I'm drawn in by the Shakespeare connection and interested to see how he articulated his objections to the West, but forget all that. Read how flat and empty this is. This is from a period in his teenage years when he spent 10 weeks in Britain:
“I got the impression that they were a loose people, and my age didn’t allow me to form a complete picture of life there,” he wrote. “We went every Sunday to visit Shakespeare’s house. I was not impressed and I saw that they were a society different from ours and that they were a morally loose society.""Loose," that's all he's got. He has to repeat it. He says the name Shakespeare, yet he has not one shred of interest in who Shakespeare was and why he is so important to the people of the West.
Perhaps he was sent to Britain by others and resisted learning anything, but he comes across as an incurious dummy.
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Bin Laden went to Shakespeare’s house every week? That’s gotta be a lie. I’ve been there. You’ve seen it once, you’re good to go.
Well, a hundred generations of cousin marriage aren't known for enhancing intellect.
I wonder if the moral looseness bin Laden so objected to was portrayed in the porn he was so addicted to?
Britain is filled with loose canons -- ever since Henry VIII. American rebelled against a few.
He kept a journal? Haha gay.
Why were the bin Laden records hidden since 2011? Probably to hide the al Qeada -Iran connection.
Iran must be kept innocent for the ValJar master plan.
I can't remember their name, but someone who went on to be influential in the Muslim Brotherhood came to the US in the 50s, attended a church social, where men and women were dancing, and declared the US to be immoral and decadent.
If you come from a culture where men and women who are not related are not allowed to associate with each other and where women are required to cover up their bodies so that only the face is showing, or even to hide their face, then you are going to consider the West to be decadent and depraved. And in fact, a good portion of Western culture is decadent and depraved. Did you know the SC has decided that videos of women crushing rodents to death under their feet while wearing high heels is protected speech?
Written in English or in his own native language.
If the former, it may explain a lot.
Same basic story as Sayyid Qtub.
"470,000 documents"?
That's a lotta docs!
Let's assume that Osama bin Dumbguy read or wrote all of those documents. That's about 25 docs per day in every day of his life.
I don't buy it.
Is intelligence a prerequisite for a rabble rouser?
I'm not impressed by Shakespeare. There are those who can read and explain him well but why the middleman.
Also, did he write from right to left? He must've got ink poisoning. Maybe Obama didn't actually kill him.
So was this written in English, in which case the limited vocabulary might be due to his working in a second language? Or was it written in another language, with the later translation to English possibly losing some of the nuance?
That reads like the NPR pieces where they go to Wisconsin and describe what they see.
Surprising? Hypothesis: He is an incurious dummy.
Examine the hypothesis within the context of discoveries of government and media since he left office.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright delves deeply into the process of modern jihadism and how observation of Western society was a part of that process. It is naive to think that young Arabs would be captivated by Western culture. Other than dabbling in the pleasures of decadence, they have no interest.
Saudi Arab Muslims are stupid. The Persian and Egyptian Muslims are the intelligent ones we need to watch out for.
But all of them DESPISE all Christians for being ignorant idol worshippers. That is why the have a license to enslave, rape and slaughter us at the first opportunity. Allowing them to invade us at our expense only shows them how easy stupid Westerners are to murder at a time of their choosing.
Allu Akbar is a public proclamation that our murder proves the god of Mohammed is greater than God of Christianity...just like the 5 time daily call to prayer from towers proclaims the same evil lie.
Losers and incurious dummies they are.
I can't remember their name, but someone who went on to be influential in the Muslim Brotherhood came to the US in the 50s, attended a church social, where men and women were dancing, and declared the US to be immoral
Sayyid Qutb. One of his followers in Egypt was Ayman Zawahiri.
"incurious dummy"
Redundant.
I wonder if the moral looseness bin Laden so objected to was portrayed in the porn he was so addicted to?
Considering that Islamic heaven is unending copulation with re-virginated women every day, I'd guess that porn in this life is not considered to be immoral by a substantial number of fundamentalist believers.
Show me a curious dummy. Now that would be something new.
Someone that might confuse corpse man with corpsman.
