Did the Prophet Muhammad really say a nation run by a woman would fail?

The Indonesian government, jolted into action by the horrible bomb blasts in Bali of Saturday last week, finally placed the radical Muslim cleric and preacher Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, leader of the militant Jemaah Islamiyah sect under "hospital arrest". If you ask me, the announcement that the Indonesian police are interrogating Ba’asyir has to be taken with a grain of salt.

From what we’ve seen of him on television in the past, this fanatic Ba’asyir has the kind of sharp tongue that can intimidate those who confront him, particularly if they fear that he, indeed, is the chieftain of a violent Islamic group that blows people up or guns them down.

It’s true that the Indonesian parliament finally gave the government of President Megawati Sukarnoputri the mandate to issue and enforce a decree – only the other day – authorizing the arrest and detention for questioning of suspected terrorists for as long as six months, or slapping them in jail if terrorist links can be substantiated. Whether Jakarta will have the guts to enforce such arrests and follow through with convictions, on the other hand, in a nation of 210 million in which 87 percent profess Islam remains to be seen.

* * *

For instance, did you catch the interview of this guy Ba’asyir on Cable News Network? Maria Ressa of CNN, with her head appropriately covered in a Muslim shawl, has gotten a one-on-one with Ba’asyir shortly before his "arrest". In it, Ba’asyir categorically denied that such an organization as Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been in the headlines for months, existed at all. Naturally, since JI did not "exist", Ba’asyir thundered, he obviously could not be its leader. Ergo, the Jemaah Islamiyah, which did not exist, could not be possibly behind the Bali bombing which killed more than 180 innocent revelers in Kuta! Sanamagan. It’s the holy Ba’asyir’s defense – deny, deny and deny.

As for that fictitious JI and even al-Qaeda, the white bearded semi-prophet airily insisted, those were invented by the Americans and Jews in order to justify their war against Islam.

That’s why, I suppose, people have been dying in those Zamboanga explosions and that bus which was blown up on EDSA in Quezon City. Or the victims who perished in the December 30, 2000, bombings in Metro Manila. They were killed by bombs planted by an organization which does not exist. Or perhaps those bombs were put there by the American CIA? Or by politicians? Or by extortionists? Or by the Kuratong Baleleng? Or the Israeli Mossad in order to embarrass and falsely implicate Muslims? You’ll be amazed at how many Arabs in the Middle East still believe that the September 11, 2001, destruction of the Twin Towers in New York and the attack on the Pentagon was a Zionist plot to turn the world against Islam. With the "help", of course, of the Americans!

Of course, Americans are just as capable of skullduggery as everyone else. The US Central Intelligence Agency – I can attest from my own Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos days – was deeply involved in the opium and heroin trade, as they were, I’m informed, in Afghanistan during the Soviet "occupation" years (allegedly to subvert the Red Army by addicting its soldiers – making fat profits with their Pushtun and Pakistani partners in the process). On the other hand: causing terrible grief to their own people in the American homeland? It’s beyond belief.

Coming back to Ba’asyir, Ressa asked him in the wind-up of the interview (after he had denied being in a plot to assassinate President Megawati) what he thought of the government of Megawati. Ba’asyir declared that we would have to listen to what the Prophet himself had said. He snorted that Muhammad had asserted that "any nation led by a woman will be unsuccessful!"

Attention: GMA!

Is it true that this is what Muhammad had said? Where? In the Qu’ran? I hope some Islamic scholar or Mutawwa (teacher), or madrassa leader, Iman or Ustadz, can furnish us with chapter and verse. We know, of course, from our own Christian New Testament that "even the devil can quote scripture".

Wags quip that Indonesia’s President Megawati heard about what Ba’asyir had told CNN very quickly, so that’s why he got "arrested". It’s probably untrue. Nobody could be that taray.

* * *

Everybody talks about the holy Qu’ran and quotes from it. Qu’ran means "The Recitation". It is the word of God (Allah) as transmitted through Muhammad.

The Christian "News Testament" of our Bible was penned by the Evangelists, who were apostles and disciples of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. In the case of the Prophet Muhammad, Allah’s revelations over a more than twenty-year period were written down on all sorts of material – palm leaves, stones, paper or parchment. Many revelations were also derived from oral tradition, taken from the "memory" of some of the intimates and followers of Muhammad.

I think Andrew Mead in his Business Traveller’s Handbook on Saudi Arabia which I picked up in a Riyadh bookstore (believe it or not, it’s published by the Gorilla Guides, 2000) describes how the Qu’ran finally got to be in its present written form very graphically.

Mead, who now lives in Wiltshire, England, but still goes back and forth to Saudi, resided in Jeddah and did business in the Arabian peninsula for over 20 years. He noted in his book that "following the death of Muhammad in Madanah in 632 and after the battle of Yamaman in 633 in which large numbers of those who knew the revelations by heart were killed, it was feared that this knowledge would become lost. Accordingly, it was decided to collate the revelations from all available written sources and ‘from the hearts of the people’. A number of differing versions came into use and so it was that the Caliph Uthman (644-656) deputed a companion of Prophet, Zayd bin Thabit, and other learned men to produce a revised version in consultation with those who could recite by heart the revelations. Thus came into being the definitive version of the Holy Qu’ran."

