Once Were Radicals (29 page)

There were times when I'd become sick of reading about the dynamics of the political failure of twentieth-century Islamic movements. All these stories about Muslim countries rejecting (or being forced to reject) their own religious and political heritage was enough to make even the most casual fan of political Islam depressed.

It was at such times that I'd be hungry for some kind of Islamic success. I'd then enjoy the relative ease of immersing myself in my old and familiar high school doctrinal debates. Arguing about which dogma took you to paradise was so much easier than finding solutions to save the world. I'd then revisit the work of that rather undiplomatic South African Muslim missionary Ahmed Deedat, watching videos of his one-sided and almost choreographed debates with various missionaries and re-reading Deedat's booklets, many of which had highly provocative (and, dare I say,
grossly offensive) titles like
Crucifixion or Cruci-fiction?
and
The God Who Never Was
.

It didn't take me long to realise that Deedat was just repeating the same arguments without solving real-life problems. His polemics were like a shot of adrenaline that fired Muslims up and make them feel more confident about their faith. But they really didn't achieve much in the long term. Worse still, his cold, sharp logic could just as easily be applied against any religion, including our own. What's to stop people quoting verses of the Koran and various
ahadith
and scholarly commentaries out of context and reaching offensive conclusions about Islam and Muslim traditions? These days, each time someone emails me complaining about the latest junk they've read on some evangelical anti-Muslim website or blog, I remind them of what offensive arguments Deedat used to get away with before the days of internet and email.

On one occasion, Dad's work in London coincided with one of Deedat's UK tours. On Deedat's itinerary was a debate in the Royal Albert Hall with a Palestinian Christian missionary named Dr Shorosh. Dad attended the debate and was impressed by Deedat's knowledge of the Bible, though he was most unimpressed with Deedat's rudeness and lack of respect for other people's religions.

Dad brought home a recording of the debate made by Deedat's hosts. I watched the debate numerous times and had almost memorised it. It's been at least fifteen years since I last saw the tape. However, I do remember some details. The debate was chaired by an English Muslim lawyer named Ahmed Thomson. In those days it was a shot in my faith's arm just to see an English person
adopt my religion. Ahmed Thomson asked the audience to stand up for the recitation of both the Lord's Prayer and the first chapter of the Koran (containing seven short verses and called
Surah al-Fatiha
or ‘the opening chapter'). The
al-Fatiha
was recited first in Arabic with an English translation. Dr Shorosh then recited the Lord's Prayer in Arabic first and then in English. I remember the audience as a whole remaining standing for both prayers, except for one notable exception. Yusuf Islam was seated when the Lord's Prayer was recited.

I found Yusuf Islam's response so uncharacteristic of him. Though I'd met Yusuf only once before in my early teens, I thought of him as a gentle and tolerant man who had years before treated my relatively juvenile questions with respect. Yet now he could not bring himself to show the same respect to a prayer which quite possibly may have been uttered by God's Messiah. Surely there was nothing in the Lord's Prayer that would offend anyone, let alone a Muslim. Then again, for all I know, he may not have stood up for the Koranic prayer either. Muslims aren't expected to stand up when the Koran is being recited.

Apart from this, I enjoyed the debate. Deedat was still using and repeating many of the same phrases, arguments, anecdotes and even biblical verses (some of which he had memorised in their original Hebrew or Greek) to great effect. He even used Shorosh's own books against him. Shorosh was clearly no match.

One Friday, I went to the
Jummah
(congregational) prayers at the King Faisal Mosque. There I met up with my two friends Kamal and Abdullah, and we set off to the city. On Fridays, the Anglican Dean of Sydney would set
up a podium and microphone in the middle of the square between St Andrews Cathedral and Sydney Town Hall. He invited questions from members of the public on any subject related to Christianity. I wanted to show off my debating skills to my two buddies.

On our way, we bumped into one of my Indian uncles who helped organise at our youth camp. Uncle Kazim asked us where we were off to. He must have sensed we were up to no good. I did the talking.

‘Uncle, the Angelican Dean of Sydney is having a public question-and-answer session in the square. We would like to question him and challenge him to accept Islam.'

Uncle Kazim identified my delusions of polemical grandeur instantly.

‘Irfan, don't you think that might be a silly idea? The Dean is a learned man with a doctorate in religion. You are in law school. Why should he convert after hearing a few questions from you? Maybe you and your friends should go back to the mosque and read some Koran.'

Despite Uncle Kazim's best efforts to delay our journey, we managed to catch the last ten minutes of the Dean's session. When it was my turn, I asked a question which I had used in Divinity classes frequently and which I thought was very clever.

‘Yes, Dr Shilton, I have a question. We know that Adam committed a sin in the garden by eating the forbidden fruit. We also know that Adam asked God for forgiveness. My question is this—was Adam forgiven?'

Kamal looked at me, confused. He whispered in my ear. ‘Bro, that's a pretty simple question. I thought you were going to debate him.'

‘Just wait and watch, Kamal.'

I looked at the Dean and could almost read his thinking process. On the one hand, if he said ‘yes' then it meant that we'd inherit both Adam's sin and forgiveness, making the doctrine of original sin redundant and rendering the whole salvation formula via the death and resurrection of Christ unnecessary. On the other hand, if he said ‘no' then it meant that Adam wasn't forgiven despite asking God for forgiveness. It meant God was punishing someone who turned to Him in repentance. It reflected badly on the Christian concept of God.

Of course, looking back, it's likely the Dean was really thinking something else. Instead of answering our question, he asked me to speak to him about the issue afterwards, at which time he provided me with an appropriate answer.

