Once Were Radicals (16 page)

Lebanon was also a basket case, with Muslims of various denominations fighting each other and fighting Christians. It wasn't clear exactly who was at fault or who started the fighting. However, all the Lebanese people we had ever met in Sydney were uneducated, arrogant and racist towards us because we didn't recite the Koran in their accent. The only nice Lebanese people we knew were all Christians. One woman often told us about her parents who had been shot dead in their bed in Lebanon by Muslim militiamen who had stormed into their house. This Christian woman loved hearing me recite the Koran and would explain its meaning to me in her broken and heavily accented English.

The impressions I gained watching the TV and meeting Muslims who weren't from South Asia reinforced in my
mind the view that non-Indian Muslims belonged more in the ‘them' than ‘us' category.

Pakistan, on the other hand, was with the good guys. It was an ally of the United States and was a thriving democracy, even if I regarded it as a rather dirty, unhygienic place where people didn't use toilet seats and where you had the Koran bashed into you by imams.

Mum and Dad were far more interested in Indian or Pakistani news. They were both extremely disturbed by the arrest and hanging of the prime minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in 1977. Mum was never a huge fan of Bhutto (who was the Pakistani prime minister during the period we lived there), because of the stories about him sending out goons to kidnap young women and having his way with them. As far as my parents were concerned, Bhutto was the democratically elected leader. General Zia-ul-Haq's military coup was a huge embarrassment for Pakistanis everywhere. Dad and a Pakistani uncle used rather colourful language in Urdu when General Zia appeared on the TV news promising elections within ninety days. The uncle noticed I was listening, and advised me not to repeat his words in respectable company. From memory, his words were:

‘
Yeh haramzada maadat choth kiya election karwa-e-gah. Thum deklena, yeh kutha badmaash tho kursi ko apnahi bana-e-ga! Khuda ko bhi mushkil hoyegi is kamineh ko hataane meh.
'

(‘As if this bastard mother-fucker will organise an election. You watch, this dog-like pimp will make the
[Presidential] chair his own. Even God will have trouble removing this low-caste fellow.')

After Dad provided me with a full translation (Mum wasn't around to stop him), I told the uncle how impressed I was with his extensive vocabulary even if I felt it was blasphemous. I soon heard similar language used even by the most religious Pakistanis to describe political leaders, especially military dictators. Poor God used to get dragged into all kinds of political discussions. Within months, General Zia's anti-democratic antics and love for power became a source of numerous blasphemous jokes, many of which were told at religious gatherings by very devout uncles sporting impressive beards.

I remember standing outside the front gate of the Surry Hills mosque with Dad after
Eid
prayers.
Eid
was one of those occasions when that 90 per cent of Muslim people who never otherwise set foot in the mosque turned up. As soon as the prayers were over, people would walk out and completely ignore the sermon. On this occasion, an uncle on the mosque committee came to mingle with Dad as we waited for Mum to emerge from the crowded women's section. The uncle shared a General Zia joke with my dad that went something like this.

On the Day of Judgment, God decided to organise a special cocktail party for world leaders to be held just before He set up His
mizaan
(the scales used to judge people's actions during their lifetime). Each world leader was expected to greet God upon entering His Divine Court before mingling with the other guests. Margaret Thatcher (the first British female prime minister) walked up to God, who stood up from his throne and shook Mrs Thatcher's
hand. Next was Ronald Reagan, and God again stood up and shook his hand. Finally, General Zia arrived, late as usual (heck, he was running on South Asian time!). God called Zia closer and shook his hand. Zia was a little perturbed by this inconsistent treatment, but assumed only the best from God.

‘Allah, you called me close to you before shaking my hand. I guess you must have been happy with my Islamisation policies.'

‘No, General Zia. It's just that after seeing what you did to Bhutto, I was too scared to get out of my chair!'

That joke was told and re-told at religious gatherings all over Sydney, with even Urdu-speaking imams having a good chuckle. Sometimes religion and politics do mix well.

Dad was always very private about his religious faith. He regarded religion as a personal matter, and was so averse to preaching that he never even insisted on my performing daily
nemaaz
or other rituals. He also didn't like praying in public unless there was no choice such as when we were at the mosque.

Dad also never led any
nemaaz
service at home. Hence, in our house, we all performed our nemaaz separately. It wasn't until later in life that I learned of the importance of performing
nemaaz
in jemaat (congregation).

Even if only two men were present, one of them is meant to lead the
nemaaz
service and the other follow. The leader is known as the imam and is usually the oldest or most knowledgeable person in the group. This
nemaaz
done in
jemaat
is considered more Islamic and therefore deserving of greater reward from God for all involved. People praying
in congregation therefore become a truly Islamic
jemaat
(or, shall we say, a true
jemaah islamiyah
? It's okay, keep that national security hotline magnet on the fridge).

Sometimes when we were invited to lunch or dinner by more openly devout friends, the menfolk would gather at prayer time and perform the
nemaaz
in
jemaat
. Someone (often a young child) would call out the
azaan
(call to prayer) that I used to hear radiating from numerous minarets in Pakistan. Sometimes even I'd be roped in to perform this task. A heap of bedsheets would be rolled out, and an uncle (usually the one with the longest beard and the most expensive Mercedes Benz) would act as imam.

These uncles would follow up
nemaaz
with religious talk about why we should be particular about
nemaaz
or why we should spend more time reading the Koran. They would read out of a book in Urdu. Other children my age, most of whom couldn't understand much Urdu, would be forced to listen to these talks. They would look on in confusion whilst I nodded in sequence with other uncles when the imam-uncle made some substantial point.

