Quantum Note
February 11, 2005
Of Beards, Amamas and Jilbabs
They must have been following me for some time, but I only noticed them when they started to circle around me as I crossed the main boulevard off the Beadon Road. They were both in their mid-20’s, in uniform, riding a motorcycle. When I turned into a side alley, they came nearer and as our eyes met, I saw intense hatred and anger in their bloodshot eyes. I will never forget that enraged expression. Yet the irony is that it was not even directed at me, but at what I represented to them: a man with a beard, wearing a long jilbab and amamah.
Just as I represented someone to them, they too represented something to me: a new bestial force that has arisen in our lands on the strength of a foreign power—a new breed of men who have been fed crumbs from the King’s table to betray their own tradition, history and land. They were obviously on the look out for “foreigners” and my dress caught their attention. I knew, just as they did, the bait that lurked behind their minds: the dollars that have been put on the heads of those who can be caught in our cities and sent to that heart of darkness—Guantanamo Bay—where the King’s men are writing one of the darkest chapters of human history.
But I was no foreigner to the land where this hateful glance was cast at me; I was walking in my own beloved city, a place where my father and grandfather are buried and where generations of my ancestors have lived and died, a place which evokes inexpressible love and yearning in my blood. As they circled around me for the last time, their eyes brimming with a strange mixture of haughtiness and disappointment, I realized the enormity of change that has transpired in the general conditions of our land during the last four years.
This change could not have precipitated so quickly without September 11, 2001, but even without that dreadful day, it would have come; it is the inevitable harvest of what was sowed during the preceding era when a humble General had emerged to command our land in the name of God.
The wind that blew over our land during the late 1970’s was, however, not an isolated event; it covered a very large area of traditional Muslim lands. It was the result of a dreadful robbery committed in broad daylight; a pillage that shattered the dreams of a millions of men and women who had shown a genuine and sincere recommitment to Islam during the 1970s. Their dreams of rebuilding their societies were hijacked by self-styled kings, amirs, military generals, mullahs and prime ministers with historic mandates. This cruel turnaround was powered by the windfall arising out of an unprecedented hike in oil prices and it sowed seeds of hatred for the beards and amamas that has now yield rich rewards for the head hunters.
The men who wheeled around me on this recent visit to my birthplace are the product of a lost historic opportunity that could have easily produced an entirely different society in this land where the vision of Islam is now being redefined in terms that originate in Washington DC. What is now happening in this land, and all across the Muslim world, was simply unthinkable twenty-five years ago. Who could have then imagined the kind of social engineering that has produced educated men and women who neither know their language nor eat the food that generations of their ancestors have eaten and whose dreams are orchestrated for them in a far-away land? Who could have imagined then that the spiritual space of the entire Muslim world could be so hollowed out that even the sound of Azaan would become alien? Dotted with dish-antennas, the cityscape of Islam’s most sacred cities now give testimony to the veracity of the Prophet’s saying: Islam began as a stranger and a time will come when it will again become a stranger.
Yet, one cannot blame those who are leading this brutal insurgency that is draining the lifeblood from Islamic civilization; they are at least being sincere to their beliefs. They have taken upon themselves to spread their vision of life to the far corners of the earth and they are spending billions of dollars on this mission to remake the world in their own image. The verdict must go against those who have failed to prove their sincerity to a commitment they made when they pronounced the Shahadah. They have not only destroyed the historic possibility of remaking our societies, they have also made it extremely difficult for young men and women now committing their lives to Islam. Beards, amamas and jilbabs have become suspect, not only at airports and border crossings, but also in the streets of our beloved cities where we have shed our blood and sweat and where we have dreamt our best dreams.
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