Cody
Williams
Suicide Bombers
Dying for a cause is different than killing for one.
My Muslim buddy Abid met his wife for the first time two days before they married in a civil ceremony in downtown Manhattan. He had placed an order for her along with his wedding suit from a mail order company ran out of Bombay India, his hometown. They were married for three years and had two children by the time he dropped off my social radar. Abid and I had become particularly good friends despite our vastly different backgrounds. I’m black, Christian grew up in the American Midwest. He was a Muslim from India who had migrated to New York with his mother and brother. I don’t polish my shoes enough and he was a nattily dressed retail-clothing manager. We had similarities too. We both were staunchly committed to our faith. We both looked suspiciously at how the US government treats people. We both enjoyed a good laugh over a beer in any you-name-it Manhattan watering hole.
Abid and I would have intense religious debates. I would contend that the Islamic world misinterprets the ministry of Jesus Christ. I didn’t fault them because I believe many Christians misinterpret Christ’s teaching as well. Abid saw me as being a part of a moralistically depraved society of infidels, carnal and bound for hell. However, we still enjoyed each other’s company. Friends who witnessed our debates wondered how we could remain friends being at religious odds. Somehow, however, there was something about each of us that allowed us to transcend those differences and smile broadly each time we saw each other. We liked each other.
Whenever I go home to Detroit I make sure to stop in and say hi to Eddie, the Chaldean who for the past thirty years has run the convenience store just doors away from my mother’s home on the city’s west side. Eddie always smiles when he sees me. My mother has shared with him the progress of my career since I left there to go away to college. Eddie remembers the details of some of my life events better than I do. While my mother was still able to handle her financial affairs Eddie would cash her personal checks. Often they would bounce but Eddie got used to that and never charged “Mama,” as he called her, a bounced check fee.
“Mama bounced another check last week. But I know she gonna make it good, so I don’t charge her,” Eddie would share with me when I stopped in.
My mother lives on a fixed income and knew Eddie’s was a good place to float cash until her social-security check was deposited for the month. Eddie knew my mother as one of his most reliable customers and more intimately, a family friend.
Eddie migrated to Detroit from Iraq. (More Arabs have migrated to the Detroit area than anywhere else outside of the Mideast) Eddie’s family in Iraq has always been Christian. When the Ayatollahs took control of Iran and held Americans hostage Eddie made a point to explain to us that he was a Christian and not a part of an Islamic movement.
I’ve watched closely media broadcast of the war in Iraq; the campaign leading up to it, its “shock and awe” start; the capture of Saddam Hussein and the execution of his two son, Qusay and Uday; the declaration of victory; and the rise of the insurgency. I listened to military strategists describe with calculated coolness exterminating ‘the enemy.’ I’ve seen footage of the fierce resistance.
The faces I see of some Iraqi ‘combatants’ don’t look much like guerrillas trying to destabilized a government but faces not unlike my middle eastern friends, men and boys fighting fiercely to defend their homes and villages from outside aggressors. These men, not dressed in military gear, look more like store keepers and barbershop owners who have taken up arms to do exactly what I would do if my family was threatened and our home was invaded. These men look to me like Eddie, the Chaldean Christian and Abid, the natty dresser and Islamic clothier living and working here and who have become integral fixtures in our cities, lives and neighborhoods.
One of the four suicide bombers who undermined Brittan’s emotional security last week by setting off bombs on a bus and in crowded subway trains was a black Jamaican national who converted to Islam. The will of a suicide bomber is desperate and dying for a cause is different than killing for one. Why did this Jamaican convert join the others who we believe were on a jihadist mission?
To strap a bomb around your chest and plan to detonate it takes someone whose life and living is already so chafe with confusion, hopelessness and despair that the return from battle, even as a victor, has no promise.
New York and other US cities are gripped with anxiety anticipating a suicide bomb attack. Sensationalist media is quick to portray would-be bombers as thugs bent of destroying peace and liberties and taking the world “back to a 13th century” Islamic state. Yet, our cities in this century are replete with young men who at best face life in and out of the penal system, hardcore prisons and jails with revolving doors. The unemployment rate for young black men, in most of these cities on a high security alert, hovers at a constant 50%. Whites are quick to stereotype these men as incapable and uneducateable, and reject them. Rejection hurts. Rarely are they given opportunities to rise above their dire circumstances. Drugs, crime and alienation are all they have in which to look forward.
This brings me back to Eddie, my mother’s long time friend and confidant, and Abid, my good buddy, and me, a black man. We’ve looked in each other’s eyes and have become friends. And all of us share a frustration from being kept marginalized by a prosperous society where those at the top have a myopic tendency to show concern only for their own. (Note the continuing sagas of the ‘missing white woman of the week’ played out on 24-hour news channels when the number of missing blacks far outnumber that of missing whites) Unlike me, with the faith I have in Christ, too many of these young men have no hope for a easier tomorrow; too many of them grow weary of today’s despair; too many of them look with disdain at yesterday’s lack of opportunity.
American prisons have always been ripe recruiting grounds for Islamic converts. Malcolm Little became Malcolm X while incarcerated. The young and ostracized; those fighting for tolerance and acceptance; the marginalized all need to be reached before an extremist group reaches them first and offers them the acceptance they long for.
If we want to look at the face of America’s potential suicide bomber, look no further than the line waiting for food in homeless shelters. Look no further than the arraignment dockets in our criminal courts teaming with young black male angst. Look no further than the 1 million men of color locked up in prisons, or their fatherless sons left at home with no real hope but only to follow them.
Can dying to them easily become a cause worth living for?
© 2005 By Cody Williams www.codywilliams.com
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