The Mufti Speaks Out!

Yeah?

I can give you the standard line, because I’m a liberal, I’m (mostly) politically correct, and, besides, who hasn’t heard it? So here goes:

Islam is a religion of peace and love, there is no place either in the Quran or in the practice of the religion for violence against women or those who do not share the faith.

Then it goes further: Islam, unlike Christian religions, is non-hierarchical. There is no pope, no Archbishop of Canterbury who speaks for the believers. Rather, each Imam is the spiritual head and teacher of a mosque or university. Yes, some mosques for historical or theological reasons are more important than others, and thus some imams are more prominent than others, but no imam speaks for all.

How convenient!

I say this because the world has sat around for three weeks and watched as the Nigerian government did nothing about getting the 276 still-missing kidnapped girls freed from their captors, members of a group called Boko Haram. The group attacked the girls at bedtime in their boarding school, and the scene must have been horrific. And the head of the group issued a rambling-à la-bin-Laden speech promising to sell these girls in the marketplace. Oh, and that’s no idle threat, since Nigeria is a major…well, here’s NBC News on the subject:

The Global Slavery Index, an annual survey by the Australian anti-trafficking group the Walk Free Foundation, ranks Nigeria fourth on its list of nations with the highest number of people living in “modern slavery,” behind India, China and Pakistan.   

Right—so all the world has to sit around and watch this atrocity, but that’s not all. Because God forbid we should even breathe the suggestion—I’ll take a sledgehammer to the keyboard after I write this—that there’s something more than usually blood thirst about Islam. Readers, you’re my witnesses—I have more than once tsk-tsked the Catholic Church, and I refuse to comment on reports that this blog was more than a little responsible for the unprecedented resignation of Ben 16, or whatever the number was. My point? Not too many Christians out there are carrying out attacks on girls’ schools.

Oh, and there’s another thing. Since no one can speak for this religion, and since you, Dear Reader, are very likely doing other things, like working to pay your bills and raising children, then you have to assume that some imams out there are speaking out and decrying this atrocity….

Are they?

It’s hardly scientific, what I’m doing, but it’s more than I’ve seen anyone else do. I googled “top imams“ and got this link from ranker.com.

Are they really the top imams? Who knows, but I took each one of the top ten and googled his name (a curious lack of women in the group, by the way) and the words “Boko Haram.” And—perhaps unfairly—I gave them just one page of search, under the assumption first that it was a fairly narrow search and, second, that it was certainly topical.

So here it goes:

1. Abdul Rahmen al-Sudais is described in Wikipedia thus:

Abdul Rahman Ibn Abdul Aziz as-Sudais (Arabic: عبد الرحمن السديس‎ (ʻAbd ar-Rahman ibn ʻAbd al-Aziz as-Sudais), born Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1960)[1] is the imam of the Grand mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and was the "Islamic Personality Of the Year" in 2005. Al-Sudais has called for efforts to combat terrorism,[2][3] preached Islam's opposition to "explosions and terrorism",[4] and has called for peaceful inter-faith dialogue.

OK—the Google search turned up nothing related to Boko Haram, but did, at the bottom of the page, have this:

Despite his sectarian, racist incitements that Jews are “scum…rats…pigs and monkeys,” the chief cleric of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al Sudais, has been welcomed and invited to preach at the East London mosque in Whitechapel tonight, Tuesday evening, 4 August 2009.

Al-Sudais, who has close ties to the Saudi elite, has also insulted Christians and Hindus, referring disparagingly to Christians as “cross-worshippers” and Hindus as “idol worshippers”.

He has been banned from Canada for his anti-Semitism.

Guys? The imam of the Grand mosque in Mecca has been banned in Canada? Not looking good.

2. Abdul Rauf, whom you will know as the Ground Zero imam. In fact, the search was a bit problematic, since there are a basketball player and a Nigerian politician with almost identical names. So I added “Imam Abdul Rauf Boko Haram” and hit the enter button.

And I’m pleased to tell you, the Imam has been tweeting up a storm: “Six reasons the World Should Demand Action” he tweeted yesterday. But any public statements? New conferences? Op-Ed pieces? No, though there was this:

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf Accused of Embezzling Millions from Mosque Fund

Right—when a bunch of his guys abscond with over two hundred girls, what did this guy do? He tweeted!

