine. (I am not making this up) Last week the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, apologized for the Crusades, which began in 1095 when Pope Urban II called on Christendom to take up the sword to “liberate the Holy Land” after Muslims cut off Jerusalem from Christian pilgrims. Atrocities abounded on both sides for a hundred years. No similar apology has been issued by Muslim clerics that I can find. Why should they?
There is an ancient Arabic proverb: the falling camel attracts many knives.
This entry was posted on Monday, December 12th, 2005 at 6:04 pm.
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