The Massacre


“May the diggers of the trench be destroyed for what they did!”  (Quran 85:4)


1.     The trenches were dug all through the main streets.
2 In droves of ten, Jewish men were lead
       to be slaughtered.
3 Their corpses and severed heads were
       buried together in the trenches.
4 All was done in cold blood.
5 Eight hundred men in all had to suffer
       this fate.
6 The women and children were all
       made slaves.
7 The property was confiscated.
8 There was no shame involved in this,
       no sense of guilt.
9 After all, this had been God’s
       judgment from the Highest
          Heaven.
10 After all, the killers bore in mind the
       fate of the people of Jericho.

2.     Muhammad,
       you are the truest embodiment of
             moral perfection,
                      or so you claim.
2 In you, a Muslim has a good example
       to follow and imitate.
3 But the stench of blood, o
       Muhammad.
4 That merciless methodical killing that
       went on all day.
5 That massacre,
       that divinely sanctioned massacre
           that makes a holy and moral act
              out of the cold-blooded
                  shedding
                      of human blood.
6 That Islamic justification, no matter
      how unintended,
         of Deir Yassin,
           of Sabra and Shatila,
             of the Killing Fields,
                of the ethnic cleansing
                      in Bosnia and Kosovo,
                                 of the Holocaust.
7 All that, o Muhammad,
     make me doubt all your claims.
8 They make me reject all your claims,
       and all similar claims
           to prophethood,
      and divinity.

3.     You have made an atheist out
       of me, Muhammad.
2And you continue to repulse me from
       beyond the grave.
3 I don’t want any part of your
        morality.
4 Damn all Judeo-Christian ethics.
5 To hell with all forms of religious
       piety.
6 Give me back that old-fashioned
       pragmatic humanism.
7 Give me back my freedom of
       conscience.
8 Give me back my sense of humanity.


 June 1995


Notes

This poem deals with the infamous massacre of the Arab Jewish tribe of Bani Qurayzah, which took place in AD 627. The massacre came in the aftermath of an attempted invasion of Madinah, the capital of Muhammad’s feldglign kingdom at the time, by the people of Makkah, his original birthplace, and their allies, and was meant as a punishment and a warning to all neighboring tribes to beware Muhammad’s wrath should they entertain any traitorous ideas about their Muslim neighbors. Indeed, Bani Qurayzah had entertained for a while joining the anti-Muslim alliance. The massacre, then, had more political than religious motivations, and formed a unique event in Islamic history with regards to the way Jewish minorities were treated over the course of Muslim history. Still, having been perpetrated by the Prophet has created a precedent that is often invoked today by Islamic extremists in their statements aimed at Israel.

The irony in the Quran’ic verse quoted as subtitle lies in the fact that it refers to and condemns a different massacre, one that had occurred in Yemen sometimes  before Prophet Muhammad’s own birth. This particular massacre, or so Islamic sources contend, was ordered by the Jewish king Dhu Nuwas against his Christian subjects.

Deir Yassin. A Palestinian village where a massacre of Palestinian civilians by the Jewish terrorist groups known as the Irgun and Stern Gangs, took place on April 9, 1948 – a month before the declaration of Israeli statehood. The death toll was estimated at 250 victims, and included women and children. Menachim Begin, the leader of the Irgun, hailed the massacre as a “conquest,” and declared: “Continue thus until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, thou hast chosen us for conquest.” In due course, Begin would become the Prime Minister of Israel, and would be awarded the Nobel Prize in 1979, alongside the president of Egypt at the time, Anwar Al-Sadat for signing the Camp David peace accord ending the war between Israel and Egypt.

Sabra and Shatila. The names of Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut, where another massacre of Palestinian civilians took place in September 1982. The perpetrators this time were  Christian Phalangists, and are reported to carried the massacre under the watchful eyes of Israeli troops stationed nearby at the time, a fact that would soon force the resignation of then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The death toll was estimated 762 and 3,500 civilians, a figure that included Lebanese Shia residents of the camps. Again, the toll includes women and children.