The lead article in this morning’s New York Times features a lengthy look-back on a
scandalous story from March of 2015:
the mob-murder of a woman in Afghanistan, upon charges that she had just
burned a Koran. To publish such a follow-up is quite
commendable, as so many complex events are misconceived during the initial
period of their media notoriety. At
the time, the story was reported along the lines of: Yes, she apparently burned one, who knows why, but she was already known as a lunatic, and should not have been held responsible
for the act, let alone murdered.
An investigation followed, and the paper today states: “Farkhunda
had not burned a Koran.” An obviously crucial point (logically,
legally), entirely independently of whatever further feelings or philosophy you
might personally entertain (and, as usual, we are dealing here only with the logic of the case, not trying to push
one opinion or another). -- But why,
then, (you will immediately wonder) had the mob set upon her? -- Ah, wheels within wheels.
What is alleged to have happened is this:
Farkhunda first visited the Shad-Do
Shamshira shrine … It was a Wednesday, women’s day at the shrine, when men are
not allowed. The women commiserate
about their lives. They visit the
fortuneteller to buy amulets to help them get pregnant, find a husband, or
have male children. Known as
tawiz, the amulets usually consist of writings on a small piece of paper that a woman can pin to her body or
keep in a pocket. Farkhunda was
appalled at the way the women’s superstitions were being exploited … She
confronted … the fortuneteller.
The article then veers off in a more salacious direction,
not strictly relevant to the crux of the story, about how the fortuneteller was
selling Viagra and condoms on the sly.
To prevent Farkhunda from trashing her trade, the fortune-teller evidently decided that the best
defense is a good offense, and accused her of burning the sacred volume; that was passed to the mob, and grisly
events followed.
There is a religious background here, however, which is
crucial to the case; and
ultimately puts all this in quite a different light (theistically/legally; no defense intended of the quick-trigger savagery
of the mob).
Now, neither birth-control nor aphrodisiacs are per se
normally forbidden in Islam (though abortion is); for the latter, consult this
jolly summary:
But the amulets (and the fortuneteller) are quite
significant here to the essence of the story, and the article does not spell
this out.
The reader might get the impression that Farkhunda was
simply objecting to the use of the shrine as a place of commerce, and upbraided
them the way Jesus chased the money-changers from the Temple. But the commerce in fortunetelling and
amulets is islamically much worse -- as though the Temple-defilers had been
selling pagan idols rather than merely changing your drachmae into denarii. Mainstream (Sunni) Islam is quite
emphatic in condemning pagan survivals and polytheistic deviations; here Wiki quotes a hadîth (saying of
the Prophet) against amulets:
وفي الحديث: مَن
عَلَّق
تَمِيمةً
فلا
أَتَمَّ
الله
له.
وتعليق
التمائم
من
فعل
الجاهلية،
كانوا
يعتقدون
أنه
يدفع
عنهم
الآفات
The word used here for ‘amulet’ is tamîmah; the verb here, atamma,
is from the same root, and the saying has the air of a bit of wordplay. The word used in the article, tawiz, is from classical Arabic ta`wîð (accented on the second syllable; rhymes with seethe), from a root meaning ‘to seek
refuge (from evil, with God)’, familiar in the common apotropaic phrase a`ûðu
bi-llâh.
As for fortune-telling, that too is
deprecated as a survival of the jâhiliyyah (the Days of Ignorance before Islam)
-- though in practice, a kind of Koran-based analogue of the bibliomantic sortes Virgilianae does survive, in the
tolerated form of the istikhârah.
Thus, at this point (as the article does not
notice), Farkhunda appears, on the face of it, as a defensor fidei, in the face of her backsliding compatriots; and thus, prima facie, a charge that she
burned a Koran would seem absurd.
But now comes a crucial further development,
which the article quite glides over:
It seems that, in her iconoclastic zeal, Farkhuna went on to burn some of those amulets by setting a
fire in a trash can. Left to
their own devices, readers may recall Christ’s equally vigorous action in the
Temple, overturning the tables of the money-changers. And had these amulets been, say, jade idols, there would
have been no Islamic problem with destroying them -- indeed, ISIL and and
Taliban deem it a duty, blowing up pagan statues far and wide. Only … that is not what the
‘amulets’ are. Reread the
description: “the amulets usually consist of writings on a small piece of
paper”. Umm… What kind of writings? “Today you will meet a tall dark
stranger”? “Help I’m a prisoner in
a Chinese fortune-cookie factory”?
No: typically, verses from the Koran.
Thus, it would appear that, indeed,
Farkhunda did burn the sacred verses after all; only, in the form of loose pages, rather than a bound
book. And that distinction is
religiously immaterial. It
is difficult to avoid the conclusion that she was, then, within the culture, actually guilty more or less as charged.
~
Secular readers will be unmoved by all that, and feel
justified in not even attempting to understand what is really going on
theologically (and thus, within Sharia, legally). But abhorrence of burning God’s word, or even (in whatever
secular context) the mere name of
God, is familiar, not only in
Islam, but in Abrahamic religion generally. We deal with the matter here:
The ancient Jews, whether learnèd or
otherwise, were loath to burn any scrap of writing, lest it contain, somewhere
within it, the name of God (or rather, in keeping with the Hebraic decencies,
the name of G*d).
Accordingly those who lived in Cairo, buried all excess
scrip and scripture, in storerooms and cemetaries.
~
Such folk-superstitions as talismans and
fortune-telling may have a
particular flavor in Muslim lands, but much of it is an area rather than
intra-confessional phenomenon.
Thus, consider the folk-belief in the Evil Eye, characteristically
circum-Mediterranean.
Two examples from my personal experience -- everyone
involved being highly educated and long living in America.
(1) A Christian woman originally from Lebanon was
introducing her class to Lebanese culture, and mention the tradition of the
dreaded al-`ayn. Of course, she said (standing there in fully modern Western
dress), that’s all just superstition, people don’t really believe in it
anymore, only … A change came over her, and her eyes turned inward, as she
reminisced.
“Just last month something happened… I
had a very fine tall potted plant in the entry-way, and a friend came to visit,
and remarked on how nice the plant was.
And … the next week … it had
withered and died!”
That would be a prototypical case of hexing via the Evil
Eye, whose essence is envy.
Thus: Hint to
non-initiates. When dealing with
people from a Mediterranean culture, be especially cautious of praising their
children, and being careful to dot your discourse on such subjects with mashaallaah!, which reputedly draws the
sting of the Eye.
(2) I once took
dialect tutoring from a woman originally from Baghdad. Though Muslim, she did not seem to have
narrow religious views -- her parents had sent her to a Jewish school for one
year, simply because it was conveniently in the neighborhood; and she sometimes prays to the Virgin
Mary (“since only she would understand a woman’s troubles”). The class went well.
Later, two (Christian) young women, colleagues of mine (one
blonde, one brunette, as we shall note so as to tell them apart) shared
tutoring-sessions with the same teacher.
But the brunette noted that the teacher would never look directly at
her, though she was at ease with the blonde. When the brunette would ask a question in Arabic, the
teacher (looking away) would respond in English -- vitiating the point of the
class.
“As the weeks went by, I got more and more frustrated,” she
reports. “And then I noticed that,
each week, the teacher had put on yet another piece of turquoise jewelry.” Suddenly she realized what had
been going on: this young woman
had blue eyes (not very, though),
and that feature is said to be characteristic of al-`ayn. The turquoise
stones function as (blue) amulets against this.
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