The Imams and Their Wives

The Imams and Their Wives – A Parable

 

Somewhere in the West Bank of Palestine, a Mossad agent’s pulse is racing as he feels every stroke of his heart course through the veins of his throat.  He is a sniper by trade, and he anxiously pursues a Hezbollah resistance fighter with his night vision scope in the vain hope of either killing her or wounding her enough to throw her into Israeli prison for her transgressions against the Zionist movement in the Holy Land.  Crack!  A 50 caliber round whizzes past her ear as she turns the corner and dives into the relative safety of a nearby alleyway. 

 

Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack!  The reassuring clacking of her AK-47 springing to life indicates that she has opted to return fire towards the rooftop sanctuary of Agent Brown.  Unfinished business is at hand.  Fortunately, the sniper has already ducked behind the cover of a small concrete wall virtually expecting a volley of fire from below.  "That b***h!  She almost killed me!  She has got some serious skills!  I will send her home to God Almighty, yet."  Crack!  Phft!  A round slams into the corner of the wall, barely shanking wide and to the right.

 

"That a*****e!  I must have missed him with my first volley!  His a*s is mine!" 

 

The specific facts of this story may or may not be fictional.  At some level, encounters such as this one have been a staple of life and death across the Holy Land for many years. 

 

However, on another level, this particular case study echoes millions of personal sagas throughout the extended war over the possession of the Holy Land.  It seems that (little to their knowledge), this particular sniper is actually shooting at his presumed “true love” and future wife.  In the heat of war, people often act counter to their own long term interest.  Torture, civilian massacres, landmines, and summary executions are just a handful of the atrocities of war, and war has historically elicited both the best and the worst from Allah’s children.

 

Following the death of The Prophet, Muhammad, Islam broke into two primary sects, the Shiites and the Sunnis.  The Sunnis followed the leadership of the caliphs, the political successors of Muhammad.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliph, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunni  On the other hand, the Shiite sect preferred to follow the leadership of Muhammad’s family, the Shia imams, commencing with Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s cousin and the spouse of Fatimah. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiite  This division between the leadership of the Islamic religion has continued to this day with an estimated 10% of the world’s Muslims preferring the Shiite sect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiite  The actual statistics upon the division of Islam are currently being disputed, not the least of which is in Wikipedia itself where the Shiite page suggest 10-15% of the Islamic world being Shiite, and the Sunni page suggests 7.5-10%.  As much as I love Wikipedia and endorse their overall product, sometimes I just have to wonder!

 

According to Wikipedia:

 

The Twelve Imams are the spiritual and political successors to Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, in the Twelver or Ithna Ashariya branch of Shia Islam.  According to the theology of Twelvers, the successor of Muhammad is an infallible human individual who not only rules over the community with justice, but also is able to keep and interpret the Divine Law and its esoteric meaning.  The Prophet and Imams' words and deeds are a guide and model for the community to follow; as a result, they must be free from error and sin, and must be chosen by divine decree, or nass, through the Prophet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiite#Twelve_Imams

 

“The twelfth and final Imam is Muhammad al-Mahdi, who is believed by the Twelvers to be currently alive, and in hiding.”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiite#Twelve_Imams  While that is a valid theory of the nature of the existence of The Twelfth Imam, I have an alternate theory that I believe is more factually accurate.  I believe that he actually disappeared much like Jesus after The Resurrection to eventually perish in relative obscurity.  At times, you can get a whole bunch of negative attention for your religious movement like Jesus from the Roman Empire, and it behooves the group for one of the leaders to disappear to relieve the tension.  On the other hand, I suspect that the Twelfth Imam had a propensity towards dodging responsibility and wanted to live for some his life instead of lead from a position of perceived authority.  At any rate, the number 12, like the number of the disciples, was just a good number.  The weight of the world, in theory, rests upon the shoulders of each and every one of us here on Earth at this time.  Needless to say, there were times over the course of history when people ran and hid from unwanted attention, and other times when people stood their ground and fought for what is right.

 

In the modern day, it appears as though The Twelve Imams have returned to Earth to help out in a time of geopolitical crisis, and at least some of them have found their home at the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.  However, the female side of their future family appears to have crash landed upon the Earth within the dismal confines of the Palestinian refugee camps, also with a tendency toward fighting.  With the presumably quite imminent Palestinian peace treaty, it is quite possible that this arrangement was the fastest way for the imams to find their wives in the midst of the reconciliation festivities, but between now and then, there is the possibility that one of the imams will find himself shooting his own “true love” or vice versa, and that would be a most unfortunate consequence of the underlying geopolitical power structures in which we live and their relations with one another.  This leads me to the joke (to which I hope that nobody takes offense), "They told me that traditional Muslim girls are frigid and hostile, but that particular story borders upon the fundamentally absurd!” 

