Harper's Weekly/The Last Word

by Achmed Abdullah

For works with similar titles, see The Last Word.

 

The Last Word

By ACHMED ABDULLAH

NO, no!” the Egyptian smiled; “you are mistaken, Effendi. Of course I am an orthodox Moslem, but I'm not a fanatic. I have seen and heard and thought too much to be intolerant. I have learned that once we descend to the roots of our tree of life, be we Moslem or Jew or Christian, our elemental feelings and passions and aspirations remain the same, unchanged and unchangeable. Only the superficial, the mean, the contemptible, mark the barrier between different religions. Only ritual divides man from man. But the bed-rock of life we all stand naked in the presence of the Most High God.

“It is even like the story of Akhbar and the Buddhist monk.”

Ibrahim was silent and lit a meditative cigarette, and then he continued, smiling:

“It is an old tale, my heart, as old as sin and older than virtue, as old as smell, hatred and older than love, as old as tears and older than laughter....

“Akhbar the Moghul, was a great Emperor, a fair-minded man who administered justice with the same impartiality before as after breakfast, who never punished the rich or showed undue mercy to the poor in order to display his disrespect for persons. He exalted the good irrespective of their creeds, and he rubbed the noses of the bad in the dust of disgrace, never inquiring if they were Hindus or Moslem. He was indeed a pearl of equity.

“To his court in the city of Shahjehanabad (you call it Delhi) there came one day a holy man sent by the Imam of the Christians in Rome, a bland man who belonged to a certain dervish order who are called Jesuits. He was granted an audience, and he told the Emperor of his mission in life to convert all to the faith of Jesus (on whom be peace). The Moslem doctors opposed him and asked Akhbar's permission to poison him. But the Emperor was a just man, and so he ordered the Padre and the leader of the Moslem priests to appear before him and to expound their respective creeds. And as umpire he appointed a certain Bah-ngoh, a Buddhist from Burmah, who had spent many years as hermit in a little grove not far from the imperial abode. This Bah-ngoh was a vast sea of most excellent qualities, the father and mother of wisdom, equal to Mahommed for benevolence and liberality of spirit; and everybody conceded that he would make an ideal judge, without bias and without worldly vanity....

“Thus, Effendi, on the fourteenth day during the period of the dark half of the moon, in the month of pilgrimages, the two holy men met in the great Hall of State before the Emperor, who sat on the peacock throne and who was surrounded by all the gentles and sages of Shahjehanabad. There were Afghans and Turks, Rajputs and Mahrattas, Persians and Arabs, Gakhars and Mongols; there were Moslem and Brahmins, Jains and Sikhs, And everybody looked forward to a fine matching of wits, a skilled play of theological swords. For the Moslem doctor, Sheykh Ala-ad-din Moustaffa el Wahhabi, was a wonderful hand at discussion and argument, and a master in the craft of dissimulation, which he had studied under the best professors in Kashmere, the home of lies. And it was also said that the Padre Ignatio de Clavijo stood unrivalled amongst Christian doctors for intelligence and the art of twisting words and ideas until they choked for mercy. Indeed, they were worthy of each other's steel....

“They commenced the discussion, the Christian trying to convert the Moslem, and the Moslem doing his best to convert the Christian. They attacked each other with carping vigour and bigotted bitterness. For six mortal hours they sought to confound each other by every possible and impossible argument: by religion and theology, by tradition and revelation, by inference and comparison, by history and legend (indeed, they are only two lying sisters, Effendi; one speaks while the other sings), by philosophy and philology, by Matra and Maya, matter and mind. They accused each other of cheating and arguing in a circle, and each answered with a categorical 'Because' to the other's challenging 'Why?'. They got heated and jabbered meaningless phrases learned by rote. They called their blasphemous prattle inspirations from the One God... (There is but One, praised be He!). They brought forward the same old assertions, and they were unable to arrive at truth by reasoning, having swallowed their religion as they would swallow a pill. They were pathetic in their confidence to convert each other by simply emphasizing once more the same old rituals and worn-out superstitions. They tore each other's statements to pieces and ridiculed each other's holiest of holies, one attacking contradictions in the Koran, the other those in the Gospel. Soaked in the outward profession of their faiths, the empty letters of their creeds, but unenlightened with a single beam of shining truth, they were shrouded in the black clouds of self-conceit, the grey mist of preconceived opinions; and they were without the torch of proof to dispel the darkness which enveloped them. They had righeousness in their mouths and lies in their bellies. One said, 'Praise be to Allah, there is no one like Thee, Thou art He'. And the other bright original mind rejoined, 'Praise be to Jesus, there is no one like Thee, Thou art He'. The Christian said with a sneer, 'Oh Islam, where is thy sword?' And the Moslem spat and replied, 'Oh Christendom, where is thy humility?'

“Thus they talked and talked until most of the assembly were fast asleep. And Akhbar, having reached the end of his patience, turned to the Buddhist and asked him to decide between the two. And the Buddhist said:

“So long us rice and millet grow, so long as salt and spices are not too dear, life is much the same under all religions. So long as the sun shines during the day and the gentle moon heralds the night of sleep, the differences between Moslem and Christian are worth less than two grains of sand in the desert of Gobi. The good and the bad are alike creatures of the day; they pass away with each day's sun. Only birth and death are eternal. The reverence paid to the great truths of life overbears all the made-up distinctions of bickering priests. We may dispute about the outward ornaments of our faith; but once we reach the naked, quivering heart of our inmost beliefs, we find that we are all one. There is no dispute about the seven great virtues, the seven great sins, the seven great truths. They are one and the same in all creeds. The real truth is always a compromise....' The Buddhist was silent for a while and meditated, then he continued gently, 'And I say: let the Moslem as well as the Christian give up each a few inches of his cherished, iron-clad rituals; let them advance toward each other with their right hands outstretched so as to grasp the hand of the other with love and friendship and understanding; let them step on the golden bridge from opposite sides until they meet in the middle...' Here he smiled a weary smile: 'And then, ah, then they will both be Buddhists.'”