“This work”, says the publisher, “was not named ‘The Qur’an and its Translation’, because its author, M. Quraish Shihab, was acutely aware that the Qur’an is a holy book that cannot possibly be translated into any other language.” #qurantranslationoftheweek 🌏🇮🇩

Nevertheless, Muhammad Quraish Shihab’s (MQS)“Al-Qur’an dan Maknanya” (“The Qur’an and its Meanings”, first published in 2010) comes across as a Qur’an translation, rather than a qur’anic commentary.

Published in a single 650-page volume, which includes both the Arabic text of the Qur’an and an appendix that summarizes the content of all surahs, the work renders the meaning of the Qur’an into Indonesian verse by verse.

Some footnotes contain additional explanations, and the occasion of revelation of a segment of the Qur’an is infrequently provided, but the proportion of such additional material is small.

MQS (b. 1944) is a prolific Indonesian exegete, and a highly visible one as well, as he was the country’s first TV exegete. In 2004, he began hosting TV programmes that focused exclusively on the interpretation of the Qur’an.

1. Is @FoxNews" giving aid and comfort" to insurrectionists? Can the sponsors, hosts, directors, producers, writers, managers, and directors be charged under 18 U.S. Code § 2383 - Rebellion or insurrection?

I’ve enjoyed reading @AlexJLanglands The Ancient Ways of Wessex & learned how #chalkstream #winterbournes & #springs have influenced our culture & cultural heritage - #Ridgeway paths that are now #NationalTrails

Perhaps old news to many, but new to me so here’s a short thread…

Our #ridgeway paths are a bundle of numerous routes which I always assumed followed the high ground for strategic purposes & avoiding the muddy clay vales. Timperley & Brill (1965) described our #ridgeways as literally high ways, although they could have called them “dry ways”.

Langlands (2019. p14) explains that #ridgeways or watershed-ways were used out of necessity to avoid #winterbourne streams, springs and wetlands lower down the escarpments & that in summer when the #winterbournes were dry travellers could use routes along the lower slopes....

Quoting Grundy (1918. p70-72; downloadable on Google), Langland calls these lower routes #summerways and suggests there are summerways parallel to nearly all of the great #ridgeways - twin summerways and ridgeways

Looking at the Downs near Whitehorse Hill, the B4507 road follows the escarpment at a relatively steady height just above the spring line - almost a dot-to-dot line linking spring heads and their #winterbournes - could that be the old #summerway I wonder?

I'm creating a recommended book list for students of South Asian history and politics.

What do you think should be on it?

- "Annihilation of Caste" by BR Ambedkar
- "Walking With the Comrades" by Arundhati Roy
- "Hindutva" by VD Savarkar
- "Slavery" by Jyotirao Phule
- "Mogul India" by Niccolao Manucci
- "Sketch of the Sikhs" by John Malcolm
- "Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi" by Mohandas Gandhi

- "The Mughal Throne" by Abraham Eraly
- "Aurangzeb" by Audrey Truschke
- "What Gandhi and Congress Have Done to Untouchables" by BR Ambedkar
- "A History of the Sikhs" by Joseph Davey Cunningham
- "Travels in the Mogul Empire" by François Bernier

- "City of Djinns" by William Dalrymple
- "A Free Man" by Aman Sethi
- "Ants Among Elephants" by Sujatha Gidla
- "Jahangir's India" by Francisco Pelsaert
- "The Sikhs in History" by Sangat Singh
- "We or Our Nationhood Defined" by MS Golwalkar

- "War at the Top of the World" by Eric Margolis
- "The Argumentative Indian" by Amartya Sen
- "The Age of Kali" by William Dalrymple
- "The Temptations of the West" by Pankaj Mishra
- "For Reasons of State" by John Dayal
- "The Punjab" by Henry Steinbach

I've been publicly addressing white mediocrity since my 2011 blog post "The American Way: Mediocrity, When White, Looks Like Merit," but I learned A LOT from @IjeomaOluo's MEDIOCRE. As Brittney Cooper's @nytimes review said, it really is an invitation for society to do better.

Of necessity, that invitation requires unvarnished truths. A few of my favorite lines:

“When I talk about mediocrity, I am not talking about something bland and harmless. [...] I’m talking about a dedication to ignorance and hatred that leaves people dead, for no other reason

than the fact that white men have been conditioned to believe that ignorance and hatred are their birthright and that the effort of enlightenment and connection is an injustice they shouldn’t have to face” (6).

“Perhaps one of the most brutal of white male privileges is the opportunity to live long enough to regret the carnage you have brought upon others” (30).

“Nothing says ‘American’ like a boy making a woman struggle so that he can seem independent” (35).

“Mediocre, highly forgettable white men regularly enter feminist spaces and expect to be centered and rewarded, and they have been. They get to be highly flawed, they get to regularly betray the values of their movement, yet they will be praised

I'm now going to ad-lib my long-threatened thread about Mission: Impossible and my single favourite sequence in motion pictures (take that, Red Shoes ballet sequence). Here's the film on the iPlayer right now. The sequence in question is the one in the thumbnail. Of course!

