The First Marker's The Deepest

Surfing through Bettysnake's Flickr pics (great graffiti when she posts¹), and I came across Brighton is with you Omar - with a link to www.save-omar.org.uk/. Her pictures have full copyright claimed, so I can't post them here without express permission from her, and Betty doesn't respond to comments and queries often... so I just didn't bother, as I wanted to just write this.

So, not knowing Omar, I clicked the link to see what's going on in Brighton and why Omar needs saving more than the rest of us. It ends up Omar Deghayes is being detained in Guantánamo Bay... OK. That rang a bell. I don't know Omar or anything about the case, so I'm being a bit detached, looking over the site, when I see that there is a letter from Omar scanned in which was received via the Red Cross. It's in Arabic and English. So I clicked on the small image, to see what the deal was². It had the black marker censor mark, from whoever... but what was censored was odd.

Cat Stevens, or his Muslim name Yusuf Islam, appears to have been censored. Now, I get why people are supporting Omar, and I understand that he's being held probably related to something with whatever it is that has been claimed.

I don't know the fellow, I can't vouch for him, but censoring what appears to be a music artist's name does seem... odd. Peculiar. Strange. Weird. Abnormal. Extraneous. Ridiculous. Assinine. Idiotic. A few other words. And where I was in the middle on this, you know... that sort of censorship just doesn't make sense to me. I don't get it. The first marker's the deepest, baby.

In a world worried about terrorism, it seems like someone's chasing a Moonshadow. Or erasing it. Weird. I'll let everyone else talk about everything else, but that particular black marker is noteworthy, strange and just a little over the top. Maybe this fellow would be better off on Castro's side of the fence. Fidel might even listen to Cat Stevens.

I also didn't know that Islam didn't allow for music. That explains a lot that I didn't understand in the past. I don't know any Muslims that I have noticed not listening to music.

In all, I don't know who is right here, but there is something definitely weird about that black marker.

¹ 'The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls' sort of stuff (Paul Simon reference; 'Sound of Silence').
² Why there isn't a direct link to that post, I do not know...