Yes, it was Sayyid Qutb, Ron. I looked it up this morning thinking about the same thing you did.
"I'm not impressed by Shakespeare. There are those who can read and explain him well but why the middleman."
From that, we can extrapolate your limitations.
I hope that there are no further revelations on Osama. Stuff like this can really hurt his image.
""Loose," that's all he's got." It's all he needs.
"He says the name Shakespeare, yet he has not one shred of interest in who Shakespeare was" Well, isn't that a shame. Why exactly should a good Muslim have any interest in anything outside Islam anyway, except to destroy it more effectively?
"why he is so important to the people of the West." How important is he exactly to "the people" of "the West"? For example, could any randomly selected person from "the West" summarize the plot of any of his plays, or recite more than two lines of any of his poems?
"Show me a curious dummy. Now that would be something new."
Seems like the formula for many comedy plots. It's not only not new, it's hackneyed as a fictional story.
Also children. They grow out of their dumbness, but they're usually pretty curious.
According to OXFORD, Old Will is not so important any more. Him being a White Man means that he is no longer relevant in today's society. As another blogger often says "This will not end well."
"incurious dummy"
The "incurious" part is what creates the dummy. If your brain and soul are already filled with ideas that explain the world to your satisfaction, what more is there to learn?
This concept applies as well to a lot of the bitter dialog about current American politics. Fortunately our culture also permits heretical thought, if we chose to engage in it. Will that positive element of our culture remain strong enough? It is dominant in some aspects of our culture, but weak or repressed in others. It may be the central struggle of our time.
You'd think he could at least have gotten excited about Shakespeare's anti-Semitism.
I think he meant "loose" in the sense of a "loose woman", lacking in sexual morality. He may not have elaborated on it, but the observation doesn't show a lack of intelligence, it's his impression. A look at the British tabloids of that day, or television or any other barometer of popular culture and you just might have gotten that impression that Britons lacked morality. Had he taken a deeper, more thoughtful look...he miht have concluded the same thing.
When his mental endowment proved inadequate he blamed the unsatisfying encounters on looseness.
"Show me a curious dummy. Now that would be something new."
Harks back to John W. Campbell's Twilight: A curious machine.
From that, we can extrapolate your limitations.
Maybe Shakespeare is another game of thrones thing.
SoO when the SEAL blew his fucking brains out there wan't a lot to clean up. Huh.
I'm not impressed by Shakespeare. There are those who can read and explain him well but why the middleman.
The plays are over 400 years old. The language and culture has changed. That's like asking why the middleman for Aristophanes' plays.
I was once discussing history with a friend and he made the point, which is true, that a lot of people assume that people in the past aren't as smart as people today. To illustrate that isn't true he pointed out that peasants and the poor appreciated Shakespeare's plays when he was alive and, rhetorically, asked why that was. I replied, "because they could understand the dirty parts?"
Lots of people of limited inborn intelligence are still curious. Folks with Down syndrome, for example, or just people who aren't super bright but are still engaged in the world.
To the subject of the post: Muslim culture isn't exactly known for literacy and intellectual curiosity. Look up those Mark Steyn numbers on how many books are published in English every year vs. Arabic/Farsi etc.
At least he kept a journal, though. How many Americans have plenty of time for idiot TV and video games but don't have the time to write and reflect?
but he comes across as an incurious dummy.
He comes across as a devout Muslim. There are hundreds of similar accounts written by other Muslims about their visits to the West.
Shakespeare was popular in the Wild West, lots of traveling troupes of actors made a living performing his plays.
https://www.bard.org/news/shakespeare-and-the-wild-west
As for his importance, he helped shape the English language as it is spoken today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_influence
"Loose," that's all he's got. He has to repeat it. He says the name Shakespeare, yet he has not one shred of interest in who Shakespeare was and why he is so important to the people of the West.
Perhaps he was sent to Britain by others and resisted learning anything, but he comes across as an incurious dummy.
*****
You do realize that he's the product of an Muslim country where the ONLY thing that matters is Islam?
Show me a curious dummy. Now that would be something new.
