REFLECTION: A Muslim view of Jesus the Refugee

My old school chaplain at St Andrews Cathedral School taught me that the word 'Christmas' is really a combination of two words — 'Christ' and 'mass'. So it is Christ's mass. Being a low church Anglican, he made sure we understood that by mass, he didn't mean Mass. Then again, he also made sure we remembered that the word 'catholic' meant universal.

And so, with that in mind, I'd like to offer a very non-universal reflection of Jesus. It's my own personal theory of who Jesus was and why he is a very good reason for this season.

The first pertinent thing to say is that Jesus probably looked like someone who'd be on the wrong side of the Cronulla riot. He was born in a place called Beyt Lahm on the West Bank, which today has a giant wall passing through and around it. Many Western Christians are blissfully unaware of why the wall exists and how it makes a 'Two State Solution' to the conflict there virtually impossible.



Because Jesus was what one might call a Jewish Palestinian, he may have had olive skin and curly brown or red hair. When I was at school, the baby Jesus was always played by a blonde headed white skinned doll. Joseph and Mary looked very Anglo, while I played one of the three wise men from a faraway place called 'the East'.

My two wise colleagues were played by a Chinese girl and a boy from New Guinea.

Jesus was born into a family of internal refugees. His mother had to seek refuge, fleeing Herod's nasty dictatorship. I doubt even Saddam Hussein or the Taliban would have had a policy involving the industrial-scale slaughter of male infants.

Despite coming from an aristocratic family, Mary was forced to flee her home. It's uncertain whether she used the services of satanic people smugglers to get her to safety.

I believe Jesus' humble beginnings (not to mention the fact that I believe he was divinely inspired) led him to understand what it was like to be marginalised. He was born to a virgin, and in the Koran there is a passage which mentions the first time the baby Jesus made a public appearance.

Mary had made a vow not to speak in her own defence if asked how she could produce a baby when she wasn't married. The religious men present accused her of sexual impropriety. She pointed to the baby in the cradle who performed his first miracle by speaking out in defence of his mum.

I am indeed a servant of God: He hath given me revelation and made me a prophet. And he hath made me blessed wheresoever I be, and hath enjoined on me prayer and charity as long as I live. He hath made me kind to my mother, and not overbearing or miserable. So peace is on me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised up to life again!

For me, this was the essence of Jesus the Messiah. Jesus was someone who spoke for those whom the rest of society marginalised. We see this in the New testament Jesus who was happy to spend time with tax collectors, fishermen and ladies of the night.

Who was Jesus' closest female companion? Who was the one who went to the Garden where his tomb was to rub herbs on his body in accordance with Jewish custom? Who was the one who spent so many hours and days with him? Who was the one who shared his own blessed mother's name?

Jesus had two Marys in his life. One was his mother, the one who miraculously conceived him while she was still a virgin. The Qur'an says she was chosen over and above the women of all nations.

And the other Mary? Some say she was a prostitute. I'm not sure if she was, but the point is this: Christ didn't waste time with wealthy Middle Eastern despots or the even wealthier neo-Conservative thinktanks of his day, seeking measly riyals or US dollars in return for loyalty. I doubt you'd find Jesus appearing in WikiLeaks.

Muslims believe Muhammad was known to make time for a woman in his city who suffered from schizophrenia. He also had a close friend Julaybib who had no known ancestry and apparently suffered from some physical deformities.

The word Sufi comes from the name given to poor starving semi-naked refugees who lived on a bench in the mosque and who became known as the People of the Bench ('ashab as-suffah'). They are the equivalent of today's street people.

Muhammad also spoke of the prostitute who finished her shift and went to the well. She saw a dog that was dying of thirst. She took pity on it, dropped her shoe into the well and dragged it out full of water for the dog. For showing kindness to a dog, the prostitute earned God's mercy and forgiveness.

Real Islam, real Christianity — indeed real religion — wants to rid us of pomposity and self-righteousness. God's prophets (including the Son of Man) made time for those whom society pushes away. Jesus, the child of a refugee, was there for everyone. I just cannot picture him, the son of a refugee, standing up and preaching for us to stop the boats.

First published in Eureka Street on 21 December 2010.

Beautiful Brisbane ...

I just got back from the Brisbane Writers' Festival. It was a superb festival held an a fantastic location. I mean, what better place to hold a festival of authors and books than in a library?



