FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Subverting the Qur’an

Rant Number 480 6 March 2012

Insulting the Qur’an brings poor dividends, as the Yanks are finding out in Afghanistan. And no need to recall the Rushdie case. However, a sacred text can be perverted in subtler, more insidious ways. The latest BBC4 episode of the Sicilian detective series, Inspector Montalbano, proved it well.

The Mystery of the Terracotta Dog shows the eponymous, shaven-headed policeman investigating a cache of arms in a cave. A run-of-the-mill mafia hide-out, it seems, but the plot thickens when the bodies of a boy and a girl killed long ago are found, lying in an adjacent, sealed chamber. A handful of coins and a huge terracotta dog, as if standing guard, are by them. Mystery indeed...

Inspector Montalbano patiently pieces together the pieces of the puzzle. The uncle of the dead girl when a student had written an essay on a certain ‘Mediterranean legend’. About some young men sleeping in a cave, guarded by a faithful dog, Qitmir. For centuries they sleep, till miraculously, they wake up again. A copy of the Qur’an is then produced...Muslim readers, by now you have twigged it. So does the policeman, of course.

It is like this. To escape persecution by Emperor Decius, a brutal and savage pagan, seven Christian youths are walled up in a cave near Ephesus, in Asia Minor, guarded by their dog. After 200 years, they wake up. One of the boys goes into town to buy food. He offers a coin and the shopkeeper is astonished: the coin bears the image of a hated emperor from long ago. Now a Christian monarch rules, Theodosius II. After initial incredulity, the people rejoice. Later, the boys are canonised – Feast Day 27 July – God be praised!

Now look up Sura al-Kahf, 18^th in the Qur’an. The same wonderful narrative appears. Commentator Abdullah Yusuf Ali acknowledges the Christian origin of the story. He calls it an allegory and says that the Prophet Muhammad treated it as a parable (under inspiration, Ali adds), to teach various lessons. Other pious commentators might baulk at the term ‘allegory’ but that is not for the priest to judge. Allah and the saintly sleepers know the truth. (The Book does not name the dog, by the way, but it is charming that that goodly beast plays such a fine, protective role of believers.)

Back to Inspector Montalbano. The jigsaw comes together. A dark, painful case. The student, now a very old man, was the uncle of the dead girl. Her father, aflame with incestuous passion, had raped her. When he realised the girl was in love with the boy, he paid an assassin to have them murdered in bed. (It is Sicily, after all...) Arriving on the scene of the crime, the uncle decided that the couple, denied union and happiness in this world, must be united in the next. So he arranged the bodies, coins and terracotta dog in a cave. The Qur’an gave him the idea. Simple.

What is wrong with this, you might ask? A lot, an awful lot. Sura al-Kahf does not tell a tale about lovers. It is about some pious, chaste, believing youths. They are strong monotheists, in flight from a murshik, polytheistic persecutor. That is why the Lord performs the great miracle of causing them to fall asleep and then awake again after centuries. They may well have thought they were going to die but death is not the end but the door to life for one who trusts in the One, True God.

The Mystery of the Terracotta Dog is not about faith. Not about belief. Not about martyrdom. Not about standing up to an unholy system. The tragic lovers simply are in love with each other. They love the flesh, not the Lord. Their illicit love dooms them forever. From their sleep they would not awake again, not to eternal life, anyway, no.

Love, even earthly love, is of course something eagerly desired. We have all been young, haven’t we? We all – well, most of us – have hankered after the forbidden fruit. So, few would not feel sorry for the lovers in the story. Dante too sympathises with Paolo and Francesca, the doomed lovers in the Inferno. Yes, he still places them down below, amongst the damned. He has no choice. Dante knows the difference between sentimentality and divine law. Andrea Camilleri, the author of the Montalbano novels, apparently does not.

So, here you have it. An insidious subversion. A holy text, a book revered by billions, is used and misused to convey a message opposite to what it intends. The companions of the Cave, the faithful, self-denying and heroic youths of Sura al-Kahf vanish from view. Instead, they become a couple of rutting physical lovers. The dog, the coins turn into props, gimmicks, clues scattered to inspire the sleuth to solve his mystery. The supernatural narrative, the vertical dimension, the enigmatic drama of God’s power and grace are replaced with a purely horizontal, natural and sentimental intrigue. Maybe the viewers lapped it up. But it troubled the priest...

It does not happen only to Muslims, of course. Dan Brown subverted the sublime mystery of the Incarnation, the glory of St John’s Gospel, to produce a vulgar fantasy about a supposed carnal affair between Christ and St Mary Magdalene. It is not just subversion, it is inversion. St John’s Gospel is about love of God, not love of man. The Greek word for erotic love, eros, never appears in the New Testament. Instead, agape is used. Non-physical love. Brown could not bear that. He had to twist it, to soil, to besmirch it. And he made a lot of money into the bargain. It figures.

Inspector Montalbano is actually a jolly good thriller. The Sicilian atmosphere is great, the plots grip you, the characters are gritty and earthy, unlike the rather schmaltzy, insipid suburban figures of Midsommer. Hope no one wishes Andrea Camilleri ill. He is no Rushdie. Can’t believe he meant to disrespect a holy text. Yet, unwittingly, the Terracotta Dog illustrates what the Zeitgeist is relentlessly at: the occult war, the subversion, the inversion of the sacred.

Revd Frank Gelli