Ahmed Faraz, in addition to being a great poet, is also a great wit. According to one wonderful anecdote, a group of radical mullahs showed up at his doorstep in Pakistan and asked the typically argumentative Faraz, who'd enraged the religious right often enough, if he could recite the first kalima (one of the five pillars of Islam, whereby a Muslim 'testifies' that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is his messenger, this is often used as bullying tool of religious zealots to prove heresy); Faraz, looking at them bemused, asked, "Why, has it changed?" (See Khalid Hassan's account of this in The Friday Times, some time this past summer.)
Posted by: Shehryar Fazli | Dec 22, 2007 8:55:49 PM
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Ahmed Faraz, in addition to being a great poet, is also a great wit. According to one wonderful anecdote, a group of radical mullahs showed up at his doorstep in Pakistan and asked the typically argumentative Faraz, who'd enraged the religious right often enough, if he could recite the first kalima (one of the five pillars of Islam, whereby a Muslim 'testifies' that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is his messenger, this is often used as bullying tool of religious zealots to prove heresy); Faraz, looking at them bemused, asked, "Why, has it changed?" (See Khalid Hassan's account of this in The Friday Times, some time this past summer.)
Posted by: Shehryar Fazli | Dec 22, 2007 8:55:49 PM
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