I've been to Brisbane a few times, and always wondered what all the fuss was about. It seemed so dreary. But that's because I had not discovered the Brisbane River and South Bank or seen the Brisbane CBD at night. This is a city able to rival any in Australia.



The Festival organisation was impeccable. We were housed at the Mantra on Southbank, a short walk from the venue.



I had two fabulous sessions. One was moderated by ABC journalist and author Matt Peacock who has just released a fantastic book about the James Hardie fiasco based on his years of reporting and researching the issue. Also on the panel were Abbas El-Zein, Joris Luyendijk and Lana Šlezic.

The other panel was an in-conversation with the very funny Robyn Williams, a radio announcer who looks nothing like this dude ...




... and everything like this chap ...




God-willing, I'll be returning to Brisbane for the EidFest! Can't wait!!

Awesome Byron ...

I have to admit that at first I wasn't exactly looking forward to heading up to Byron Bay for a writers' festival. I wasn't sure what to expect from a place which had a reputation for being a hangout for hippies, a kind of middle class Nimbin. Boy, was I wrong!

This was a superb festival held at a fantastic venue and with a fun crowd. It was a family carnival atmosphere, and there was no shortage of writers and books for kids and young adults sharing the big stages with authors catering for bigger kids.

One of the stars of the festival was Imran Ahmad, whose terrific book Unimagined (which I reviewed here) managed to sell in bucketloads. Here's a pic of Imran standing next to a somewhat less prominent writer.



The authors had their own separate space called the Green Room. At Byron, our room consisted of a separate white tent.



It was amazing who you could bump into at the Green Room. Here is author and speechwriter Bob Ellis ...



... and here is historian Thomas Keneally ...



... and here is the very funny Gretel Killeen seated on the left ...



... and here is the also very funny Mungo MacCallum standing next to one of his biggest fans ...



All in all it was a superb way to spend a long weekend. I feel like writing another topical book just so that they will call me back next year! More details and photos later.

Learning tolerance ...

During a second session at the Crime & Justice Festival in Melbourne, I managed to find time to discuss tolerance with a young local philosopher named Damon. I can’t quite remember what we spoke about but there was a fair degree of laughter. I know I probably didn’t get a chance to discuss the matters I’d written down beforehand, which I’ve summarised below. All bracketed page references are from the book.

[01] Sheik Hilaly was an example of both tolerance and intolerance. He showed us his tolerant side in his lack of sectarianism between Sunnis and Shias at a time when this kind of stuff was rife. He also showed us his tolerance in the way he handled the woman dressed in a bikini at our campsite in 1990 (pp 264-265). However, his intolerance toward Jews during a speech in 1988 wasn’t the best example of tolerance.

[02] The young man Hilmi whom I met during my last days at Macquarie University showed enormous tolerance toward violent intolerance. He introduced me to the magazine Nida’ul Islam, a magazine which was published in both Arabic and English. I occasionally wrote for the English section, and like probably most of the magazine’s readers, I didn’t have much of a clue about what the Arabic section actually said. Hilmi seemed to think that killing civilians who didn’t belong to your faction was OK. At least that is how he justified the actions of the so-called “Armed Islamic Group” in Algeria (pp 270-271).

[03] I rely on Martha Nussbaum’s explanation of the “clash within societies” (her alternative to Huntington’s “clash of civilisations”) to define fascism (pp 299-300).

[04] We need to be able to work for justice even with people we otherwise disagree with. I learned this (pp 283) from the example of Muhammad’s establishment of the Hilf al-Fudul (Alliance of Virtue) and from the Indian sufi scholar Ahmad Sirhindhi’s notion of khidma (service) being the highest stage of one’s journey to God, even higher than feeling totally immersed in God (wahdat ash-shuhood).

And now for an illustration of the kind of thing my mum would never wear now even if you paid her a few million rupees.

A piece of fan mail ...

Here's some fan mail I received on Friday 14 August 2009 ...

Dear Irfan, whose name I can't properly pronounce,

After hearing, and of course seeing you, at Eltham New Voices Festival, I made sure I read your book: Once Were Radicals.

I found it a very interesting faith journey. My life has been and is still a faith journey.

I am Catholic. I'm a lady approaching late 60's [enough information] and the greatest adventure in my life has been the journey inwards. I am a 4 times a week Mass Catholic and a once a week Anglican meditator. [actualy @ St Margaret's where you spoke.]

I have learned that my church, meaning universal church, lacks in so much, but it's part of my identity and I am dependent on the Eucharist, so therefore I am committed. Fortunately there are many wonderful writers and thinkers who sustain me in my beliefs.

