Boreal

FAREWELL POSTINGS

9/11

March 19, 2025

Like millions of you, I watched on television what happened that awful day. No matter how I meet my end, it can never compare to the horrific way the 9/11 victims died. As I am thinking about them, a posting to that effect and another lie told about Islam.

WHEN KILLING 2,996 PEOPLE IS LIKE KILLING ALL OF MANKIND

In the history of the modern world, there probably was never a more representative sample of humanity than the nearly three thousand people whose life was brutally snuffed out on September 11, 2001.

So many innocent people dying a horrible death, some blown to bits; others burnt alive by exploding jet fuel; still others falling or jumping to their death in the plaza below to escape the fire above; the survivors of the initial attack crushed between slabs of concrete as the buildings collapsed, their lives squeezed out of them like so much toothpaste.

They gave truth to a lie that was a snippet of verse 5:32 about "whoever kills a soul is like one who has killed the whole of mankind" which was repeated ad nausea in the days that followed their deaths by influential people who should have known better.

Revelation 5:32 was proof, clerics and community leaders argued, that Allah did not approve of the attacks, conveniently leaving out the portion about retaliation (underlining mine).

5:32 For that reason (the murder of Abel by Cain), We decreed for the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul, not in retaliation for a soul or corruption in the land, is like one who has killed the whole of mankind; and whoever saves a life is like one who saves the lives all of mankind. Our Messengers came to them with the clear proofs; but afterwards many of them continued to commit excesses in the land.

Osama Bin Laden considered American troops stationed in Arab nations as corruptors in the land of Islam and attacked their homeland as the Koran’s retaliation dogma allows.

A Celebration of Life as a Reason to Yearn for Death

March 27, 2025

This morning finds me in bed clicking through postings looking for something memorable as a last chapter—my Afterword and Epilogue notwithstanding. Again, I am drawn to a chapter/posting from Love, Sex and Islam. The fact that Cancer Girl allows me to talk about my beloved partner one last time may have played a role in its selection.

Perhaps, but it is Lucette's toast to life at the beginning of this book and how Islam has perverted a celebration of life into a reason to yearn for death—the central message of Cancel Girl—that was the deciding factor.

CANCER GIRL

I did not know it then, but after almost five years, my time in Montréal was almost up when I met a young woman stricken with cancer. Just like Norm from Cheers, I had my favourite seat at the bar. When I made it to Thursdays after work that day, the stool next to me was occupied by a young woman who didn’t seem interested in talking to anyone.

She may have been there most of the afternoon, judging from the way she was slumped over her drink. She wasn’t drunk, though; just despondent. That morning, she had received confirmation that she had cancer, one of those below-the-belt types. Her prognosis, she was told, was good but there were no guarantees. She might need to wear a wig at some point during her treatment.

If that was all, she was fortunate. Muslim women may not, under any circumstances, add to their god-given hair, even if God decides to take most of it back. Jewish women were not adverse to wigs and hair extensions, which Muhammad considered cheating and banned their use. 

Narrated Sa'id bin Al-Musaiyab:

Mu'awiya came to Medina for the last time and delivered a sermon. He took out a tuft of hair and said, "I thought that none used to do this (i.e. use false hair) except Jews.

The Prophet labelled such practice, (i.e. the use of false hair), as cheating."

Bukhari 72.821

God’s spokesperson cursed an unfortunate woman who only wanted to improve her appearance after a sickness caused her hair to fall out.

Narrated Asma (the daughter of Abu' Bakr):

A woman came to Allah's Apostle and said, "I married my daughter to someone, but she became sick and all her hair fell out, and (because of that) her husband does not like her. May I let her use false hair?"

On that the Prophet cursed such a lady as artificially lengthening (her or someone else's) hair or got her hair lengthened artificially.

Bukhari 72.818

In another account of the poor woman’s plea to allow her daughter to wear a wig to save her marriage, it is an equally insensitive God who will curse her if she does.

