A God Who Hates (6 page)

Hafez al-Assad’s brother Rifaat established a special military unit called the Defense Companies to protect his brother’s throne. At the same time another Alawite officer named Ali Haydar set up an additional unit called the Special Forces. Both men concentrated on attracting the rising generation of the Alawite community, using promises of high rank as an incentive. This young generation had found a new area of opportunity that attracted it more than education did, and large numbers of them joined both military units, whose basic function was to protect Hafez al-Assad’s throne and regime.

Under Hafez al-Assad the Alawite community, which had been on the verge of becoming the best-educated and most socially aware sector of the Syrian population, began to undergo a process of militarization. As this young generation became militarized, a huge gap opened between the university-educated class, which was fairly well established, and the new, less well educated and less socially aware militarized class. A new struggle broke out between these two classes. Hafez al-Assad began to hunt down members of the educated class and threw large numbers of them in jail.

Once again, this class found itself neglected and oppressed, and those who managed to stay out of prison either left the country or cut themselves off from politics. From his fellow Alawites, Assad expected nothing less than blind obedience and he unsheathed his sharpest weapons against those members of his community who dared to defy him. His fight against them was no less ferocious than his battle with the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been waiting in ambush for him since the first day of his presidency.

When he first came to power, Assad tried to propitiate the Sunni majority so as not to be rejected by it. He attempted to win the support of Sunni clerics and of those with social and economic influence. The mufti
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of Syria and other members of the Sunni clergy were among Assad’s closest associates and the most vocal champions of his regime. The Muslim Brotherhood was a terrorist movement, and the vast majority of Sunni Muslims rejected it. The Brotherhood, however, took advantage of the truly appalling corruption that had spread into all areas of public life under Assad. The corruption was taking its toll and Assad used it as a trump card to gain favor with the Alawites. Bribery was rife in government ministries, the standard of living for most Syrians dropped, and wealth became concentrated in the hands of members of the ruling family and a few of its close associates. Though this elite minority included members of a number of different religious communities, most of them were Alawites.

The Baathists, for all their shortcomings, had almost succeeded in smothering the flames of terrorism among the Muslim Brotherhood when the Saudi money that began to shower down upon the organization in the mid-1970s fanned its flames among them once more. I well remember the Baath Party’s decision of 1968, when I was in primary school, that performance in religious studies should not determine the future of primary school pupils the way performance in, for example, mathematics or science did. The party could not do away with religious education altogether, but it could reduce its importance, and this was an important step toward withdrawing religious education from the curriculum. No sooner had the Baath Party made this first move to block Islamic expansion than Hafez al-Assad came to power. As a member of a minority he could not take any further similar steps; on the contrary, his fear of the Sunni majority, the womb which had brought forth the Muslim Brotherhood, made him turn a blind eye to the new Saudi-backed Islamic expansion. A bargain was struck: You turn a blind eye to me, and I’ll turn one to you.

Corruption ran riot in the ranks of the ruling elite just as Saudi Wahhabism ran riot among the masses of the Sunni populace. Both situations got so out of hand that neither party was any longer capable of considering anything beyond its own interests. While the Syrian president and his entourage were smuggling billions of dollars out of the country and living a life of shameless wealth, most Syrians of all denominations were suffering from degrading poverty.

The Sunnis felt that they had been duped, and welcomed the Muslim Brotherhood—well provided with Saudi money and glutted to the point of indigestion with Islamic teachings—not from a hope that it would improve the situation, but from a desire to be avenged on those responsible for it. The entire Alawite community became the scapegoat, and the educated class, most of whose members Assad had thrown into prison because they had dared to defy him, was easy prey for Islamist terrorism. This class had no way of protecting itself, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s secret armed squads hunted down its university-educated members—doctors, engineers, university lecturers, and judges—unmercifully, and murdered them one by one, while Assad’s regime stood by and ignored what was happening.

During this period of anarchy I can remember rumors being spread of a deal the Assad family had made with the Saudis, as represented by the Muslim Brotherhood, to the effect that Assad would turn a blind eye to the Brotherhood as long as it did not target Assad or other members of the ruling family personally. Indeed, this is what happened and Syrians followed events as if they were watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon. The struggle became serious only when a detachment of Muslim Brotherhood volunteers attacked a convoy of vehicles in which Assad was traveling, and opened fire on it. They then threw a bomb at the convoy, killing one of Assad’s companions, while Assad himself escaped by a miracle.

This 1979 incident caused the whole situation to explode, and the Syrian authorities launched a merciless manhunt. They attacked the Syrian town of Hama, the traditional Muslim Brotherhood stronghold, and pulverized it with tanks, then pursued the defeated remnant in other Syrian cities. This bloody struggle continued for about two years, and many Syrians unconnected with either the authorities or the Brotherhood were among its victims. However, the authorities crushed the Brotherhood only after its failed attempt on the president’s life, not in defense of any religious community.