Pinky.
He comes across as a devout Muslim.
Exactly. When a Western reporter asked a Taliban official what people in Afghanistan were supposed to do for fun, since just about everything that we in the West do to distract ourselves: music, most books, movies, dating, etc, was forbidden, he suggested that they could go to the park and look at the flowers.
Most people do not understand how utterly alien from Western culture devout Muslim culture is. Hell, I've run into people that don't even know that they don't eat pork or drink alcohol. I told that to one guy and he mused that it was no wonder they all seemed so pissed off all the time.
Ron Winkleheimer said...
As for his importance, he helped shape the English language as it is spoken today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_influence
William Caxton might deserve more blame.
How important is he exactly to "the people" of "the West"?
Shakespeare's impact on Western culture and the English language is grossly underestimated and broadly unrecognized.
William Caxton might deserve more blame
True, but Shakespeare's influence is substantial. I once had someone tell me that he thought Shakespeare's plays were all cliched. I asked him how he thought that had happened.
If you don't understand Shakespeare's importance in Western culture then you don't really understand Western culture. Thus the current drive to de-emphasize him in English departments in Universities.
Ron Winkenheimer reflects: I was once discussing history with a friend and he made the point, which is true, that a lot of people assume that people in the past aren't as smart as people today. To illustrate that isn't true he pointed out that peasants and the poor appreciated Shakespeare's plays when he was alive and, rhetorically, asked why that was. I replied, "because they could understand the dirty parts?"
Shakespeare wrote plays for the masses, just as Puccini and Verdi wrote operas for common folk. The distractions of television and other low-intellect diversions have actually made us a less 'literate' people than those of the Elizabethan era, regardless of the reading ability of the population.
Incidentally, "The Story of English" [McCrum] is a great read.
How important is he exactly to "the people" of "the West"? For example, could any randomly selected person from "the West" summarize the plot of any of his plays, or recite more than two lines of any of his poems?
I'd be surprised if most of us couldn't. I don't know about you, but in middle and high school coursework we read ... oh, lemme see, Julius Caesar, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Henry V and The Merchant of Venice. We went to Shakespeare in the [Central] Park for Richard III. (That set me off on reading all the histories, going all the way back to King John.) I played violin in the tiny orchestra for a production of The Comedy of Errors. And so forth. I admit to being hazy on most of the comedies, but you can ask me to summarize pretty much anything else.
It would be mighty strange if none of that schoolwork stuck by one at all.
As for poems, I can certainly recite a few of the sonnets. "When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see" is a favorite; so is "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun." (They are very different from each other.)
You will say that I'm not a randomly-selected person from "the West." True, I'm not. English is my first language, for one thing, which gives me a huge head start over, say, someone from a slum in Brazil. For another, I like literature.
Michelle, I was also fortunate to have studies Shakespeare in middle and high school and can still recite long soliloquies from Hamlet and Macbeth. IMO, Shakespeare was an even greater genius with words than Einstein was with physics.
I admit to being hazy on most of the comedies
Pretty much the same as Romeo and Juliet, except the lovers end up living happily ever after instead of dead. Seriously, two people want to get together, hilarious hi-jinks occur that try to keep them apart, but in the end, they end up together.
Taming of the Shrew is possibly the only one that differs from that. And, in my opinion, is the funniest of the lot.
IIRC, we read Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice. We saw performed Richard III, Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar, [still my favorite]. My granddaughters read Toni Morrison. :-(
IIRC, we read Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice.
At my high school, overseas on a military base, we read two Shakespeare plays a year. (My favorite was King Lear) My best friend was educated in the US and didn't read a single Shakespeare play in four years of high school.
I'd be surprised if most of us couldn't
Me too. Leonardo DiCaprio played Romeo in his younger days. I'm sure plenty of young women saw that film. And they might not recognize the plot as coming from Shakespeare, but plenty of films are just reworks of his plays.
http://metro.co.uk/2016/04/23/10-films-you-didnt-know-were-based-on-shakespeare-plays-5816493/
We also read The Iliad in high school.
