Fruits of Heaven

I have been out of action with a terrible sprain in my back; almost immobilized me for 3-4 days. To add to my woes I had a big assignment to submit. I had spent the last several days in Melbourne sipping exquisite liquor (one of the best unintended consequences of having a diplomat sis in law with a well stocked bar of high-end duty-free liquor- else you’d catch me sipping Thunderbolt beer and Old Monk rum in a seedy Haryana highway bar on a night out with friends from college days), eating prawns and occasionally smoking a cigarette. I had recently stopped all vices due to lack of a sense of occasion. With the Missus always around, darting harsh glares just about kills every sense of occasion. I made up for all that in Melbourne. I almost started feeling normal and human again.
Lest readers of this blog suspect that senseless trivia is my forte, I confess to a habit of contemplating on matters beyond the pale of the material world. I enjoy hearing the raves, rants and deep sonorous chants of godmen, priests, moulvis and other agents of the Supreme One on earth. There is a frenzy in their voice, a tremor in their tones which suggest that not all is hunky dory with their brain fluids, or with the world around them. I gaze in absolute wonder at their ability to rouse and influence their audiences.
It was a time I was living alone in Kolkata. The Missus and son had gone to Delhi and I was left behind, waiting for a chance to join them. Really, the first few days of freedom are great. No harsh glares… peace and quiet as you sip an evening vodka. I started watching ‘Q’ channel, a Pakistani religious channel. Yours truly had long outgrown the tendency to watch fleshpots swinging to film music in the multitudinous Hindi channels. And the prime attraction of ‘Q’ channel was a preacher called Zakir Naik, an Indian Medical Doctor from Konkan region who took to preaching Quran full time. His memory of scriptures is photographic and he can cite with ease from Bible, Gita and Puranas with equal felicity.
Whether country comes first of the Ummah, asked an eager believer. This is like asking whether mother comes first or father, replied the good preacher. Is Islam a violent religion?, asked another. He recites verse after verse to show there is no other religion closer to Islam in its’ advocacy of peace. Then the penny dropped. It came in the form of an innocent question from a girl. The channel being a big time religious one, the girl’s face is not shown; only voice is heard. Will a Hindu receive the Almighty’s blessings if he utters the Salah? The answer is no, since his utterance of the holy prayer has no value unless he has converted to Islam by swearing submission to the only God. For every uncomfortable question about the Holy Book, he gives an answer which says it has to be seen within a certain context. He does that brilliantly. Then comes a load of stuff, which I found difficult to digest. If kafirs don’t like to be called that they can always convert, says he, smugly. People say Taliban is bad. Wouldn’t you like your sister to be paid salary in her house without going out to work? That is what Taliban does, says he. I sure didn’t hear it before.
The preacher I have been hearing for the last few days is a guy called Rahmatullah Qasimi Muthedam. He is a preacher who is at the centre of an unsavoury power struggle among the learned Muslims of Kerala; an antithesis of the Muslims elsewhere in India, for they have made remarkable strides in educating their community. You can watch Rahmatullah at http://www.tubeq.com/view/579522 (sorry, non-Malayali readers, this may sound incomprehensible to you; but you can still watch the body language; it is amusing) He has a sharp, shrill voice and a predictable habit of wiping his balding pate occasionally as he recites verse after verse of the Holy Book. ”Can a Muslim be a Communist ?” asked a young boy with a scarf tied around his forehead. In a state like Kerala it is a major existential dilemma. No says the good preacher vehemently. Capital or wealth is at the soul of Capitalism and Communism. Islam accepts the importance of wealth but it is a distant one in the hierarchy of importance. Submission to the Lord is at the core of Islam. So a Muslim cannot be a Communist. I am impressed by the response. No gobbledygook. Simple Logic. Some of his responses are quite convincing that one would really start believing that Islam was the first religion that wreaked a revolution; a revolution for the under class; a revolution for the down trodden. It is almost as imaginative as Communism as it were in the early years of the previous century.
Then he goes on to say a lot of other stuff. All world literature is bumkum. Muslims ought not to play football (really ??) , or listen to music or watch TV serials or movies. The list is long. Looks like the great music of AR Rahman, the fascinating bowling of Zaheer Khan and the mysticism of Sufis could be enjoyed only by a bunch of heathens, not by true Muslims. He is also candid. Hell is infested with women, says he and recites the scriptures and hadith in suppport. He says it is alright if women choose not to come for his Quran study classes for saying unpopular things. He nearly says that women do not have much of a chance to get to heaven. And getting to heaven as you know, he says, is the true calling of the Muslim.
From visions of heaven of all religions, it sounds like a boring place. Well, saying prayers five times and sleeping with beautiful multiple houris could get on your nerves after a while, don’t you agree? Or walking on clouds, amidst soft laughter and mild banter with Bhajans or choirs flowing from the Tampura or the Church Organ in the background; won’t it drive you nuts after ten days? Can’t we have some action? Like love, jealousy, anger, heartbreak, affection, passion and the Guns and Roses? These are only in earth; it appears. I have been impressed by the power of religions to influence minds. I write about Islam, because it has occupied a lot of mind space in recent times. And there is that feeling that the whole world is closing in on them. It is a powerful idea, and these are powerful preachers. They have a lot of good things to say. And there is also a load of crap which is out of sync with the world we live in. And these ideas cannot be countered with battle tanks, daisy cutter bombs and stinger missiles. And these cannot be conquered by the CIA, Israel or by writing abusive comments about Pakistan and Islam in rediff.com. These ideas have to be countered in the minds- by those within the Ummah.