According to a story posted not long ago on the Internet, during the Friday sermon, an imam urged believers to go to Iraq for jihad. After prayers, he went home and was about to have lunch when there was a loud knock on his door. He opened it to two men who demanded that he finish his lunch quickly and get ready to take the evening flight to Baghdad. The terrified preacher begged them to spare him and expressed his willingness to do anything to avoid jihad in Iraq. Though the story seems fabricated, it contains an element of truth for the edification of the unsuspecting man in the street. The story brings out the stark contrast between the rhetoric of calling for jihad and the horrible reality of facing it.
The story came to my mind while I was watching a talk show featuring Ahmed Al-Shaea who returned alive from jihad in Iraq after escaping an explosion. Anyone who watched the show would get the message in his story of fortunate rescue from pointless death. It also sheds light on the underlying treachery, prevarications and lies used to deceive unsuspecting youths who believe that the battle in Iraq is between true Islam and those who hold no belief.
The show left me simultaneously sad and happy, angry and pleased, frustrated and at ease. I was also ashamed of the duplicity of some people who use young men as human shields to fight against things they — not the young men — have decided should be fought against. And I am also ashamed of preachers who exploit the naiveté of young men who are urged to go to fight in Iraq — even without their parents’ knowledge. They leave the country on false passports, telling their families that they are going to Makkah for Umrah or to Madinah to pray at the Prophet’s Mosque. How many Ahmeds have been deceived and their lives thrown away in this useless way?
I watched the show as though it were an adventure film with a variety of subplots. In Afghanistan, the US was originally the ally of the Mujahideen and they fought together to drive the Soviet forces out. The former allies are now enemies in Iraq and the Arab mujahideen are labeled terrorists. These Arab fighters dream of the return of the brilliant caliphate of early Islamic history — despite the fact that they lack even the most basic qualifications needed to make such a thing possible. Let those deluded individuals who speak of the London blasts as a “great war” wake up from their dream and see reality in the cold light of day. I was shocked to see Ahmed, a boy looking hardly 20 who fled to Iraq seeking death before he had even tasted the life.
He told his own story, a gullible youth, who was led, docile as a sheep, nearly to his death. What I could not understand, however, were those who were really behind such brutal acts. Do they dwell permanently in the darkness of some mythic past, having withdrawn once and for all from reality? Do they do anything more than exploit ignorance in order to select from history what they want to believe? What past glory can be revived — or new glory created — over the dead bodies of Arab adolescents? All wars are dirty. The worst is one in which the fighters do not know the truth about why he is killing or why he is dying. They know only how to count their victims though they be children, women and old men.
