A question of audience...

[qatarperegrine]

I found myself staring at the bookshelf in a hospital waiting room this morning, while waiting for a routine appointment. The bookshelf said something along the lines of:
Missionary Materials
Missionary and Guidance Department
For Reading Only
After I finished congratulating myself on reading the Arabic, I started wondering more about the books on that shelf. It held one copy of the Qur'an and a handful of pamphlets and booklets on the amazingness of Islam -- I recognized them, because I have the English versions. But the ones in the state hospital here are all in Arabic.

This leaves, as I see it, two options:

1. In a stunning market research blunder, the Missionary and Guidance Department failed to notice that the Qataris are already Muslim, OR


2. All these missionary materials exist for the sole benefit of Doha's Lebanese Christian population, at a rate of approximately one missionary book per Lebanese Christian.

I daresay they need to rethink their target audience a little. Perhaps they could learn from the Al Qaeda missionaries....

Comments

[qatar.livejournal.com]

Yep, there definitely are.

But if that's the target audience, I'd say they're still not thinking it through, since that crowd is not likely to be wooed by booklets like DID GOD BECOME MAN?*

* Spoiler: no.

[dachte.livejournal.com]

It'd be tempting to make a "reply" pamphlet - "DID GOD BECOME MANPAGE?" .. but perhaps that would be both ineffective and dangerous in some parts...