Narrated Aisha:

An Ansari woman gave her daughter in marriage and the hair of the latter started falling out. The Ansari women came to the Prophet and mentioned that to him and said, "Her (my daughter's) husband suggested that I should let her wear false hair."

The Prophet said, "No, (don't do that) for Allah sends His curses upon such ladies who lengthen their hair artificially."

Bukhari 62.133

Allah will also curse the one who assists in lengthening the hair of another. Don’t do it; it’s not worth it!

Narrated Aisha:

An Ansari girl was married and she became sick and all her hair fell out intending to provide her with false hair. They asked the Prophet who said, "Allah has cursed the lady who artificially lengthens (her or someone else's) hair and also the one who gets her hair lengthened."

Bukhari 72.817

Muhammad, on more than one occasion, banned both wigs and tattoos in the same breath.

Narrated Ibn Umar:

Allah's Apostle said, "Allah has cursed such a lady as lengthens (her or someone else's) hair artificially or gets it lengthened, and also a lady who tattoos (herself or someone else) or gets herself tattooed."

Bukhari 72.820

Just like with my nurse, I ended up at my apartment with my cancer girl but on the couch, me on my back and her on top, both fully dressed and talking late into the evening. I had to work the next morning, so at some point I had to get to bed. She said she would rather sleep on the couch if that was okay. Getting a pillow and a blanket, I made her as comfortable as I could. She kept her clothes on, if only temporarily.

I don’t know how long I had been asleep when I was awakened by the light from the bathroom. She was standing in my doorway naked, the light from the bathroom behind her silhouetting her pleasantly curvy figure. She turned around to switch off the light and crawled into bed with me.

I don’t usually sleep on my back but that is how I greeted her. She stretched out next to me and put her head on my chest. I know women don’t usually join you in bed with nothing on because they just want to cuddle, but sex was not where my mind was at, and I was dead tired. I fell back asleep almost immediately, only to be awakened with her on top, riding me as if her life depended on it.

There was no mistaking the urgency, but I didn’t let her finish. Maybe I was dreaming of my Lucette making love to me, which my cancer girl took advantage of. That would explain my reaction when I was woken up by her frenzied lovemaking and didn’t see the woman I expected. I literally picked her up and pushed her aside. I am sorry for that. I should have let her finish and then taken her in my arms and told her everything was going to be alright.

When my Lucette was mistakenly diagnosed with an aggressive cancer in both lungs and given four to six months to live, then too, making love took on a renewed urgency while she awaited the result of a second biopsy that would reveal that she only had cancer in one lung and an infection in the other. When her father died, through tears, she had also asked me to make love to her; the same happened when her mother died.

What my cancer girl and my Lucette wanted to do at a time when death was in the air was celebrate life. A man from the Dark Ages and the god for whom he claimed to speak perverted the celebration of life that is consensual sex, transforming it into sex that will be there for the taking in Paradise as an incentive to kill and be killed on behalf of a pitiless, thin-skinned deity who can’t be bothered to do his own dirty work.

3:140 If you have been afflicted by a wound, a similar wound has afflicted the others (the unbelievers). Such are the times; We alternate them among the people, so that Allah may know who are the believers and choose martyrs from among you. Allah does not like the evildoers!

3:141 And that Allah might purify the believers and annihilate the unbelievers.

3:142 Or did you suppose that you will enter Paradise, before Allah has known who were those of you who have struggled, and those who are steadfast.

3:143 You were yearning for death before you actually met it. Now you have seen it and you are beholding it.

Kill and die on behalf of Allah, and you will be beholden to death for the promised reward of female facsimiles that will provide you with assembly-line sex for an eternity.

56:22 And wide-eyed houris,

56:23 Like hidden pearls;

56:24 As a reward for what they used to do.

Muhammad’s praise of houris was unrestrained and, like the god he spoke for, shameless in using their appeal to get gullible young men to kill and be killed on their behalf.

