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Muslim musings on Easter
This
Easter, I discovered the real meaning of divine mercy. I also
discovered that the best way to feel God’s mercy is to serve the saints
with humility. And I am not alone in this discovery.
The exact theological formula of Easter isn’t what matters. Rather, for the Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and people of other faiths and no faith in particular, Easter is a time to serve society’s true saints. Coming from a Muslim background, my Easter was a time to wash feet. On the Thursday before Easter, I had the good fortune to wash the feet of 2 Buddhist nuns and a Uniting Church Minister named Bill. In a room crowded with saints lining up for their lunch, the four of us took turns in placing our feet in the water and having them washed. Bill provided the water and bucket while I provided the ceremonial Jasmine oil which all washers rubbed on their hands and faces. One or two saints also volunteered their feet for us to wash. I personally could feel the faiz (an Arabic word connoting a kind of blessing associated with the presence of saints) radiating from the water. It was all made possible thanks to Bill, an enterprising Uniting Church Minister from Ashfield. Bill runs the Ashfield Parish Mission, part of the Uniting Church in Australia. But Rev. Bill Cruise is no ordinary priest. He is also part of a growing ecumenical movement of people from across Sydney working under the auspices of The Exodus Foundation. The Easter 2006 Newsletter of the Foundation reflects the
involvement of people from a range of faiths all working to serve the
saints of society. Amongst the volunteers are members of the Temple
Emanuel congregation led by Rabbi Jacki Ninio. Jewish volunteers are
especially active, and the Temple Emanuel congregation have been
serving meals to the saints on Christmas and Easter at the Ashfield
church hall (known as "the Restaurant") for over a decade. My own involvement with saints is not a recent development. Family members, relatives and friends of mine have experienced sainthood to varying degrees. Late last year, a close friend told me about her brother who had gone missing some weeks back. He's admitted himself to hospital after experiencing severe weakness. His liver almost collapsed and suffered irreparable damage. My friend took her brother up north to get some country air and keep
him away from dealers and other low-life. Thanks to their intervention,
her brother developed some kind of psychotic illness and lived on the
streets of Sydney managing a group of other saints wiping windscreens. We entered the Restaurant, and sat down for the feet washing. The cameras were there, but they may not have been. We were having too much fun reviving an ancient New Testament practise of Christ to worry about media. Nearby, the Exodus Choir were singing their lungs out. Amongst them
were a variety of saints, including one man who had suffered a number
of strokes and could only smile and wave his hands. And how appropriate
was their song, being heard and enjoyed by the line of saints
collecting their lunch - “When the saints go marching in.”
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Washing feet on Maundy Thursday
Yes, Irfan, “Easter is about Christ” and our nation likes to pause to observe the Christian holy days. On Maundy Thursday this year, in the spirit of “as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40) we prepared for the most holy day in the Christian calendar by announcing a policy to turn away all those seeking asylum in our country. Those nails weren’t driven home hard enough, I guess.
Try humph of the Will
Piers Akerman’s Easter Sunday massage:
“Opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke revealed the plot on Friday, saying while the laws were designed to defuse a serious diplomatic crisis with Jakarta over the granting of temporary protection visas to 42 West Papuans ‘to leave it right up until the day John Howard fronts the AWB inquiry is a long way from a coincidence.’”
“Why, for example, would the Government want to divert attention from Mr Howard's appearance before Terence Cole QC's commission of inquiry when it was such a triumph?”
In contrast, Irfan Yusuf goes off at a foot-washing clinic near you:
“Nearby, the Exodus Choir were singing their lungs out. Amongst them were a variety of saints, including one man who had suffered a number of strokes and could only smile and wave his hands.
“And how appropriate was their song, being heard and enjoyed by the line of saints collecting their lunch - ‘When the saints go marching in.’
“The Prophet’s followers often were too poor to afford shelter, were severely depressed or had other ailments.
“Christ always made time for the saints of his time. If we want to be Christ-like, we should make time for the saints of our era.”
And now Australians (and Kiwis) have have another quasi-religious festival coming up, with another opportunity to honour a great soul, and perhaps even to wash his feet, should he come back here and walk among us.
With all the fuss over who may march in the ANZAC Day parades, we should hope that no barriers are erected to stop visiting US serviceman Major Michael Mori who himself offers a message of compassion, reason and hope with his steadfast protection of David Hicks and through Hicks the concept of justice.
The kind of justice denied to refugee rabble-rouser and almost certainly greenie commo Jesus when our government killed him.
Of course, Jesus was bashed and tortured for days before allegedly being crucified and left out in the open by the cops.
It would be far kinder, wouldn’t it, to be bashed and tortured and flung into years of solitary confinement?
What about the chance to wear an wear orange jumpsuit and hood, and entertain specially set up Australian, US and other torture units?
Maybe Hicks one day will get the chance to see George Bush proclaim to the baying mob: “I wash my hands of the blood of this innocent man.” Live, on Pay-TV, with all the other executions, torture and killings.
Major Mori, visiting Australia the other day, has been a beacon for those Australians seeking the release of our remaining Guantanamo prisoner, imprisoned without trial and cruelly maltreated for years by the Romans.
Major Mori has also been a beacon for those Australians who would like to see respect restored for the people, armed services and laws of the United States of America. And not to some dirty Empire of $hite oil drones.
Freeing David Hicks would start that ball rolling and signal the end of the Evil Empire.
But that concept’s very much too difficult for the less-than-complex protochord of a full squirting, gases-exchanging Howard-lover like Piers “The Cunjevoi” Akerman™
Like many primitive life-forms, Piers has been washing the feet of his Christ-Howard with his own tears of saliva, semen and gut-spray, using his tongue ciliae to do between the toes, then wiping dry the Howard-Christ feet of the cunjevoi’s most precious bodily unguents with his own bowel ciliae (see illustration on linked website).
Such devotion can be explained by the fact that the News Limited cunjevoi™ is obviously making a huge fat quid on the side out of the Rumbo Rumsfeld Iraq II show currently squirting oil, gases and decaying corpses out of the devastated Iraq, as planned.
Squirt on, Piers, soon you’ll be eligible for the Martin Bryant journalism prize awarded by the Death’s Head boys at the PM’s sinister intertidal private office.
A TRIUMPH for those too illiterate, or shrewdly political, even to read a podgy smash’n’grab sonnet or two penned by the Roam Antioch poetettes at DFAT.
Ite, missa est. Amen.
And wash those bloody feet, youse mob!!!