FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Osama Gone

Rant Number 438 3 May 2011

This morning the phone rang. Colourful Radio wanted to interview the priest on a) Osama Bin Laden’s death & b) Pope John Paul II – his beatification. Both hot news but odd conjunction.

Still, there is a tenuous link. Back in 2001 I wrote an open letter to Bin Laden. I observed, among other things, that the mother of a journalist had compared him to Jesus. Offensive nonsense? Yes, but to some looks matter. Of course, no one knows what Jesus looked like, the lady must have meant a picture in her head. Nor just the beard, I surmise, but the handsome, Semitic, olive-skinned face. Osama never seemed agitated or angry, even when blasting the infidels on video. His face emanated a sense of repose, of, yes, spirituality. Uncannily attractive. Or was there a hint of the Satanic?

Here surely the putative likeness ends. Jesus did not kill anyone. His own murder, at the hands of wicked men, the Messiah did not resist. ‘My kingdom is not of this world’, Jesus said at his trial. His Father could have sent him ‘twelve legions of angels’, if he had wished to fight, and yet he did not – so that the Scriptures could be fulfilled. Thus the comparison is absurd. Osama was a man of violence, though his violence came handy to the US when they needed him to fight the Russians. He lived by the sword and died by the sword.

That does not mean, however, that in the Muslim world many will not see Bin Laden as a shahid, a martyr. A heroic fighter, perhaps comparable to Saladin or the Mahdi of Sudan. That is why the Americans took the precaution of burying his body at sea. Why would they do that, were they not afraid of Osama’s grave becoming a cult, a focus of devotion, even of pilgrimage by the faithful? Ironic, because Bin Laden’s Saudi brand of Islam – Wahabism – abominates any sort of grave veneration – even those of the Prophet and his companions – as shirk, polytheism. I suspect Osama would not have approved of pious Muslims visiting his tomb.

In my 2001 Rant (N. 4) I imagined Osama skulking away in some freezing Afghan cave. Maybe he did back then but little did I figure he would now be living in luxury in a plush Pakistani compound. But that makes sense. If you really wanted to hide something, you should not do it in a remote place but in a place so public no one would notice it, as Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter suggests. By that reasoning, Osama might as well have hidden in Tel Aviv or even New York. Instead, he was where indeed many expected him to be. A clever ruse, only, it did him no good.

Another comparison I invoked when talking to Henry and Joo-Joo – my good Colouful Radio friends – was that between Osama and Che Guevara. Also a pseudo-Jesus lookalike. The Bolivian military with their CIA advisers got Che in the end but his myth lived on. Many in Latin America consider Guevara aLibertador, like Bolivar and San Martin. Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Brazil draw inspiration from Che’s life and ideals. He too was a ruthless man of violence, although with occasional scruples. There is, however, a radical difference between the Che’s cult and a possible Osama one. The Left everywhere, as well as misguided Western youths, could take up the Che’s veneration with zest. He was one of them, a Marxist, a secularist, probably an atheist. All admirable virtues, in the Left’s lexicon. Osama was something else. A fellow who believes in Allah, prays five times a day, keeps dietary rules and hates liberated females can never be an example, a model for Western left-wing intellectuals and militants. Hence Osama’s posthumous appeal will be restricted to Muslims. No doubt he would want it that way.

‘What will happen to you?’ I asked him in my open letter ten years ago. I saw him dragged out alive out of his Tora Bora lair, taken in chains, trussed up like a chicken, to the land of the Great Satan and put on trial for 9/11. I also said that no one could possibly imagine his being given a fair trial in the States. So, a violent death was a smart move, perhaps.

Americans danced in the streets at the news. Some Brits found it tasteless. (Brits like to feel superior.) I will not say. Was it out of a sense of revenge? Revenge is bad, impermissible in Christian ethics but it is also a very natural feeling, one most human beings do often relish. Poet Heinrich Heine once described his ideal home, a pretty cottage in the country, with a nice garden, flowers, trees, birds, all that. ‘What would really complete my happiness’, he confessed, ‘would be to see my enemies swinging from those trees outside’. A chilling image. But, be honest, would you really mind, in your heart of hearts, seeing someone who has hurt you, insulted you, ruined your life and career, destroyed your family, come to grief? Would you not exult inwardly? Or even outwardly? Come on, tell the truth – you would.

Of course, sublime, holy men like Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, Socrates, Jesus of Nazareth, Baruch Spinoza and Mahatma Gandhi have shown a different, higher, better way of conducting human relations. Until humanity learns from the teachings and the examples of those great souls to practice true virtue, the lower emotions will hold sway over us.

And Pope John Paul II? He was loved because he suffered a lot, and bore it all with exemplary Christian fortitude. He was a saint. Here, however, the priest wishes to mention how he was the first Pope who reached out in open friendship to Muslims. John Paul prayed in the precincts of the great mosque in Damascus and publicly kissed the Qur’an. Something wonderful which, I am sure, good Muslims all over the world would have noted and appreciated.

I have no doubt that from where he is, up there, the Holy Father, that great man of peace, still prays for us all.