Comic Cosmological Relief

Ah, cartoons! And comic books! They could be so much fun to read, often educational, but perhaps even more fun to create. But those days are gone. Now American children will be offered the chance to read of the adventures of the Silver Scorpion, a wheelchair-bound Muslim “superhero.” He can alter metal, you see, and presumably cause gangsters’ guns to jam and American Predator drones to miss their targets.

And for a while kids have been enthralled (well, maybe not) by the quest of “The 99,” a bigger gang of proselytizing Muslim “superheroes” after the alleged ninety-nine qualities of Allah. These are now magical stones that contain the wisdom of the Bagdad Library (not the Alexandrian one). Imagine a glorified Muslim Easter egg hunt. You wouldn’t catch the League of Justice wasting their time looking for talking rocks. This has also been turned into an animated feature that would make NPR proud (“made possible by viewers like you – thanks for your tax dollars and contributions”).

The editor of Family Security Matters a year ago ran a comprehensive exposé on how Islamic comics are infiltrating the culture, and with the encouragement of President Obama (see the video in this link to the article; he boasts in his best multicultural manner that Superman and Batman have shaken hands with Islamic superheroes). I will not try to top that excellent article. But every panel and frame of this propaganda is intended to indoctrinate children about the putative goodness of Islam. The Ninety-Nine are all children, including glib-tongued teens, crafted to appeal to modern sensibilities. Those sensibilities allow for creeping dhimmitude, prepared and propagated by American educational policies.

Cultural jihad and creeping dhimmitude aren’t just about banning Voltaire, imposing politically correct Newspeak in politics and journalism, including Islamic holidays on calendars, and demonizing critics of Islam. It’s also about conditioning children to be passive manqués who will obey the state (or the caliphate) and never presume to think for themselves. Imagery has proven to be a powerful ideological weapon. B.F. Skinner would lavish praise on the phenomenon. Communists and Nazis would be envious.

In the meantime, my sketching and blocking skills being rusty, I invite anyone to illustrate the following story. Turn it into an animated short, with special CGI effects, á la Avatar.

Picture fierce-looking, never-smiling Allah, always in a nightgown and sandals, slightly bald but boasting a flowing white beard, with a kosh tucked inside his belt and a scimitar sitting at his feet (just in case), playing celestial poker with his buddies Moragu, Saturn (snacking on one of his own children), Zagaga, Lord Shiva (recently divorced from Kali, whom he finally realized was a dominatrix), and Yahweh. In between hands, and in between sips of Dazzle Dust Chablis, Allah and Yahweh reminisce about the good old days, or the good old eons when the universe was young and they had the run of the place. They went back a long way. They were the cause of the “Big Bang.”

Yahweh and Allah are best friends. They weren’t always. You see, long ago (in another dimension not detectable by mere mortals), when they were all pubescent kids, Yahweh was the original alpha-male god of all gods and the neighborhood bully. Nobody knew who appointed him to that station, he just was; his and everyone else’s origins were the subject of many a heated, contentious, and often violent debate among the student body at the Universal Academy of Supreme Power and Metaphysical Manipulation (much like the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry). The issue was never resolved.

However, Yahweh once tried to steal Allah’s lunch money in the school playground. Allah, being a possessive and obnoxious little brat anyway – he was parentless, as well, having had no role model on which to fashion his character, and this may have contributed to his crankiness and aggressive behavior – beat the Beejesus out of Yahweh after a vigorous game of kick-the-can (a tie between the teams). For the longest time, Yahweh was “It.” That had abruptly and unexpectedly changed during the course of the game. It was not well received by Yahweh.

Yahweh, a moody and gnarly person himself, was resentful that he had only tied. He had failed to spot Wontonka, a totem-sized future American Indian god, who was hiding in plain sight behind a boxwood. He did not believe in good sportsmanship. So he attempted to channel his frustration by bullying Allah into surrendering his four-and-six-pence.

Allah, not lacking in arrogance, forthwith delivered a powerful knee to Yahweh’s groin and soon was thrashing the Anointed One with a hail of blows. Yahweh stumbled back in shock and confusion.

When the latter added insult to injury as Allah had him pinned down, and accused Allah’s mother of having mated with a scorpion (Yahweh knew that David Lean’s movie, Lawrence of Arabia, would be made six billion years hence, and he really liked that line of Anthony Quinn’s), Allah laid into Yahweh with even more furious blows, yanking painfully at Yahweh’s peach-fuzz beard for extra measure, screaming, “You offensive, insensitive, callous brute!” Yahweh at last had to cry uncle and plead for mercy. “Yahweh concedes to Allah!”

Spectators of this match thought they had heard, “Allah concedes to Yahweh!” so similar were their names in pronunciation. They were confused. It made no sense. They argued amongst themselves as Allah continued to pummel Yahweh. But, these were up-and-coming deities, who did not need to make any sense.

