| 15 February 2006 Godless and Alone Europe is godless and alone. I read the words and blinked. They were penned by a man named Karim Raslan, who is a lawyer and a Muslim from Indonesia. The words were in the New York Times, and were part of the flurry that seeks to understand what is happening across the Umma- the broad swath of the Islamic faith that reached from the Atlantic coast of North Africa to the tropical shores of Indonesia. “Godless and alone,” I repeated the words. An interesting approach to this particular mess. Other writers, Arabs, are wondering about conspiracies, and why the Danes, in collaboration with the French, are deliberately provoking the faithful. One view is that it is to bring the bearded ones to the fore, and capture their images for the evening news in the western media. It is enough to make you snort, but it is not an unreasonable view, if one accepts some of the other elements of the canon of conspiracy that seems to cloud the mind once one gets east of Cyprus. Mr. Raslin went on the Haj this year, traveling west and north to the desert to stone the Devil and walk the holy walk around the Ka'aba Sharif. Making the Haj is one of the five tenets of Islam, and is the obligation of every adult believer, finances permitting. Surrounded by his co-religionists, Mr. Raslin got the willies. Not about his faith, but about the vast difference in the way it was believed. He saw the beginnings of a fracture line between the gentler version of the Faith as practiced in the tropics and that of the Middle East. He said that he saw his version of Islam as having more in common with the preaching of the Gospel in America than he did with the shallow, sallow secularism of Europe. I think he might be on to something. I always get the willies in the Middle East, sometimes just a faint chill on my neck when listening to the call to prayers in the evening while drinking a tall single-malt Scotch behind a tall wall. But none of the willies more intense than the full-scale heebie-jeebies I got when I was walking across the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, on my way to the West Wall. Finances permitted me to make a short pilgrimage to Jerusalem a few years ago. The Dome of the Rock is there on the top of the Temple Mount, the very place where the Prophet ascended to heaven to confer with Allah, after leading Abraham, Moses and Jesus in prayer. He arrived at the Mount upon a winged steed with the Archangel Gabriel. The name of the horse in Arabic means “Lightning.” The winged animal is described as being larger than a Donkey, yet smaller than a mule. I don't know about that, but that is what the believers say. The archeologists, for their part, say that the summit of the little hill was first a place of worship for the Semites, then the site of the Jewish Temples, next the sanctuary of the Roman god Jupiter, then purified and capped by the Muslim's Dome of the Rock. The Arc of the Covenant is supposed to be buried deep in the Hill. The Crusaders arrived around a thousand years ago, partly provoked by the closing of the pilgrimage routes. That was a decision made by some Shiite believers of some intensity from Egypt. After the followers of the Cross arrived, the Dome was made a Christian shrine for nearly a century, and then the city was put to the sword and it became a Muslim holy site once more. Of course, at the moment it is the capital of Israel. Across town, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher had the same multi-use function. Prior to its establishment as a Christian site, it had been the location of a temple of Aphrodite, and one of its arches was appropriated to establish the primacy of the Dome of the Rock. The exposure to the depth and diversity of belief in that little town electrified me, almost overloading my circuits. It will serve me as a personal Haj, and finances permitting, once is plenty for my life. As a fellow hajji, I understand what Mr. Raslin was talking about. The believers have a certain fundamental understanding of one another, and the difference is only of time, not space. The whole thing can give you the willies. After blowing their continent apart twice, I can understand why the Europeans might be a little sallow in demeanor. The belief that destroyed their empires and great cities was profound, and they were scourged by fire. Anyone might want to be godless and alone for a while after a century like that. Unfortunately, it seems to attract the wrath of the believers. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |