In just about every TV news clip from Syria you'll hear people shouting the phrase: 'Allah hu akbar.' It means 'God is great.' 'Allah hu akbar' is heard when a rocket is launched into some innocent suburb of Damascus or Aleppo, on its way to kill young and old alike. I wonder how many people I've offended so far just by quoting it.
Not as many as will be offended by the next bit, I'll bet. I'm never sure who is saying 'Allah hu akbar' or why. Is it the people firing the rocket - Basher's army or the 'rebels' or some faction of Al-Qaeda, now active in Syria apparently - willing the rocket on its way to deliver more murder and mayhem? Or is it the poor people watching it fly and waiting for the crump of the rocket landing, knowing the attempt to blast their home into oblivion is continuing?
Whoever is saying it, it seems to be me to be hypocrisy to quote 'Allah hu akbar' in these circumstances. Allah is not responsible for the wicked actions of the people of all parties currently blowing Syria and each other to bits, and it is just evil for any of them to claim to have Allah on their side, as I think some of them do.
My grandfather used to relate how the 'boys' in the trenches in World War I would spend part of every Sunday morning at a church service. As they sang and prayed, they could hear the men in the German trenches doing the same. The realisation that the two armies were praying to the same God and for the same thing - their lives - just in a different language gave afiercely anti-religious bent to my grandfather's life from then on.
Myself, I feel strongly about responsibility rather than religion. I reckon if you want to commit murder and mayhem in order to hold on to or take over a country, the least you can do is accept your share of the blame in the suffering of the innocent people caught in the gunfire. Don't do it in the name of God.
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