Science Fiction in Islamic literature

[Skybird]

http://www.heise.de/bin/tp/issue/r4/dl-artikel2.cgi?artikelnr=23713&mode=print

This has been originally published in German language maybe two months ago. Somebody now has translated it, and it was republished in the same place.

Originally I did not want to start a thread about it and not to increase the number of Islam-related topics, so I just sent the link to two board members whom I considered to be potentially interested. But I think this essay is so interesting that I changed my mind and nevertheless post it now. It is about the Islamic concept of future and time, and how it is illustrated by the absence of "dreams" in general and science fiction in general in Islamic literature.

It is not exactly the usual kind of "Islam-bashing" threads that we have.

The author seem to be Islamic himself, judging by his name.

[CB..]

i'm no academic but my feelings on any religious organisations relationship with SF as a whole..seems summed up by the statement in the article


A scientific novel which is connected with phantasy cannot fall on fertile ground in an environment of preprepared answers and rejection of a culture of knowledge.
Dr. Omar Abdelaziz


and basicaly any religiuos organisation or belief that is focused on the next life can only find any meditation on the future in this life allmost blasphemy
this world and life is only here after all to sort the wheat from the chaff....the idea or concept that we might ALL be both wheat and chaff or might ALL be capable of a future in this life only serves to undermine the egotistical concept that only the individual matters and is immortal..rather than the species continueing on with each generation having something to offer to the next...odd really that it is the secular future that relys on the acceptance of the laying down of your life for the benifit of future generations .where-as the religiuos future is totaly focused on the self.....dang these contradictions...:doh: :up:

[Torplexed]

It's my understanding that Frank Herbet's classic sci fi novel Dune has always been very popular in the Arab world. A novel in which a prophesied messiah returns to a world of marginalized desert nomads sitting on a arid resource-rich, exploited planet and then whips those nomads into a messianic frenzy to take back the kingdom.

Can't imagine why it's so popular. ;)

[Skybird]

Ah, Dune 1-6 - a beast and a beauty of a book! Interesting to see how Judaism, Christian churches and Islam have developed in history according to Herbert, 11 thousand years in the future. Also interesting to see how the messiah figures he raises are turned into figureheads and so, in a way, - fail.A true classic. I am confessing dune-addict. :lol: the movies, both the David Lynch film and the German TV trilogy, are horrible, nevertheless.

[The Noob]

Dune...pah. :smug:

Good 'ol James T. Kirk is going to kick Ama...err...the Klingons arse. :rotfl: