Thursday, July 13, 2006

Which Came First: Allah or the Egg?

This is true: Reuters News Service reported today that a chicken in a Kazakh village (i.e. a village in predominately Sunni Moslem Central Asian state of Kazakhstan) laid an egg with the word “Allah” written in Arabic on its shell.

This is not: The Christian organization, To Hell with Unbelievers (ToHU), immediately issued a statement saying in part:

“The Allah egg is an obvious forgery. First of all God’s Name is God. Second of all, while God does license the images of his Son and his Son’s Mother to appear in a variety of baked goods, pizza slices, grilled cheese sandwiches, and other food stuffs, the Lord of the Universe does not authorize the use of his signature or Name on eggs.”

Intrigued, I contacted the director of the ToHU, Mark Matthews, and asked what God has against eggs.
“It isn’t that God has something against eggs per se,” Mr. Matthews told me. “The problem is having been born of a woman, Himself, God does not choose to license His Name or Image on other birth products. And, before some liberal takes this as a slap at women and other females, God does not allow His Image to appear in pools of semen either.”

That settled, I wondered if Shiite Moslems were offended that the Allah egg came from a Sunni bird.

“No,” said Abdul Kayyam, the twenty-something head of a hip Shiite group out of Manhattan called Shiite Happens. “We are simply glad that Allah decided to get into the food manifestation business. For years it has been an insult to Moslems everywhere that Jesus and Mary dominated the Holy Face in Foodstuffs movement. Of course, neither Allah nor Mohammed, peace be upon him, would ever lend their faces to food, it is good to see that Allah has found a way to let the world know that He is the God.”

Having been reminded of the prohibition of drawing Mohammed’s face, I did some investigation and found that a Dutch newspaper was holding a contest challenging Dutch chickens to lay eggs with Mohammed’s face on them. No word yet as to how this is going.

For the sake of balance I also called Rabbi Moishe Gross of the Image of God in Food Society, which, despite its name, tries to debunk claims that God’s face or signature shows up in food. “This is nonsense,” the rabbis told me. “God would not sign the Ten Commandments, let alone an egg, and a nonkosher egg at that. No, the signature is a forgery. The pizza with Mary is more problematic, seeing as how a slice of pizza stacked diagonally on another slice of pizza actually reveals the Star of David, but since she only appears on one slice, we are not worried.”

Well, then, neither am I.

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