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Iranian UFO Blasphemy
By
IoshkaFutz
I'm a skeptic concerning
UFOs, but several days ago, I prayed that a
report coming from the Reuters' office in Tehran was true.
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| TEHRAN
(Reuters) - Is Iran about to be invaded by little green men or
are the Americans racing through the night sky in spaceships to
spy on the Islamic Republic? Flying saucer fever has gripped
Iran after dozens of sightings in the last few days. Fanciful
cartoons of alien spacecraft have adorned the front pages. |
Now I realize that I'm in the realm of the semi-facetious, talking about
extraterrestrials, but upon strange sightings, the collective
imagination of an entire country went precisely there... it went there
easily, by default, as it would anywhere else in the world. But Iran is
not just any other place in the world, it is a theocracy. The
one-and-only Allah holds sway, the God interpreted by Mohammad (with
perhaps a few adjustments from his brother-in-law).
So what if...
Well the possibilities are infinite. We here are accustomed to two
sexes, male and female. Couldn't extraterrestrials have more? Male,
female, hermaphrodite, neuter...
What if "procreative" sex for these beings (with minds capable
of resolving mathematical problems such as this
...at the blink of a nose) were a once-a-year weeklong event?... Or what
if instead it was a fast-as-a-handshake activity... or a required one,
like eating, in which abstinence meant certain death?
What if their "skin" surfaces required total exposure? Like
leaves on a tree? Or reptiles... Yes, what if demanding them to dress
modestly was as silly as trying to put an overcoat on an iguana?
Let's not imagine Alien Monsters, but highly decent, and helpful beings,
willing to assist us, to share their amazing technology, one capable of
transforming deserts into gardens in less than 10 years, of curing the
incurable, of permanently ending all present and future energy crises,
of teaching Hungarian to grown-ups in 7 days...
What if...
What if they had no sense of private property, because each possessed
infinite virtual domains as real to them as Kansas was to the Apaches?
How would the followers of Allah treat these funny looking
"brothers" with their blinking noses, copulating handshakes,
mandatory gastro-erotics?
What happens to modesty, fingertip chopping, take not infidels as
friends, the whole shebang of sweet and harsh injunctions?
Science fiction is not to be waved off unthinkingly. I mean here you are
on the web reading the musings of some poor fool born in 1952. If
someone back in my youth had told me: "One day soon you will be
able to make your thoughts instantly available worldwide as fast as a
click!" - I'd have likely answered: "Oh come on, get real,
that stuff's science fiction!"
Well what's the point of all this?
Simple. The Koran and Extraterrestrials are glaringly incompatible. If
there is different, but intelligent, "moral" life out there
beyond the dazzling firmament so finely viewed from the deserts of Araby,
the Koran, the so-called word of God, for all times and all places,
instantly deserves to be lovingly placed on a shelf and forgotten, more
or less like my Commodore 64 manual.
At every spring cleaning binge I am tempted to throw that booklet away,
but I invariably resist, remembering the fine moments the machine had
afforded me. I don't care, I'll keep it. Dabbling with old hardware and
software is fun... all the more so when you realize that the people who
made it were just as smart, if not smarter than the geniuses of today.
They had less to sustain their imagination. They were trailblazers.
But never mind. I'm digressing... Back to the issue at hand.
The people of Iran saw lights in the sky... and then UFO cartoons in
their newspapers. Could it be that by so naturally, unthinkingly
imagining a possibility that would undoubtedly mean the end of their
religion, they all committed a subtle form of Blasphemy?
What's a home that cannot survive a surprise visit from distant
relatives? What's a religion that cannot survive a visit from another
corner of the universe supposedly created by its own God?
I look forward to some answers. Please don't remind me that I'm destined
to hell. That issue is already being addressed.
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