The sequence really begins with a choreographed bit of sitting-on-a-train, wherein Ethan Hunt gives a broad sketch of his plan. Essentially he says "We all have jobs to do" but what those jobs are is basically secret. Heist movies can go both ways. This one hangs on surprise.

The heist target is an IMF mainframe - they're going rogue and infiltrating their own agency. It's crucial to what the scene, and film, means at the most basic level. The institution is corrupt, our 'heroes' are pitted against it. Lots of the film is foggy but *this* is clear.

The remainder of the early train scene has one major purpose: to tell us the mission is impossible. This sequence delivers on the basic promise of the film (the whole series, arguably). The impossibility of the mission is exciting for the crew, compounding audience excitement.

Though this scene doesn't tell us what Hunt's solution is, it's crucial that it lays out the problem in a very clearly readable way. The vault's high security is hammered home. We're shown *and* told at the same time.

It's often said that the indigenous people of South America never developed a system of writing.

But this isn't entirely true. In fact, they created a unique and complex system of notation based on the tying of knots, known as quipu, which remain undeciphered to this day.

The quipu were usually made from string, spun from cotton fibers, or the fleece of camelid animals like the alpaca and llama.

The cords stored information with knots tied in vast assemblages of string, sometimes containing thousands of threads.

In some analysed quipu, the combinations of thread length, colour, knot type and knot position allow for up to 95 possible combinations, which could represent numbers, symbols or even sounds.

The Inca people used them for collecting data and keeping records, monitoring taxes, conducting censuses, keeping track of dates, and for military organization, all with immense success.

One early European eyewitness Hernando Pizarro records one early sighting of these quipu.

In fact, these quipu were the only system of notation used to administrate the Incas’ society, a vast stretch of land the same size as the Western Roman empire in Europe, containing more than 10 million people – all of which operated without a single word being written down.

How about a New Year's Eve thread about Gordon Parks & the photo world's deeply entrenched culture of white supremacy? Ok? Let's go.

We celebrate Gordon Parks as one of the most significant photographers of the 20th century. Rightfully so. His photos were more than exquisite aesthetic objects. They also profoundly shaped the way that white people saw & understood poverty & race. BUT...

But we rarely talk about *why* Parks was able to achieve so much in the photo world.

The answer is simple & clear: He -- alone among Black photographers of his & earlier generations -- received the same kind of mentoring & opportunities that as promising white photographers.

During most of photography's history, the single most important predictor of mainstream professional success was the possession of a white skin.

I just read a somewhat clueless post from one of those "moderate" Right Wing Instagram handles. You know, the sort that has a Sanskrit word in the name and is run by middle-class techie. After a significant amount of groaning, I decided to write this response about their...

...seeming worshipful attitude about capitalism. First - no, Capitalism isn't always evil. Many smaller businessmen are capitalists and do contribute to the nation by creating jobs. Having said that, the issue many people have with big capitalists is actually about power. When...

...a corporation grows too big and has stakes in every imaginable sector, it becomes a threat not only to those Communists you hate, but also to capitalists - small businesses and budding entrepreneurs (such as yourself perhaps). When people raise suspicions about the intent...

...of a big corporate, they aren't being unreasonable. They are pointing at a sword hanging above all our heads. And your saying "that sword is for all of our benefit" isn't an argument that can be taken seriously. It's childish and facile logic from someone who has been...

...conditioned from early on to see his corporate masters as benefactors and to think that the greatest compliment anyone can pay him is that he is "employable". Capitalism, at the end of the day, is about the pursuit of profit. And that's fine. But when things gets to a stage...

Re-reading this piece,

“After communism fell, the promises of western liberalism to transform central and eastern Europe were never fully realized – and now we are seeing the backlash.”
https://t.co/rnlRNa72fd

“Across central and eastern Europe, many of the democracies that emerged at the end of the cold war have been transformed into conspiracy-minded majoritarian regimes.”

No single factor can explain the simultaneous emergence of authoritarian anti-liberalisms in so many differently situated countries.

Yet resentment at liberal democracy’s canonical status and the politics of imitation in general has played a decisive role.

The very conceit that “there is no other way” provided an independent motive for the wave of populist xenophobia and reactionary nativism that began in central and eastern Europe, and is now washing across much of the world.

The enthusiastic copying of western models, accompanied as it was by the evacuation of Soviet troops from the region, was initially experienced as liberation.

But after two troubled decades, the downsides of this politics of imitation became too obvious to deny.

Last night, I was reading part of a thread where @liminal_warmth was putting together a new clan // guild // whatever on classic WoW. I almost jumped on it, but then I remembered my previous WoW experience.

I started playing during Lich King, because the people I knew started playing then. They played on a heavy RP server. I spun up an undead rogue named Qaddafi. And off I went into the world.

At this time, I played through all the story stuff. The world was amazing, and I applaud the writers for building it. However, since everyone else was already an 80, I didn't get to do dungeons. They only had the rando dungeons once you hit a high enough level.

