Our dear Keith and literary topoi and the source behind the source

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Mar 2, 2009 at 07:46

This is what Keith wrote

" ........If I prove you wrong then I want a written apology from you for calling me a liar"

This is typical Muslim way of debating an issue. Notice that I'm not calling him a liar and all I'm saying is that based on reading his blogs (as you shall see below) I do not believe a word of what he is saying. This is skepticism. I do not believe that he is a convert and I do believe that he is a Pakistani and nothing is wrong with that More later

>In this case I think Dhimmi has got it wrong -

No I do not believe that I got it wrong.

>and you are more likely to be who you have said you were - an African-American Muslim convert employed by the Armed Services of the United States.

I do not believe that either.

>Why he came to that conclusion is debateable and only he know. But perhaps he saw the same reasoning from you as he did from more fanatical Muslims from Pakistan and made the assumption that you were also from Pakistan.

History is about reading texts and it is about getting to know the author of the text (or the source behind the source) and any blog he writes becomes a historical text that begs to be examined through the tools of literary analysis and literary criticism and his blogs are gold mines

Now if you read his blogs you will find them full of literary topoi (and the occasional schemata) and a topos is "a conventioalized expression or passage in a text used as a basis for composition of a subsequent text" and you find them floating all over his blogs and examples here: "convert", "technically" and he shares such topoi with Pakistanis whihc makes me suspect that he is a Pakistani.

Just ask yourself: did anyone ask him if he is a convert? But you find the topos of convert floating in his texts

Could he be an African American (as he claims) who is a convert ?(as Deen Muhammad claims to be but is the case of Deen Muhammad his poor English betrays his claim but he shares the same topos with our dear Keith) well anything is possible including that an Arabian deity called Allah spoke to an Arabian warlord and caravan raider ...

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".