Father Frank's Rants - Militants

Rant Number 343 11 March 2009

I met a Muslim lady once. I'll call her Zeynab. Smiling, affable, cultured - all that. We got along really well. 'Are you Sunni or Shia?' I nonchalantly asked. 'Sunni, of course', Zeynab replied, her countenance darkening a little. Trying conciliation, I observed: 'Well, does it matter? After all, what was Prophet Muhammad: Shia or Sunni?' Like a shot she came back: 'Oh, he was Sunni, of course.' I am afraid she did not understand why her answer made me gasp.

To be fair, this is not a problem confined to Muslims. During the wars of religion which raged across Europe during the XVII century, Catholics and Protestants slaughtered each other gleefully in the name of the Lord Jesus. Of course, clever theologians proffered plenty of justifications for their respective positions. Some not all contemptible. But I wonder whether it ever occurred to the warring factions to ask themselves: 'Was Jesus of Nazareth a Protestant or a Catholic?' Well, the answer is that probably they must have. Unfortunately each lot must have reacted in a fashion similar to Zeynab's. 'A Catholic, certainly!' Catholics would have sworn. And Protestants...you get my drift.

The priest has thought these thoughts before but they were given fresh impetus by a conversation I had last week with an Iraqi doctor who had been visiting relatives back home. He spoke sorrowfully of the mayhem, the bloodshed and the havoc caused by the endless Sunni-Shia internecine warfare. One of his relatives had died after the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra. 'I went back to Samarra', he told me. 'I had to. I was brought up there. I cried when I saw the mosque... It could happen again. This is like a curse. It never stops. It will go on and on forever.' A Communist from a secular background ('my father never prayed', he confessed), he felt real despair at the civil war the US invasion has generated. 'The Qur'an core teaching is about social justice', he passionately argued. 'This religious fanaticism is alien to the spirit of true Islam'. Pessimism and optimism mingled in his views. A thoughtful man, has I put to him the question I asked Zeynab, I am sure he would have answered in a spirit of tolerance. His communism, though, bugged me. A menacing ideology which too divided society into opposite, warring camps. Righteous proletarians versus wicked capitalists. Or, suit yourself, the other way around. And communism too is responsible for mega-crimes and massacres galore. Stalin murdered more people than Hitler. Did my good doctor get the implicit contradiction? Sigh...well, no one is perfect.

The other night I went to bed mulling over these things. For no apparent reason, before falling asleep my mind drifted back to the recent Bombay terrorist outrages. (I refuse to call it Mombay.) A friend of mine at the time was on holiday in India and I was worried about her but I found out later she was nowhere near that city. Still, I had read the papers and watched the news avidly every day during the whole time she was away. Bombay, Bombay, Bombay....

The militants were young and sleek, eyes glinting like beasts of prey. They burst into the posh Ganesh Hotel. After killing the unarmed security staff, they rant into the restaurant and sprayed the diners with gunfire. They rounded up six survivors and pushed them against the wall. Coldly, they raised their weapons.

‘Don’t! Please! Why do you want to kill us?’ An elderly woman cried out. Her husband stood next to her, petrified. ‘We are from China! What are we guilty of?’

‘You want to know what you’ve done? Well, I’ll tell you. Know East Turkestan? Don’t tell me you never heard of it. The Uyghur people there. Our brothers in Islam. You have been murdering, oppressing them for years. Denying their rights. Now it’s payback time’ the gunman said. And shot them both.

Another man, large and bearded, pleaded: ‘Please, do not kill me! I am a Muslim!’

‘Don’t lie! That steel bangle on your wrist gives you away. You are a Sikh, aren’t you?’

The man understood it would do him no good to pretend. ‘Yes. It is true. But I have always got on well with Muslims. There is no enmity between our peoples.’

‘Oh, yes?’ the militant scoffed, ferociously. ‘Nice try. But what about the Indian mutiny? Unfortunately for you, I know my history. You Sikhs actively aided and abetted the British in putting down the revolt. Your people afterwards were the worst butchers and torturers of Muslims. Now you are paying the penalty’. To spare ammunitions, the gunman drew a pistol. A single bullet to the forehead and the Sikh dropped dead.

Trembling, two Greek businessmen in the group whispered to each other: ‘If we say we are from Greece, they’ll kill us too. Greeks and Muslims are like chalk and cheese. We have been fighting each other for centuries. Let us pretend we are from Iran.’ So they shouted: ‘Don’t shoot us! We are Muslims! We are Iranians!’

Alas, fear had affected the poor chaps’ brains. They had forgotten that Iranians belong to the Shia branch of Islam, whereas the militants were radical Salafis – an Islamic persuasion violently at odds with the Shia. So a malignant look came over the young men’s faces.

‘Iranians, are you? Thanks for admitting it. You dogs! You heretics! You are the ones who have helped Americans in overthrowing the Taleban. You are murdering our brothers everywhere. Go to hell! Die!’ A burst of gunfire took care of the Greeks, too.

Only one person was left. A tall, imposing guy. Can't describe him better because I could not see his face. Strangely, he did not seem unduly perturbed.

‘And you – who are you? What is your religion? Speak!’ they yelled, pointing their smoking guns straight at him.

‘My name is Ahmad’ the fellow replied.

‘Ahmad?’ The militants lowered their guns a little. ‘A Muslim, eh? That’s good. But what kind of Muslim? Sunni or one of the accursed Shia? Tell the truth.’

The man scratched his head, smiling: ‘I am a Muslim. A Muslim like the Prophet – Peace and Blessing upon Him.’

Automatically, the boys echoed the pious formula every believer is meant to repeat, whenever the prophet’s name is uttered. But they also insisted.

‘What kind, do you hear us? We must know – Sunni or Shia? Don’t try to fob us off with words, understand?’

The man sighed. ‘All right. I will tell you, have no fear. Only, please, brothers, tell me first: what the Prophet Muhammad Sunni or Shia? I really would you like to know that.’

‘Of course, he was a Sunni. We could prove it to you, if we had time.’

‘Oh, was he? Was he indeed. Interesting. Why is it then he disagrees with you?’

The gunmen thought they had misheard. Or maybe the stranger was trying to confuse them?

‘The Prophet disagreeing? What nonsense are you talking about, man? You are playing a dangerous game. If you try to make fun of us you are a dead man!’

The stranger replied: ‘Not at all. No one is trying to pull your leg. The Prophet, I assure you, is neither Sunni nor Shia. Or, rather, he is both. Pity you cannot understand that. That explains a lot, I suppose. You see…’

The younger militants had had enough of that nonsense. His gun blazed away. The man dropped dead.

They looked at each other with grim satisfaction. The young one told the other: ‘Good. He really deserved to die. Arrogant bastard. It served him right…’ Then he saw his friend’s open mouth. He followed his gaze. The dead man’s face…It could not be true. He looked again.

He saw the fallen man’s face was his own.

All right. I have expanded somewhat on the details of my dream. Filled it the blanks. Although I am in the habit of jotting down the contents of a dream as soon as I wake up, I never can recall it in full. But the gist is as I have recounted.

A dream - a wish fulfilment, like Dr Freud taught? Or a message from God, as the Bible sometime has it? Or a prophetic thing, as Muslims believe? Be that as it may, as the fires of sectarian killing seem to be blazing up again in Northern Ireland, a dream with a moral, perhaps.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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