Tekumel: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Steal From Gross Old Men

 DID YOU HEAR, O GROGNARDS? DID YOU HEAR?! M.A.R. Barker turned out to be a secret creep and scholarly vanguard wielding pen and typewriter under the Black Sun! That means he used his PhD and skills to deny the Shoah and who knows what else, he was a NAZI, and the Tekumel Foundation has kept mum for a decade, because HOLY HORST-WESSEL-LIED, what are we going to tell our literally hundreds of fans? 

So uh, I found Tekumel disgusting and impossible to believe in as a setting YEARS before it was cool. Here's why, how, and harrumph:

The setting has many, many jewels and wonders. It is a treasury of weird detail and gameable, plottable ideas and structures. I love Barker's aliens, well, some of 'em: the Shen, Ssu, Hlyss, Hlaka, Hlutrgu; and the semi-intelligent reptiloid Sro, Serudla, Feshenga, and numerous smaller many-legged beasties. Purple poison plants? Beautiful. I could go on, but I have a science fantasy setting of my own, SORQ, where i have subjected the beings and tropes i like to forced resettlement and reappraisal of stupid aspects of their culture and cognition as described, so hit me up for more of what's cool and salvageable from Tekumel.

So. M.A.R. Barker is known to some as Muhammad Abdur Rahman, convert to Islam and scholar of Urdu, as well as other languages much further removed from the linguistic norms most nerds waste their time on this planet imitating in their constructed languages. He did anthropology and linguistics in the mid 20th century mode, and experienced a world of insurmountable, incommunicable differences between cultures, indigenous peoples he could never fully understand nor expect to comprehend his world of nation-states and ennui. Somewhere along the line, he took Shahada, professed before witnesses that there is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God, took an Arabic name as many new Muslims do, and whatever else that followed is between the Most High, Barker, and those he interacted with. 

This is a perfectly normal, indeed daily occurrence all over the world, but it is not as common among Anglophone professors and sci-fi gamers as, say, dabbling in Thelema or Wicca, or whipping out Libertarian slogans for all occasions. Islam? Like, he PICKED it, changed his name, but hid it behind initials? What is UP with that? 

I've seen a lot of crude and nonsensical Islamophobia about Barker on rpg.net, GURPS forums, IRC groups, and so on. Can't trust a Saracen, o.children of the West!

Thing is, I'm an Anglophone gamer, erstwhile academic at home in the Academy, conferences, seminars and monographs, raised an Evangelical and nourished on corn dogs, who encountered Islam, Arabic, the Qur'an, the Sufi tradition of mysticism and esoteric thought, and said, I WANT TO GO TO THERE. I changed my name, entered into mosque and dervish lodge, chanted and fasted, the whole thing. Changing religion, taking on a tradition of thought and practice and social norms from some weirdo foreigners is just something human beings do, particularly in times and periods of ambiguity, change, interpenetration of ideas and devotees. In my case, I discovered stuff about my brain too late to finish a doctorate and join the scene of new Muslims, newly traditional or reconstruction minded, even heretical, in American and European universities.

So, as a Muslim, as a trained historian, as a student of the intellectual tradition, as a former specialist in esoterism and heretical groups quite comfortable with the weird variety of things humans think and do, I say that Tekumel is a very strange fantasy world for a Muslim to spend so much time, effort, imaginal investment, and thousands upon thousands of hours projecting one's sense of self into.