Your story fascinates me and I'm grateful to you for sharing it. If only the wisdom of time could catapult us all into understanding each other, but then the lessons of life wouldn't happen.

How grateful I am for having discovered as Gandhi did, that we are all on the same journey, leading to the same destination, but taking a variety of routes. May God bless you, and your beautiful parents, abundantly.

If the rest of the book leaves me with nothing more to say you will receive this as is, but if I need to make further comment it will be a PS.

Yours in our shared God,

TT

PS. I'm a 4th generation Australian of Irish and English stock. The book just got better and better. A favourite writer of mine; Richard Rohr [Fransciscan]] says on one of his tapes that religion is a necessary means to an end but not the end, and if you manage to progress far enough you will probably feel okay about leaving it behind and embracing the in-dwelling God.

And here is a completely unrelated cartoon.

Learning Justice

One of the highlights of the Aussie literary calendar is the Crime & Justice Festival held in Melbourne at the gorgeous Abbotsford Convent in July. This year I was lucky enough to go along and participate in two events.

On Saturday 18 July, I joined Jude Bourguignon to chat about ideas of justice. We decided before the session that we wouldn't try to get too esoteric and stick to simple stuff. No doubt those attending and expecting some profound insights would have been bored out of their brains.

For me, learning about justice was an essential part of my journey into and then out of what some people call “radical Islam”. Hence at my first Muslim camp in 1985, I wanted to fight for justice in Afghanistan and expressed my wish to the imam of the camp. He tried to talk me out of the idea. I learned from our discussion that justice isn’t always what it seems.

To properly recognise what justice is and how you can contribute to its establishment, you need to understand the unjust situation. You also need to understand your own limitations and the consequences of your joining the fight for yourself, those around you and the cause itself.

We also need to understand that a situation isn’t just unjust when it happens to us. When it happens to others, we must show solidarity with them. My mother set this example (at pp 34-35) to me when I was young. As soon as she heard that Catholic school kids were getting teased in our neighbourhood, she went and befriended all the Catholics in our street! It was her simple way of showing solidarity with a fellow oppressed minority, even if most people living in our street were Catholic.

Sometimes justice can be rough. My own mother’s regime of linguistic fascism (at pp65-66) wasn’t something I terribly enjoyed. Her use of a car cassette player to torture her kids with Bollywood songs wasn’t the highlight of my childhood.

Justice also involves understanding other people’s limitations and why they cannot always follow the rules in exactly the manner you deem appropriate. I was perhaps one of the biggest hijab messengers when I was in my late-teens, always lecturing and hectoring the women of my family to cover their heads. But I had to learn (at pp198-200 and 241-242) that people have their reasons for doing what they do.

There is also spiritual justice which I learned during my early exposure to orthodox Islamic spirituality. I learned from Imam Rabbani Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindhi about the concept of wahdat ash-shuhud, the idea that as you rise up to various spiritual levels, you reach a stage where you feel immersed in God. At this stage, everything around you and even inside you looks divine. It’s like sticking a torch in the path of the sun and trying to separate the torch’s light. Sirhindhi said that this state of spirituality was not the highest level of proximity to God. Rather, there was an even higher level than that which arose when you returned to earth and devoted your life to service to others (at pp290-1).

Service to others must not be limited to those who agree with you and believe in the same things you do. We all have an innate sense of justice. I learned that the Prophet Muhammad was a key player in the establishment of the Hilf al-Fudul or Alliance for Virtue (at p273) designed to defend the rights of merchants in his city who had no access to the system of tribal justice as they didn’t belong to and have access to the support of a powerful tribe. The alliance would advocate on behalf of such people.

In a separate session, I joined a young Melbourne philosopher to talk about tolerance. I'll write about that later when I get a chance. Now here's a totally pointless photograph of someone taking a totally pointless photograph.

Stuff recently published elsewhere ...

Since the beginning of August, I've been a little busy on the keyboard. The result has been a few articles and pieces published here and there. They include:

1. an article in the Canberra Times about freedom of speech, national security and the responsibility of pundits. You can read that by clicking here.

2. A piece in the popular news and commentaru website Crikey on the push to ban al-Manar TV in Australia. You can read that piece by clicking here.

3. Another piece in Crikey about the immediate aftermath of anti-terror raids carried out in Melbourne. You can read that piece by clicking here.

And here is a silly cartoon I had nothing to do with.