Shakespeare's genius lies not in his plots but in his wordcraft.
This is a real blow to bin Laden's image. It's kind of like when I found out Kurt Cobain was a boring douche.
"I can't remember their name, but someone who went on to be influential in the Muslim Brotherhood came to the US in the 50s, attended a church social, where men and women were dancing, and declared the US to be immoral and decadent."
Sayyid Qutb was the guy you are thinking of.
Shakespeare's genius lies not in his plots but in his wordcraft.
I agree. There are a limited number of plots anyway. Boy seeks girl, love lost, hubris meets nemesis. That's not all of them, but it would be pretty hard to come up with a "new" plot that hasn't been used at some point in the last 6000 years of recorded thought. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the first known instance of what would eventually be the Buddy Movie trope.
Gilgamesh and Enkidu are at first antagonistic, but eventually befriend each other and have adventures together. Eventually one of them dies and the other mourns his loss. Except for the dying part we are talking Gibbs and Murdoch here. And the only reason they didn't kill Murdoch off is sequels.
As above, not surprising. Qutb did actually pay much more attention than the anecdote implies, but only to gather material to rationalize his own judgments.
This is not just an Islamic thing FYI. Asians in general, Japanese aside, have limited curiosity about western literature. To various degrees.
Look up Stanley Cavell's Must We Mean What We Say, or Disowning Knowledge in Seven Plays of Shadespeare, and see how much of Shakespeare you understood.
I can't remember the group, I think it was a founder of the Brotherhood who visited the US in the 50s and didn't didn't like us for stupid reasons like we put salt on our watermelon.
i know I read that somewhere.
" Except for the dying part we are talking Gibbs [sic] and Murdoch here."
why the middleman?
Have you ever tried reading The Canterbury Tales in its original form?
I even gave up on Bleak House and chose the miniseries.
@rh: ""I'm not impressed by Shakespeare. There are those who can read and explain him well but why the middleman." From that, we can extrapolate your limitations."
Getting that from a Dylan admirer has got to hurt, right?
"You will say that I'm not a randomly-selected person from "the West." True, I'm not. English is my first language."
Yeah, I would say that. And much of "the West" does not have English as its first language. And "the people" of "the West" care little about literature, Will included.
Meade said...
Show me a curious dummy. Now that would be something new.
and Gahrie replied...
Pinky.
Curious dummies. In fiction, anyone who would push the big red button marked "do NOT push". Pinky is definitely the archetype.
In real life, anyone who prefaces his emergency room visit with "hold my beer and watch this."
Understanding rhhardin is easier once one considers that he is a robot.
I can't read Middle English, at least not well, nor can I fully understand Shakespeare without a middleman. That's the problem with Willy Shakes. Other writers of his time are far more comprehensible to modern readers. Compare him with Ben Johnson, other English and American colonial writers of the time, and you'll have to conclude that he wasn't even TRYING to be understood. True, other writings of that time seem old-fashioned now, and even Jack London and Mark Twain used words and phrases that were commonplace then but unusual now. Thats also true, to a lesser degree, of writers from the more recent past.
That Shakespeare coined so many new words, something pointed to as part of his genius, says to me that he was just making up shit. I swear he was just trolling us, and English teachers everywhere fell for the gag.
And "the people" of "the West" care little about literature, Will included.
This is true, yes, but at least we still, perhaps grudgingly, insist that it be included in our children's curricula, even if they complain about it endlessly. My freshman's "I don't know WHY I have to read stupid Huckleberry Finn because who cares and I'll never use it;" and my retort "Because not reading literature means you remain ignorant about human nature and the human condition, not to mention grasping that the world and its history are complicated and wildly varying places, because that is the point of studying it" is a cliche in American homes.
I don't think many in the Muslim world have this conversation with their fourteen year old daughters. The ones who do have moved to the West, not tried to destroy it.
"From that, we can extrapolate your limitations."
Getting that from a Dylan admirer has got to hurt, right?
It's a level playing field. Anybody can play.
If you want classical English writers who can be read for pleasure, there's Coleridge's huge collection of essays, De Quincey, Carlyle.