As such, I was always woefully undergeared. By the time I hit 80, My primary weapon was a decent off hand weapon, and there weren't opportunities to upgrade. As I was gear light, my DPS was below average, and I'd get kicked. A lot.

The culture dictated you needed to be a spreadsheet king, or have been part of a raiding guild since the beginning. I was low on DPS, so I got kicked before completing the dungeon, and the rogue gear was always at the end.

no gear > kicked > missed gear > cycle repeats

I want to start a thread of 90s rap records that aren't often discussed here.

I'll focus on singles that were dope/ringing off at the time because rap discussions on Twitter tend to focus on the same 15-20 "big ticket" classic albums, and this way, we can flesh things out a bit:

..and this isn't a "definitive" or authoritative anything. I'm just killing time until my mom finishes Christmas breakfast. Lol

Saw a post that triggered a wild spirit journey of remembrance.

To make a covenant anciently they parted certain animals and 'passed through' the parts, then they partook of [consumed] their part. This was a ritual of purification and of covenant.

See here esp. v. 9-10, 17-18

Jeremiah explicitly supports this too; as do many other accounts in the scripture and in history all over the world, they attest to this tradition of parting a sacrificial animal [body] and passing through the parts and blood as a covenantal and a purification ritual.

This connected the dots to the Covenant with Israel as the Waters of the Red Sea [and various bodies of water later] parting and the purified 'passing through' - or back it up and transpose this idea to the marking of the door posts with the blood of the Lamb at 'passover'

Look now to the Baptismal covenant, a purification covenant [for the remission of sins], a symbolic "passing through" to our 3rd Estate and future resurrected life full of the purifying Holy Spirit of the Celestial Kingdom (as the Gift of the Holy Ghost).

The Priesthood 'parts' the bread and 'divides' the water, 'passing it to' the Saints to renew their Baptismal covenants by 'partaking' (consuming) the symbolic body and passing through the symbolic blood of the Lamb of God. The Divine Body and eternal atoning sacrifice.

Far-right parties are currently gaining momentum & exerting parliamentary influence in diverse countries such as the UK, Hungary, the USA, Austria, Sweden, Germany, & Denmark.

Far-right terrorism has increased dramatically.

We ignore this at our

Far-right recruitment discourse offers an affective script of feeling angry, insulted, & ashamed, as well as courageous, proud, & hopeful.

Research shows how affective–discursive practices are employed to create gateways to radicalization and ideologically motivated violence.

Within fascism, the myth of #palingenesis, that is “national rebirth from the ashes,” is continual and key to the motivation of political action & violence: 'heroism' is the “psychological recompense for fascist political activism.”

The language of the Nazi regime had an emotional impact; fascist & far-right rhetoric rely heavily on affective performative work.

The collective Nazi mind comprised hatred of women, fear of sexuality, & a desire for homosocial belonging, as well as a lust for ritual violence.

Ruth Wodak describes fear as fueling the political success of the far right, whereas others identify desire for male comradeship & the urge to “express anger and frustration at mainstream society” as key emotional gateways for neo-Nazi recruits.

The faces of the insurrectionist, anti-American mob that attacked the country have inspired me to re-read George Orwell's "The Road to Wigan Pier".

One of his lesser known, but IMHO best books. Thread.

First, so many right wing extremists tweeting Orwell quotes right now, as if he would have supported an attack on democracy. Read his work. Here's what HE believed, in his own words:

Orwell was a socialist. In fact, he was fighting against fascism in the Spanish Civil War when the book was published in 1937. He took a bullet in the

I'm re-reading the book because of what Orwell writes about class.

Buying plane tickets, purchasing weapons of war and body armor, taking time off from work, that takes time and money.

This is why Orwell is so interesting. Who are the people most prone to fascism?

I’m feeling stuck between a rock and a hard place in terms of the sheer number of people who still have no idea my book exists and the degree to which I feel like I can’t just keep shouting “hey my book!” over and over again without alienating the entire world. Thoughts?

Thread: I don't know about you, but staying sane recently hasn't been that easy. I've found it particularly hard to read novels - something that is usually my go-to therapy.

BUT I've always loved radio, and especially radio drama, and...

I was giving someone a few recommendations for things to listen to on BBC Sounds and realised I was getting carried away. I've heard tons of really good stuff in the past year and a lot of it is still online.

So here are some links! (stay tuned - this will take a while).

Firstly, there's Primo Levi's 'The Periodic Table' - unutterably brilliant. If you haven't heard this you've just got to stop what you're doing and do so.

Then there's Big Girl, Small Town by @michellegallen

Brilliant - probably the best thing I've heard on radio on a long time. A dark secret gradually gets revealed (or not) in small town near the British border in Ireland.

For a bit of fun there are two Charles Paris Mysteries - A Doubtful Death / The Cinderella Killer. Bill Nighy plays a slightly louche thespian with a bent for amateur sleuthing. Funny dramas based on old radio plays by Simon Brett updated by Jeremy Front.