Ahmed al-Rahim al-Syed was a devout Muslim, as hard as that was to be in godless America. He would have to wear blinders to shut out the smut and shameless show of female flesh, block his ears to the daily incessant blasphemous chatter of Christians, and ignore the shoddy, incidental devotion claimed to be dutiful faith.
Gaithersburg is a Washington suburb of no particular character or importance, one Ahmed chose only for its modest lodging and proximity to the Islamic Center where he and his family spent much of their time.
The mosque was a refuge from the apostasy and barbarism of the secular world around him, and an asylum from Jews. No matter where he looked, Jews were everywhere - diamond merchants, clothiers, managers, doctors, and lawyers - and there was no escaping them..
The Quran has made it perfectly clear that Jews, claiming to be God's Chosen People, have expressed an ignorant, defiant refusal to accept Islam, the true religion, and to acknowledge that a universal Muslim caliphate is at hand.
A day did not pass without Ahmed regretting his decision to leave his native Palestine and come to America; and he hoped that Allah would forgive him for abandoning His holy land and nesting among infidels.
He hoped that his daily prayers, his Friday prayers at the mosque, the disciplined religious training of his children, and his solidarity with Muslims around the world would win him favor in Allah's sight and would give him some measure of hope for the Last Judgement when he would be raised from the dead and reunited with Allah, God Almighty.
The Muslim heaven was a glorious one, filled with the promise of a spiritual and human idyll. Christians in all their penitential ignorance believe that heaven is only the sight of God, but a Muslim paradise will be filled with all the joys and pleasures of the fullest and richest human life.
Ahmed had always wanted to be Sultan Suleiman of Turkey, a pasha with harems of beautiful blonde women, culled from the far corners of the Ottoman Empire in service to the emperors of the Muslim world. Every day he dreamed of Suleiman's Russian princess, Anastasia, daughter of Russian royalty, the jewel in the Sultan's crown, the famed grande dame of Topkapi palace.
Ahmed liked to watch videos about the life of the great Turkish pashas, especially the women in his retinue. Not only did Suleiman prize Anastasia, but beauties from Persia and India, light-skinned, fine-featured women who were at his beck and call, a different woman every night to whom he made love in a rose-scented palatial bower.
As much as Ahmed convinced himself that his interest in Turkish pashas and their harems was only historical and a personal tribute to the extension of royal Islam, he had to admit that his desire was carnal. He wanted the prizes of the Orient, feel the tender caresses of Mogul princesses, enjoy the kisses of queens of Mesopotamia.
He had married his wife in Gaza, a proper Palestinian girl from a modestly well-off family. The family was not as conservative as he had hoped. The Wahhabi Saudi tradition of the honor and respect for women - their own chambers, a cloistered, monogamous life, their full and complete devotion to God and their male masters - was what he aspired to, but he had no choice. His parents wanted a good marriage, a substantial dowry, and a full-bodied reproductive wife.
The marriage was arranged, and the imam told him that love would come from mutual respect and proximity, but it never did. Fatima was a plain, dowdy, limited woman who performed her marital duties with clenched jaw and closed eyes.
He had no doubts about her fidelity because he was sure no man would want her; so faithfulness in such an unattractive, unappealing wife was incidental. From the very beginning, despite his religious devotion and fealty to Allah, he wanted the perks of royalty - ten wives and a hundred lovers.
Ahmed had been born unlucky. What he wanted out of life would only come millennia in the future when Allah called the faithful to join him, body and soul in paradise. A long wait, one so far off and so faint that if it hadn't been for his profound belief, he would have never have placed such a premium on it.
Why had he not been born a sultan, a pasha, a shah or a member of the court? Why had he been born in the benighted, contested strip of nasty land in Palestine? Why had been given a wife and not chosen one for himself?
Ah, if only he could have, he would have chosen Amina, daughter of the Ghazzah Street landlord who gave sumptuous banquets and showed off the beauty and elegance of his three daughters of whom Amina was the most beautiful and desirable.
No, the celestial dice had been thrown and his life began in a tenement apartment, above his in-laws, scrambling for an extra shekel, eating goat meat and couscous, buying and selling for pennies until the chance of a lifetime, emigration to America came his way.
It took bureaucratic maneuvering, an overwhelming debt, boiler-class freighter accommodations, and many weeks of travel before he reached American shores. Not exactly illegal but not fully legal either, his debt increased with the payments to local Turkish lawyers who promised him full American government recognition.
And so it was that he spent increasing amounts of time in the basement of his Gaithersburg split-level watching what now amounted to Islamic pornography. He hated the idea, the very notion that he was sullying the one true religion with salacious thoughts of naked women, but this virtual world was all he had.
Upstairs he could hear the heavy footsteps of his wife, now an obese, slovenly harridan, and so he retreated further into the magical realism of a sultan's harem.
Muslims, aware that Islam was getting a very bad press - the new conservative, nationalist governments of Europe were vowing to deport Muslims en masse, reversing the tide which had let them in. Islamic terrorism - Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, al-Shabab, the Houthis, and ISIS - was still in the news; and fewer and fewer Americans and Europeans were no longer looking at Muslims as just another religious group.
The idea of babbling brooks, luscious musk melons, and above all vestal virgins in an Islamic paradise had persisted for centuries and was laughed at by non-Muslims everywhere. These wife-beating sex lords could only dream of such a pubescent fantasy; but there Ahmed was, squirrelled away in a Gaithersburg basement dreaming of the very same idyll and pleasuring himself to boot.
Over time the virtual, video world grew less and less compelling and the real world more appealing; and he began to look at the bare midriffs, low cut blouses and short skirts of the blonde young things he passed on the way to work with increased interest. He wanted the real thing, not just a virtual woman photoshopped in a Turkish studio.
In a moment of spiritual panic, he rushed to the mosque and fell prostrate, praying for forgiveness; but the damage had already been done. The cancer had metastasized and he had become the infidel he had always warned against.
'Going whole hog' was an Americanism he never understood, but now he did. He had been 'on the fence', corrupted on the one side, faithful on the other; but in this short, nasty, brutish life there was no point in sitting on a picket undecided. Better to go whole hog, and with that and with some difficulty, he began his evolution.
He still prayed and gave Allah his due, but his outlook had changed. Life was not one of prostration, obedience, and mindless prayer. He was still a youngish man, full of life and 'vim and vigor' and nothing or no one - especially his wife - was going to stand in his way.
The Quran says that Allah will mete out his most severe punishment for apostasy - those who leave Islam - so the Muslim community of which he was so much a part condemned him, marginalized him, and ultimately threw him out.
Yet, America was before him in all its promise and secular glory. He would divorce his succubus wife, move to sunny California, and begin life anew.
Easier said than done, but his co-workers, all either Christian or Jewish but patriotic Americans to the core were glad he had seen the light. Good riddance to another 9/11 sympathizer.
Bill Maher, progressive shill for years has had his own epiphany and has joined others in calling Islam antithetical to European and American civilized values, sounding the wake-up call loud and clear. 'There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim', he said when challenged by a cleric; and Ahmed's co-workers were very much in sympathy with him.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.