A Sinner in Mecca

by Parvez Sharma

  “Assalamulaikum,” I greeted him in the Muslim way. Peace be with you.

  “Alhamdulillah,” he replied. Praise be to God.

  “Your name means merciful,” I said after we exchanged names. “Do the Saudis treat you that way?”

  Rahman smiled. “I am lucky to work here so close to the Prophet’s grave.”

  I probed further. “What’s it like to work for the Saudis?”

  “Hell,” he said quietly. He told me they’d taken away his passport five years ago when he’d entered the kingdom. In exchange, he received an iqama, a work permit. This legal slavery permeates all Gulf monarchies. Rahman had not been able to visit his family for years. His employment was indentured servitude.

  In this Rahman and other immigrant laborers were not unlike female citizens in Saudi Arabia, who need “exit visas” after receiving “permission to travel” from their male guardians—a husband, father, or son. They are prisoners in their homeland, victims of a patriarchal servitude. Many find a way around it. Saudi women hide in gated palaces. Rahman lived in a hovel.

  “We sleep six to a room,” he said. “Often there is no running water.” Rahman slept at most four hours each night, working multiple shifts to make enough money to send home. At night he swept the marbled floors of the mosque, and by day he worked in a tiny watch-and-mobile shop. He would save almost a week’s wages to buy phone cards to call home. For me, he was proof of the dirty little secret of oil-rich countries. Despite the rampant displays of wealth and conspicuous consumption among the kingdom’s elite, many live below the poverty line. A majority of this demographic is composed of immigrants robbed of their passports, like Rahman.

  I wondered if he had any glimmer of faith in political change. Had he seen any graffiti that hinted at dissent? He became taciturn. He must have feared I was an informant.

  “Walk around your hotel,” said Rahman. “You will find what you need to see.” That’s all he would say.

  I asked if he was on Facebook in this hyper-social web country. He had a mobile, after all.

  “What’s that?” he replied. We said goodbye. I knew he knew.

  My extensive reporting on the Arab Spring was easily searchable on the web. Was I naïve to hope I would find people eager to be filmed or talk to anyone who knew of Saudi dissent? My text bud Adham was the only real “source” I had here. With him and his web of contacts, I could easily film in Jeddah and Riyadh. But it would be harder to get to Qatif, where the protesting Saudi Shia lived. Passport-less I could do nothing outside of Mecca and Medina, and my lens was a religious one.

  I did keep a watch on the Twitter feeds of Saudi sheikhs and opinion makers I followed. The kingdom had Twitter’s densest user base in the Arab world. As for Egypt, through my writing I had tried to clear up the misconception that Cairo 2011 was a “social media revolution.” Egypt is the poorest country in the region, with more than a quarter of its people living below the poverty line. Many of the revolutionaries were far too poor to own smartphones or even have access to social media. A significant number definitely used social media, but to make it the primary catalyst of the revolution was specious. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is the richest Arab country, and smartphone penetration is vast. The insurrection-terrified Saud tolerated Twitter and more. Most places, including both of Islam’s two holiest mosques, had wi-fi that occasionally worked. Twitter was a rare place where ikhtilat (“gender mixing”) “existed” freely. Men and women hung out as equals here. And the Sauds know the importance of keeping their country’s under-twenty-five majority happy. Princess to pauper, everyone is already on or trying to jump aboard the social web train.

  A Saudi “Day of Rage” was announced on Facebook for March 11, 2011. It was deliberate because it was a Friday. As in Cairo, mosques were rightfully seen as rallying places for the mandated once-weekly communal prayer. Some reports said that only one protester, Khaled al-Johani, showed up in Riyadh. He was sentenced to eighteen months. Adham, who was in Riyadh, kept me updated hourly. Police presence was unprecedented, with helicopters in the sky. There were police checks on cars and individuals headed for mosques. Fridays in mosques were dangerous. So regimes from Tunis to Tripoli to Damascus rushed to police the Friday variety of devout thousands with potential to be incited. In Cairo, revolutionary imams had used Friday sermons to rally the faithful against the “un-Islamic” Mubarak regime.