The essayists.
As for Shakespeare enjoyment, I think of Terry Southern's gourmet, I think in Candy.
Did Shakespeare do anything on mob rule.
If you love or like Shakespeare, or are willing to give him a try, I highly recommend the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, VA (just across the Blue Ridge from Charlottesville). They really are one of the best Shakespeare troupes in the world, and have the only modern recreation of Shakespeare's indoor theater, the Blackfriars (there are 15+ modern Globes). They do no-gimmicks 'original practices' Shakespeare: lights on at all times, seats on stage, fast-moving, very little in the way of sets. It makes plays far more intelligible than other methods - I was never all that impressed by Shakespeare until I saw ASC performances. Now I go every weekend. (Note: I have no connection to the ASC except as a happy playgoer.) For those far from the Shenandoah Valley, they have a touring troupe that covers half the country.
Ann: The ASC touring troupe is doing Taming of the Shrew and Macbeth at UW Whitewater on March 13th and 14th. Go see them both!
YoungHegelian: You can see my bald head in a scene from King Lear on the ASC home page.
Anyone in or near the Shenandoah Valley: You only have 3-4 weeks left to see the resident troupe's Much Ado About Nothing, Love's Labour's Lost, 3 Henry VI, and (if you like musicals) Peter and the Starcatcher (a Peter Pan prequel). In January, they start a new season with Hamlet, Richard II, Tom Stoppard's Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, John Marston's Antonio's Revenge (very Hamletish, I'm told), and William Congreve's The Way of the World. Twelve actors do all five plays in rotating repertory, and you can see them all in one long weekend.
Shakespeare did give us glister.
What do we know about Shakespeare and sexual harassment. He was only the writer so I suppose he didn't get many babes.
Still, it might be enough to drive him out of the canon.
rhhardin:
Shakespeare on mob rule? 2 Henry VI includes Jack Cade and his sidekick Dick the Butcher, who go around slaughtering nobles and anyone who can read or speak French - very Pol Pot, that. Dick the Butcher is the one who says "First, let's kill all the lawyers". Other planks in the Cade platform include wearing the same clothes, sharing of women (Cade gets first crack at them), price-fixing (seven half-penny loaves will coast a penny) and making the Pissing Conduit (an open sewer) run with Claret wine. Shakespeare knew a lot about mob rule, peasant rebellion, and revolutionary socialism.
Unfortunately, it will be a few years before ASC (see my previous comment) does 2 Henry VI, since they just did it last year, it's an early play, and it's hard to sell sequels. (Ironically, it's probably not a sequel: he apparently wrote parts II-III first, then added Part I as a prequel, and they originally had different titles.)
Somebody should update Romeo and Juliet to social media. No need for balconies.
Bullying could be involved. Missed cell phone calls.
Click bait: Suicide, Is It for You?
If you can correctly identity fundamental historical trends, brains don't count for much, and maybe get you distracted and in the weeds.
Bin Laden’s dopey visits to Shakespeare’s birthplace immediately recalls Sayyid Qutb’s 1949 residency in Greeley, Colorado. “The Egyptian bureaucrat is considered the most influential thinker of fundamentalist Islam, the brains of the Muslim Brotherhood, the harshest critic of the West and the most effective advocate of a pan-Islam revival,” writes the Denver Post. “He settled into his career as an implacable foe of the U.S. during his now-infamous six-month stay in Greeley in 1949.”
It appears an American square dance in Greeley was the final straw. "They danced to the tunes of the gramophone, and the dance floor was replete with tapping feet, enticing legs, arms wrapped around waists, lips pressed to lips, and chests pressed to chests. The atmosphere was full of desire . . . "
Who ever said Bin Laden was supposed to be particularly smart?