Narrated Anas:

The Prophet said, "A single endeavor (of fighting) in Allah's Cause in the afternoon or in the forenoon is better than all the world and whatever is in it. A place in Paradise as small as the bow or lash of one of you is better than all the world and whatever is in it. And if a houri from Paradise appeared to the people of the earth, she would fill the space between Heaven and the Earth with light and pleasant scent and her head cover is better than the world and whatever is in it."

Bukhari 52.53

For the cold-blooded killers in Allah’s Cause, the so-called holy warriors, it’s a win-win situation whether they live or die.

Narrated Abu Huraira:

I heard Allah's Apostle saying, "The example of a Mujahid (Muslim fighter) in Allah's Cause—and Allah knows better who really strives in His Cause—is like a person who fasts and prays continuously. Allah guarantees that He will admit the Mujahid in His Cause into Paradise if he is killed, otherwise He will return him to his home safely with rewards and war booty."

Bukhari 52.46

Islam is the only mainstream religion that promises limitless fornication opportunities in exchange for the murder of its detractors. The immorality of killing those who refuse to accept your god as their own and being rewarded for it plumbed new depths of depravity. Claiming that it brings dignity from on High only makes the incitement to murder more disgusting, if that is even possible.

Narrated Anas bin Malik:

The Prophet said, "Nobody who enters Paradise likes to go back to the world even if he got everything on the earth, except a Mujahid who wishes to return to the world so that he may be martyred ten times because of the dignity he receives (from Allah)."

Bukhari 52.72

Neda

April 10, 2025

Neda! I forgot Neda! How could I forget Neda? Last night I went to be bed quite pleased with myself after a quick review of a print copy of Farewell Postings only to wake up in the middle of night with Neda on my mind starring back at me.

January 23, 1982 – June 20, 2009

She lies in the Tehran street with her headscarf half-off, blood pooling around her jeans and white sneakers. “Don't be afraid, Neda dear, don't be afraid,” a white-haired man says desperately in Persian. Another man presses on her chest, trying to keep her alive. Scarlet blood gushes from her nose and mouth and courses across her pale face. Men and women scream in horror as they realize she is dead or dying.

CAIRO — The Associated Press, Monday, Jun. 22, 2009

Neda was shot by a sniper during a peaceful demonstration in favour of fair elections.

 Despite not being the end of the world—as far as we know— it was in keeping with an admonition of Muhammad, quoted earlier, about killing young people, whom he accused of propagating “foolish thoughts and ideas.” Echoing Allah, he said to kill them wherever you find them and be amply rewarded on Judgement Day for doing so.

 2:191 Kill them wherever you find them and drive them out from wherever they drove you out. Sedition is worse than slaughter. Do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight you at it. If they fight you there kill them. Such is the reward for the unbelievers.

The killing of Neda may have been Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran’s way of warning the demonstrators he was ready to kill them all, as he would make clear in a subsequent speech where he quoted Allah about slaughter being preferable to sedition.

Should he decided on slaughter to avoid his faith-based government being toppled, like Khomeini before him, he will call upon the theocracy’s equivalent of a private army of perhaps more than a million zealots, the Revolutionary Guards, to do the killing. So far, the Guards, in dealing with a new challenge to the rule of the Ayatollahs, the hijab protest, have tried to impress upon recalcitrant wearers, and their male supporters, of the need for them to cover their hair in public by not necessarily killing them, but by blinding them in one eye.

A Path to Peace Between Palestinians and Israelis

April 17, 2025

While reviewing the latest draft copy of Farewell Postings I decided that I could use my knowledge of the Koran to offer a path to peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

The Jews of Medina joined their Arab neighbours to save Muhammad from certain death by granting him and his follower’s asylum when his Meccan kin were hot on his heels intent on killing him for preaching an intolerant faith that would have their forebears burning in Hell.