  Obeying the Al Saud, Riyadh’s grand mufti fatwa-ed, “Islam strictly prohibits protests in the kingdom because the ruler here rules by God’s will.” He invoked the familiar Fitna (“chaos”). Compliant ulema (religious scholars) also tweeted on point.

  There were more protesters in Shia towns such as Awammiya in eastern Qatif. According to Adham, people were being fined, flogged, having their passports confiscated, and even being exiled in the Shia east. I would have given anything to go and film.

  In 2009 and 2010, there had been huge floods in Jeddah, leading to a high death toll and a subsequent groundswell of anti-government sentiment. A hashtag went viral across Saudi Arabia: “#JeddahIsDrowning.” This term captured widespread rage against how the regime handled the floods; however, it never led to any street protests. Were the Saudis afraid or complacent? Soon, protests exploded in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Yemen, meriting worldwide media attention.

  Saudi King Abdullah did not want Mubarak’s fate. As usual, he simply threw money at the problem, unveiling a $37 billion welfare program. Sycophantic billboards sprang up to welcome Abdullah returning home from a medical trip to NYC: “Welcome, King of Humanity,” “If you are well, we all are well.” The second of the powerful Sudairi brothers, Salman, became king after Abdullah died in 2015.

  I did find some graffiti in an alleyway near our hotel. Nothing political. Perhaps the promise of the Arab Spring had faded into a bleak Islamist Winter.

  We had been in Medina a few days, and sitting in the malodorous bus, I tried to drown out the sound of our Hajj guide with my headphones soothingly playing the melodious voice of an unknown qari. He was reciting Medinan Ayah 21 from Surah 33 (Al-Azhab, or “The Allied Troops”). I loved his intonation. There is music to be found in Wahhabi Islam, even if it lies only in prayer intonations and calls to prayer.

  “You have indeed in the Messenger of Allah a beautiful pattern (of conduct) for any one whose hope is in Allah and the Final Day, and who engages much in the Praise of Allah.” My mind wandered as the recitations lulled me into a space of quiet reflection.

  In this parsed little portion of the qari’s recitation lay all the evidence any Muslim would need for emulating the Prophet’s life and traditions that the sunnah comprised. But those seeking perversion knew exactly where to look, even young Daesh types who didn’t know how to pray correctly. Jump to verse 64 of the same chapter, and you’ll find: “Verily Allah has cursed the Unbelievers and prepared for them a Blazing Fire.”

  An overworked Fox cub reporter hopefully got a raise after finding a Surah like this. It must have taken a lot of Wikipedia-ing. Fox network’s Sean Hannity allegedly had claimed the Quran forbade Muslims from taking Jews and Christians as friends. Hannity, Trump, and Islamophobes in general treacherously provide endless recruitment fodder for the Daeshes and Boko Harams of the world.

  My mind also wandered to the history I had studied. It was the Quraysh jahils (pre-Islamic ignorants) who worshipped idols (shirk and thus mushrikun, those who commit shirk) and who initiated war with Muhammad. He survived assassination attempts. His followers were routinely raped, killed, and tortured. They called him a madman, and as he walked the streets, they even threw human excrement on him. After Khadija died, a heartbroken Muhammad, then a pariah and not a prophet, was forced to flee Mecca, the city of his birth. He was a hunted man running away like a coward shamefully in the dark of night. This outsider and outcast survived years of hatred and ridicule. It was in Medina that he found shelter and started to build the earliest community of Muslims, whose numbers only multiplied. His enemies were nonplussed.

/>   What of the book? Many claim the Quran only calls for conflict in self-defense. Arguably, Muslims historically fought monarchical, not civilian, armies. Is this emulated in part by the Saud-abhorring Daesh?

  I had learned to carry my expanding bag of scriptural evidence to my speaking events. I always wanted to give my audiences proof of Islamic pluralism like in Ayah 62 from the Quran’s second Surah, Al Baqarah (“The Cow”):

  Those who believe (in the Quran), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians—any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.

  Jews, Christians, and Muslims are equally rewarded in the Quran.

  The Medina bus on which I had allowed myself to wander jolted to a stop and my mind re-entered the present. We were in a logjam. Hundreds of immovable buses. For me, it was additional evidence of Saudi disregard for the comfort of the pilgrims.