Hovering in the background was God (nicknamed “Bog”), a shy, quiet little gamin whose constitution caused him to flit from recognizable humanoid form to a dove. All the other students avoided him, even Yahweh and Allah, because there was something strange and unsettling about him. It was his mesmerizing eyes. Allah envied those eyes. But he knew that eventually God or Bog would cause trouble in the future. He had once remarked to Baal, “Better look out for that one. It’s always the wallflowers who make the most trouble later.”

“He gives me the creeps,” agreed Baal, the demon god, munching on a piglet. He was nothing to look at, either, resembling as he did the Rancor in Star Wars, a silly movie about magical powers Allah knew would be shot six billion years hence. Baal didn’t know that, for he could not see into the future. His talents lay elsewhere. There would be a falling-out between him and Allah.

Back to the schoolyard dust-up. Allah relented, released Yahweh from his hold, and stood up. “Allah is merciful,” he said, shaking a finger down at Yahweh, who was near tears, “and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!”

Thus, the Big Bang, which didn’t happen that instant. It took time for the energy expended by Allah and Yahweh in that terrible fight to gather enough pressure and molecular dissonance for the temporal realm to explode, and time hadn’t been invented yet. By Allah.

And that was how Allah became the only true God (so gossips say). All the other Academy’s male students more or less conceded Allah’s supremacy and offered no challenges to his new-found title as Numero Uno of the Firmament.

There were some future goddesses in the school, too, but Allah didn’t like girls, especially not those pretty little Greek ones, showing off in their skimpy robes and behaving like they were Someone’s gift to men. It was just an expression, but no one could say who that Someone was; no one wanted to “go there” on the matter of the infinite regression of First Causes; the subject was not in the school’s curriculum and forbidden to discussion. Allah harbored a special dislike of the Cretan girl-goddesses, who traipsed around wearing nothing at all on top. When he accused them of immodesty and of being a distraction during class, they would usually retort, “In your dreams, Kilroy. We caught you looking.”

Allah, being a natural prude who could not brook rejection, because he knew he was perfect, complained to the headmaster about the girl-goddesses. But this venerable person (no one knew where he came from, either, or how he acquired his knowledge and powers; he just was) advised Allah to be patient. “This school has a policy of diversity, and welcomes students from all cultural and belief backgrounds. But someday your time will come, and you will set the rules. In the meantime, you must be tolerant.” He paused and added another admonition. “You must stop teasing Kali about her four arms. You mustn’t make fun of others’ disabilities.”

The headmaster studied Allah’s petulant face. He noted that the child’s beard was growing thick and would soon need some trimming, and perhaps a shampoo. “By the way, you have been tardy in deciding how many Imams will deliver humankind from its misery. And when. You must decide soon. Will it be the seventh, or the twelfth, or the thirty-first? I cannot award you a diploma if you continue to be so indecisive.”

“I’ll do what I wish,” muttered Allah. “I will nominate the Mahdi or the Expected One when I’m damned good and ready.” From that day onward, Allah brooded, and brooded, and brooded, and thought many dark thoughts. Not deep thoughts, just dark ones. It was his foremost and governing quality. He had ninety-eight to go.

Allah graduated with honors from the Universal Academy. Immediately upon receiving his diploma, he dove into his work with an enterprising passion. As the temporal realm unfolded in the Big Bang, he staked claims to large portions of it, planned the demise of the other Academy graduates (all false gods anyway, he was “It,” but he might keep a few around, just for company), and contrived a way to make himself known to humankind without really showing himself . He was very sensitive about his personal appearance. “I will invent a prophet, and his name will be Mohammad!” he exclaimed triumphantly to the void, which was slowly coalescing into the heavens.

It came to him, just like that, although the thought confounded him for a moment, because he should have known about it beforehand, eons ago. That was when Allah learned that he was also omnipotent, as well as omniscient, and could change his own predestined knowledge of what was to be and what he might and might not do about it. “It is the will of Allah! It will be written!” But, where? Ah, yes, a holy book! Full of fairy tales and blood and gore and rapine and slaughter for the gullible and impressionable. Appeal to their prurience. And sacred stones! And commandments! Dozens of them! I’ll make them genuflect – No! Bow five times a day – in submission to a rock he would cast from the sky! And then have the fools swathe it in silver!

But, the book? – No illustrations! He would keep them guessing! What would he call the holy book? Allah snapped his fingers. The Recitation! The story of Allah as told by Gabriel to a brigand! And it’ll be a bloody miracle if Mohammad could memorize it all! So, he’d have to make Mohammad an idiot savant!

Allah cackled to himself, and rubbed his hands together, and began imagining the likeness of Mohammad the Prophet. And he remembered the mesmerizing eyes of Bog. “Yes. Svengali! He’ll put the fear of Allah in a rhinoceros!” Which he hadn’t invented. Still, he did a merry jig in celebration of his own almightiness.

The rhinoceros was Bog’s doing. Bog, you see, was busy in another quadrant of the universe.

Allah was right. That one was going to be trouble.

But, that’s another story.