‘You must be that Yusuf chap, the St Andrews old boy who used to make all that trouble in Divinity classes. I've heard you've asked Rev Alex this question. My answer is the same as his. We inherit Adam's sinful nature, not his sin. It doesn't matter whether God forgave Adam or not.'

I then tried to corner Dr Shilton with other questions about the authenticity of the Gospels, about the processes used at the Council of Nicaea in 325AD etc etc. Dr Shilton was a kind and patient man and taught me a lesson that has stayed with me even at times when I have wanted to walk away from religion altogether.

‘Mr Yusuf, you can ask me a hundred questions to which I may not have all the answers right now. In fact, I may not be able to find answers to some of your questions ever. But good Christians, and no doubt good Muslims, believe that the real goal in life isn't to know all the answers but rather
to know the Person who knows all the answers. And can you tell me who that Person is?'

I whispered ‘God' rather sheepishly.

‘Excellent. Now why don't you and your friends run along and have some lunch or go watch a movie or something.'

So much for converting the Dean of Sydney! Kamal, Abdullah and I quietly slipped away. Kamal was clearly embarrassed, and suggested I had shown disrespect to the ‘Christian sheikh' and should apologise to him at the next Friday forum. I followed his advice and I was at the Town Hall square again. This time I had no questions to ask. I just wanted to listen and then find an appropriate moment to apologise. But there was no podium and no microphone. The Dean had taken ill and wasn't holding his scheduled Friday session.

My hero Deedat wasn't always generous even to his Muslim brothers. I used to regularly receive mail from both the South African and British branches of Deedat's Islamic Propagation Centre International. At one stage, he seemed to be grooming a young South African barrister named Yusuf Bacchus, and videos of Bacchus's debates with missionaries were being advertised and promoted. Within a year, a newsletter arrived from Durban. The back page showed portraits of both Bacchus and Deedat. The black and white photo of Bacchus's face was serious, and he had a cross (as in ‘X') struck through his face. Deedat's colour photo showed a face radiating a smile and had no cross. Below their faces was an announcement to the effect that Yusuf Bacchus should no longer be regarded as having any affiliation with Deedat or the Islamic Propagation Centre International.

Eventually I got over the aggressive missionary work of Deedat. When his repetitious arguments began to bore his audience, Deedat turned to Middle Eastern politics and the Israel/Palestine dispute. I watched a video of a symposium he'd organised with a former US Congressman named Paul Findley. Deedat was clearly out of his depth, his arguments sounding so simplistic compared to the relative nuance of Findley, who limited his discussion to American foreign policy.

What really made me wonder about Deedat's approach was when he visited Australia during a lecture tour. Flanked by local bodyguards, Deedat delivered a lecture to a packed Sydney Town Hall. I wasn't at the lecture though I did watch the official video recording afterwards. What particularly disappointed me was the timing of his talk. The lecture was based on his book
Crucifixion or Cruci-Fiction?
and was held on the evening of Good Friday. I thought this was unnecessarily inflammatory.

Soon after leaving Australia, Deedat suffered a stroke, and after a long period in a coma, he passed away. Notwithstanding his often provocative remarks about other faiths, Deedat played a major role in shaping my religious identity. His combats were always about doctrine (in the case of Christians) or Middle Eastern politics (in the case of Jews). He did, however, acknowledge that Christians, Jews and Muslims shared the same moral and ethical values and worshipped the same God.

While the political Islam of books by Maududi and others of similar ilk made lots of sense, events overseas always proved
a source of doubt and even disillusionment. I always had the impression that Iranian political Islam was much friendlier to conventional Western thinking than the Jamaat stuff I'd read coming out of Pakistan. It was weird how books by Jamaatis (as we referred to JI members) like Maryam Jameelah were openly being distributed in Australia without anyone inside or outside Muslim circles caring.

I still have a two-volume set of commentaries by Jameelah titled
Western Civilisation Condemns Itself
. Her critiques of Western philosophy and the writings of other Pakistani Jamaati ideologues left me with the impression that the values of Islam and my own Australian values would clash more often than not. This wasn't the case with Iran's Shariati. I'd often wonder whether the marching Iranian hordes screaming ‘Death to America' had even bothered to read Shariati.

Indeed, the closest I felt Shariati came to showing hostility to Western values was in a selection of translated lectures entitled
Marxism and Other Western Fallacies
. I haven't read the book for years, but I recall being left with the impression that while Shariati mildly criticised most Western philosophers, he largely left them intact. But in the case of Marxism, the demolition job was quite direct and brutal. It was as if the only real fallacy Shariati identified was Marxism, and in the Cold War era of the time this was regarded as a good thing.

Iranian political Islam seemed more pro-Western. It didn't require me to turn my back on conventional thinking in an intellectual manner. On the other hand, the Saudi- and American-backed political Islams of the Sunni world—groups like the Jamaat-i-Islami and Muslim Brotherhood,
which were actively backing the Afghan jihad against the Soviets and whose books were being distributed and bought and sold openly—were far more hostile to the West than anything the Iranians had to offer.

That all changed when the name of an Indian Muslim writer I idolised suddenly hit the front page of the newspapers.

I was shocked by the attitude of English Muslims shown on TV protesting against Salman Rushdie. I'd have expected them to be as proud as I was when I saw Rushdie's name in the newspaper. Rushdie was the man who introduced me to the injustices suffered by the Palestinians in a touching review he wrote of Professor Edward Said's autobiography. Yet now this leading British Muslim (albeit a rather unobservant and secular one) was under armed guard, his books and effigies burned by fellow English Muslims. Surely having someone with a name as strange as their names being printed in the newspaper and writing novels should have been a source of pride.