October 10, 2014
So long as there is evil in the world, there will be bad people who claim to be Muslims and bad people who claim to be Christians. Nevertheless there will be religious and social principals that caution us against maligning either as a group. Though I believe in these and in lots of other wonderful principals, I don’t always manage to live up to them. Still, I really don’t stand by and let people say false and hateful things about Muslims in general. Let me tell you why.
Our family once lived in Amman, Jordan. We loved Amman, but some scary things happened while we lived there, including the Six-Day War of June, 1967. When planes swooped down, strafing our community on their way across the city to bomb the airport, I sat under the dining table with my children. Israel swiftly occupied the West Bank of the Jordan, causing many thousands of Palestinian refugees to arrive, crossing the river on the Allenby Bridge. Sometime in the next few years the refugees organized themselves to fight, set up outposts in the Jordan Valley, and began making small guerilla-style attacks across the river. Israel retaliated by attacking Jordan—bombing the army here and there, and once nearly annihilating a village in the valley. In effect, the Israelis were saying to King Hussein, “The Palestinians are your problem.” In the end this strategy provoked war between Jordan and the PLO.
Of course 1967 was not the first time that Palestinians had been uprooted. It had happened in 1948. That’s why about half the population of the country was Palestinians, on whom Jordan had bestowed citizenship. Our neighbors across the street were among these. They were Muslims named Sharabi. Mr. Sharabi was a banker and had been a minister in Hussein’s government. He and his tall, beautiful wife, Selma, were courteous and helpful neighbors, and their four daughters became friends of our girls, Jan and Cynthia.
The days of the civil war were the most dreadful we had ever experienced, until then. The noise of battle continued day and night, moving from one area to another. We listened to the news in Arabic, not always understanding. We lived on Jabal (Mt.) Amman, but over on Jabal Hussein, an American friend of ours died and the news reached us by phone. Then one day all was quiet. We were so relieved and too ignorant of war to notice that the army was nowhere visible. Nor were we seeing any guerillas. In fact, no one was in control, but we were not smart enough to be concerned.
The telephone rang, and it was our neighbor, Mr. Sharabi. He said to Wayne, “Very bad things are happening up the street. You are in danger. You must bring your family to my house immediately.” We did not understand why, but we went, covering our blond and red heads as instructed. Jumana, the Sharabis’ 13-year-old stood, down on the walk in front of her house, looked up and down the street and then signaled to us—when to wait, when to come. One by one we ran across the street.
In the Sharabis’ lovely house we learned that no more than two blocks up the street a gang of criminals was breaking into the homes of foreigners, robbing at will and raping women and girls. While we knew nothing, this news had reached our neighbors, who welcomed us with relief, gave us beds to sleep in and fed us, keeping us out of sight until the danger had passed. We know they hid us at considerable risk to themselves, and there was no guarantee that what they had done would not be discovered. All these years later I am afraid even to imagine what would have happened to our family, if we had lived two blocks up the street, without such neighbors.
Eventually, another Palestinian Muslim, a young man, drove us to the Amman airport and we flew to Beirut, leaving the key to our house with the Sharabis. The fighting resumed, and at some point the situation became so critical that there was no way to go out for food, and the Sharabis were in need. Mr. Sharabi went over to our house then and took a few things from our pantry: two cans of tuna, an opened box of crackers, some partially burned candles… He wrote a list, and when calm returned he mailed it to us with an apologetic note, saying, “We thought that if we survived we could replace these things, and if we did not, you would forgive us.”
Many years later, when I saw Jumana, she told me what she remembered of the day they rescued us. Before he called us on the phone, her daddy had stood at the front window looking out at our house and said, “They are good people, and if anything happens to them, I will not forgive myself.”
A few years ago in this little town we live in now, in the foothills of the Sierras, someone littered the shopping area with garish, yellow leaflets proclaiming the stupidity and wickedness of Muslims, putting it under windshield wipers, tacking it to posts. The leaflet made totally false statements about Islam. For instance, it claimed that the symbol of Islam is a sword, an instrument of violence, but of course, the symbol of Islam is a crescent moon. That falsehood was the least ugly thing it said.
I could not be silent. I wrote an article for my church newsletter and permitted it to be published in the local newspaper. I debated with a representative of the attacking group.
Frankly, I did not enjoy doing any of this, because it felt like leaping into a spotlight, and I don’t like spotlights. So why didn’t I just stay silent? The answer is so simple. I once lived across the street from the Sharabis. They were neighborly, upright, honorable, honest, generous, respectful of our faith and true to their friends. They were Muslims and they were good people, and if I ever let them be maligned, I will not forgive myself.