The captioned imamic quote closes Mark Steyn’s little essay on quirky vignettes gleaned from John Robson’s new Top Five Book “A year’s worth of strange stories”.
The broader point, one feels, is that in a certain sense the foot-of-page-37 item is the real story. What gives you a better grasp of the realities of Europe today? The front-page reports on the G8 and the U.S.-EU summit? The in-depth profile of Jacques Chirac or Dominique de Villepin? Or the small space-filler about a French police lieutenant promoted to captain despite spending 12 of the last 18 years on “paternity leave,” in the course of which he wrote three books about the Beatles.
As a summation of contemporary Europe that could hardly be improved, not least in the way the generosity of Continental “paternity” leave seems to be inversely proportional to their barren societies’ actual paternity rate.
Robson’s book is self-published and can be ordered direct from the author for $7.95 via Paypal.
[ht: Tim Blair]
Huh - if it were not enjoyable why listen to it?
In pre-Islamic as well as post-Islamic times, music is oftentime associated with worship of God(s), and I can understand why such use of music would be disallowed.