In 1979, when I was in my fifth year of medical school, I witnessed the death of our ophthalmology lecturer, Dr. Yusef al-Yusef At first I didn’t realize who had been killed. The shots that rang out on all sides—sending everyone nearby into a state of shock—mingled with the killer’s voice shouting from the loudspeaker:
“Allahu akbar … Allahu akbar!”
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Later, when the fear and shock of the attack started to wear off, I discovered that the victim was a man I had looked up to as an ideal of morality and humanity—an upright, generous, and cultured man from a poor family that had sacrificed everything to cover the cost of his medical studies in Europe. He had come back at once and begun his work as a lecturer at the college of medicine. The sound of the killer’s voice glorifying God mingled with the sound of the shots. Ever since that moment, Allah has been equated in my mind with the sound of a bullet and become a God who has no respect for human life. From that time on I embarked upon a new journey in a quest for another God—a God who respects human life and values every human being.

Does God exist? As I can perceive his influence, I have to acknowledge his existence. As I have described myself on more than one occasion as an atheist with no belief in the transcendental, it is only natural that some people regard this insistence of mine as an incomprehensible contradiction. My response is this: Though I never saw God throughout my entire life within the prison of Islam, I did see the influence he wielded, and in order to dispel his influence I have to deal with him as if he exists. When a young child is afraid of the monster under his bed, he suffers from the effects of that fear just as he would if the monster really existed. Things we believe to be real affect us as if they were real, even if they are no more than an illusion.

God, as I perceive him, arises out of our feeling of need for him, that need which we cannot satisfy in other ways. God, to me, is the thing that satisfies that need. People believe in God in an attempt to fill an intellectual or psychological void that cannot be satisfied by more realistic methods. He is like a key fitting into any lock we need to open.

Let me give you an example of what I mean: I was driving my car down Route 91, bringing my daughter Angela home from the dentist. Usually the drive home takes half an hour, but that noonday the roads were jammed with cars and it took us about an hour to cover half the distance. Angela was due to go to a friend’s birthday party. She got very upset and, as usual, vented her frustration on me. I suffered her adolescent criticisms in total silence. Silence is my way of dealing with her fifteen-year-old adolescent outbursts. Once she had calmed down a bit I began to chat with her, calmly, so as to avoid another emotional outburst.

When Angela’s emotions were at their height, she opened the car window and said with childish innocence: “I wish I could turn into God right now!” Keeping completely calm I asked her, “And if you did become God, what would you do?” She replied without hesitation, “I would build a special road for myself to take me home now so that I could avoid the traffic jam, get back quickly, and get to my friend’s birthday party on time.” God, in an attempt to fulfill Angela’s need, had become a road-builder!

Of course, sometimes, we ask too much of God. An old woman was standing on the beach watching her adolescent grandson dancing over the surface of the water on his surfboard. After only a few minutes a powerful wave came along and flung him into the depths of the sea. The old woman rushed back and forth until she was exhausted, not knowing what to do. Finally, she dropped to her knees and raised her hands to the heavens: “Lord, oh Lord, bring my grandson safely back to me. I promise not to burden you with demands after this.”

No sooner had the grandmother finished uttering her plea than the same wave came along and tossed her grandson safe and sound at her feet. The grandmother knelt and raised her arms to the heavens: “Thank you, Lord, thank you! You’ve brought my grandson safely back to me, but”—she bowed her head in embarrassment at breaking her promise—”have you forgotten that he was wearing a cap?”

God is our feeling of need for him—a need which extends from the most important request (Lord, bring my grandson back to me safely!) to the most trivial: And don’t forget, Oh Most Sublime, that he was wearing a cap!

We ourselves created God, and then we allowed him to create us. We shaped him to fit our need, and then we allowed him to shape us to fit his. We dressed him in our clothes, and then he dressed us in his. With time we got things confused, and we no longer knew which of us had created the other, whether he had created us or we had created him. The question remains: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

This question is not very important, except when this vicious cycle produces a deformed chicken or a rotten egg. When searching for the reasons for this defect we do not need to know which came first, whether the rotten egg hatched out the deformed chicken or the deformed chicken laid the rotten egg. What I believe is important is that we should begin the job of searching on both levels, and that we should start to re-create both ourself and God at the same time. When we create God then allow him to create us, each of us is responsible for the well-being of the other, and for the degree to which the resulting creation is sound. When one of us is defective, the other is defective, too; and as time passes it becomes hard for us to recognize the point at which the distortion began. If we are serious about rectifying this creational defect we must not waste time answering this question. Instead the time must be used to begin to deal with both axes, both chicken and egg: both God and Man.

In the young man’s village I spoke of earlier, just as in my own, people created an ogre that corresponded to the size of their fears, then allowed that ogre to re-create them in his image. After a long time had elapsed, the true facts were lost and no one knew anymore which of them had created the other or which of them was responsible for the other’s imperfection. Did the fear which dwelt in the hearts of the inhabitants of the village play a part in the creation of that ogre, or did the ogre implant that terror within them?

The young man was brave. His wanderings and constant traveling had given him a rare degree of courage that helped him to surpass the wisdom of his time, which had warned him against risking his life. Courage is one of the rarest human virtues. To bring about change and rectify defects one must first acquire courage. Wisdom alone cannot change things. On the contrary, sometimes it helps perpetuate a lack of change. Only courage can bring about change. The received wisdom in my village taught me that the eye is no match for the needle, while the courage I acquired after facing the terrors of departure and emigration taught me that my eye can face up to a needle, when that eye is the only weapon I have.

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Mufti:
a Muslim scholar who interprets the Sharia.

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When Muslims kill, they shout
“Allahu akbar!
”
—
”Allah is the greatest!”