Yar manuniya

I grew up willing to look the demon in me in the face; look at it right through its soul and discover the secrets that make it tick. A contrarian, a devil’s advocate… I believed that the god I worshipped was the god of truth and no matter where He stood that was where I would stand.

I have known and experienced and understood those low key, subtle moments when it was acceptable and you were encouraged to compromise the core values and principles the faith itself propagated and stood upon if it furthered the interests of the faith… I had also discovered at some point that, I, and in fact, the people I grew up implicitly trusting, people I absolutely believed were infallible were also petty human beings after all.

I have sang songs I later understood glorified killing and bloodletting. I have experienced an instance when it was made clear that you were allowed to lie and cheat and even kill if they weren’t members of the faith. I have lived in a society that stripped all humanity from the “arna”, which technically meant animists and pagans but informally applied to all nonbelievers. In the light of this reality, it was therefore easy for the hypnotic rhythms of the war-against-terror pop culture narrative pushed by the West to catch on and make a dent.

The era of 7-10 has effectively ended the era of 9-11. For me, it hits like a cold lead headshot from a smoking gun. Where I come from, there is this concept I want to call the “metaphor of lightening”. It is the qualification for the phenomenon of “‘Yar Manuniya”… that is, “the eye-opening hand of disillusionment”.

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In the darkness of a stormy night, everything goes, because no one can see that the king has no clothes on. Because the elephant in the room exists only as a distant silhouette that can be red, blue or even white. It depends on what the guy with the loudest megaphone says. If he says it is white, then a white elephant it is. No one could point and disprove that school of thought.

But perchance there would come a profound flash of fleeting lightening, and every little detail of every little thing will be an epiphany of its own and a reality check of its own.

 Since at least 9/11 the world was immersed into a certain ideal—and I was conditioned by that ideal because that was the world I grew up in… according to that ideal, there is something so carnal and malevolent about Islam.  

The mainstream parroted tropes that asked questions on why it was clear that all terrorists are from one religion and from the definition of terror and terrorism derived from 9-11 that was true. I grew up knowing about al-Qaeda and Bin Laden and Hezbollah and Hamas. Then came the Taliban. Then came al-Shabab. Then Boko Haram. Then ISIS. They were all Muslims. And they were all terrorists. If there are terrorist groups that weren’t Muslim, no one hears about them supposedly because they’re not doing the heinous, reprehensible evil that is a way of life for Muslim terrorists.

I was of course already questioning the Islam = terror/Muslim = terrorist stereotypical equation before 10-7. We have heard from Snowden and we have also heard from Assange. Then I saw a US congressman ask the president of Colombia University, a Muslim Arab woman of Egyptian descent, if she wanted god to curse the US because the Bible said god would curse anyone who does not bless Israel… even if Israel is mass murdering women and children by the account of international institutions created to make such a judgment call. And I saw the Trump nominee for US Defence Secretary ask a news host to open the Bible because it is written in there that god gave Jews Palestine and that is what made the zionist claim to Palestine valid.

Then I noticed that Americans in particular called their men in uniform heroes and thank them for their service even after all those Americans have also heard from Snowden and Assange. Then I also recall that… a US president pardon the token few actually convicted of murder according to US law because they deserved reprieve in the name of the people of America, whom they were serving. It was okay to be a terrorist after all, as long as you’re doing it in the name of a cause you recognise as sacred.

 Then I saw the brazen relegation of every principle of humanity and the rule of law to the mean and blithe interests of their own world… the US can kill one million Iraqis on a lie that came to be acknowledged as a lie… yet it can go back to being the leader of the free world.

It is clear now. In my lifetime, there had never been a thunderclap this loud, a lightning strike this terrifying, a lightning rod this hypocritical. There was never one with a focus of the world until 10-7. That, and the fact that someone now understands and knows history in the context and perspective of this conflict, one can now see the fundamental disconnect between thought and reality.

I now know a little of what is in the Bible, the Torah, the Talmud and other religious texts and pronouncements of important figures. A perfect storm indeed. ‘Yar manuniya indeed!

I remember being accused many times of condoning jihadi terrorists and secretly approving what they do. With this lightning strike, the ‘Yar manuniya that followed 10-7, I think I certainly know how deep the rabbit hole goes. It’s funny. I used to believe that African-Americans were abusing the whole white-guilt thing, and that the whole oh-so-persecuted victimhood complex was contemptible. And on that count in particular my reaction was, “figures!” They actually knew something I didn’t know, we didn’t know. They have lived with, “that”, that wholesale insincerity and hypocrisy of purpose. Now I know. At least think I do.

No matter what happens, the Palestinian cause has already won this war. The very world we will live in was itself created by Palestine on 10-7. 10-7 was certainly a dark day. Women and children died. What is so perplexing is the fact that after Hamas said, “let there be light!”, what followed has been a resplendent storm of luminosity.

 ‘Yar manuniyas are funny like that.