The Televangelist

by Ibrahim Essa

  That would be their big plan and he could almost read it in big letters on the teleprompter. He would be crushed and he would have to cut to a break, maybe the last one in his life. But what were the Shi’a to him? He might as well say what everyone wanted to hear. He was a television sheikh, after all, not a sheikh with real learning. Isn’t that what he had trained himself to be—to hold what he’d read and what he knew in reserve and only to say things that met the wishes of the red light that gave him permission to speak? He was a red-light sheikh, a television preacher who should know that he belonged to this box, this game. In this game you weren’t allowed to step outside the boundary lines that marked the field. What mattered was that the audience, the advertisers, and the owners were happy with you, and you put on a show that could be interrupted for advertisements selling soap, potato chips, and tins of cooking oil that they claimed was traditional. When his old teachers at al-Azhar were giving their lessons in the mosque courtyard, seated at the base of a column, did they have to put up with someone asking them to stop so he could advertise the shops of the chief merchant or public baths that ease back pain? Why did he think it was important that he say something that mattered? Since when had he had a mission? Was he afraid he might be punished, lose his livelihood, and be humiliated, or was he afraid of losing face in front of Hassan, and Omar, when he started to understand? And where was God in all this? Why didn’t he think of where he stood with respect to God when he said something he didn’t approve of just to win the approval of others?

  He honestly believed he pleased the audience by flying under the radar. He told himself it was sometimes better to chip away at ignorance gradually than to confront it head-on. But now he faced a choice between, on the one hand, going along with widespread deceit for fear a hammer might hit him on the head and crush him if he did not or, on the other hand, confronting the deceit however bad the consequences might be, including the possibility that his audience would turn against him and society would hate him. First a few grumbles, then you lose your livelihood and they attack your record and your faith, then you are cast out.

  Anwar began, just as he had expected, with a hostile introduction that incited the audience to kill the Shi’a and endorsed the execution of Sheikh Mukhtar, by the first person who laid eyes on him, to win God’s favor and mercy. “Would you like to comment on this introduction, Sheikh Hatem?” he concluded.

  The question was an initial challenge in a contest in which Anwar wanted his viewers to see blood flow. It was one of those moments that television presenters relish most: emotions running high, the guests insulting each other, tears, an actor sobbing, a hot fatwa on sex from some sheikh, a politician’s threats, or an exotic dancer’s confessions. No learning or information would interest this television monster, which demanded something vulgar or lewd, anything raw and impulsive.

  “The essence of Muslim evangelism, my dear brother and eminent friend,” Hatem began, “is to bring people together rather than drive them apart, to unite rather than divide, to mend rather than break, to set right rather than to cast judgment, to advise rather than criticize, and to guide rather than threaten.”

  Then he paused, as if he had thrown ice onto Anwar’s bald pate. But Anwar was a professional; Hatem still thought he must have been a circus presenter before he moved to television. In response to Hatem’s opening punch, he came back with a counterpunch.

  “Of course, Sheikh Hatem,” he said. “That’s all very worthy and laudable. Evangelists should keep to that approach when they preach, but provided they make clear what is halal and what is haram, provided they deter religious innovations and deviations, confront aberrations from true Islam and distortions of the Quran and the Sunna.”

  He stopped to give Hatem time to take in his deliberate nastiness, and then continued, “So now we ask you, Mawlana, to what extent can we consider the Shi’a to be Muslims?”

  The question was crude, tendentious, and aggressive. It showed where the program was headed and that it would end in a lynching. Now Anwar wanted him to dismiss the Shi’a as heretics to save himself from the suggestion that he was taking their side and the side of Mukhtar el-Husseini. He wanted him to throw down his glove in surrender to satisfy State Security before the commercial break.

  “Look, Anwar,” said Hatem, deliberately using the man’s name alone, without any titles or honorifics, “do you remember the hadith about the pillars of Islam? Of course you remember it, unless you flunked elementary school.”

  The mockery was a warning, as Hatem pulled Anwar into the ring.

  “Well, so say the hadith then. You look a little flustered,” he continued.

  Anwar smiled and decided not to let Hatem get away with it.

