BorealFAREWELL POSTINGSOf Music and DogsFebruary 24, 2025 I signed up for Amazon Prime for the free deliveries and now, as I spend more time in the past then in the present, it is Amazon Music, which is part of the offering, that I appreciate the most. I simply ask my Amazon speaker to play tunes from the 70s or even the 60s and it bring that past to life. Asking Alexa to play Julio Iglesias makes me feel as if she is here with me. Lucette was mad about Julio Iglesias. He was not yet well known in Canada when she returned from a vacation in South America with some of his albums. The first time she played his songs for me—for us—I too became a fan. I did not understand a word he sang, but his melodies were captivating and he had such a beautiful voice. She said his songs were all about love and I believed her. Years later when he started recording in English the same songs I had heard in Spanish, I believed her even more. Playing musical instruments or listening to music is 16th on Islam’s current list of greater or grave sins, sins where the transgressor will spend an eternity of fire in Allah’s Hell. It is not a sin to listen to accapella performances, songs performed without musical accompaniment. It can be quite beguiling. Geert Wilders, at this writing the Dutch leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), in the spirit of Theodoor van Gogh*, made a film about Islam. What is most striking about Fitna is not the images of the dead and mutilated, but the lyrical and mesmerizing rendition of violent and hate-filled revelations calling for the murder of unbelievers. If you don’t understand Arabic, you can almost imagine yourself making love to Allah’s words except that, unlike those of Julio, they have next to nothing to do with love. If the violence and hate that are contained in verses sung without instrumental accompaniment broadcast to the Islamic community in Arabic were broadcast in English on MTV for example, there would be uproar. Non-Muslims would be appalled that impressionable young minds are subjected to so much sadistic violence and hate forcefully expressed in such a captivating lyrical way. Yesterday I was listening to a young Muslim podcaster explaining how hard it was for her to give up listening to music. Some will risk Allah’s Wrath rather than give it up, like the women and girls I wrote about so many years ago in what remains my all-time favorite posting. ------ * “Theodoor van Gogh was a Dutch film director. He directed Submission: Part 1, a short film written by Somali writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which criticised the treatment of women in Islam in strong terms. On 2 November 2004, he was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Islamist who objected to the film's message.”Wiki The twenty-six-year-old Bouyeri shot van Gogh before slitting his throat as he was pleading "Mercy, mercy; we can talk about this" and pinning a five-page condemnation of Western society to his body.
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