Have been reading lengthy entries on Islam in my old Enc. Britannica.

Curious analogies drifting through on coffee break. Poets up in arms over war. Muhammad (founder of Islam) like the ultimate "acknowledged legislator". Surahs of Q'uran came to him from Allah transmitted by angel Gabriel while he was in a sweat-trance. Analogy (very distant) to previous speculations here about poetry as epileptic response to crisis - main crisis being transition from adolescence to adulthood ("mystical wedding").

Analogies between Muhammad & David (poet-warrior) & prophets (bearers of God's Word) & Messiah. "a sword issued from his mouth". Islam emerging out of, & distinguishing itself from, Judaism & Christianity.

Monotheism as opposed to pagan polytheism. Like a lens in the desert coming into focus. How it becomes (in the prophetic word) a governing principle or gyroscopic mechanism. Governance of crisis & charismatic poetic "ejaculation". Governance. Mandelstam & Akhmatova on the counter-authority of poetry. Akhmatova & Stalin die on the same day (March 5th). (Dostoevsky both epileptic & prophetic.)

Epilepsy or charismatic possession. Power transferred to or emanating from divinity, rather than humanity. Religio = "binding". Black Stone of Mecca; black stone in Jerusalem where Abraham bound Isaac & where Muhammad ascended into heaven (leaving his footprint).

Meteoric stone carried in small covered "ark" on the back of a camel in pre-Islamic Arabia. Possible origin of tablets of the law in Ark of the Covenant. Theme of William Blackstone & the pebble-boomerang in Forth of July.

Henry & Bluejay in the garden behind Shakespeare's Head. Images of Gulf War & Presidency in Stubborn Grew.

Mandelstam:

"The poem is a stone fallen from heaven.
No one will judge it."

Adolescence and paternal authority. Song & Dionysius & panic. in the "bull's eye". (Blackstone & his white bull.)

Islam faced questions about human reason & autonomy from the beginning. The Sunni emphasis on peaceful consensus was in part a reaction against earlier developments; & the Wahhabite radical purism (akin to Qutb & Al Qaeda ideology) had its precursors from very early on. Dynamics internal to Islam.

William Blackstone, upon leaving his Boston home & going into Rhode Island: "I left England to get from under the power of the Lord Bishops, & here I am fallen into the hands of the ministers."

Roger Williams & "soul liberty".