  “Islam is based on five . . .” he began.

  “Yes, that’s the right hadith. Well done. Come on, let’s say them together: testifying that there is no god but God, performing prayers, giving alms, fasting during Ramadan, and, for those who can afford it, making the pilgrimage to Mecca. Of course you can afford to go every year with the Interior Ministry delegation!”

  Then Hatem decided to strike. “Now we come to our Shi’ite brothers. They testify that there’s no god but God, they say the same five prayers and give the same alms, and they fast during Ramadan and make the pilgrimage to Mecca. How then can you ask me if they’re Muslims or not? Is the question even valid as a question? The imam Ibn Taymiya says that dismissing people as heretics or infidels was the first unwelcome innovation introduced into Islam.”

  Anwar attacked stupidly: “You’re defending the Shi’a!”

  “Are you attacking them? You asked me a question and when I answered you I defended the truth, not the Shi’a. Anyway, are you asking me because you want to know? Or is this ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ and you know the answer but you’re just testing me?”

  The heat rose on the set and the sparks started to fly. Anwar went back to alternating between smiling and stroking his jaw.

  “Don’t you think that defaming the Companions of the Prophet—Abu Bakr and Omar, for example—puts one outside the Muslim community?” he asked.

  “Firstly, I’m not going to tell you what I think, but the consensus of religious scholars is that this is a serious offense—besides of course being impolite, impudent, and ignorant—but not heresy or unbelief. But I’d like to say here that Omar ibn Abdel-Aziz, the fifth of the rightly guided caliphs as the early Muslims called him, when you read the great biography of him, you’ll find that among the great things that he did during his reign was that he banned the defamation of Ali in mosques, and Ali here means Ali the imam of the pious, may God be pleased with him. Note that he was the eighth Umay-yad caliph and the Umayyad caliphate had been around for about sixty years at the time, and Ali was being insulted in mosques. You may know that the Shi’a at that time were just opposition groups that didn’t have recognized mosques or specific countries where they were in power, because the first Shi’ite state came hundreds of years after the beginning of Islam. Anyway, insulting the Companions of the Prophet was common among the Shi’a at the time, just as insulting the imam Ali was the official practice of the Umayyad state until Omar bin Abdel-Aziz stopped it for two and a half years, and then it was resumed after his death, or rather his assassination. So what I mean is that this was a mistake that everyone made and it goes far back in history. But if anyone continues to do it, they should be condemned as extremist and depraved.”

  “But they continue to insult Abu Bakr and Omar and Aisha even now, don’t they?”

  “I swear I’ve never heard them do that,” Hatem replied. “If anyone did say something like that, then as I said, that would be an outrage. But that doesn’t prove anything about either Shi’a or Sunnis.”

  “Would you like to listen to part of a recent sermon one of them gave in which he insulted the Companions of the Prophet?”

  “Of course not. Let’s not pick extremists and lunatics from here and there, and drive people apart rather than
bring them together, especially since there are also people giving sermons in which they accuse the Shi’a of heresy. Look, Anwar, when you get to know Islam properly, there’s no such thing as Sunnis or Shi’a. There aren’t any sects or denominations. The Prophet Muhammad wasn’t a Sunni. He was the Muslim Prophet of God, who brought the good news, called people to Islam, and guided them. The whole story was a political struggle for power over who should succeed the Prophet. Tens of thousands of people were killed in the struggle, which was between Ali the Commander of the Faithful and Muawiya, who rebelled against Ali’s leadership and, as we would say these days, staged a coup to secede from the Islamic state. To justify this political struggle, they had to find non-political justifications, which all appeared after the war was over. The question arose as to whether it was legitimate for two groups of Muslims to fight. One group appeared that took the side of Ali and the family of the Prophet, especially after the massacre and tragedy at Karbala, which is a mark of shame on the forehead of humanity and not just of the Islamic state at that time, and then there was the group that prevailed in the war and acquired official status, which was bound to create a legitimacy with which to stand up to the family of the Prophet and justify shedding the blood of Muslims. The concept of the People of the Sunna and the Community appeared and the struggle lasted centuries between rulers and oppositions, and between a majority and a minority, and everyone was busy formulating ideas to protect either the majority and the government and its control over Muslims or, on the other hand, the persecuted minority opposition that operated underground or in prisons or was closely controlled and monitored. So it’s hardly surprising, Anwar, if you haven’t fallen asleep listening to me and if you understand what I’m saying, it’s hardly surprising that a number of imams and interpreters of the Quran and historians were persecuted or imprisoned under the Islamic state, solely because they were accused of being Shi’a or of sympathizing with the Shi’a. The same thing is being repeated these days with the political conflict between Iran on one side and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states on the other. They all try to come up with justifications in Islamic law, explaining how they are defending the true Islam. But it’s just a political quarrel for which the price is paid by ordinary, normal Muslims who imagine that worshiping God means they have to hate the way other people worship the same God.”

