Talk:Omnia

The entry on Omnia misses one very obvious reference that I'm sure Pratchett had in mind: Omnian religion is a satire on all the main monotheistic religions, and as such contains references to Islam, alongside those to Judaism and Christianity.

Perhaps the most obvious Islamic references are geographic (Omnia's desert location) and the prohibition of alcohol: Omnians are not allowed to drink alcohol at all, and this can only be a reference to Islam. (Judaism and Christianity actually *mandate* wine in certain religious ceremonies).

More importantly: Omnia's expansionist wars are references to the holy wars of both Christianity (crusades) and Islam (Jihad). Islam grew from a minority religion in what is now Saudi Arabia into a veritable empire within a few decades, a growth which involved a series of wars, including the conquest of large parts of the then-Christian Bizantine Empire. Omnia's expansion is surely a reference to these expansionist wars, not just to the Crusades.

Pratchett is, it seems, very careful not to make Omnianism a satire on any single religion. Some aspects of his creation are satirize just one of the three main religions; some play on common denominators between two religions. Most importantly, the inherent intolerance of Omnianism, its confidence that its God is the only God and its holy scriptures are the only books that matter, satirize the fundamentalists of all three religions.

The war between Omnia and Ephebe plays on a potential event that never actually happened: it is as if, in the real world, crusading Christians -- or the armies of one of the Islamic Empires -- had come to fight against Athens at its philosophical heyday, bringing intolerant monotheism and open, democratic philosophy into direct confrontation.

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