It Depends on What Your Definition of 'Normal' Is

Cash payments from Iran "normal," Karzai says

Update: And speaking of 'normal' (and its opposite): the Ayatollah's Tehran Times is delighted to welcome Tony Blair's newly-"reverted" sister-in-law to the fold. The not-so-normal woman was inspired to embrace Islam because of what she saw in Iran and "Palestine":

TEHRAN (Press TV) -- Tony Blair's sister-in-law Lauren Booth has embraced Islam, saying she was inspired by a visit to the Holy Shrine of Fatima Masoumeh (SA) in Qom, Iran.

“It was a Tuesday evening, and I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy,” Booth told the British daily The Mail.

The 43-year-old half sister of Cherie Blair now wears hijab whenever she leaves her home, prays five times a day, and visits her local mosque.

“Now I don't eat pork, and I read the Quran every day. I'm on page 60. I also haven't had a drink in 45 days, the longest period in 25 years,” she added.

“The strange thing is that since I decided to convert I haven't wanted to touch alcohol, and I was someone who craved a glass of wine or two at the end of a day.”

Booth, who works for Iran's English-language Press TV news network, decided to embrace Islam six weeks ago and converted immediately after she returned to Britain.

Booth did not refuse the possibility of wearing a burqa and said, “Who knows where my spiritual journey will take me?”

Before her spiritual experience in Iran, Booth had spent considerable time working in Palestine and was “always impressed with the strength and comfort it (Islam) gave.”

She travelled to Gaza in August 2008 along with 46 other activists to highlight Israel's blockade of the territory and was subsequently refused entry into both Israel and Egypt.

In a public letter she wrote to Tony Blair during her visit to Iran last month, Booth expressed hope that the former Labour Party politician would change his presumptions about Islam.

“Your world view is that Muslims are mad, bad, dangerous to know,” she wrote in her letter, and asked Blair to acknowledge International Quds Day, an annual event on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims express solidarity with the Palestinian people and protest Israel's occupation of Beit-ul-Moqaddas (Jerusalem).

“Here in Iran they feel proud to suffer in order to express solidarity with the people of Palestine,” she said...

Yes, because if they don't, they may be thrown into prison where they face torture and even death. That's the "bliss," you might say, of living under totalitarianism (you blissed out imbecile, you latter-day Unity Mitford, you).

Update: My rhyme for the "revert":

A blithering idiot named Booth,
Donned a niqab and said, "Forsooth,
There wasn't a Qom
Where I come from
And now I'm brain dead--that's the truth."

Update: This line from Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens seems tailor-made for Lauren and Islamdom's tyrants:

The will to command and to dominate is one thing, but the will to obey and to be prostrate is a deadly foe as well.