  Hatem might have bored Anwar but he was relieved and he hoped it was time for the break, which it was.

  “The producer says we have to cut for a break now, but I want to ask you, as it’s clear you’re minimizing the danger of Shi’ism—”

  “What! You’re trying to pin an accusation on me, but you haven’t even asked me about Shi’ism in the first place, for me to minimize or exaggerate the danger!” Hatem cut in angrily.

  “But you said there are no denominations in Islam.”

  “Okay, but how does that mean one should be Shi’ite? Shi’ism is a denomination and I told you Islam doesn’t have denominations in the first place.”

  “But you said the Prophet wasn’t Sunni.”

  “Of course, because you can’t say that Jesus Christ was a Catholic, can you? Besides, my friend, the Shi’a claim as much as anyone else that they love and follow the example of the Prophet and there are descendants of the Prophet who are Shi’ite. So the Shi’a are Sunnis from their point of view, and we are Shi’a from our point of view because of our love for the family of the Prophet, Ali, Hassan, and Hussein.”

  Anwar felt that the audience was losing touch with what Hatem was saying, either because it was obscure or because of his overtly defensive tone. He was more satisfied than Hatem with Hatem’s performance, so he decided to finish him off before the break, as he had promised his friends in the police.

  “Do you deny that the Shi’a have a Quran called the Quran of Fatima?” he asked.

  Hatem knew that Anwar had left this zinger till the end so that he could leave triumphant before the wretched break. “I tell you,” he replied, “any Muslim who hears us in Iraq or Lebanon or Syria or Saudi Arabia can go into any Shi’ite mosque and pick up the first Quran they find there and tell us whether there’s a single letter or word that makes it different from our Quran.”

  Anwar jumped in quickly. “But it’s a secret Quran!” he said.

  “And what’s the use of a secret Quran, Anwar? You seem to suggest it’s a Quran that’s used for worship, so in what sense would it be secret if people used it in their prayers for fifteen centuries? Look, Anwar, as soon as you say the word ‘mushaf,’ people assume you’re talking about the Quran, but that isn’t right at all. You may know, but you probably don’t, that the word ‘mushaf’ never occurs in the Holy Quran to describe the Book of God. ‘Mushaf’ is an Arabic word that was applied to the Quran after it was compiled during the reign of the Caliph Abu Bakr, but it could apply to any set of pages bound between covers. That would be a mushaf. But what is known as Fatima’s mushaf doesn’t contain anything that could called Quranic as far as we understand from all the stories and research. What they say is that Fatima was sad and in grief at the death of her father the Prophet and she remained in grief until she herself died just seventy-five days later. During that period the Angel Gabriel consoled her by appearing in various guises and speaking to her about the Prophet’s virtues and by telling her stories written by Ali bin Abi Talib, who was her husband of course. All these accounts might be explained away, they might be accepted or dismissed, but there’s nothing in them about Fatima receiving any divine revelation or about this mushaf containing a single word of the Quran. And the book doesn’t exist anyway and even the Shi’a say it belongs to the twelve imams and that it’s with the missing imam and no one knows when he’ll return. But let me go back and say that this is all about political conflicts and anyone who has a chance to smear his rival does so undeterred and with impunity.”

  In a parting gesture meant to declare his interim victory, Hatem declared dramatically, “And now for our break.”