  Our mutawif was talking about how exemplary the life of Muhammad was. He serendipitously was using a Surah that I remembered from my childhood with Khala. Even though he gets only four direct mentions in the Quran, Muhammad lies at its heart. There would be no Quran without Muhammad. All of Islam’s rituals and traditions are based on ancestors like him. Muslims are required to try to emulate his life, thus the sunnah. The 21 Ayah of the Medinan Surah 33 says, “Ye have indeed in the Messenger of Allah a beautiful pattern (of conduct) for any one whose hope is in Allah and the Final Day, and who engages much in the Praise of Allah.”

  After hours, we reached Masjid Quba, the mythical first mosque built by the Prophet. This is not a sectarian entity, but is mentioned both in the Quran and the sunnah. It was said that just praying two rakat (“movements”) of prayer here amounted to the blessings of an entire Umrah, the lesser pilgrimage. The Saudis had destroyed the original mosque. This was an austere Wahhabi version.

  A few stragglers in my group expectedly prayed to what looked like unmarked graves outside a shrine of some sort. The mutaween were quick to arrive and disperse these infidels. I was recording.

  “Shirk,” he said grabbing my iPhone. “Password?” I had no choice but to give it.

  These were early days, but this vicious mutawa went through my footage methodically and deleted every single video and photo. He shoved his right hand and the phone into my face forcibly, as if to make sure that I’d lose my balance. I did and fell backward, thankfully on a small dune, which cushioned the impact.

  Our group leader rushed to me, pulling me up.

  “Don’t ever mess with these guys. You will soon be able to spot them because their beards and dress are different. At all costs, stay away from them and their sticks,” he advised, adding, “And whatever you do, don’t ever record or take pictures at places like this!”

  The violence of those moments had struck terror in my heart.

  Adham replied after I texted him what had happened.

  “Remember habibi this is not your lovely Cairo. Be careful.”

  “Why?”

  “You have to remember that those winds from the Nile don’t blow here. Nothing changes. We change nothing especially these fucker mutaweens, you have no idea Parvez. BE CAREFUL,” he ended in all caps.

  To comfort me, Shahinaz sat next to me in the bus. The group leader whispered audibly, “Right now it’s OK, but most times you will both be separated.”

  When the mutawa grabbed my phone and pushed me to the ground, he was giving me an early lesson on how cruel, rigid, and pervasive the Wahhabi control of this country was. And its feared foot soldiers of morality had the run of the land. The Wahhabi tenets forbidding depiction of the human form were clear. But later in Mecca it was impossible for them to control millions taking Hajj selfies. I hid in plain sight and yet got into trouble often. Recording a shot for a hoped-for film needs more lingering and deliberate “camera” movement than a quickie selfie.

  Our next stop was Masjid Qiblatain, the fabled mosque where the Prophet changed the Qibla (direction of prayer) from Jerusalem to Mecca. Al-Aqsa (the Temple Mount in Jerusalem) had always been “the furthest mosque” in the world’s most-contested real estate, Al-Quds in Arabic and Jerusalem to those who acknowledged Israel’s existence. Muslims worldwide have always mourned the “loss” of Jerusalem. Politically adept elders when I was growing up blamed its forfeiture upon “the treachery of those corrupt Arabs.” For thirteen centuries, Jerusalem was ruled by Muslims and the sites sacred to Christians, and Jews in the city were never willfully destroyed in the name of Islam. Was it the world’s best example of a religious plurality that did once exist between the three faiths?

  I knew Al-Aqsa from childhood. In Jerusalem, in the year 621, the Prophet ascended to heaven several times and negotiated with God on a night Muslims commemorated as Lailat-e-Miraj (“the Night Journey”) and prayed more to get extra brownie points from Allah. Muhammad rode, on a heavenly steed called Buraq, from Mecca to Jerusalem (Al-Quds) and then multiple times to heaven. A flying horse? Wondrous to any child. There were always lots of tongas (horse-driven carriages of a very particular South Asian style) on the streets of Saharanpur, and as a child, I clamored for rides, wondering if they, too, like Buraq, could ascend into the heavens. I was always discouraged because traveling in tongas was what “poor people” did. Out of all of Islam’s stories I grew up with, this was my favorite. Muhammad’s job was to be our negotiator-in-chief with God, so he could bring down the number of required prayers from an unreasonable fifty to five.

