Interruption to Regularly Scheduled Blogging & Walid Shoebat
As those who follow this blog are aware, we are going on vacation beginning tomorrow. This will, of course, result in an interruption to our regularly scheduled blogging.
No, I’m not one of those super-dedicated types that takes their laptop with them and blogs while on the road and in the motel. A vacation, to me, is a time to get away, and I have every intention of doing just this (although if I can work some sneak peeks in to insure that everything is running smoothly in my absence, I am not above doing so).
As a final blog before our interruption, however, I would like to write about a phone conversation I had yesterday with a fellow small press publisher.
It was an interesting conversation and came about like this:
I ran across some information on a writer named Walid Shoebat who is a former muslim terrorist turned Christian. His work includes four books, his most recent being God’s War on Terror. In a nutshell, he read the Bible, was not only convicted that the Bible is the Word of God and that Jesus is the Christ, but was also struck by the similarities of the Bible to islamic prophecies — primarily the similarity of the Bible’s descriptions of the coming anti-christ with the islamic descriptions of the coming 12th Iman (whom muslims anticipate coming with furver equivalent to Christians looking for the 2nd coming of Christ). In short, the 12th Iman bears a striking similarity to the anti-christ. Things that made Mr. Shoebat go ‘hmmm’.
So he began digging further into Bible prophecy and into the corresponding prophecies in the koran and has come to the conclusion that the 12th Iman will be, in fact, the anti-christ that the Bible speaks of.
Now, for many, this is a difficult hypothesis to embrace (although with the state of things in the world, it is getting seeminly less difficult each day), especially for those who have studied Bible Prophecy for years and in-depth. There are certain things in Bible Prophecy that seems to be a given, and the fact that the anti-christ would arise from a form of the revived Roman Empire is just one of them. Tradition says so. The Bible says so. But what tradition goes on to insist, and which the Bible doesn’t, is that the ac will arise from the most associated portion of the Roman Empire (the western portion of the empire which included Rome itself). Most scholars overlook the fact that the Roman Empire encompassed much more real estate than the European portion we all think of, and that present day countries like Turkey were actually a major part of it.
In other words, Walid puts forth, the ac could very well come from the middle east, be muslim, and still fulfil the Bible Prophecy of arising from the old Roman Empire. Perhaps even fulfil it more fully than the traditional view.
Anywho, I read up on some of his work, viewed some of his videos, found my way to his website, and noticed in the process that he was being published not by a major pub house, but by what appeared to be a very small publisher, no bigger than ourselves, in fact.
So, I sent off an email to him via the ‘contact us’ page on his website, and much to my surprise, received a phone call a short while later. Not from Walid, but from his publisher.
It was a fascinating conversation. As I told my husband later, it is not often that I talk with someone with a middle eastern accent who is closely associated with a former terrorist.
What I found is that the pub company publishing Mr. Shoebat’s books is actually smaller than our own. So small, in fact, that they have not even reached a point of being able to have their books in the mainstream distribution channels via Ingram, the largest, most used distributor in the US, and possibly the world. We, small as we are, have achieved this, and probably about 75% of our total sales come through our listings with them.
What was stunning to me was the sheer volume of Walid’s books that they have managed to move despite not having major distribution. Over 40,000 copies of his first title alone (when he was still an unknown, new writer on the scene). Of course, the subject matter is everything, and the unique perspective he brings is a gold mine.
His publisher (whom I am not going to name, because even though the company is listed and easy to find, I’m not certain how the owner of this company feels about having his personal name easily associated with Walid’s — something I will go into further into this post) and I spoke at length about what it would take to get the works into Ingram, into the stores, etc., and further about a possible future collaboration on some other books that they are bringing out, and some back list titles they have that they have not been able to concentrate on. And as he so succinctly put it, they sold 40,000 of Walid’s first book, but they should have very well sold a million, if they had had it in distribution.
We talked about why Walid was with such a small publisher. No major pub would touch him. The content is too controversial, and too volatile. Every publisher out there knows of the fatwah that was placed upon Salman Rushdie with ‘Satanic Verses’. Few of them want that kind of heat, especially after 9-11. Who wants to worry about their office building being blown up because of a title they put out there? This is why I’m not giving out the publisher’s personal name here. I’m sure it can be found, but I’m not going to help in that process.
In conclusion, my main point is that if you haven’t heard of this author, you are going to. His books making it into the major distribution routes and the mainstream stores is nearly inevitable. And at that point, he’s absolutely going to explode all over the place. He’s already seen with near regularity on various news programs including CNN, Fox and ABC for his insight into the current middle-east conflict. The fact that we may have some part to play in getting his work out there is not finalized, but both I and his publisher were very open to working together at some point.
Does this mean that I totally agree with his viewpoint? Not necessarily. But I think it bears enough merit to be seriously looked into. I also don’t believe that any decision I come to on whether it is totally credible or not is the end all be all and should be made for everyone. I think like every other publisher does, I suppose. That people should be able to read it for themselves, and make up their own minds.
Everyone have a great week! We’ll be back on the July 19th at the latest.
