Free Secrets of the Wee Free Men and Discworld by Linda Washington

chaos a Rincewind and a Cohen the Barbarian could cause. (More on chaos in chapter 3 .) No one ever does. Suffice it to say that there’s no army big enough to stop them.
    Omnians vs. The Ephebians: Jihad Discworld-style

    A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.
    â€”Mohandas Gandhi 59

    Religious wars and persecution are still other ways the threads of the tapestry try to pull each other out. In Small Gods , Deacon Vorbis, the Quisition head, instigates war against Ephebe and anyone else who refuses to believe in “the right” god—Om—a god that Vorbis doesn’t really believe in. The Islamic term “jihad”—“holy war”—immediately leaps to mind. Vorbis also wants to persecute anyone who claims to be a devotee of the “turtle movement”—those who believe that the world is carried on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant turtle. In his opinion, the very thought is ridiculous!
    It’s all a matter of perspective.
    You can see the similarities between the turtle movement and early Christians who had secret signs and calls to alert or encourage one another in times of persecution. And, of course, the Quisition is like the Spanish Inquisition, a tribunal begun by King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile (a.k.a. the “Catholic
King and Queen”) in the fifteenth century in reaction to suspicions concerning the conversion of Jews to Christianity. The inquisitor general (Vorbis’s office in Small Gods ) headed the Inquisition. The idea was to maintain Catholicism in the kingdom of Castile. One way to do this was to stamp out what inquisitors believed were heretical ideas (i.e., Protestant beliefs) through the use of trials and torture. You’ve probably heard the saying “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” a saying popularized in a Monty Python sketch. This was because no one knew exactly when the inquisitors would roll into town. Everything was hush-hush.
    Vorbis’s trip to Ephebe and the war that almost results also bring to mind the Crusades, starting at the end of the eleventh century. The Crusades were a counter-jihad of sorts fought in Palestine and Syria, after Muslims tried to take back Christianized areas. The fighting went on for centuries.
    Sadly, we’re all well acquainted with the consequences of the jihad of our day: war in Iraq, suicide bombings, buildings toppling in New York on September 11, 2001, and so on, thanks to the efforts of Muslim extremists. As a counter-jihad to the trauma of 2001, U.S. troops were dispatched to Afghanistan beginning in 2003. It’s déjà vu all over again.
    To the Muslim, jihad isn’t just a war against a perceived enemy, it is a duty. Think of the jihad of the Fremen led by their Messiah—Muad’Dib/Lisan al-Gaib in Frank Herbert’s Dune (classic Dune ). As Daniel Pipes of The New York Post put it, “Jihad is thus unabashedly offensive in nature, with the eventual goal of achieving Muslim dominion over the entire globe.” 60
    Vorbis would agree.
    Males vs. Females: Gender Politics

    I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds; and I very rarely change it.
    â€”Margaret Thatcher 61

    Another rip in the tapestry is the war between the sexes. In Equal Rites, Pratchett addresses the issue with Eskarina’s quest to become a wizard—a quest opposed by the wizards and even, for a time, Granny Weatherwax. Granny pooh-poohs the notion of women using wizard’s magic (fireballs and such) not only in Equal Rites, but also in Wintersmith .
    The only women the wizards gladly admit to the hallowed halls of Unseen University are Mrs. Whitlow the housekeeper, a woman they admit they’re afraid of, and her staff. Occasionally Susan drops by via the rite of AshkEnte when subbing for Death. To the wizards, women aren’t capable of “high” magic. They’re only good