I always wonder, when attending late night prayers in my favorite mosque in Jeddah, whether the heightened emotions demonstrated by the congregation were due to increased piety, or to more sins they feel they have to ask forgiveness for. Every night in Ramadan (nighttime prayers are offered only during the holy month of fasting, and are unusually well-attended by men and women alike), I hear them tearfully calling out for God’s help.
Can these increased expressions of piety be due to what is taking place in Afghanistan? I have to say that ever since I began fasting regularly almost 20 years ago, rarely has Ramadan come round without some sad event taking place at the same time.
The Palestine question has always been there, of course, with all the feelings of oppression it engenders in Muslims. In addition, each passing year brings with it new causes for concern, sorrow and anger. Lebanon, Algeria, Bosnia, Kashmir, the list sometimes seemed endless.
Afghanistan, which was a regular fixture in the 1980s, has recently made a comeback. The massacre at Haram Al-Ibrahimi in Al-Khalil (the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, according to the Israeli lexicon) in which a Jewish settler gunned down more than 30 Muslim worshippers also happened during Ramadan.
Imams always have a sad subject to talk about in their sermons. Each night during nighttime prayers in Ramadan, the imam recites one-thirtieth of the Qur’an. After he is finished, he launches into a long supplication, asking God’s forgiveness. He also reminds the congregation of their sins during the other 11 months of the year, when they allowed material considerations to take precedence over religious obligations.
The imam then typically refers to the miserable state of Muslims around the world, and chooses one subject. This year it is Afghanistan on which to concentrate. He calls on the Almighty to grant the Muslims victory and vanquish their enemies without defining who the “Muslims” in this case are. Are they the Northern Alliance or the Taleban?
There is no such ambiguity regarding the enemies of Islam, though.
Passions rise to fever pitch among the lines of worshipers as they listen to God’s words gravely recited in the still of the night, reminding them of the fact that their third holiest shrine, Masjid Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, is still under Israeli occupation. A combination of feelings of humiliation and defeat, along with the knowledge that they (we) have let God down by throwing away that which He entrusted Muslims, comes over the congregation. Frustration and anger at ourselves, at Muslim rulers, and at the world which conspires against us, causes us to cry.
I sometimes wonder whether these unending tragedies are the reasons behind the generalized and deep-seated sense of sadness among Muslims. It is as if these prayer gatherings are some sort of group psychotherapy. Most of the Muslims I am talking about, by the way, are non-politicized and are not members of any Islamist organization.
This phenomenon is seen daily in all mosques in Saudi Arabia, from the grand Masjid Al-Haram in Makkah to the smallest mosque in the most poverty-ridden corner of the Kingdom. Everybody seems to be taking refuge in prayer and lament.
I grew up in Madinah at a time when the Arab nationalist tide was at its height. Mosques weren’t the venue to vent one’s emotions then. Instead, people sought refuge in the giant radio sets of the day, which broadcast unendingly the rousing speeches of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser.
In those years, the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah was quiet (even in Ramadan) compared to today. It never filled up, even for Ramadan nighttime prayers. Now though it is full to bursting, with people spilling out onto the street. These days, you’d be lucky to find even one empty room in the dozens of five-star hotels surrounding the holy edifice.
Their burdens are indeed heavy: feelings of defeat when they look to Palestine; feelings of oppression, economic oppression, backwardness, poverty, unemployment, overpowering bureaucracy, bad education. The list seems endless.
I remembered Osama Bin Laden last night, as I was leaving the mosque after nighttime prayers. Many years ago, I fasted with Bin Laden in one of his camps in the mountains of southern Afghanistan. It was a different world then; hopes were high that the Mujahedeen victory over the Soviets (which seemed imminent in 1987) would herald a worldwide renaissance for Muslims everywhere.
How things change. There is no place for optimism today. In Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden has very few supporters among those who knew him personally. I remembered the men I met upon leaving Osama’s converted cave in the Afghan mountains that Ramadan morning. They were a group of passionate young Saudis and Yemenis working earnestly on erecting defenses for Bin Laden’s camp (which was strategically located to protect convoys supplying the Mujahedeen fighting the Soviet occupiers).
As I was leaving, I heard the voice of Sheikh Al-Sudais, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Makkah, boom from microphones in that remote spot in Afghanistan. He was reciting from the Qur’an.
I can’t but help thinking what a charming picture that cold morning presented. Bin Laden and his followers protecting arms convoys provided by the CIA and paid for by the Saudis and the Americans with Pakistani supervision.
Yet when I recall the young men I saw at Osama’s side all those years ago, I cannot help but notice that almost none of them is still with him today. With the possible exception of Abu Hafs, Bin Laden’s comrades of the 1980s have long since left his side and returned to Saudi Arabia where they proudly recount their participation in the Afghan jihad. Those were simpler days, where the enemy was obvious (a foreign invader wanting to impose an atheist ideology on a Muslim people). When the Afghan Mujahedeen decided to turn their guns against each other, however, most Arab volunteers chose to return home and not become part of inter-Mujahedeen squabbles.
Bin Laden himself left Afghanistan in 1992 even though he didn’t return to Saudi Arabia. But it was as dramatic as it was disappointing to see Arabs being hunted down and killed without pity in Kabul and Kunduz last week. By involving themselves in fighting between various Afghan factions, Bin Laden’s men succeeded in wiping out a heroic and noble history which Arab volunteers wrote in blood for the sake of a country many of them knew little about.
How could Bin Laden have committed such grave errors? That story must wait for another time, but at least Bin Laden has provided us with another lament with which we can spend the nights of this most holy month of Ramadan. As if we didn’t have enough already. (Published first in “The Daily Star/International Herald Tribune)
