Day: April 26, 2009

Clash of stupidity

The recent removal and questioning of six Moslem clerics from a Twin Cities’ flight became a front-page, headline news story with several clashing views.   From a civil liberties point of view, those imams’ freedom of worship was taken away and they were singled out and publicly humiliated because of either their religious customs, the way they looked, or the use of their native language. From the view of the Americans involved, widely known for their ethnocentric and Islamic-phobic tendencies, the imams “seemed angry,” as a passenger explained in a police statement.  The patriotic passenger continued, “The men then chanted ‘Allah, Allah, Allah.’ “They spoke Arabic again.” 

We have been fighting in Moslem countries for years,  we should know by now that Moslem prayer is always in Arabic regardless if  any terrorist tendency, and prayers require invoking the phrase “Allahu Akbar’(God is the Greatest) numerous times.  Colloquial Arabic is likewise full of expressions like “Inshahallah” (god-willing) and “mashallah” (what god wishes), which are not normally preambles for suicidal acts. Besides, we really are supposed to be a little jolly when speaking with God; he is our creator after all. It does not really matter to me if overzealous passengers or paranoid US Air pilots demonstrated their cultural incompetence on board.  But what truly bothers me about this incident is that it appears to me not a clash of civilization or culture, but a clash of stupidity. 

I appreciate the imams trust in American public judgment and prudence. But from the common sense view, the way those imams behaved and looked at the airport is part of the clash.  Any outraged Moslems should be aware that in a post 9/11 Islamic-phobic country, Moslems with huge untrimmed beards should just not pray in the boarding area at an airport.  Period.  I certainly understand that as Moslems we should be the ones who are extremely cautious about traveling by air with paranoid Americans. As for me, I don’t really care what the First Amendment says or entitles you to, in a post 9/11 Islamic-phobic era, I do not care if the time of prayer was called or not.  According to my only imam (my dad), when traveling, a Moslem can always pray all five daily prayers in the comforts of home upon arrival. The prophet followed this guideline even though he was among his own devoted followers, not a suspicious and paranoid airport crowd.  You just cannot display that degree of poor judgment as a Moslem, let alone as an imam, whom other Moslems expect to exhibit social prudence.  This is an era in which we can assume that Moslems are profiled, some have their phones monitored, and others may be followed or watched when they are praying at mosques, all in the interest of the safety of the flying public.  What are you thinking when you pray at the airport itself!  I understand that getting drunk at an airport bar before boarding would have been less threatening to lots of passengers. What happened at the airport to those six imams is not a lack of legal rights and a First Amendment issue, this is a lack of common sense and poor judgment issue. Those imams are supposedly teaching us through sermons at every Friday prayer how to behave as a Moslem living in a hostile post 9/11 era. Those six imams biggest blunder was not just praying together at the airport but being there together. Bushra Khan, spokeswoman for CAIR’s Arizona chapter, said, “All these men did was pray, . . . and that scares some people.”  Please count me in; I would be too, but not because this type of behavior predisposes a terrorist tendency, but rather a pertinacity of stupidity tendency. In this post 9/11 era, when I travel, I am always clean shaven; I leave my prayer rug and my nail clippers at home along with my feta cheese and cans of fava beans.. I don’t even pray at a mosque, let alone at the airport.  My biggest concern is not connecting with god Almighty at the airport, but connecting with my flight. I stay quietly in the waiting area, watching CNN and Fox network news blasting fair and balanced coverage of Moslems around the world. I don’t ask for special “halal” meals on the flight, but just quietly fish out any offending pork that may have found its way into my entrée. And when they ask me to take my shoes off at the airport; I understand it is time for security check and definitely it’s not the time for prayer.

Ahmed Tharwat/ Host and producer
BelAhdan
Arab American TV show
Airs on Public TV at 10:30pm
www.belahdan.com

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An average man

The American people have seen enough Muslims behaving badly all over the world; Saddam, Ghdaffy, Assad, Ossam, Alsadar, Zarqawi and with the Bush administration illusive crusade on terrorism; this list gets longer by the day. American people in a dire need to see some reasonable Muslim, please meet my dad.

My father was a small petite man, with a big nose and sharp piercing small eyes; he wasn’t a heavy-handed, intimidating father figure. However, he believed that to survive raising a large family of 10 on $7 monthly salary, you needed to be vigilant in reconstructing our family values.

First, to put our house in order, he gave us character-based nicknames; our original Arabic names had been either those of a prophet or a servant of God, Muhammed, Ahmed, Abdelraffe, Aabdellnasser, Abdelaal, etc… didn’t reflect who we really are, so I became the Sursarah, the small cockroach; my mom was Walad, one of the boys; the skinny one was Feseekhah, dried fish; the enigmatic one was Brovdaah (I still have no idea what it means); the oldest was Abul-ossi, the father of sticks; then, the comfort-seeker was Oomdah, the mayor; the youngest was Hando’ah, the cutie; and my only sister was Al-arousah, the beautiful bride.

He wasn’t a religious zealous man; he was what you could call a moral relativist. He would quietly pray the mandatory five daily prayers without lecturing us. He would tell us biblical stories to spread his moral ploys; each story would have a disguise message made to shape our outlook on life. The prophet said: to sleep hungry is to be merry, he would say when one asked for late meal. “The Hebrew people got lost in Sinai for 40 years, you know” he reminds us when we drifted to our ways, and if you don’t listen to his advise he would say “Well suite yourself but remember; Noah’s son didn’t make it ” .

He was a frugal man; to my dad, consumption was an evil state of depletion. Nothing terrified him more than one of us breaking into the kitchen to snack before mealtime. It was a violation of house golden rules. He even developed a home security sound-code alert system reflecting the level of threat to any domestic consumption around the house. Regardless of where he was, he managed to monitor and sense what was going on in our kitchen even in his sleep. Clearing his throat was a special warning alarm to alert us to his level of annoyance. He would clear his throat once if you broke into the kitchen, twice, for opening the refrigerator, and three “ahems” meant don’t touch that cold watermelon.

A conservationist before it became fashionable; He would walk around the house turning off radios, stoves, electricity and shut windows— as his daily mission to defeat ominous waste.

Reusing old stuff around the house for him was a divine resurrection ritual. Eating questionable leftover food was his small triumph over the tyrant of the decaying process. Sending the mail in used envelopes was his personal signature, reusing old batteries even for just a few minutes was magical, and for him, nothing was ever too precious for him to be wrapped in scraps of old newspaper.

My dad was an average man who never wanted to be a hero, he passed away a few years back and finally is resting in a divine place where there isn’t much to do or to say— the way he always wanted, god bless you dad. 

Ahmed Tharwat
Producer/Host of the Arab American TV Show Belahdan
Minnetonka, MN

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AhMedia احا صحافه