Some of these uncles had only recently become religious. Dad was particularly sceptical about their calls to religiosity. He recalled a time back in the early 1970s when he served one year on the executive of one of Sydney's earliest mosques. He once went on a fundraising drive around Sydney seeking funds for the mosque. Many of these uncles were too busy wining and dining to join him or even to contribute. It was Dad's first and last involvement in what he cynically described as the Islamic industry.

These uncles looked down on Dad for his refusal to participate in religious gatherings. Some would encourage
me to become more openly devout, and would then use this as a means to denigrate him. At the time, I didn't recognise this was happening. I assumed Dad really was irreligious even though at home I would see him performing his
nemaaz
at the right time.

Dad would sometimes warn me to keep a distance from the more religious uncles. He said they might use me to do their dirty work. I couldn't understand what possible dirty work religious people engaged in. Dad asked me to always compare what these uncles expected of me to what they expected of their own children.

‘Irfan, you won't see these allegedly religious people getting their own children to spend their precious time getting involved in their religious organisations. They will make sure their children study while you run around doing so-called Islamic work.'

I couldn't see any evidence of this taking place. Rarely did any uncles do more than simply push me to be observant with my religious obligations. The only mildly political point they would make was encouraging me to be particular about eating halal meat. I hardly saw this as political.

I wasn't exposed to the Islamic organisations beyond occasional attendance at dinners organised by a group of uncles who had formed a national body of mosques called AFIC (the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils). These dinners were usually held on the evening of Good Friday, and were attended by various politicians such as an Italian-looking man named Al Grassby who used to wear colourful ties and make colourful speeches about how he believed there were over one million Muslims in Australia (there are only 360 000 Muslims in Australia today).

Also attending these dinners were men who didn't look like the kind of Muslims I was used to. They didn't speak Hindi or Urdu, they didn't look terribly Muslim and they spoke Arabic and Turkish.

These AFIC dinners were not my first exposure to non-Indian Muslims. During school holidays, Dad would take me to special Friday prayer services known as
jummah nemaaz
. I used to attend these each Friday at the mosque in Pakistan with hundreds of people. The first time Dad invited me to the
jummah nemaaz
, I was all excited and thought I was going to something similar in Sydney, only to be disappointed that I was only going to Dad's office at university. Then slowly other men began trickling into the office. Many were of similar age to my dad. They wore strange colourful shirts and looked almost Chinese. They in fact were from Indonesia, a country that's closer to Australia than to India. I'd never associated Indonesia with Islam until that day.

Dad would invite his Indonesian friends to our house for dinner. They loved Mum's cooking. They would invite us to their homes in return but Mum didn't like going because the women would rarely speak to her, even in English. Instead, they spoke to each other in Bahasa Indonesia. Mum also didn't like going because they often served a fruit punch which contained alcohol.

Despite their drinking habits, Indonesians seemed very gentle and quiet. I never saw Indonesians raising their voices in the manner some of my Pakistani uncles did in the mosque or at community gatherings. They wore very colourful shirts with strange designs on them—Indonesians have a special way of designing and making these shirts
called
batik
. But what really stunned me about Indonesians was that their country was the largest Muslim country on earth, and that they were also Australia's closest neighbour. So every Australian had a Muslim neighbour (or five!).

Among the more strange experiences I had was a visit to one of our Pakistani friends. Their daughter was slightly older than my eldest sister and became like an older sister to me. Their house was located across the road from a major Sydney jail, and I was always excited to be in the car with Mum and Dad as we drove past it. One day we went there for dinner when they had these unusual people visiting. They were white-skinned and looked like Anglo-Australians. They also took part in the
nemaaz
, and seemed to know a lot about Islam. In fact, one of the girls wore a hijab.

They were from Yugoslavia. I was quite shocked to hear that there were Muslims there, and at first assumed they must be converts like Muhammad Pickthall. But their father told us that there were millions of Muslims all over Yugoslavia. This seemed rather strange because I thought that Yugoslavia was a communist country where people weren't allowed to have a religion.

At Surry Hills mosque, the prayer services were often led by a Lebanese man who was a close friend of my father, called Imam Chami. He lived quite close to the old spice shop in Bondi Beach. We would often drop into Imam Chami's house on the way to or from the spice shop, and he would serve us these wonderful Lebanese sweets. Imam Chami was a very gentle man, and was certainly a far cry from Molvi Sahib in Karachi.

Imam Chami was also very different to some of the other Lebanese Muslims we came across. Mum didn't
seem to have much time for Muslims from Lebanon and other Arab countries. One of my Pakistani uncles was based in Beirut for many years, and had many stories to tell about the decadence of Lebanese Muslims, their lax sexual morals and their women who dressed in a rather unfortunate manner.

Middle-class Pakistanis also looked down on Lebanese who worked in factories as labourers. I found this snobbery quite unusual given that Mum herself worked in a factory. However, Mum always bilingually distinguished herself from them by reminding me that she chose to work in a factory to send me to a private school, and that she had a Masters degree in Urdu. ‘Those Lebanese people are uneducated. They
jaahil
.'

This word
jaahil
was used often by uncles and aunts to refer to Arabic-speaking Muslims.
Jaahil
in Urdu is used to describe someone with little or no education. It is also used to describe someone uncouth, stupid, uncivilised and bad-mannered.
Jaahil
is actually an Arabic word used in the Koran to describe idol-worshippers who lived during the time of the Prophet Muhammad. It seemed strange that a people who could understand the words of the Koran could be deemed so uncivilised.