Ramadan Battle of Fallujah

In the last ten days of Ramadan any of the odd nights could be laylatul-qadr, "Night of Power and Salvation". The night when God the Merciful started to reveal His Mercy, in the form of Quran the book of guidance to Prophet Muhammad, who was sent as a Mercy to all humanity. The night when Muslims believe that God will not reject any sincere prayers, so we try to "find" it during the holy month. 

It is not possible for us to mount a month long night vigil during Ramadan praying and contemplating. Instead Muslims have evolved an easier path which is to limit our vigil to the last five odd nights of the holy month since it is also reported that lailatul qadr falls on one of these nights.

We gather to offer our nightly congregational prayers in a peaceful and affluent suburb of New York, protected by a police cruiser, a mercy bought from the county officials, prominently stationed at the entrance of our Mosque. But we are all thinking of Fallujah the "City of Mosques" because of the news reports that the much-anticipated invasion of Fallujah has finally begun. I am thinking of the terrified mothers of Fallujah and the worried military-moms all across the US. The "liberation" and "pacification" of Fallujah is going to be as transient as that of Samarra was. So why all this bloodshed? I ask myself.

We stand up to pray, shoulder to shoulder irrespective of our social status, people of different races from distant lands and diverse cultures who speak different languages in their homes. Our prayer service is led by an "American-born " teenager who has memorized the entire Quran. As we glorify God rising, bowing down and prostrating in unison we find scarce if any mercy in the world around. When I prostrate, my head touches the feet of a cabdriver who is praying in front of me. His flimsy socks have holes in them and the autumn night is chilly. I am filled with guilt about my relative affluence. As I think of the collateral damage in Fallujah the guilt trip then takes me from the realm of wealth to the realm of security and safety. The Imam concludes this round of Quranic recitation with prayers for peace and justice to reign in the world, a reign that cannot start soon enough for me, for all of us. 

Innocent civilians are beheaded in the name of religion and liberation struggle. Innocent citizens are pulverized to pieces with the most devastating weapons by armies that "soften up" entire cities from a safe distance. They are directed by politicians who dread having to deal with body counts of their soldiers but have no compunctions about the body count of the civilians living in the targeted cities.

No there is no mercy to be seen or experienced today nor truth and courage. The air we breathe is infested with lies, greed, fear, hatred, cowardice and a million other negative energies that have benumbed our senses. 

We shed tears when a pet is run over by a gas guzzling SUV but we do not notice when a hundred children are blown to bits by suicide bombs and by air to surface missiles.

We do not care if we are misled into war nor when the dictators we support in Uzbekistan and Tunisia boil the dissidents alive. We help these tyrants come to power and stay in power because they serve the interests, just as we the consumers do, of our military-industrial establishment. We do not want to know of the fate of hundreds of thousands who are killed and raped by these dictators and of the millions living who fare only slightly better. We choose to ignore the consequences of occupation that our allies have imposed on fellow humans. We do not think of long term effects of sustained persecution and despair on human psychology. We are rudely jolted into noticing these effects only when they start to manifest as suicide bombers. 

But even these awakenings do not last long. We are lullabied back to our slumber by repeated hypnotic incantations that suicide bombers are born into and brought up by their religion. We do not care to use the same analytical prowess to examine the causes of terrorism that we use to predict our favorite team's or our most valuable stock's performance. We do not ask ourselves what is the commonality between the biblical Sampson, the kamikazes from Japan, the Hindu suicide bombers from Sri Lanka and the Muslim suicide bombers of the Middle East? If we do then we will certainly find out that it is neither religion nor economy. It is despair and anger and at times it is a tactical response in an asymmetrical war. 

We are awaken from our stupor to take notice only if and when one of these self-aggrandizing dictators gets too carried away by his delusion of power and starts to defy our military industrial establishment. We are kept awake only long enough for us to give our manufactured consent to send our young men and young women from the inner cities to "free" the long forgotten but now suddenly remembered masses in distant lands. In our twilight state of consciousness, between ostentation and sudden wakefulness, we are too confused to ask if it is really a noble mission that we are going to engage in then why not send the cream of our society to win the laurels and fame? 

The drowsy state of our minds robs us of the competence to analyze the effect of an asymmetrical war, fought from a safe distance and with overwhelming military superiority that creates more civilian casualties and more anger and hence more suicide bombers and more butchers of human lambs. 

Similarly, the anguished cries of the victims of these angry hijackers of our faith do not penetrate our consciousness that has gone into a state of permanent denial.

So while the Imam is praying for Peace and Justice, I will pray for pain. A deep, piercing and constant moral pain that we all must feel and that which cannot be dulled by consumerist anesthesia. That alone can awaken us sufficiently enough and long enough to strive to break the cycle of violence, hatred and more violence. Only then can we redeem our religion from those who have hijacked it. Only then can we have the capacity to hold our governments accountable, a prerequisite of having a truly functional democracy. Only then can Justice and Peace begin to reign.

Dr. Shaik Ubaid is the president of Indian Muslim Council-USA, an advocacy group that promotes pluralism in India and the US.