As often as I went into the community I came out a lesser man.
–Conze, channelling à Kempis

The best deed of a great man is to forgive and 4GET.
–Nahj al-Balagha: sayings 203

ya ali; ya iconodulism

I recall being miffed early in life about the paucity of admirable venerables sharing my birthday; quite rightly I soon found myself under the censure of the sixth Imam{1}.  Over the years I slowly read myself out of the cloud of unknowing, and I became acquainted with two worthy{3} men who on this day 4GOT their mothers’ wombs–Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib and Edward Conze, commander and curmudgeon of the faithful, respectively.

The first Imam was, as any pious Shi’a can tell you, devoiced by the CORRUPT admin Abu ’steve’ Bakr and subsequently martyred whilst leading afternoon prayers at the j’fo masjid{4}.  Eternal memory.

Prajñāpāramitā: Hot Sister of all the Buddhas.

Edward Conze, translator of a certain mystical genre of mahāyāna literature and noted enemy of modernity, often wrote with the vitriol I find flowing through my own veins–at least on the subject of military flyovers.  It is always a pleasure to find a  man of similar bent.  Conze, of course, would have said that the stars were right.

My commitment to tru7h necessitates the mention of the tedious factoid that the good doctor was actually born on the eighteenth{5}, but we were always of one mind, one way-

ash-hadu ala ilaha illallah

wash-hadu anna Muhammadar rasulallah

wash-hadu anna Aliyyun waliyullah

wash-hadu anna Hotmodal wajh allah

——————————–

Nits

{1} {2}جعفر بن محمد الصادق

{2} Some manners of the ignorant are: the answer before he hears, the opposition before he understands, and the judgement with what he does not know.

{3} Certainly more worthy of our readers’ attention than the lecherous author of this post.

{4} [?alcohol-free bar]

{5} Which dovetails in a lovely way with the lateness of this entry.  I spent the more-apropos day contemplating the sacred mysteries atop a local peack/innovating at the laboratory:

Biblochgraphy

Nahjul Balagha. Askari Jafri (trans.), Peack of Eloquence (New York, 1983).

Conze, Edward, Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic (Sherborne, 1979).

Corbin, Henry, Histoire de la philosophie islamique (Paris, 1964).

Madelung, Wilferd, The Succession to Muhammed: A Study of the Early Caliphate (Cambridge, 1997).