  The banners of victory were fluttering in the eyes of Anwar Othman during the break, as he gave his muscles a rest during the time-out. Everything he had wanted to happen had happened. It didn’t matter whether what Hatem said was valid, true, accurate, or honest. It didn’t matter whether what Anwar said was sound or silly. What mattered to the police officers who planned it was that it would smear and pillory Hatem. This had been achieved, because they were working on minds that were not interested in thinking or finding the truth. They were working on the instincts of an audience that had a fascination with the scandalous and that was disposed to accept personal attacks and believe anything that was slanderous. Hatem had become a television sheikh who, for the past many years, had paid no attention to the growing interest in superficial aspects of religiosity and apathy about its essence, its treasures. The most watched of his programs had been the one in which he described the moving scene when the Prophet died in the arms of Aisha, his wife. The advertisers asked for it to be repeated several times. Yet when he spoke about public finance in Islam, in a program that was unusually daring, the audience walked out and the advertisers warned the channel not to repeat it. When Ali el-Kaaki gave him the list of themes that he, as an advertising agency, wanted in his new program, they were all the obvious ones: the hijab, chastity, men and women alone together, the death of the Prophet, prayers for special occasions, almsgiving, what Islam says about envy, and the special qualities of Quranic verses. When Hatem told him that the only sources for the special powers of Quranic verses were spurious hadiths that were invented to encourage Muslims to read the Quran but didn’t contain anything that made sense, Kaaki replied, “But Mawlana, why don’t you want people to read the Quran?”

  And when Hatem read the title “The Torments and Comforts of the Grave” he threw the piece of paper on Kaaki’s desk and said, “I can’t do that, Kaaki.”

  “Why not, Mawlana?”

  “I can’t say that people are tormented in their graves.”

  “Why no
t?”

  “Why not! Because they’re not tormented in their graves.”

  “But Mawlana, we’ve been hearing about the torments of the grave since we were in our mothers’ wombs, and then you come along and say it doesn’t exist!”

  Hatem laughed. “For a start, it’s just one hadith with a single chain of transmission, and hadiths like that can’t be used as the basis for law or doctrine,” he said. “It would be okay if you wanted us to include the special powers of Quranic verses, but not the torments of the grave. And besides, people would kill me and hate me if I told them people aren’t tormented in their graves, because I’d be arguing based on reason and not on the texts. It’s true there’s nothing in the Quran about the torments of the grave but everyone hangs on to the same hadith without exposing it to the ultraviolet rays of reason that God asked us to use.”

  “Mawlana, don’t complicate things for people.”

  “What am I complicating, Kaaki? After a long life, you die, and that’s it,” Hatem said with a laugh, even though he was being sincere. “Then they’ll put you into a grave, unless you were burned to death and they couldn’t find any flesh or bones, and you’re just ashes. If the torments and comforts of the grave really exist, there would have to be two things. Firstly, there must be another life apart from life on earth and the afterlife—the life of dead people in graves so that they can feel the torments or the comforts, because how could they feel anything unless they’re alive? The other thing is there would have to be two Days of Judgment and two Days of Resurrection instead of one of each because, if you believe in this business of the torments of the grave, then you’ll be judged twice, once to decide whether you deserve to be tortured or to have an easy time in your grave and then again to decide on your fate in the afterlife, whether you go to Heaven or Hell. But this is incompatible with either Islamic doctrine or reason. There’s only one Day of Judgment and we’ll all rise from the dead on one day, the day the trumpet is blown, but there’s no partial judgment or judgment in two stages, no ‘take a little torment now and we’ll settle up later on the Day of Resurrection.’ Those who talk about the torments of the grave are implying that God Almighty is unfair, God forbid, because how can He punish us before He judges us? How can He torture us in our graves for our deeds before we’re forced across the bridge over Hell and we’ve seen our good deeds and bad deeds on the scales? Should there be punishment before judgment? A verdict before a trial? Of course not. And besides, the Quran says the Day of Judgment will be so frightening that everyone will want to ‘run away from his brother, his mother and father, his spouse and his children.’ But how could that be if everyone knew what the result would be from whether they’d been tortured or had a pleasant time in their graves?”