|
|
|
|
Jim McLeod, ironically a Lebanese Christian with a Scottish last name, knew the arguments that Muslims have to convince others to accept their religion. At least he knew most of them. He hadn’t heard Qur’an yet, but he did know from other Arab Christians that it was truly a miracle of language. They admitted it freely, those who knew anything of it at all. The classical Arabic of that scripture wasn’t like the Arabic he spoke and understood native to Lebanon. It was still Arabic, but not always understandable to him the few times he heard it.
What he had heard was why people should accept Islam, especially since 9/11. He lived in Washington, DC and thought that maybe he could go without hearing about Islam there in the US. But in DC, there were so many Muslims that he ran across them regularly and they weren’t always Arab. Many were African-Americans and ‘Desi’ or sub-continental. Not that he looked down on them, but he felt they were less qualified to tell him anything about Islam. He was comfortable being a Christian because it meant that Jesus had paid the price for his sins. It meant that one of his comforts, alcohol, wasn’t even a sin at all. His other comfort, fornication, was a minor sin and not a major one. He liked living in the US where he could engage in them as easily as he could in Beirut, but with less disapproval from others.
When Ali, an African-American from Puerto Rico, came to his job, he was sure that Ali would approach him one day and talk about Islam to him. It never happened. But on a company trip to Miami, Ali did make mention of natural disasters and punishment. "Every time a place gets hit, people start talking about how it’s not a punishment from God, like they got something to prove. Why can’t people ever think that maybe they can get in trouble since we don’t make ourselves?" He wasn’t talking to Jim, but Jim happened to be there. The two carried the debate to Jim's hotel room balcony.
"But that would be like saying God is evil," said Jim. (I seek refuge from this.) "I mean, I just don’t believe that God would punish anyone, especially like that!"
"Which natural disaster are you talking about specifically? Floods or earthquakes?"
"Any of them. They all wipe people out. Why would God send that if He can just take out whoever he wants and leave the rest?"
"That would make the world too easy, it would be too much of a paradise without the righteous having to fight for it," Ali answered plainly.
"I don’t see what’s wrong with that, anyway. But then why hit anyplace with a disaster if it’s a punishment and God wants the righteous to suffer and struggle? That doesn’t make sense."
"Of course it does. It’s still a punishment for an area, not for innocent individuals that are there. Kids might die in those things, but that’s not their punishment. Some old folks who opposed something bad going on there might die, but that’s not their munishment, either. The places get punished, and whoever in them deserves it gets punished that day or on Judgment Day. There’s no perfect judgment day right now in this life, but whoever dies gets what they earned after that in my view. If you don’t believe in any judgment at all, then you’re gonna be confused by these natural disasters"
"I don’t believe in Judgment like that," said Jim. "I really think they’re just natural phenomena that sometimes get out of hand. Like here in Miami, hurricanes are a part of life in the summer."
"Fall," Ali corrected.
"Okay, then, in the fall. Whenever the season is, it’s normal for here. Been going on since long before any Europeans got here. It didn’t start happening just because Miami became a party town."
"I bet the damage did, though. Hurricanes had always been in existence, but as this place became more of a party zone, it started getting smashed up more. I remember when Florida let Bush in office without him even winning, by playing with Black and Hispanic votes. Next thing we know, Florida got hit with four hurricanes in a row. Then Katrina mashed up Miami before it got to New Orleans and Mississippi. Sorry, man, but the more and the longer corruption goes on here, the more abnormal the hurricanes act. In early 2005, a hurricane started even before hurricane season started. That’s normal. Ivan broke up into four storms and one of them moved south for the first time. Hurricanes don’t move south, but this one did. I’m telling you, even if we don’t understand why everyone dies and not just the ‘bad people’, the fact is these things even look like punishment from God!"
"If God is sending these things because he’s mad about what people are doing, then He’s a tyrant! I don’t want to call my god a tyrant like that by believing this!"
"Then you must think He’s supposed to just be a push-over and think that nothing is really wrong, just because people think that way. It would be like adults thinking that way about children’s behavior just because kids feel like that because they don’t want spankings and discipline. Why would we go along with that? They’d rule the world and turn everything upside-down if we didn’t correct their behavior. Likewise-"
"But why would Florida deserve this kind of thing?"
"Well, take homosexuality."
"I don’t think God would punish that with a flood or a hurricane, though."
"Then you will continue to be confused by why God allows these things. If you’re a Christian, then you know the story of Lot and his people, right?"
"I think it was allegorical."
"Okay, I got the message. You don’t believe in justice from on high, okay. The point is you know the story, right?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah! Lot had guests and the people were gay and they wanted to rape his guests who were really angels in disguise-"
Ali interrupted him with, "Look, the point is God punished homosexuality with destruction of a town, and even punished Lot’s wife for being sympathetic."
"That’s too harsh a punishment for God to give people for being gay."
Too harsh a punishment?! Ali thought. Is he on crack?! "Good night, Jim."
"What? You can’t argue anymore?" Jim asked like he had defeated Ali with his so-called enlightenment.
"There’s no argument at all. We see it differently and that’s all but the fact is you keep making it a point to depict God as some cream-puff who doesn’t have the right to punish, like your concept of Him makes up His boundaries! That’s the end of it. I’m going to bed, you have a good night, and I hope you benefit, really benefit, from some good sleep." Ali was on Jim’s hotel room balcony, and he got up and left for his own room quickly. He never let on that at the the same time that Jim had made the last statement, he had seen the water on the beach recede from the coast very quickly, exposing alot of the beach that was previously naturally submerged. Even though it was night time, he had managed to see it.
Jim was on the second floor, and so when the tsunami came and hit the coast, he was pinned in by the water that rushed in to his room. His room door opened inward, so he couldn’t open the door against the water pressure that had already broken his window and quickly flew in to fill up the vacuum. He couldn’t swim out through the broken window against the current and pressure of it filling his room. He was pinned against his door, and as the water level rose, the air went out and he was unable to breathe when it reached his ceiling. He was one of several people who died from Florida’s first tsunami in written history. Miami had become like another Banda Aceh, but Ali had reached the safety of his seventh floor ahead of the in rushing waters that rose so deep that they left debris on the third floor when they finally receded.
Now, when he had reached the seventh floor and saw the
flooding below him, he had begun to sing out the adhan. But what was amazing was
that he had sang it to himself at a low volume. But survivors began to say they
heard the words "Allahu Akbar" being sung at a loud volume, clearly audible
above the din of the incoming Atlantic Ocean. They had heard this on different
sides of the hotel. Instead of taking the hint, they and the public began to
foolishly blame Muslim terrorists for the tsunami and sparked a federal
investigation into that possibility. But Ali knew that Jim and others had been
taught a lesson. No one asked why he thought so many had been killed and
injured, but he felt very surely that since so many thouht the same way Jim did,
they got it, too. He was just grateful that he had been able to see the warning
of the receding waters and be spared from it himself, for he could not think of
one reason why he deserved to be.
bravenet.com