 

If one of the old imams had decided, "It is Friday night, and I have nowhere to go.  I might as well spend another night at work," we might have a different story entirely.  I might have to later tell him, “You did it!  You managed to subvert yourself into a hole in the ground or vice versa.”  Those poor kids might never get married but for the efforts toward peace and a stronger Palesrael by people from around the Middle East and the globe.  How many times across the Holy Land has this exact situation recurred?  When you look at love as a "game of cat and mouse," it is beneficial to see the possibility of an ending other than death for one or the other party.  There is also the option of Israeli prison, for example.  And, there are others such as a peace treaty and reconciliation!  At this time, they may demand satisfaction in the matter of the defense of their separate interests in the Holy Land, but there are other forms of satisfaction besides violence.

 

I suggest that in the case of the imams and their wives, a lot could be lost in this battle, and the chances of finding that special someone is greatly diminished over the possible chances in the conditions of peaceful coexistence.  If Israel "wins" the war, the Mossad imams lose all the more from a statistical perspective as few people search for their “true loves” in enemy territory.  On the other hand, if Palestine wins, the imams’ wives lose.  However, there is a third possible solution with a lot more possibilities than either nation attaining the absolute exclusion of the other from the Holy Land.  To me, this appears to be the happiest and most spiritually fulfilling resolution that the current state of Palesrael has to offer.  I suggest that the imams did not want to live in Israel without their wives, and the wives did not want to live in Palestine without their husbands. 

 

You said you didn't need her
You told her good-bye (good-bye)
You sacrificed a good love
To satisfy your pride
Now you wished
That you should have her (have her)
And you feel like such a fool
You let her walk away
Now it just don't feel the same

“Blame It On the Rain,” Milli Vanilli, http://www.mp3lyrics.org/m/milli-vanilli/blame-it-on-the-rain/

 

This story further illustrates some of my most central tenets regarding the possibility of peace in Palesrael:  What is Israel without Palestine?  What is Palestine without Israel?  What are the imams without their wives?  What are the wives without their husbands?  Perhaps, the best answer to all of these questions is "very frustrated."  This is much the story of the status quo in Palesrael, one nation (Israel) and a collection of sub-national groups wherein there is little satisfaction in favor of a system that generates considerable frustration. 

 

I must confess that The Imams and Their Wives was one of the more interesting stories from the alleged End of Times that I may yet have related to me in person from the actual witnesses at a later date.  To this, I can only respond, "Well, kids, I think that you both had some really great points in the middle of that particular geo-political power struggle.  Israel was really lacking without Palestine, and Palestine would have been extremely lacking without Israel, in my opinion.  When the political leaders decided to side less with bilateral lacking in favor of more cooperation and happy vibes, it was a real high point in the history of the Holy Land.  I could have sat around and given too much emphasis to Bush with his pronouncements against global terror and the merits of going exceptionally hard upon it, but I decided against this particular approach and feel considerably better for it.  It could just as easily have been me killing one of the imams’ wives as them had I decided otherwise or vice versa."

 

A while ago, I allegedly told Satan of two games that people play: "Cooperation and Disjunction."  If people cooperate with one another, they find that they have a lot of benefits to share with others.  For example, if Palestine truly has the imams’ wives, the imams have a considerable better chance of meeting and wooing them in a peaceful Holy Land.  This is the inherent nature of cooperation, a friendly and mutually satisfying relationship between the parties.  However, the game of disjunction is considerably less satisfying.  If the status quo is rephrased as, "Both Israel and Palestine can expect to be wait longer for the mutual satisfaction of each other’s needs and to suffer substantial losses along the way," it sounds all the less compelling to argue that this is the best resolution of the issues for either side of the current struggle.

 

The parable of The Imams and Their Wives is a wonderful example that elucidates just one facet of the theorem that peace has significant advantages over war, many of which are extremely difficult to notice during the heated emotions and confusion of battle.  Life goes on after war.

 

Reviews

[Berserker[Diktator Von ..]

Ver interesting...I really liked this one. It is sad, but true. Events like this do happen almost daily. Although maybe not to the extent of the story line. Anyways, it was wonderful. It really makes you think about what is happening around the world at this moment in the confort of you or anyones home. I often think about what someone may be goingthrough at this very moment, maybe it is this exact same thing or worse. Un fortunately not many people stop to think about what other people are doing or going through here, or anywhere else. This piece makes you want to stop and think about those things. Good Job!

Always here,
Berserk

[Emily B]

Gabe,
I have long been an ostrich witih my head buried in the sand. But your stories are so down to earth and approachable that I find myself reaching for issues clear round the world.

Great write.