Akram's Razor
As if to prove the theological contention that God’s mercy cannot not be earned, Akram’s Razor somehow made it onto Beliefnet editor Dilshad Ali’s Top 10 Islam blogs.
There are so many far smarter, funnier, better-writtens blogs out there, so I’m flattered and suprised, and of course it’s ultimately just one person’s opinion. Perhaps this is some variant of the Seinfeld “Bad Seed” phenomenon in the Blogopshere where the laziest, most resolutely unprofound commentator is assumed to, despite all outward appearences, have something deep on his mind.
Or perhaps an X-Files conspiracy theory might explain this: As you might imagine, some crackpots from among the show’s devotees (whose less extreme and well groomed ranks include myself, unleast until Mulder and Scully got replaced by androids) believed that the show was an attempt by the Feds (who’ve known of aliens ever since Roswell in the 1950s) to slowly acclimatize the public to the idea of aliens so that the truth can eventually be told without widespread panic. That theory’s not all that surprising in our day of overactive imaginations and quasi-literacy, but the real tin foil hat-wearing loons believe the show was part of a far more devious conspiracy by the Man to discredit the truth about aliens. The show, they claimed, existed to trivialize belief in aliens the public eye. (Sort of like the wonderfully playful episode involving Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebeck.) Could Ms. Ali be a chain-smoking agent provocateur planted in Beliefnet.com to keep down the Muslim bloggers who are sticking it to the Man? The plot thickens…
Wait, come to think of it, I think this has been happening in the UK for quite a while. The crazier, dumber and more ideologically atypical the Muslim extremist (e.g., a lunatic pseudo-scholar who looks like Captain Hook), the easier it is for him to get onto TV and print. This has been happening for a loooong time, too. After their own misguided followers, these zealots’ biggest fans seem to be the MSM editors who lavish attention on them while normal Muslim leaders are left hidden in the wings.
Still, I’ll take whatever I can get, and whatever the explanation, I’m glad my middle name starts with an ‘A’. “Svend’s Razor” would languish near the bottom, and were it “Zulfiqar’s Razor”, I’d really be trouble with those who the majority who don’t scroll down. (I wonder who many folks named Aasem, Aatif, Aasil, or one of the infinite number of Abu’s realize that using their first names will boost their placement in blogrolls, etc.)
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