Just like we have the King James Version of the Bible, or the gospel according to Brother Mike and El Shaddai, or the radio-TV teachings of Billy Graham and so many electronic prophets and charismatics, who knows from what version of the Prophet’s "word" this fellow Ba’asyir was quoting? Or was it from his own fantasy?

We’ll have to remember that after Muhammad died, there was only the leadership of his trusted convert Abu Bakr, whose warriors had to fight off the unbelievers and the revisionists in the so-called Apostasy Wars, then a succession of Caliphs. Who knows what might, in those years, have been inserted, or taken out?

Islam’s history tells us it was during the month of Ramadan in 610 A.D. that Muhammad ibn Abdallah had gone with his wife and family to a cave on Mount Hira to pray. From that height, his hometown of Mecca below was quite visible. (Muhammad was a merchant from the prominent tribe of Quraysh.) On the 17th night of Ramadan, Muhammad was roused from sleep in his cave by the "terrifying embrace" of an angel. The angel – later identified as the Angel Gabriel (yes, one of ours, too) uttered the command which changed history and shook him fully awake: "Iqra!" (Recite!)

When Muhammad cried out that he was incapable of "reciting" because he was no kahin or inspired prophet, the angel embraced him again and, lo, Muhammad found God’s words pouring out of his mouth. This is why the only true word of Allah must be uttered in Arabic.

Muhammad and his "recitations" were not readily accepted by the Meccans. He even had to flee for his life to Madinah in the early period. However, by the time he died on June 8, 632, he had converted almost every one of the surrounding tribes to Islam.

* * *

By the way, Ramadan this year – the month of fasting and prayer – starts on November 5. This means that all Muslims must fast and pray from dawn to dark, and, at the risk of sounding impious, it must be added: Absolutely abstain from sex. Over the years, though, in a couple of Muslim countries in the Middle East (which I won’t identify just yet), I’ve attended more jolly parties during Ramadan than you can imagine – between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.

Even in Pakistan, during the wild and wooly Tribal Territory days in the Northwest (near the Afghan frontier), I went on a drive to Landi Khotal – the Khyber Pass – with a friend, a captain in the Pakistani Air Force. He turned off the road into a grove, and pulled out a hamper which might have come straight out of Fortnum and Masons’ in London.

"Let’s have a bite," he laughed. I looked at the "feast" inside the hamper and exclaimed: "But it’s high noon, and it’s Ramadan!"

He merrily winked and said: "Don’t be a prude, old boy; nobody’s looking!"

Just to show you that good Muslims can be as…uh, cheerfully worldly as good Catholics during Lent.

Fish on Friday? We used to observe that ourselves.

* * *

Metro Manilans, the way I saw it yesterday, were not cowed by those bomb explosions in Zamboanga, or the one which devastated the bus on EDSA, or the grenade found in Makati, and other bomb scares or incidents.

I can only vouch for two places: The Glorietta and Greenbelt in Makati. But both were full of people, from shoppers to restaurant goers.

In Greenbelt, my daughter and I had even had to wait our turn to secure a table at Sugi’s. The restaurant, and adjoining eateries, were full.

Last Friday afternoon, I can also say I visited Megamall in Mandaluyong and later Rockwell (Power Plant) and saw both malls full of patrons, despite earlier rumors that the Zamboanga "bombers" might also hit Metro Manila.

It’s a good indication that our people are not easily intimidated, either by threat or actual "bombing". If our morale is easily daunted, then the "terrorists" – whoever they are – will have scored a victory and gotten what they wanted: The destabilization of our society. (A bomb was "discovered" last night at 8:30 p.m at Virra Mall, in Greenhills. Everybody in that upscale mall was being sent home at last reports.)

I hate to have to say that there will probably be more bomb attacks or "attempts" in the near future. The nature of terrorism is to strike everywhere, anywhere, and where least expected. Its very mindlessness is what makes it so stultifying.

Were the Jemaah Islamiyah, or al-Qaeda, or the Abus, or some rebel group, whether Muslim or New People’s Army, or anarchists behind those explosions? Up to now its guesswork. But I’m sure your guess coincides with mine.

In Indonesia, it has been discovered that the terrible bomb which devastated the Sari Café and those neighboring nightclubs and, in truth, the entire block, was not C-4 or military "plastic". The Indonesian police, it turned out, had hastily jumped to that conclusion. The bomb was determined to have been home-made, you know. The same type of fertilizer et cetera "explosive" as that rigged by Tim McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, whose mega-bomb had reduced the federal building in Oklahoma city to rubble and destroyed so many lives. The Zambo bombs may have been of the same "home-made" variety – easily concocted from the Everyday Terrorists’ Manual.

Incidentally, Canberra – after Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer returned from Jakarta – estimated that 119 of the some 180 or more persons killed in last week’s attack in Bali were Australians. The Australian government said it had "disturbing new information" about the possibility of further terrorist attacks against Westerners in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia. That includes us, of course.

We can only respond, as was said before: Let them do their worst; we will do our best.