3. Imam Abdul Wahid Pedersen is a Danish guy, and half of the search results were in…Danish. Right, but there didn’t seem to be anything much in the way of denunciations on the screen, though I dropped in on the Wikipedia article on him, and discovered that he was convicted and sentenced to over a year in prison for “buying and selling 5kg of hashish.” But look, he was 29 at the time (though he had converted to Islam a year earlier….)

4. No, there’s nothing recent about this guy from Queens—but I do give you this, from the Wikipedia article on him….

Ahmad Wais Afzali (b. 1972 (age 41–42)) is an imam, formerly from Queens, New York. He was deported from the United States in 2010 as part of a plea bargain after lying to the American FBI regarding a conversation he had held with acquaintance Najibullah Zazi,[1] a man later convicted of terrorism charges in the United States.

Guys?

5. Imam Ahmed Yassin—OK, this guy was a problem, though maybe it’s just that my brain has gotten dazed by so much ole-time religion. The problem? I kept getting results for Sheik Ahmed Yassin, and I didn’t think I wanted that. But I pursued the sheik, and he may be our man. And who was he? A founder of Hamas, who died in 2004.

OK—look, I was going to be fair. My father, I have no doubt, would have gotten all the way down the list of the top ten imams: he would have found some imam willing to step up to the plate and bat one for religious moderation. And in fact, I can report that the Egyptian mufti (and wouldn’t it be fun, by the way, to be a mufti? Just for a day or two, you know, kind of check it out…)....

Sorry, I was about to tell you that the mufti has come out and “slammed” Boko Haram! Hah! Take that!

I started out skeptical, but guess what? That’s fallen completely by the wayside!

Whew….

So, unable to endure any more, I have called my sports consultant, who happens to be my brother.

“Johnny, what do you call it when one team is getting slaughtered and nobody can stand it any more?”

“The mercy rule.”

Mercy, indeed!

On Edge

Tell me again—when did we agree that it was OK to play your music into my ears?

I know, I know—you must be tired of this rant. Look, everybody’s life is hard, and mostly getting harder. You don’t need this.

So here’s the good news. It wasn’t I, this time, who lost control. Just the guy next to me, on a supremely jammed subway train on the upper West Side of Manhattan at 8AM.

Well, we crammed ourselves in, and a black woman and boyfriend were having sharp words. I tuned them out, of course—do I need that? Isn’t getting to the airport on time with two bags in a subway car holding people in the low three figures enough?

Well, miraculously, a seat became vacant. I sat, figuring to chill until Columbus Circle. That’s when the black guy flipped on a transistor radio and treated us all to some (I think / presume) hip-hop.

Let me put this gently, Refined Reader. Every stanza made explicit and very street reference to the pudenda of African-American females.

We all stood it for a couple of minutes. Then the eye telegraphs began among us—the brows furled, the eyes flicking heavenward, the shoulders shrugging. And then the guy next to me said, loudly but politely…

“Would you please turn that down!”

Guess the response…

Second time, and note the absence of “please.”

“TURN THAT DOWN.”

Just realized—it can’t be a response since it wasn’t a response. It was…what? Ignoration? Ignor-ance? Ignorance? You choose….

The guy has the insight to say…

“I’M LOSING MY CONTROL!”

But he doesn’t have the power to act on it. Instead, he lunges across several people to get at the black guy.

I don’t do well in emergencies. I look on, a stunned witness, as the lion mauls me, or the scorpion plunges its stinger into my foot.

So I was not among the group of guys who separated the two.

I did hear, however, the screaming rage of the black woman as she soundly (pun intended) berated the white guy. Must have had some effect—the guy sat down, and then said, “I apologize for my behavior.”

“I am leaving this train,” said the black woman, stomping out of the car. Her boyfriend / husband sauntered out—every movement a “fuck you.”

The man was shaking with rage—I could feel it just sitting next to him.

Well, first question—am I gonna go there?

Nope.

I’m not letting that into my day. Which was very nice—got to the airport with plenty of time, came home, scolded / caressed the cats, talked with Mr. Fernández.

Second question—why did the guy act so explosively?

Well, first there is the…right, it’s not music, so let’s call it “aural incitement.” Because make no mistake, the stuff is there to provoke rage. I once heard a song blaring down the street (started up by the Governor’s mansion, ended down by the plaza) in which the last word of each line was the endearment “motherfucker.” Took twenty minutes of meditation to wash that out….

