In thy God I don’t trust
Apr 16, 2023
I don’t indulge in religion, but in this instance and at this particular time of the year, I feel I must. Let us agree from the start that we are all accidents of birth. None of us had a choice as to our parents, in what country we were born or into what religion. This, I think, will save us a lot of argument about indoctrination, belief, piety and fanaticism.
I was born into a Sunni, Muslim, Palestinian house where our entire life was about learning and examining. We, Al-Raminis, are people of the book and followers of the teachings of Muhammad. Actually, you only have to examine my name, Jafar Muhammad Mustafa Al-Ramini to see the indelible stamp of Islam clearly on my forehead.
Over a decade ago there were three major documentaries on British television about Islam, about Jerusalem and about the Crusades. The first one by Rageh Omaar for BBC2, entitled The Life Of Muhammad, was done with sensitivity and took care not to offend unnecessarily. Needless to say, Rageh Omaar is a renowned journalist of Muslim birth.
The second major series was ‘Jerusalem’ on BBC4, written and presented by Simon Sebag-Montefiore, a well-known author and historian from a famous Zionist family who were very much involved in Palestine and the creation of Israel.
And then, ‘The Crusades’ by another historian, Dr. Thomas Ashbridge, beautifully shot, each frame perfect, but that was where the beauty stopped. It was full of distortions and very much painting the Muslims as the villains of the piece. Right now, looking at Palestine we see that the Holy Muslim month of Ramadan, the Holy Christian Easter and the Holy Jewish Passover have converged into one, provoking even more bloodshed all over my country of birth, especially the Holy City of Jerusalem. So far, this year the Israeli Occupation Forces have slain over 100 Palestinians. That’s it, I said to myself. ‘I must kick this argument about their God, the omnipotent, the peaceful and the compassionate into touch. Almost every inhumane bloody massacre of entire cultures and nations over hundreds and hundreds of years has been as a result of the war cry, ‘In The Name Of God!’
Look at what happened in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, the United States of America. A country that was built on religious fervour and In The Name Of God.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me..’
This was the message the Christian new world sent out to maltreated, impoverished refugees from all over Europe who had suffered religious degradation in their own countries, again, In The Name Of God. They flooded in, these maligned people, clutching their meagre worldly possessions, which always included a bible, looking to leave that religious persecution behind them.
And what happened? Those God-fearing, whiter than white Christians practiced, even more thoroughly and even more abhorrently, the kind of ethnic cleansing they experienced themselves back in the ‘old country’.
The Red Indians, now known, guiltily as “Native Americans”, were virtually wiped out. Their land, their culture, their way of life, their dignity were obliterated in The Name Of God.
In the name of that same God, the white, God-fearing Christians kidnapped and transported, under the most appalling conditions, mostly in chains, entire communities of Africans to help them forge God’s new country. They were slave labour. Even when those same slaves took on this Great White God of their masters, even when their religious fervour rivalled anything experienced or heard in an ordinary white church it was not enough. They were not God’s people, so they didn’t count.
That flood of refugees from Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries was then. Today it has become a tsunami. Not from Europe, but from Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. From all the places where modern Christian leaders have created unnecessary wars. We’re all used to seeing boat-loads of desperate people, men, women and children, hanging on to the last vestige of hope for a decent life. And how they drown, or are turned back or shoved into holding pens, like cattle.
Look at what today’s God fearing Christians, have done to us, the Palestinians over the last century. Christian Europe persecuted the Jews in Europe to near extinction. Then to assuage their guilt, they promised them a home-land in a land that didn’t belong to them and was already inhabited. My homeland, Palestine.
This belligerent act was not done in the name of saving the Jews but to get rid of them. Those Zionist Jews who came to Palestine in the early 20th century, with a bible in one hand and a gun in the other, also had just one purpose. To get rid of us, the Palestinians. In the name of their God.
David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel, once infamously said, “I don’t need a mandate to rule over Palestine. The bible is my mandate.” This religious fervour has carried on through all the massacres that were inflicted upon us and is still the banner under which most of the current Zionist leaders operate. Mr Ben Gvir, Minister Of National Security in the current Netanyahu government, has just been given his own private, armed militia. He and Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, together with twenty members of the Knesset, led thousands of illegal settlers, waving Israeli flags and singing religious songs, through the West Bank to establish and legalise more illegal outposts and settlements. “With God’s help,” said Ben Gvir, “we will legalise dozens more.”
In the name of God.
Our blood has no value. It can be taken by anyone who wants to spill it in the street. And they will be rewarded for it. Not in the Kingdom of Heaven, but in the land of the Palestinians, the Holy Land. Any Jew in the world, even a recent convert to Judaism has the right to immigrate to Israel and will be gifted a Palestinian home. Whereas, like millions of exiled Palestinians, I am not even allowed a visit.
On the American greenback, it says ‘In God We Trust.’ How appropriate. What God I wonder?
I say to them, your God is about conquest, subjugation and greed. Your God is about the superiority of avarice over the truth. Your God is about coveting what other nations have and getting it, no matter what sins are committed in the process.
Your God is Mammon. In that God I do not place any trust. In that God I want no part.
Jafar Ramini
Jafar M Ramini is a Palestinian writer and political analyst. He was born in Jenin in 1943 and was five years old when he and his family had to flee the terror of the Haganah Militia. He lived in London for 53 years before coming to Perth two years ago. Justice for the people of Palestine is a life-long commitment.
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