Early on, Muslims and Jews got along like family; afterall, they both worshipped the same god. Muhammad, under the newly created Constitution of Medina, was granted authority to arbitrate disputes between Muslims and Jews, in part, because of his knowledge of the Torah. The Koran, apart from a brief self-serving interpretation of the life of Jesus and his mother, is very much a synthesis of Jewish beliefs and pagan traditions.

Even before Muhammad’s flight to Medina, Allah was so impressed by the Jews that He gave them the Holy Land.

7:137 And We bequeathed to the people who were held to be weak the eastern and western parts of the land which we had blessed (the Holy Land); and the fairest Word of your Lord in regard to the Children of Israel was fulfilled, because of their endurance; and We destroyed the houses and towers which Pharaoh and his people were building.*

It all fell apart when the Jews of Medina insisted that Muhammad could not be a prophet of Allah because God only spoke to mankind via His Chosen People. Before the breakup, Muslims prayed in the direction of Jerusalem, but that would change as mistrust and animosity developed between the two Semite people.

In the following verses Allah gives His reasons for this about-face (no pun intended).

2:142 The ignorant among the people (among the Jews and polytheist Arabs) will say: “What caused them (the Prophet Muhammad and the believers) to turn away from the former Qibla towards which they used to turn (Jerusalem)?” Say: “To Allah belongs the East and the West. He guides whom He wills towards the Right Path.”

2:143 And thus We have made you (the Muslim nation) a just nation, so that you may bear witness unto the rest of mankind, and that the Messenger may bear witness unto you. We did not ordain your former Qibla except that We may distinguish those who follow the Messenger from those who turn on their heels (return to disbelief). It was indeed a hard test except for those whom Allah guided. Allah would not allow your faith to be in vain. He is Clement and Merciful to mankind.

2:144 Surely, We see your face turned towards heaven (yearning for guidance through revelation). We shall turn you towards a Qibla that will please you. Turn your face then towards the Sacred Mosque (the Sacred Mosque of Mecca, the Ka’ba); and wherever you are turn your faces towards it. Those who were given the Book (the Jews and Christians) certainly know this to be the Truth from their Lord. Allah is not unaware of what they do.

2:145 Were you even to come to the People of the Book with every proof, they will not follow your Qibla, nor will you follow their Qibla. Nor will some of them follow the Qibla of the others. And were you to follow their desires after all the knowledge that came to you, surely you would be one of the evil-doers.

Perhaps we could start a dialogue between the Palestinians and Israelis beginning with when Muslim Arabs and Jews got along. The Jews would, as a matter of course, have to acknowledge that they make a mistake when they denied Muhammad’s prophethood; in effect, recognizing the Palestinians as equals.

Discussions like those that undoubtedly took place during the drafting of the Constitution of Medina would follow with the intent of drafting an agreement to govern a two-state Federation.

Afterword

TWIN THREATS

In conflict situations… [there is] a powerful resistance to killing one's own kind, a resistance that exists in every healthy member of every species.

Konrad Lorenz, in his definitive book, On Aggression, notes that it is rare for animals of the same species to fight to the death. In their territorial and mating battles, animals with horns will butt their heads together in a relatively harmless fashion, but against any other species they will go to the side and attempt to gut and gore.

Similarly, piranha will fight one another with raps of their tails but they will turn their teeth on anything and everything else, and rattlesnakes will wrestle each other but they have no hesitation to turn their fangs on anything else.

Lorenz suggests that this 'non-specicidal' tendency is imprinted into the genetic code in order to safeguard the survival of the species.

 From A Resistance to Killing by Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman

Only lunatics, sociopaths/psychopaths, those who have been conditioned to kill as a reflexive reaction (soldiers) and finally those who believe they are doing God’s work will kill another human being in cold blood.

Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall, Chief Historian of the European Theater of Operations in World War II, in a series of interviews with American riflemen concluded that only 15 to 20% of them fired their weapons at an exposed enemy soldier. His conclusions have been supported by other studies. This has led the military to find ways to overcome this resistance in a normal person to killing another human being, even in theaters of war.

The modern military has largely overcome this reluctance to kill through repetition and operant conditioning (modification of behaviour based on stimulus/response), making it an automatic reflexive reaction for a soldier to fire his weapon at a threat, real or imaginary.

What if your objective is to deliberately and methodically eliminate a segment of humanity for which you will require the assistance of the general population? You do what the NAZIs did. You dehumanize that portion of humanity you wish to eradicate, making their elimination the moral equivalent of getting rid of a pest.

The Koran has taken this dehumanization process one step further, adding demonization to the mix.

4:76 Those who believe fight for the Cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve fight on behalf of the Devil. Fight then the followers of the Devil. Surely the guile of the Devil is weak.

Islam, as a religion, has proven particularly effective at overcoming people's strong genetic predisposition against killing one of their own kind by concentrating on a thorough indoctrination in the Koran.

As mentioned in a previous chapter, it starts as soon as a child can, with the assistance of an adult, usually its mother, mouth the words. This home-schooling in what philosopher Robert Redeker, writing in Le Figaro, described “as a book of incredible violence", is usually followed by a more formal and structured indoctrination at a madrassa (Islamic school).

But, it does not stop there. What the child has been taught at home and at school is reinforced every day of their lives through mandatory daily prayers where they are compelled to repeat some of the most hateful, cruel scriptures known to man (recommended: Chapter “Lessons in Cruelty,” Children and the Koran, Boreal Books).

Then there is a male believer’s God-given right, when they reach the age of 15, in keeping with Muhammad’s example, to join the fraternity of holy warriors and to participate in the organized slaughter of unbelievers and abscond with their property which includes their wives and daughters.

Narrated Ibn Umar:

That the Prophet inspected him on the day of Uhud while he was fourteen years old, and the Prophet did not allow him to take part in the battle. He was inspected again by the Prophet on the day of Al-Khandaq (i.e. battle of the Trench) while he was fifteen years old, and the Prophet allowed him to take part in the battle.

Bukhari 59.423

Narrated Abdur-Rahman bin Auf:

While I was standing in the row on the day (of the battle) of Badr, I looked to my right and my left and saw two young Ansari boys, and I wished I had been stronger than they. One of them called my attention saying, "O Uncle! Do you know Abu Jahl?"

I said, "Yes, What do you want from him, O my nephew?"

He said, "I have been informed that he abuses Allah's Apostle. By Him in Whose Hands my life is, if I should see him, then my body will not leave his body till either of us meet his fate."

I was astonished at that talk. Then the other boy called my attention saying the same as the other had said.

After a while I saw Abu Jahl walking amongst the people. I said (to the boys), "Look! This is the man you asked me about." So, both of them attacked him with their swords and struck him to death and returned to Allah's Apostle to inform him of that.

Allah's Apostle asked, "Which of you has killed him?"

Each of them said, "I Have killed him."

Allah's Apostle asked, "Have you cleaned your swords?"

They said, "No."

He then looked at their swords and said, "No doubt, you both have killed him and the spoils of the deceased will be given to Muadh bin Amr bin Al-Jamuh."

The two boys were Muadh bin 'Afra and Muadh bin Amr bin Al-Jamuh.

Bukhari 53.369

 8:68 But for a prior ordinance of Allah, you would have been afflicted on account of what you have taken (an ordinance which made it lawful for Muslims to take spoils and captives) by a terrible punishment.

Revelation 8:68 in action:

80 Yazidi men from the village of Kawju were shot dead by Islamic State holy warriors and their wives and daughters taken, it is speculated, to the city of Tal Afar, a gathering area for foreign fighters.