The city is also on edge. No, not up in Upper Manhattan. But the train was coming from the Bronx. When was the last shower the guy took?

Third question—what about the black guy? Why didn’t he react? Yeah, he was trying to throw punches too—who wouldn’t? But when the situation stabilized—or perhaps was stabilized—he went back to being his insouciant self.

Well, a blogger on his toes would have the answers to all these questions. The Internet, however, is slow these days. The best I can do is to provide the conclusion of a research paper by an admittedly less-than-stellar source—The Journal of Undergraduate Psychological Research. Eliana Tropeano, in 2006, wrote the following:

This study examined whether or not watching a violent music video would provoke individuals to answer questions with violent responses. Eleven participants watched a violent music video, 11 participants watched a non- violent music video, and 11 participants were in the control group and did not watch any videos. It was found that watching the violent music video containing violent lyrics, aggressive behavior, and degrading behaviors toward women did make an individual feel and react more violently with regards to responses to questions about fictitious scenarios. The conclusion was that watching violent music videos does negatively affect behavior.

Well, well, so the dog bit the man. Nice to know.

Now, here’s my absolutely un-researched theory. This music does what pornography does. It blunts you, stupefies you, and puts you into a mindless state of inert violence.

And what happens when there’s a trigger?

Two Muslims (Part Two)

Readers may remember my rant against a “religious” Muslim, who in the name of Islam was going to kill his 15-year old daughter for the sin of writing a boy’s name in her notebook.

Three hours after writing the post we’re in a cab, John and Jeanne and I. The driver is clearly an Arab, and—let’s assume—Muslim.

The first thing he says?

“Wow, Ma’am, that’s a wonderful button you’re wearing! I love it!”

“Oh, you mean the one of Big Bird?” asks Jeanne.

“Yeah, it popped right out at me—even before I stopped! Love it—it’s terrific!”

And so we meet our second Muslim.

Who doesn’t lack for words, nor opinions. In fact, he’s on a par with Puerto Rican volubility—and that’s high in the nineties on the standard scale.

“My daughter just loves Obama—she calls him ‘Barrack.’ And the other day, she told me, ‘Daddy, why does your belly stick out and Barrack’s doesn’t? You’re never gonna get to be president with your belly sticking out!’”

Jeanne inquires—how many kids does he have?

Two girls—12 and 5.

And he wants to know—where can he get that Big Bird pin?

The pin is round, has Big Bird smack in the middle. Above—“Save Big Bird.” Below—“Vote Obama!”

“I was almost going to give him mine,” says Jeanne later, “but I have a collection of pins going back decades, and this one is special.”

That’s when she remembers—the Obama campaign committee is striking camp at Broadway and 93d. So she proposes that he stop, she’ll get out, grab one, and we can be on our way.

“God bless you, Ma’am!”

So we do, picking up one for me as well.

Well, the cabbie is ecstatic with the gift; he can barely wait to get home and give it to his daughter.

We go on to talk politics.

“You know, it’s incredible to me that the first thing the Republicans are saying is that they’ll do everything possible to prevent Obama from doing ANYTHING! I mean, aren’t they elected to lead, to make compromises, to make the country a better place? Isn’t that what we pay them for?”

A cab? Nah—we’re in the Democratic National Convention, with the cabbie the keynote speaker!

“And you know, what I like about Obama is that he’s all about the next generation, about improving the schools, about making a world that’s better for all, about seeing your kids go places that you couldn’t get to!”

Balloons are dropping!

“People come into my cab who are Republican, I tell them ‘hey, that’s OK! We’re all American, we’re all working for the same goal, and even though we may disagree, that’s great! That’s what makes us strong! That’s what unites us, our ability to listen, criticize, compromise, and respect each other! That’s the American way!’”

Confetti!

“I see my kids learning things I never knew and I know that their world is going to better than mine!”

And the spotlights pan the backseat!

Fearing that at any moment the Stars and Stripes Forever would fill the taxi, I asked about the gasoline situation. The governor has imposed rationing, and so you can only get gas every other day, depending on the last number of your license plate.

And yeah—that applies to cab drivers, as well.

‘What,’ I think, ‘that’s completely outrageous! Gas is the lifeblood of this guy’s business!”

