i think the whole premise is nonsense and rubbish, but i now people would rather indulge in fantasy than cope with reality.

former president reveals he was secretly a muslim and always has been.

The Kindle edition is more expensive than the hardcover.  Lost sale.

It’s unfair to say “there are Nazis in every timeline.” In “the mirage” some of the Lutheran terrorists are also national socialists, politically, but it’s their Lutheranism that makes them terrorists. (In “the mirage,” there was never any Bolshevik revolution in the Russian Orthodox Union for the Nazis to campaign against, so they never got any traction.)

But Jews and even Christians are treated as full citizens in the UAS. It’s the Shiites that are the despised minority, and that owes more to their Persian ethnicity, and the fact that Iran stayed out of the UAS, and is a constant source of criminal smuggling and illegal immigration into the more prosperous UAS. (Think of Turkey as the Canada of the UAS and Iran as its Mexico, if you will: more ignorant, lower-class, and right-wing extremists in the UAS spend a lot of time fulminating about those awful Persian immigrants, in terms that imply that they think of all Shiites as Persians, even when confronted with examples to the contrary.) And some religious people blame the 11/9 disaster on the fact that Baghdad’s mayor, at the time, was accused of being a militant secularist, a dangerous charge in that society.

I pre-ordered it, started as soon as I woke up the day it came out, and read it every minute I could spare until I put it down. I loved it — but the ending felt a little cheap, to me, and I wish he’d shown more of what it’s like to be an American living under occupation.

Yes, there were some hard times (say, bad dynasties) but there were more better times : (rich) Jews were often named ambassadors, for instance.

Also, from the times of the the autonom quasi Republic (‘governorat’) of the Sale’s pirates (basically Moors expelled from Spain who became privateers and took revenge at sea attacking spanish galions — carrying the south american gold –, and taking theirs orders — ‘Lettres de course’ — from Holland, London, etc.), we have some documents of french Christians infuriated (and feeling humiliated) because for paying ransoms to free prisonners, they had to negociate with jewish people of Sale.

More recently, everybody agrees that the then future king Muhamad the 5th have protected his jewish subjects from the very ‘vichyssoises’ french authorities (wich opened fire on american soldiers in ’42…)

But, well, in this matter, there is before 1948, and after. (Anyway, the kingdom of Morrocco have very good relations with the israeli state since the 70′s — but very discreetly)

Kind of depends on the definition of “recent”.

Like the 1930s to 1940s?  You really feel that Christian Europe was making Jews more welcome than the Arabs were?  Do I need to Godwin that for you?

The point being in that it is entirely plausible that Jews could be treated well and given a homeland, post-WWII.  Turkey, for example, was a major escape route for many German Jews fleeing the country (estimates at 100,000 or more).  This isn’t to say there weren’t massacres, pogroms or persecutions…just that there were also instances of fair and better than fair treatment.

Remember: modern Arab antisemitism in our world is largely a post-WWII phenomenon, imported from Europe and compounded by clumsy and stupid handling of the area by various global powers, especially the UK and US. (Followed up by Israel’s own stupidity in recent decades, but the seeds were already there.)

Before the last few decades, most Arab countries had large, thoroughly integrated Jewish populations, with a much better history of equal treatment than there was in Europe. In a world where WWII was Germany vs Arabia, a strong Jewish/Muslim commonality is entirely plausible.

Moorish Spain was a haven for Jewish peoples hounded out of Europe by religions and financial (as well as good ‘ol racist) pogroms. The Mughal princes prior to Aurangzeb provided a safe environment for non-muslims with Akhbar even removing the tax (Jisia) for non muslims.

I think you may be getting confused be fairly recent political events which have set one against t’other and that was mainly due to a pretty poor imperial fudge by the British between the 1920′s and the 40′s in which we exercised the rights of our mandate in the region without due respect given to the people of the region for politically expedient reasons back home.

So yes, I would suggest that not only is the premise plausible but from an historical perspective it’s almost more plausible than anything else.

Truth stranger than fiction, who’d a thunk it?

You really should think about getting a gig as a writer, your quite good with the written word.

I’ve read Bad Monkeys and it was okay.  But I love Ruff & Gold’s blog posts so much that between those and this review I’m getting it ASAP!