Re the "loose" thing, it reminds me of my half-serious "Sex and the City" theory (aka the Samantha Theory) about 9/11, About a week after 9/11, Ben Stein appeared on one of the late-night talk shows at a time when people were still recovering from the shock and trying to assess what had happened. Stein said one of the factors involved in Jihadist anti-Americanism was the sexual liberation of American women. I often wondered if Mohammed Atta and his band of Merry Muslim Pranksters, while they were in the US taking flight lessons, etc., had watched SEX AND THE CITY. If so, I thought that Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte--especially Samantha--with their sexual "looseness" and, to Muslim primitives, "scandalous" attire, must have driven the Islamists bonkers, and maybe pushed them over the edge--not that they needed much pushing, but perhaps getting them to decide to hit NYC. the perpetual "bête noir" of resentment filled yokels from the boondocks.
That, or the strippers they used to patronize.
You don't actually have to be smart to be right, mindless evolution proves this.
Who ever said Bin Laden was supposed to be particularly smart?
He was strategically intelligent in this sense: He knew radical Islam could never defeat the West alone, but if it could goad the West into conflating radical Islam with all of Islam and attacking both indiscriminately, it might be able to provoke a Clash of Civilizations that would send everyone on earth to heaven or hell.
Yes, EP, he worked according to Democrat talking points. That's his brilliance! Normal Muslims all believe in democracy and all forms of multi gendered human freedom and universal rights.
Normal Muslims all believe in democracy and all forms of multi gendered human freedom and universal rights.
The distinction between radical Islam and ordinary Islam is made by every serious conservative strategic thinker, none of whom are Democrats. It was Barrack Obama who refused to use the phrase radical Islam.
The distinction between radical Islam and ordinary Islam is made by every serious conservative strategic thinker, none of whom are Democrats. It was Barrack Obama who refused to use the phrase radical Islam.
Were this the case, would we not see big rallies with 'normal' Muslims protesting ISIS?
Were this the case, would we not see big rallies with 'normal' Muslims protesting ISIS
We don't see big rallies of ordinary Republicans protesting occasional acts of right-wing terror in America, because Republicans rightly believe the acts have nothing to do with them. Ordinary Muslims think the same way.
I am heavily, heavily paraphrasing, but the thing that bin Laden said right after 9/11 that has always stuck with me is something like "We don't have to do do anything else. Now, they'll tear themselves apart." It's chilling first of all. Second, it seems to suggest insight into a blind spot we may have in the west. And third, it was pretty prescient.
We don't see big rallies of ordinary Republicans protesting occasional acts of right-wing terror in America
Because we're waiting for the first one.
it might be able to provoke a Clash of Civilizations that would send everyone on earth to heaven or hell.
You are absolutely fucking ignorant! Islam has been at war with Western Civilization for 1400 years....the crusades were a defensive action against Muslim aggression. Egypt was once the largest Christian nation in the world. Islam conquered most of Spain and it took centuries for the Spanish to kick them out. South Eastern Europe has spent centuries defending the rest of Europe from Muslim aggression? Do you at least know who Charles Martel was?
No dummy, 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is said to hold a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from North Carolina A&T State University.
Because we're waiting for the first one.
Abortion-clinic murders are political acts of terror, committed by right-wing terrorists. Ordinary Republicans rightly believe these acts have nothing to do with them.
You are absolutely fucking ignorant! Islam has been at war with Western Civilization for 1400 years.
First, wipe the spittle from your beard. Second, I understand it’s possible to talk about Islam in the same lunatic way as Islamic radicals who call Barack Obama a “Crusader” because he put some of their friends in the ground. It sounds dumb when they say it, and it sounds dumb when you say it.
Osama bin Laden had a degree in civil engineering and al-Zawahiri had a medical degree and was a practicing surgeon.
rhh,
"Somebody should update Romeo and Juliet to social media. No need for balconies."
One of the high schools in my home town already did this, but with Julius Caesar. It was a fabulous production.
Egregious Prole,
"The distinction between radical Islam and ordinary Islam is made by every serious conservative strategic thinker..."
And vehemently denied by such insignificant nobodies as Erdoğan: "There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it."
And vehemently denied by such insignificant nobodies as Erdoğan
Pro tip: If you're attempting to persuade an American audience, don't use wacky accent marks when referring to some foreign guy.
Egregious,
What the heck would you know about persuadable American audiences?
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