The guy responds—he was in a line from 7 to 11PM to get a tank of gas.

Right—but what about tomorrow? Will a tank of gas last him?

“It’s a hard life,” remarks Jeanne. “Most cabbies gotta make 200 bucks a day, just to pay rent, expenses, gas….  So a lot of them have partners, who can work the extra shift.”

I’m thinking something different. I’m thinking of two parents, two fathers. And three girls. One father is somewhere in Pakistan, planning—perhaps—a ritual killing of his daughter in America.

The other father is on the streets of Manhattan, driving for hours on end, thrilled that a stranger—now a friend!—would stop and buy him a campaign button.

Two fathers, both Muslim.

One has gone forward—physically, to another country; spiritually, to another reality.

The other is locked into his past.

We should have a word, I think.

“Two fathers, both Muslim,” I wrote four paragraphs up.

A word for a father who is, and who is not.

Two Muslims (Part One)

Well, New York continues to surprise.

Or maybe not. Coming to the city as a new (or perhaps altered) person, I’m not sure what was here before that I couldn’t see, versus what was never here at all.

“She’s a pretty amazing person,” said Jeanne about her colleague, who conducts evaluations for people requesting asylum in the US.

Then she told me the story of a fifteen-year old girl from—where? Let’s call it Pakistan, though it could be any one of countries where fundamentalist Islam is raging.

The girl wrote the name of a schoolmate in her notebook. The family discovered it.

So?

The schoolmate was a boy.

Well, you and I would probably say “so,” and maybe even wonder whether the family had any business looking inside the girl’s notebook. Not being a parent, I don’t know if that’s standard operating procedure….

You can probably guess.

Family wasn’t pleased. So they gave the girl two options:

1.     marry a fifty-some guy whom the family would chose

2.     ritual killing by a family member

The girl chose:

       3.   get the hell outta town

Well, she did. Don’t know the story of how, but she landed in the United States. And is now in hiding because she fears her family may be sending / arranging a hit man to kill her.

That’s where Jeanne’s colleague comes in. Working for a group called Physicians for Human Rights, she does evaluations for people seeking asylum in the United States.

Which has, by the way, the largest number of petitioners for asylum of any industrialized country. About 40,000 people, if yesterday’s-read-today’s-not-findable number is correct in my memory.

And she trains young physicians and med students to do the evaluations as well.

The evaluations themselves are interesting. They’re not supposed to be therapeutic—though paradoxically, they can be. Instead, they’re meant to make the person requesting asylum relive and retell the worst of the (usually) torture that they have endured—to do it fast and dirty, as it were.

Why?

Because the person requesting asylum is gonna face a judge who is going to rule on the question—has this person truly suffered persecution or terror? Is he or she in danger, should the US deport? How convincing is the evidence? Yes, you call appeal the decision. Better, though, if you don’t have to.

The person doing the evaluation, then, becomes a psychic surgeon—applying the saws and drills to the mind and memory, extracting the most painful abuse and torture to display to the judge.

Curiously, some people find the process helpful.

Right, so Jeanne’s colleague had a problem. A fifteen-year old in hiding somewhere, without cash or food or clothes. And Super Storm Sandy bearing into the city. What to do?

Rent a car and deliver the goods, make sure the kid was safe.

Well, I did my share of snorting and some of Franny’s share as well. It seemed to call for it. Look, I don’t give a shit about culture and respecting religions and pluralism and anything else. This family? Rather, these guys—since they have completely subjugated the women?

They’re unspeakable. “Heinous,” perhaps, is the adjective that springs to mind. “Abominable,” certainly, is another alternative.

I can make a case—sort of—for why Islam developed the rules and traditions it did when it was a desert religion. A religion formed where water was precious, hospitality was a necessity not a nicety, when a harsh environment forged a harsh societal code.

Right, but now?

I’d say something that I think any woman would say. There is nothing more important than the family—the husband she has loved, the children she has born and has raised. And for a guy who is willing to kill his daughter for the “crime” of writing a boy’s name in a notebook? A guy who has sent her fleeing in terror halfway around the world, and who is hiding who-knows-where as a massive hurricane / Nor’easter / snowstorm bears down on the region? A guy who does that for his family’s “honor?”

Off with his balls!

(Stay tuned for part 2.)