  “Fifty? Oh my god!” exclaimed Shahinaz when I told her.

  On his way, it was said the pragmatic Muhammad met and discussed matters with Jesus, Moses, Ibrahim, and even Adam. Muhammad knew these figures were necessary. He needed them on his side. That day, I lingered at Qiblatain as long as I could, knowing that perhaps I would never get to visit the modern Al-Quds.

  Muhammad was a man of skill, wisdom, and moderation and could be a crafty diplomat when needed. He did not believe in harm. His lifetime was a time of respect for the other monotheisms, and the Quranic revelations relied on them to build the Quran’s own expansive and poetic text. Jews and Christians were not hated—they were to be respected as “people of the book.” Muslim men could marry Jewish or Christian wives. And all Muslims could eat Jewish food. The Quran made kosher and halal monotheistic brothers. I wondered how the unhinged evangelicals back home would react if they knew Jesus gets more mentions in the Quran than Muhammad. And it’s all positive.

  It was day four in Medina, and I was wary of filming. Spiritual-tourism shifts had been arranged, and Shahinaz and I, thankful to be reunited, had a lot to share. She told me a fight had broken out in her tent between two camps: One believed that full-face abayas were de rigueur. The other said faces needed to be exposed as the Prophet commanded. There was no détente. We disembarked at Uhud, where the reluctant warrior Muhammad lost. In his only other battle at nearby Badr, he won. The third, “The Battle of the Trench,” was or was not a battle, depending on whom you talked to.

  An area the size of half a soccer field had been walled off. It contained what looked like a grave. All you could do was peer through crude latticework. Groups of Shia, both genders, stood lamenting. I felt one with the pain of the abaya-wearing women. It was more than 100 degrees. Important companions of the Prophet who were martyred in the battle of Uhud were apparently buried there.

  “Film this,” my group leader, Shafiq, encouraged me, adding, “We need all the evidence we can get, because before long even this will be destroyed by them.” I promised to share the footage with him. Afraid to this day that someone would figure out it was I who made the pilgrimage with the group that year, I never ended up sharing it.

  I focused on the women. A shirt-and-trouser-style Iranian pilgrim passed them with the boombox reminiscent of the extremely divided New York City of the eighties, where the racially charged slur “ghetto blaster” was used to describe these contraptions.
And boom this one did: with recitations of long Shia lamentations. Out of nowhere, a group of mutaween approached the wailing women—one busied himself with grabbing the Iranian’s boombox. As one of them seemed to notice me, I hastily put the phone in my fanny pack, which would in a few days do double duty as an ihram-holding belt, and walked away as fast as I could. The other mutaween used their familiar wood staves to hit the abaya-clad women with gay abandon. Clearly these illiterate philistines had missed the many Islamic missives about not disrespecting women.

  In spite of these barbarians, strangely, I had never felt safer. I texted my MMS group, “It’s hard to explain, but surrounded by millions of Muslims from every nation on earth gives me a sense of safety I never felt before. I am not even afraid of the mutaween!”

  And then I got an unlikely text from Hossein, my pal on that Dua Kumayl night at Jannat al-Baqi. “Please never mention the green revolution thing to anyone, Parviz. It’s our secret.”

  “Sure,” I replied.

  CHAPTER 5

  SHOOT ME IN HERE

  Saudi Arabia was in a panic yet again because of “those damned Iranians, always creating trouble,” Adham had texted me one summer. Iran almost savored the sweet taste of “revolution” again in June 2009. It was three decades after Ayatollah Khomeini’s return from exile in France when Reza Shah, the last US-supported Pahlavi monarch, fled a country that would change forever. The triumphant ayatollah had established a theocracy that some believed would be toppled in what came to be known as 2009’s brief “Green Revolution.” Thousands poured out into the streets contesting the irrepressible Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election. The protesters said he had stolen the election from a reformist called Mir Hossein Mousavi. Allegedly, 1,500 died as the Iranian Basij (Iran’s version of the Saudi mutaween), with Arab militias flown in, quashed the protesters. Neda Agha Soltan, a young girl, died on camera on Tehran’s Kargar Avenue. The horrific video still remains in circulation.