Father Frank's Rants - Islam Expo and Doppelganger Provocations

Rant Number 311 15 July 2008

Islam Expo and Doppelganger Provocations

‘Fr Frank, we’ve just seen your look-alike!’ the veiled lady cheerfully said, at the Islam Expo exhibition. Good bless her, she meant well but it made me nervous. Mumbling an apology, I quickly made off out of Olympia, without looking right or left. Seeing your own doppelganger, or double, portends catastrophe – they say. Superstition, sure, but…in matters occult, prudence is best.

Yet the image of my double conjures up intriguing possibilities. Consider: peace, community and spirituality. These are the three key values, like three charming sisters, that I commended to the Muslim faithful in a speech. As we assembled in the Great Hall on Friday night. As some shared concerns of our faiths. And bases for interfaith work. However, what if my double had spoken, instead of me? What if he had invoked something less edifying? Perhaps more risky? But that’s to anticipate.

To explain. Armed with an invitation, I had turned up at Islam Expo’s opening ceremony. ‘You are a VIP’. I was told and invited to sit in the front seats. I obliged. ‘Now you should go up onto the stage’, another guy told me. Sounded a bit strange but…all right. So there I obediently sat, like an Anglican icon, between Ken Livingstone and Yusuf Islam, formerly singer Cat Stevens. Then an official came up and proudly announced ‘the representative of the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster’. Then he smiled and looked invitingly at me. I shook my head. Felt sorry for the organisers. Maybe the Cardinal’s man had got lost in the crowd. Anyway, after some minor kerfuffle, ‘Fr Frank Gelli, Anglican priest, from the Arkadash Interfaith Network’ was invited to the podium. Facing the sea of friendly faces - hundreds of fellow Abrahamic believers, the priest perorated.

Peace. Salaam. Shalom. (The good Rabbi Weisz, a Woody Allen look-alike, was there too.) Beautiful word. ‘Assalamu alaykum’. Peace be with you, the risen Christ says to ten disciples after the Resurrection. (St John 20:19). So peace is a necessary, splendid common value. Something to remember, as the forces of darkness menace to unleash another war in the Middle East. To oppose that is another common, God-given task. The audience cheered wildly.

Community. Loathe the hackneyed term but its meaning matters. Faiths build communities. Though, let’s get real, sometimes communities compete for followers, I told al mumineen. Fair enough. But then let us have a goodly competition. Why not compete as to which faith benefits humanity best? During the floods that devastated the English west country last year, some local Muslims brought food and aid to old people stuck in their homes. That sort of practical thing. Feed the starving, visit the sick, lift up the desperate, and give the young something better to live for. Let’s be rivals over all that. Geddit?

Spirituality. I alluded to an old search of mine for Sufi tarikats, mystical fraternities, in Turkey. My unforgettable encounter there with a saint, Effendi. And so on. Yes, spirituality is the life of the Spirit. Spirituality is like living, running water. Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well (St John, ch. 4) all about that. From that extraordinary well, be it Zem-Zem in Mecca, or Sychem in Samaria, or simply our inner life of prayer, all true believers absolutely must drink.

Thus far, all well and good. Later, a few people were kind enough to compliment me on my message. And the following days the priest wandered around the many stalls, attended debates, exchanged ideas, met old friends, made new ones and ate a good meal. Like the 40.000 people who attended over the week-end, I enjoyed Islam Expo a lot.

Yet, the thought of my doppelganger nagged me a bit. I fantasised he had got to the mike in my place. What things, what unusual message, might he then have preached to Muslims?

Revolution. Wot? Yes, revolution, why not? We need it. Palestinian firebrand Dr Azzam Tamimi did indeed urge it, vis-à-vis some failing Islamic polities. If that scares you, note that another speaker, not an Arab but a sophisticated British expert with a solid background in intelligence, also advocated ‘a new vision’, and ‘a new kind of human being’ at the heart of politics. Would have made James Bond sit up! Fr Frank’s doppelganger, however, went further. He called for no less than the restoration of transcendence in the heart of public and political life. Sounds vague? Harmless? The very opposite. Dynamite, man! Consider how modernity and post-modernity alike involve a direct, sustained attack on transcendent, other-than-human values. What do seminal writers as different as Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre, Foucault, Baudrillard and Derrida have in common? Well, what I would term a kind of pseudo-humanism. Meaning the total exaltation of man. And of nature. Naturally, allied to an inexorable hatred of revelation. A determined denigration of the divine. So Machiavelli divorced politics from ethics, Hobbes replaced God with matter in motion and its modifications, Spinoza would recognise no laws of humanity different from physical laws, Rousseau upheld an enforced egalitarianism, Marx substituted sordid economic interest for idealism, Nietzsche sang the Nazi superman and Sartre argued for freedom as caprice. As for Foucault, Baudrillard and Derrida, that post-modern, unholy, intolerably verbose trinity, well, the epithet ‘charlatan’ would probably dignify them too much.

Against these ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’, my double argued, third millennium man and woman will revere and read some timeless guides to the eternal. Such as Plato, St Augustine, Ibn Arabi, Al Hallaj, Al Farabi, St Francis, Vico, the Baal Shem, De Maistre, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Dostojevski, Spengler, Hassan Al Banna, Imam Khomeini and Martin Buber. All valiant champions of the transcendent. But beware, ‘of many books is weariness of the flesh’, as Ecclesiastes warns. Bible and Qur’an are the total texts that really matter. For our respective faiths, the best embodiments of the transcendent.

So, what is to be done? But revolution, insurrection, rebellion, guerrilla, of course, what else? The transcendent cannot be resurrected without the multitudes rising up.

Mind you, thus spoke my doppelganger. Nothing to do with the poor priest…

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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