Friday, November 5, 2010

I write for two entirely different audiences and for several different purposes, therefore

I write for two entirely different audiences and for several different purposes, and accordingly, there are vast, enormous, caverns of differences between the tone I adopt, and the language that I use, depending upon my target audience, and my intended purpose.

At the one extreme, I use language as an assault weapon.  If you completely read one of my blog posts and feel that I ought to have been more reserved, or could have made my point better by using gentler language, THEN, and perhaps only then, have I succeeded in my purpose, which, from the beginning was to assault you with my unvarnished and uncompromising perception of truths that I find too horrifying and brutal to try and correct by suggesting that we all get in a boat and start singing Kum-by-ya accompanied by ukelele.

Until such time as the wealthy and the powerful no longer use their wealth and power to rape, ravage and plunder evermore from the poor, sadly, this is the disagreeable voice and the language I will use to make my points, as I would use a baseball bat to break the nose of anyone who deigned to steal from, lie to, or persecute members of my tribe.

If, at the other extreme, you find my prose to be repetitive, highly lyrical (perhaps too much so), or even archaic in style, well, in that instance I am writing as a Muslim, with a Muslim outlook, and Muslim sensibilities, a very cultured and carefully crafted and highly stylized almost poetically lilting use of language to inform, advise, persuade, or even to warn.  In this instance, I am writing as a Muslim, for my Muslim brother and sister readers, but also as a Muslim, who hopes to put a serious or even reverential twist on my tales.  As a Muslim who is not offensive to Western / Christian sensibilities.

Of the two extremes, would that it were that I could always write as a Muslim would write for Muslims, and that my brothers and sisters will find my words uplifting, AN D consonant with the truths that have been revealed to them from study of the Koran.