04194
April 23, 2004

‘All is from God’

Imams say civilization is being restored in Afghanistan

by Alexa Smith      

      He slices his vegetable omelet, still talking.

      “Now, the rights of women are getting better,” he says. “They can go into any profession, get educated, hold office.” When he pauses his colleague, Momin Shah, leans forward and pitches in, “They can drive.” Then Rouf gets back to talking and Shah to mostly listening.

     It is almost 11 p.m., and Rouf, Shah and Hyatullah Abdul Majeed, all Muslim imams, are jammed into a back booth at Denny’s, just about the only place open at this hour of the night with vegetarian dishes and fish on the menu.

      Few restaurants in Louisville, if any, practice halaal, the ritual slicing of meat that accords with Islamic custom and is akin to the Jewish kosher. The imams already have sent back two bowls of vegetable soup with unexpected bits of beef in the broth.

     These men, all from Kabul, Afghanistan, have been criss-crossing the United States at a breakneck pace, visiting lecture halls and universities on a tour funded by the U.S. State Department. The purpose of the program is to help Muslim scholars, teachers and preachers see how Islam is practiced in the United States and talk about “mainstream” Islam as practiced in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. (See related story 04195)

     It has been a long day, with an appearance in Bloomington, IN, and an evening panel discussion at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Everybody is tired. But Rouf talks on, remains animated, hands moving, head nodding.

      In between bites he talks about religion. And persecution. And about starting over, over and over again. “All is from God,” he says. “You enjoy the hard times. You enjoy the good times. The real world is not here, but in the hereafter.”

Momin Shah, Asad Nawabi and Abdul Rouf (from left) at Presbyterian Center gathering. Photo by Alexa Smith.

      Majeed, who clearly agrees, peers over his chic rectangular bifocals and says: “The people of Afghanistan believe that the world is a war of tests. That’s what it is. We believe that people go through hardship. Good times. Bad times. ... We relate in (our) hardship to that of the prophet, how it was for him.”

      “We appreciate the hard times, and thank God for the good times,” Rouf says, sweeping his arm across the table and adding, “This food, it is provided all from God. And we thank God for it. If I go outside and someone slaps me, I ask God to help me forgive.”

      Majeed interjects, “Islam is a religion of forgiveness, if you study it truly. God loves those who forgive.”

      Rouf, 53, has experience with forgiveness.

      He was tortured by Soviet communists, who pulled out his fingernails to punish him for praying, teaching, and practicing his religion. Later, he was jailed by the Taliban for offenses against its unbending brand of Islam, including the crime of teaching little girls. During the Soviet occupation and the Taliban’s draconian regime, he was jailed seven times.

      Rouf says yes, he prays for his tormenters. “For their souls, I prayed God would bring them onto the righteous path,” he says, adding that, even after the Soviets jailed him for praying, he prayed in front of his guards. “I just kept reading the passages in the Koran that say, ‘Don’t ever lose hope in God.’ And, if I was going to be killed anyway, I might as well pray.”

      The souls of millions of Afghans are still healing after decades of feudalism, occupation, civil war and a kind of religious fundamentalism that terrorized its own believers and dictated the details of daily life, including what kind of haircuts men could get.

      The repression, fear and chaos left more than a million Afghans dead and forced about six million to flee to refugee camps in neighboring Pakistan and Iran.

      After a coalition of U.S., British and other troops drove the Taliban from power in 2001, thieves’ limbs were no longer amputated, women were no longer executed for adultery and banned from most jobs, and pop music, dancing, TV and music were no longer prohibited.

      Shah, too, has had his own brushes with the authorities. He was arrested several times by the Taliban for allowing women to attend his mosque school, but was always released because of his popularity as a teacher and orator. A refugee in Pakistan from 1980 to 1992, he served as the president of the Islamic Front of Afghanistan for Peace and Brotherhood, using the position to secure the releases of prisoners of war held by the Taliban.

      Nowadays, these men are among those who are picking up the pieces of religious life.

      “It seems more people are coming now,” Majeed says, talking about mosque attendance in Afghanistan. “They’re interested, now that they’re not forced. They can come if they like.”

      Majeed, who is regarded as an authority on human rights, says education is again being made accessible to young girls and women, “so we are able to help them.”

      He says he sees signs of change.

      “Farmers are farming again, or going to the city for work,” he says. “People are working and coming home at night, earning their own money again. Day by day, the country is building itself back up. More building projects are going on, so there is more work. Afghans are proud people. Building brings jobs.”

      Farming has always been a hard way of life in a country that is largely desert and  rocky mountain ranges. Only 12 percent of Afghanistan’s land is suitable for agriculture. During the war years, even that pittance was neglected — or worse, planted with land mines.

      Rouf says Afghans are not very tolerant in religious matters. He attributes that to a lack of education: “Education was virtually eliminated ... and it is slowly coming back.

      “That is not an excuse. You have to understand, we have lived in a war-torn country for over 20 years.”

      The sting of those years impacted Majeed as well. He spent a decade in self-imposed exile in Pakistan during the Noor Mohammad Tarraki’s Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan and aided refugees in camps there during that period. He is quick to talk of the trauma of those days. “The Russians took scholars, religious leaders, and martyred them,” he says. “Every day, day in and day out, they talked against Islam in the media. Now, that is not an issue.”

      Majeed says the coalition soldiers in his country now are respectful of religion.

      “Politics in Islam, religion in Islam, it is the same to us,” Rouf says. “Look at history. Women were sold as slaves. Then Mohammad came, and through politics and diplomacy, the women were freed. Laws were established for the betterment of humanity.”

      About the current war, he says, there are lots of opinions.

      The problem is, he says, that politicians often lie and misuse religion – in governments all over the world. He says that religious individuals tend to view other religious communities more favorably than governments, including the American one. “We view Christians as people of the Book, and respect them as such,” he says. “We have perceived and read that Christians are a peace-loving people. And we came to the United States to find out if this is true. And we found that not only are they kind to humans, but to animals. They love their pets.”

      He acknowledges the sadness of the Christian and pacifist communities who opposed the bombing of Afghanistan: “It is human nature to feel badly when innocents are dying. That’s understandable. Bombs kill both the innocent and the bad. In war, there is no love.”

      Shah leans forward slowly and he speaks thoughtfully. “If the U.S. wants allies in the world, it needs to go into countries and improve them,” he says. “Rebuild networks. Hospitals. Roads. Show … love and peace. That is how it can rebuild allies. Not through war.