Pray For Pain,
Peace
By Shaik Ubaid
09 November, 2004
Countercurrents.org
Tonight
is the 25th of Ramadan and it could be laylatul-qadr, Night of
Power and Salvation. The night when God the Merciful started to
reveal His Mercy, in the form of Quran the book of guidance to Prophet
Muhammad, who was sent as a Mercy to all humanity. The night when Muslims
believe that God will not reject any sincere prayers, so we try to "find"
it during the holy month.
It is not possible
for us to mount a month long night vigil during Ramadan praying and
contemplating. Instead Muslims have evolved an easier path which is
to limit our vigil to the last five odd nights of the holy month since
it is also reported that lailatul qadr falls on one of these nights.
We gather to offer
our nightly congregational prayers in a peaceful and affluent suburb
of New York, protected by a police cruiser, a mercy bought from the
county officials, prominently stationed at the entrance of our Mosque.
But we are all thinking of Falluja the "City of Mosques" because
of the news reports that the much-anticipated invasion of Falluja has
finally begun. I am thinking of the terrified mothers of Falluja and
the worried military-moms all across the US. The liberation
and pacification of Falluja is going to be as transient
as that of Samarra was. So why all this bloodshed? I ask myself.
We stand up to pray,
shoulder to shoulder irrespective of our social status, people of different
races from distant lands and diverse cultures who speak different languages
in their homes. Our prayer service is led by an "American-born
" teenager who has memorized the entire Quran. As we glorify God
rising, bowing down and prostrating in unison we find scarce if any
mercy in the world around. When I prostrate, my head touches the feet
of a cabdriver who is praying in front of me. His flimsy socks have
holes in them and the autumn night is chilly. I am filled with guilt
about my relative affluence. As I think of the collateral damage in
Falluja the guilt trip then takes me from the realm of wealth to the
realm of security and safety. The Imam concludes this round of Quranic
recitation with prayers for peace and justice to reign in the world,
a reign that cannot start soon enough for me, for all of us.
Innocent civilians
are beheaded in the name of religion and liberation struggle. Innocent
citizens are pulverized to pieces with the most devastating weapons
by armies that "soften up" entire cities from a safe distance.
They are directed by politicians who dread having to deal with body
counts of their soldiers but have no compunctions about the body count
of the civilians living in the targeted cities.
No there is no mercy to be seen or experienced today nor truth and courage.
The air we breathe is infested with lies, greed, fear, hatred, cowardice
and a million other negative energies that have benumbed our senses.
We shed tears when
a pet is run over by a gas guzzling SUV but we do not notice when a
hundred children are blown to bits by suicide bombs and by air to surface
missiles.
We do not care if
we are misled into war nor when the dictators we support in Uzbekistan
and Tunisia boil the dissidents alive. We help these tyrants come to
power and stay in power because they serve the interests, just as we
the consumers do, of our military-industrial establishment. We do not
want to know of the fate of hundreds of thousands who are killed and
raped by these dictators and of the millions living who fare only slightly
better. We choose to ignore the consequences of occupation that our
allies have imposed on fellow humans. We do not think of long term effects
of sustained persecution and despair on human psychology. We are rudely
jolted into noticing these effects only when they start to manifest
as suicide bombers.
But even these awakenings
do not last long. We are lullabied back to our slumber by repeated hypnotic
incantations that suicide bombers are born into and brought up by their
religion. We do not care to use the same analytical prowess to examine
the causes of terrorism that we use to predict our favorite team's or
our most valuable stock's performance. We do not ask ourselves what
is the commonality between the biblical Sampson, the kamikazes from
Japan, the Hindu suicide bombers from Sri Lanka and the Muslim suicide
bombers of the Middle East? If we do then we will certainly find out
that it is neither religion nor economy. It is despair and anger and
at times it is a tactical response in an asymmetrical war.
We are awaken from
our stupor to take notice only if and when one of these self-aggrandizing
dictators gets too carried away by his delusion of power and starts
to defy our military industrial establishment. We are kept awake only
long enough for us to give our manufactured consent to send our young
men and young women from the inner cities to "free" the long
forgotten but now suddenly remembered masses in distant lands. In our
twilight state of consciousness, between obtundation and sudden wakefulness,
we are too confused to ask if it is really a noble mission that we are
going to engage in then why not send the cream of our society to win
the laurels and fame?
The drowsy state
of our minds robs us of the competence to analyze the effect of an asymmetrical
war, fought from a safe distance and with overwhelming military superiority
that creates more civilian casualties and more anger and hence more
suicide bombers and more butchers of human lambs.
Similarly, the anguished
cries of the victims of these angry hijackers of our faith do not penetrate
our consciousness that has gone into a state of permanent denial.
So while the Imam
is praying for Peace and Justice, I will pray for pain. A deep, piercing
and constant moral pain that we all must feel and that which cannot
be dulled by consumeristic anesthesia. That alone can awaken us sufficiently
enough and long enough to strive to break the cycle of violence, hatred
and more violence. Only then can we redeem our religion from those who
have hijacked it. Only then can we have the capacity to hold our governments
accountable, a prerequisite of having a truly functional democracy.
Only then can Justice and Peace begin to reign.