BBC Aug 16, 2914

[Islamic State] terrorists explained in a new publication their justification for taking women and using them as sex slaves, saying simply that it’s a practice that’s as old as Sharia law — and allowed by Islamic beliefs.

Washington Times Oct 13, 2014

Hitler, in Mein Kampf, looked to the East for what he called lebensraum, literally “living space” for the master race. This living space was to be acquired through extermination, enslavement and sterilization of non-Aryan races. It was the moral duty of every Nazi to ensure the survival of the master race by whatever means at his or her disposal.

35:39 It is He Who made you successors in the lands. Then he who disbelieves, his unbelief will recoil upon him; and their unbelief will only increase the unbelievers in contempt in the sight of their Lord. No, their unbelief will only increase the unbelievers in perdition.

Will the practitioners of the master religion one day, with the authority granted them by the Koran as “successors in the lands,” see it as their religious and moral duty in a warming world, with dwindling populations fighting for survival, to exterminate the competition and thereby ensure that only believers are left alive when Allah brings about the an end to His Creation and rewards those who cleansed it of unbelievers, saving Him the trouble.

If global warming leads to a type of Mad Max world where it is a fight for survival under a pitiless sun, it is a battle that the believers should win decisively having been conditioned to be ruthless with Allah’s despised unbelievers.

9:123 O you who believe, fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them see how harsh you can be. Know that Allah is with the righteous. 

My Farewell Postings may reflect a life on the brink but it does not mean I don’t care what happens to, not only to you, but to all life threatened by Islam and now in combination with global warming.

Epilogue

FATAL FANTASIES

My grandfather was murdered by one of his sons during an alleged hunting accident. The boys were out hunting with the old when they got to a small lake where the group of maybe eight or six split into two, one going to the right the other to the left to make their way around the lake. When the group with the old man reached a small clearing by the lake, they stopped to ostensibly let their father rest. A shot rang out from the other side of the lake. My father insisted that he had never agreed to the killing of the old man, which he admitted was deliberate, not naming the brother who fired the fatal shot by name.

Decades later it was my old man who was murdered by someone close; a woman with whom he formed a relationship after mom died from her fifth heart attack.

My old man when he came home late in the evening drunk out of his mind, often as we were getting ready for bed, would go into the kitchen and pick a large knife from a drawer and with a hand on her shoulder guided my mother to their bedroom telling her it was her last night on earth. It was up to my oldest brother, who was still a teenager, and the only sibling my father would listen to at times like these, to get the old man to give up the knife.

At one point in time, I remember the police were called when he wasn’t at home. They knew the old man so they did not come in guns drawn but simply extended a hand and he gave them the knife. They asked my mother if she wanted to press charges. She didn’t and never would. She had married him for better or for worst and would always stand by him knowing, that in spite of the threats, he would never harm her physically! In those days the police could not charge her husband without her consent. When her husband threatened her she would assure her crying children she would be alright.

The woman who murdered my father, one night after both had been drinking heavily and he made his trademark threat, took him seriously and when he fell asleep did to him what he threatened to do to her.

Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg, was wrong when he said only religion could get good people to do bad things. My father was a good person and so was probably the woman who killed him. She was found guilty of manslaughter and given a suspended sentence largely, I suspect, because of my oldest sister Lea, who befriended her when she was in prison and later testified on her behalf, telling the court what our father was like when he drank.

My father, when he was sober, if only once a week on Sundays when booze was only available from bootleggers was what you expected from the head of the family. On most Sundays, except in wintertime, early in the morning he would takes us boys fishing along a narrow river that wend its ways through a forest of pine trees about forty miles out of town. We followed him only for so long before he disappeared into the underbrush to reappear maybe six hours later with a basket filled with rainbow trout and we all returned to where we left the car and returned home for a feast of freshly caught fish that had been kept alive by placing the basket in the fast flowing cold water of the Skunk river.

Sunday supper was my father’s thing. If it wasn’t fish it was a large turkey, ham or roast… which he cooked then presided over a lovely family dinner.

My father, when he was drunk, would sometimes talk about one side of the family’s German origins which I dismissed as nothing more than the ramblings of a drunk until a few years ago when I received a transcript of a talk given by Gérard Payer at a reunion of Québec Payeurs.

His name was Johan Christoph Bayer. He was a 25 years old soldier based in the German town of Hanau, 25 kilometres east of Frankfort in the German state of Hesse. In the eighteenth century, Hessian regiments were often put in the service of the British Empire.

On July 12, 1777 Christoph’s regiment arrived in Québec City to help defend the former colony of New France during the American Revolutionary wars after American forces led by Benedict Arnold laid siege and later launched a failed attack to take the city.

After the war, the British allowed 332 German soldiers (of the approximately 4,000 who came over) to stay if they cleared a minimum of one acre a year on the land they had been allotted and found a wife. Christoph asked for and obtained the hand of Marie-Madeleine Gendreau of Saint-Thomas de Montmagny, a small parish on the banks of the Saint Lawrence River where his regiment had been billeted one winter. Bayer became Payer and later Payeur.

Christoph and Madeleine had eleven children, eight of whom reached adulthood. Madeleine died on October 18, 1838 at the age of 80; Christoph, a few weeks later. He was 82.

When I first started writing about the Koran, Lucette half-jokingly said that I wanted to continue the tradition of at least one male member of my family getting murdered every generation. Lately—who I am kidding— for years now I have been entertaining two fantasies where I am violently killed thereby bringing attention to what I have written. In the first, I am shot dead like my grandfather, in the other I am killed with a knife.

Since the first edition, I have sent a copy of Shooting the Messenger to a least a dozen minister of Foreign Affairs/Global Affairs looking for exoneration. Only Maxime Bernier wrote back to say that he would look into my firing a short time before he was dismissed as Foreign Affairs Minister.

In this fatal fantasy, I show up at the large front desk that welcomes visitors to the Department and informed them that I have a book that I would like to personally give to the Minster. When told to leave the book with them, I take out a gun loaded with blanks and fire a shot into the air as I make my way to the elevator that will take me to the floor where the Minister can be found only to be met by a hail of bullets. I fall to ground still clutching my now blood-stained Minister’s copy of Shooting the Messenger—Till Death Do Us Part, a murder no longer a metaphor.

That fantasy is unlikely to become reality as, unlike my Lucette, I don’t have the courage to say “today is the day that I die” and follow through with it. Therefore, I pin my hopes on getting noticed by someone whom I offended by something I wrote about Allah and/or Muhammad and who, seeking revenge on their behalf, spots me enjoying a glass of wine at my favourite outdoor patio on Elgin street—or any other venue for that matter, doing whatever—and slices my throat, if not completely take my head off.

Of course, if I wanted to get notice without waiting for Islam’s kindest cut of all when it comes to dealing with detractors, I would trigger a Pavlovian-like collective reaction in the ummah (the community of believers) by publically burning the book in which they have been indoctrinated. The problem is that, I don’t believe in burning books no matter the content; and if the content does matter I prefer an honest objective discussion like the type if have been providing in my books and postings.

If I had the inclination and the courage to burn the Book I would do it in remembrance of a woman who was falsely accused of doing so and was set upon by a rabid mob of the easily offended whose picture of her pleading for her life has been imprinted on my brain.

Wiki Commons

Woman falsely accused of burning Koran is killed by mob.

The 27-year-old religious scholar Farkhunda was beaten, pushed from a roof, run over by a car and set alight before her body was thrown in the Kabul River.

Globe and Mail, March 23, 2015

That children raised on a steady diet of the Koran would, when grown up, do this to another human being, for whatever reason, should give you pause. The reason for my last, and what I consider my most important recommendation, that you read what I wrote in Children and the Koran - The End of Empathy to fully grasp the implication of this wretched scene.