Hello,
Ever get the feeling your leisure pursuits have got out of hand? Well if you haven’t lucky old you, because I have. As is my usual habit I whacked up this post, ran the spell checker, hit publish and went to bed, the other evening . Sunny over at Pickled Politics very kindly wrote approvingly of my post and so began my downfall.
I’ve been fortunate in my blogging antics in that no-one takes me even slightly seriously. Which is fair enough I write a personal blog for heaven's sake. As a result I now find myself somewhat out of my depth. In short I have been rumbled as an idiot. Lack of attention is not always a bad thing.
Anyway a clever clogs by the name of ‘Just For Fun’ is the rumbler. I could be pedantic and point out that it’s all very well him getting on his high horse when he can’t for the life of him manage get my name right but I won’t because he has recommended anyone reading my dreadful blog reads this first. So I will merely respond with a book recommendation of my own, read this and you’ll never get my name wrong again. I found his remark 'A donkey carrying books is not literate' painful reading, chiefly because I have always felt embarrassed by my own lack of learning. I expect 'justforfun' has been through university and what have you. Unfortunately for reasons that are utterly tedious and entirely my own fault I didn’t complete my education and have spent my entire adult life trying to combine a full time job and playing catch up ever since, sadly the results have not been what I’d hoped but I plod on. I’m afraid that my brain tends to race ahead of my mouth and my typing finger so my posts do get a bit mangled at times.
Anyway I shall respond to his criticisms here. I have moved them on to my spare pages because I believe I’m due a second mauling which I might want to respond to and so do not wish to take up my entire main blog with this the fallout from this which might have been better confined to my comment box (from my own regular readers point of view).
Read the rest.....
8 comments:
Clairwil, for what it's worth I did complete my university education and I managed perfectly well to understand your implications and arguments. They were clumsy at times and perhaps your sense of sarcasm is not easily discernible to a first-timer, but the basics of what you were trying to put across managed to pierce my awareness. And I was pissed when I read it.
Living in a country where religious affiliation is split fairly evenly between Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, and in a region of the world where Islam is easily the most dominant of all religions, I have to say that your arguments are the same as I have heard from many an individual - Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Most especially your conclusion that Islamaphobes and Fundamentalists are two sides of the same coin!
All credit to you for respondding to the accusations in such a even and considerate manner... and don't let the criticism put you off!
Crap! I just wrote a really long comment about this and Blogger deleted it.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I thought your argument was perfectly coherent and at the very least defensible, and arguably quite right.
I also thought his criticism of you for not mentioning that Muslim women have both secular and religious rights is, while on the surface not unreasonable, indicative that he didn't trouble to look at your archives long enough to see that this point goes without saying.
Finally, I thought your question about drinking the bar dry was a pertinent one.
Keep up the good work!
Binty
Thank-you. I suppose it depends on your starting point. You've read my blog for a while and as a post it doesn't stand out much here other than being a bit different from the usual subject matter. It's a bit different perhaps for someone reading it in isolation, coming from a blog where things are a little more measured.
Steve
I cannot stand it when blogger does that. Funnily enough it always seems to do it when I say something good. I think you're right about my failure to acknowledge the secular rights of Muslim women. I don't get many comments from newcomers and tend to write with regulars in mind, taking it for granted that they have some knowledge of my views.
I think all this has been positive for me in that I'll try and take the readers knowledge a bit less for granted when I'm writing. Though I reserve the right to be my thoroughly unreasonable self.
I wouldn't want it any other way!
Gosh, that comment was a bit luvvie. Sorry about that. I think watching Shabhaz has been rubbing off on me.
So to speak.
Clairwil - sorry to have shortened your name on occasion, but I did get it correct on occasion and also in my first post.
I sensed when I hit the send button on my first post I should have stayed my hand and edited my comments abit - I regret using the quote about the donkey because it obviously has been taken personnally by you. I should have either stopped after my recommendation that people read Jamie's book or spent more time explaining the quote about the donkey in it proper context as I can see it has obviously either upset you, or caught your immagination which I prefer to believe because I can't immagine you not having a thick skin.
I never intended to post on the topic a second time. All I intended was people read your piece again and think through what you had exactly written, little realising, as I do now, that you did not intend your piece to stand alone, but rather be an episode in a dialogue on your blog. However as you know, Sajda did not think I should just post my first comment without a detailed rebuttal to your piece. So that is what I attempted and I think I even said it was not your piece that prompted me to make my first post but rather's Sunny's unqualified endorsement of it, so don't worry I'm not upset and was never really upset in the first place, nor getting on a high horse.
I had tried to make my second post a conversation with Sajda using your article as a piece that illustrated ambiguities in areas and that perhaps was not as unequivocal as it appeared on the surface. I think you even posted on PP later that perhaps you should have re-writen parts of it and eloborated more in areas.
Anyway it was good to read your elaboration on your article and I will not add anything, except to say I was surprised to read in your last paragraph 'Had I known I was going to be scrutinised I’d have pulled my socks right up'. If you had said that at the beginning I would never have bothered to take your article seriously, but I do think the issue is a serious one and so took your incomplete article at face value.
Anyway I will stop digging my hole now.
Justforfun
Wow... it's so nice to be on a blog and see people being quite reasonable with each other in their disagreements and opinions for a change!
Just for fun,
I am fairly thick skinned but I suppose we're all sensitive to some criticisms more than others. I make no claims to genius but did feel you were being unduly dismissive. The way I write on my blog is very different to the way I write for other audiences. Had I been asked to write an article on the subject it would have been entirely different in tone and a lot lengthier. I tend to write in a more conversational way on this blog. I was starting to feel as if I'd switched on the TV to find a transcript of one of my pub conversations was being read out in parliament with a fierce debate about whether my recommendations should be acted on taking place.
Sunny has been reading this blog for a while and has gleaned enough about my general views and opinions to be able to fill in many of the gaps you highlighted in your comments to Sadja which is possibly why he gave it such an unqualified endorsement.
Anyway thanks for reading my response and you may be pleased to hear I have added James Whyte's book to my reading list.
Post a Comment