Alice in Talibland-1
By Anwaar Hussain
Alice fell straight down the rabbit hole. Suddenly she landed on a heap of sticks and dry leaves and the fall was over. She saw a Talib running in front of her through a long labyrinthine passage. It looked like some underground cave system. Alice started to follow the Talib. He appeared to be in a great hurry.
She almost lost sight of him but caught up with him near a bend. Fearful that she would lose him again, she caught his shirt tail to make him stop. At this the Talib came to an abrupt stop pushing her hand away.
“You cannot do that,” said the Talib, “You are a female!”
“But I am only 12 years old!” replied Alice. “That’s old enough,” retorted the Talib in a gruff voice. Alice blinked, failing to understand the Talib’s meaning.
“Now here is the deal,” the Talib said in a commanding voice. “You follow me while I attend to a few urgent chores and stay quiet. When I am done, I will answer any questions that you have. Agreed?”
“Agreed!” said Alice meekly and started following the Talib a respectful distance behind.
Presently they entered a hall where they found a group of Taliban holding a miserable looking old man in shackles. In a corner, a Talib was sharpening a butcher’s knife. The smell of blood was every where. From his looks, he appeared to be a poor farmer.
“What is his crime?” asked the Talib with Alice. He behaved like the group’s leader.
“He saw us beheading a man and said something blasphemous,” said one from the Taliban group.
“What did he say?”
“He said that if we were doing what we were doing in the name of God then we could not be worshiping the same God. He said that his God was merciful, loving and forgiving.”
“Ah! That’s blasphemous indeed. But why was the man being beheaded?”
“He was being beheaded for saying exactly the same thing when he saw us digging a dead man’s grave.”
“And why were you digging a dead man’s grave?”
“Because he had escaped beheading for saying the exact same blasphemous words when he saw us beheading yet another man for a similar blasphemy but died a natural death before we could reach him. We wanted to dig him out and behead his dead body to correct the lapse.”
“That seems reasonable,” said the Talib with Alice. “Off with his head then!” said he and motioned to Alice to continue with him.
Soon they approached a dark cave from which heart rending shrieks of a girl were coming. Trembling slightly, Alice peeked from behind the Talib and saw a strange spectacle. Three men were holding a girl face down while a Talib was flogging the girl mercilessly. With each lash, the girl would beg for mercy at an even higher pitch. That in turn would urge the flogger to whip her with ever greater fervor.
Seeing the Talib and Alice, the group at once stopped the activity. “What is her fault?” the Talib asked.
“She loved,” said one from the group.
“What? Loved? How evil. Continue the punishment,” said the Talib. “But who are the men holding her down? She cannot be touched by every one.” He asked.
“Oh, the ones holding her arms are her brothers and the one holding her feet is her father. We took care that every thing is done according to the word of God.”
“God is great. That is good then. Carry on.”
With that, the Talib led Alice out of the caves to a dark, unlit opening. A pale moon was visible in the sky. Under the eerie light, the Talib turned towards Alice and said, “Now you may ask your questions.”
Gathering her nerve, Alice asked her first question, “Is it possible to have a religion that makes me happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled?”
The Talib thought for a while and then replied, “Well! I am afraid your very first question is a loaded one. You see religion is all about morals. Happiness is just an idea. Balance and intellect are twin-evils born out of lack of faith. Some far gone devils call it reason and rationality too. When one has faith, it doesn’t matter whether he has balance or intellect or any thing else. I hope I have made myself clear.”
“Quite clear, I guess,” said Alice. “My next question then is why a religious belief is necessary in order for us to have acceptable morals? And if that indeed is the case then why not cut out the middlemen and go straight for the moral choice without the religion?”
The Talib looked stumped for a while. He blinked a few times as if trying to comprehend the real import of the question. Then he shook his head and simply said, “Told you that religion is all about morals. And you cannot cut out the middlemen because that is US. And WE are ordained by God to carry out his will. So we are told and so I am telling you. That was really a stupid question.”
“I am sorry!” said Alice. “Well let me ask you this then. Why when a single person is superstitious, we call him sick, delusional, schizophrenic etc. but when millions suffer from a mass delusion we call it their religion and are asked to respect their religious beliefs?”
“Because there is not only safety but sanity in numbers too, that’s why.” the Talib replied tersely. He seemed to be increasingly getting angry with the turn the questions were taking.
“What is God?” asked Alice abruptly.
The Talib looked at her with glazed eyes.
“God is all around us. HE is in every thing. HE is nature. That is why my religion is the closest to nature….the truest and the best religion.” the Talib intoned with zealous fervor.
“Ok. Have you ever heard of Carl Sagan?” asked Alice.
At this apparently disconnected question, the Talib looked at her with a bemused look on his face and said, “No, but from the sound of his name he seems to be some infidel heathen.”
“Oh, well! Carl Sagan once said, ‘. . . if by “God” one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying . . . it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.’ What do you say to that?”
“Be careful girl. You cannot ask questions about God or how He does things. You are only to believe, to have faith. You are getting dangerously close to being blasphemous.” The Talib warned without answering the question.
“Oh ok! I am sorry. I thought that was an innocent query. But then you have to answer another question that is far more important.” said Alice
“I want to know why it is perfectly possible to question who made a watch and how he made it but not who made this universe and how he made it?”
“Be careful girl!” the Talib growled in a menacing way.
Alice continued without stopping, “I want to know how to answer people blaming your’s as a violent religion when in the protests in the wake of Danish cartoons demonstrators were photographed in Britain bearing banners saying, ‘Behead those who say Islam is a violent religion’.
“Be careful girl!” the Talib hissed.
“I want to know what to make of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quotation in which he says, “The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next”, can you?”
“Be careful!” the Talib growled. But Alice had lost all control of her emotions. She went on recklessly.
“I have seen your killings and your beheadings of fellow human beings in the name of God and I say we could not be worshiping the same God. My God is merciful, loving and forgiving. Your’s is not.”
“May you rot in hell!” shouted the Talib with foam flying from his mouth and his eyes narrowed down to mere slits.
“Off with her head!” he ordered a group of approaching Taliban.
