The Sunday Ishmael:22/12/2024

 Seated idly at my keyboard the other day I was hijacked by an incoming email from a well-known purveyor of on-line greetings cards. mrs. ishmael, it hailed me, just as all your Christmas cards have been dispatched, there is another December celebration to add to the festive frenzy: Kwanzaa! And, of course, another colourful card, filled to the brim with gorgeous depictions of celebratory symbols with  Kinara front and centre.

What the fuck, I thought? Who do I need to send a Kwanzaa card to? And what is it? Kwanzaa? Have I been inadvertently insulting my many friends who have been fruitlessly expecting a Kwanzaa card from me all these years?

So I looked it up.

And guess what - it is another made-up religion. By this character called Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga. Born on the 14th July 1941in Parsonsburg, Maryland, America, in the name of Ronald McKinley Everett, before he decided it wasn't Black enough, Ron Everett was convicted in 1971 of felony assault, torture and false imprisonment of women. Deborah Jones, who was once given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis' mouth and placed against Miss Davis' face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vice. She said that Karenga, (née Ron Everett) also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths and hit them on their heads with toasters.

Deborah Jones and Brenda Karenga, Everett's estranged wife,  testified that Karenga believed his victims were conspiring to poison him, a false belief caused by his drug abuse. He was found guilty and sentenced to a term of one to ten years, of which he served four years in the California State Prison, until his parole in 1975. He's done alright for himself since his release, and, since 2023, has been chair of the Africana Studies Department at California State University. The nearest he comes to discussing his conviction for imprisoning and torturing women is to describe himself as a former political prisoner.

So what of this religion of his, Kwanzaa?  Karenga said it was meant to be an alternative to Christmas. He believed Jesus was psychotic and Christianity was a "White" religion that Black people should shun.

Well, that bit didn't gain much traction, but it is estimated that between 500,000 and 2,000,000 Americans celebrate Kwanzaa these days. It is a celebration of African-American culture from December 26th to January 1st, derived from African harvest festival traditions and culminating in a communal feed on the sixth day.

Karenga is not alone in his belief that the historic Jesus was psychotic. William Hirsch, psychiatrist and neurologist, published his study in 1912: Religion and Civilisation: The Conclusions of a Psychiatrist, which listed Jesus' mentally-aberrant behaviours, considered Him to have been afflicted with hallucinations, described his paranoia as mounting ceaselessly and immeasurably and concluded on page 103: "Christ offers in every respect an absolutely typical picture of a wellknown mental disease. All that we know of him corresponds so exactly to the clinical aspect of paranoia, that it is hardly conceivable how anybody at all acquainted with mental disorders, can entertain the slightest doubt as to the correctness of the diagnosis."

American neuroendocrinology researcher Robert Sapolsky in his essay included in the book The Trouble with Testosterone: and Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament (1997, 1998) suggests the occurrence of schizotypal ("half-crazy", p. 248) behaviour and metamagical thinking in shamans, Jesus and other charismatic religious leaders:

"Oh, sure, one can overdo it, and our history is darkly stained with abortive religious movements inspired by messianic crackpots. (...) However, if you get the metamagical thoughts and behaviors to the right extent and at the right time and place, then people might just get the day off from work on your birthday for a long time to come."

— (p. 256)

Be that as it may, I'm not going to let it spoil my Christmas.

There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish Plumber, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster.  You can buy the Quartet from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps 

please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.

Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.