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No one from Zain’s family attended his college graduation. Ironically, at the exact time he received his diploma, his parents were killed and his brother was entombed. He had completed his BA in Finance, and the next two years would be devoted to acquiring his master’s degree.
Zain felt somewhat absurd dressed in the gown and funny cap, standing next to his fellow classmates looking equally as ridiculous. He also felt different than the other puffed-up graduates around him. Deep down he felt like an imposter. Many of his friends at school thought they knew him, but it was all a lie. Sure, he was there to get an education which would enable him to assume yet another life—that of a finance tycoon who funneled money to those who perpetrated the biggest lies of all. His father and brother were terrorists. There it was. He hadn’t said it aloud for fear of retribution, but he had thought it. It was plain and simple that since he had participated in several massacres, he was a terrorist as well. That nuance was hard to swallow when he was honest with himself. His educated classmates would think of his family as participants in terrorism. If they knew about his family business even the most devout Muslims would classify the Shallahs as terrorists. Zain struggled to accept those facts. He hung out with Muslims, and they drove to the mosque, and prayed next to one another. Never once did anyone suggest going out to kill people. In this culture, it was OK to be a Muslim. It wasn’t OK to kill people. Another sobering realization Zain confronted was that none of his fellow Muslim friends saw hatred and retribution within the pages of the Quran. There was no need to read hate or retaliation into a belief that didn’t portray such notions.
Zain was grappling with the inconsistencies of the Muslim religion taught to him versus what he experienced and observed in Zurich. Determined to ferret out the truth, and feeling he lacked firsthand knowledge, Zain read both the Bible and the Quran cover to cover. In each he highlighted the verses that encouraged or demanded violence.
One of the phrases that most of the Muslim jihadis hung their “hate hat” on and his father had quoted many times was from the Quran (2:191-193): "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or unrest] is worse than killing...but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah [disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah] and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun (the polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)" (Translation is from the Noble Quran)
After more research Zain discovered the verse prior to this (190) refers to "fighting for the cause of Allah those who fight you" leading some to claim that the entire passage refers to a defensive war in which Muslims are defending their homes and families. Nowhere does it sanction the killing of a Muslim sect or those of another faith.
Zain highlighted a similar passage in the Bible, from the book of 1 Samuel, when God instructs King Saul to attack the Amalekites: "And utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them," God says through the prophet Samuel. "But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." When Saul failed to do that, God took away his kingdom. In other words, Saul had committed a dreadful sin by failing to commit genocide.
Over many months, Zain had read, highlighted and compared verse against verse, until he felt he had figured it all out. It all boiled down to one simple fact. The Bible had equally horribly violent sections that could be misinterpreted to the same degree that jihadis misinterpreted the Quran.
The world wasn’t fighting a war waged by Christian terrorists. In fact, Zain couldn’t recall a suicide bomber taking out a school in the name of Jesus Christ. Overall, Christians appeared to be very tolerant of other religions. Live and let live. They were so certain of their faith they didn’t appear threatened by other religions. The world only had a problem with Muslim terrorists. But someone had to be wrong. Wouldn’t it be something if his father had died and went to Paradise, but Allah was not there to greet him? In that instant, Farwan would realize everything he had fought for and had put his family through had been for nothing. Even if Allah was there and took his father into the fold, had Farwan truly followed the teachings of the Quran? Or had he spent the entirety of his life chasing faulty doctrine handed down by those who held a grudge against humanity?
Written in Surah 2:25: "And give good news [O Muhammad] to those who believe and do good deeds, that they will have gardens [Paradise] in which rivers flow..."
Was killing perceived enemies classified as doing good deeds? Was killing Shia Muslim women and children perceived by Allah as a good deed? Zain had continued reading. Surah 55:72, Ibn Kathir (d. 1373 CE) stated: "The Prophet Muhammad was heard saying: 'The smallest reward for the people of paradise is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine, and ruby, as wide as the distance from Al-Jabiyyah [a Damascus suburb] to Sana'a [Yemen]'."
Had his father and brother longed for 72 wives and 80,000 servants? Why was that such a good reward? Zain had one Swiss girlfriend and found the relationship confusing. He hated to think what it would be like managing 72 wives in paradise. He supposed that was the purpose of the 80,000 servants—to keep the women happy.
Zain felt his father might be disappointed upon his demise. One religion would be right which meant others had to be wrong. Christianity had about 2.4 billion followers. Islam was the second largest faith with 1.8 billion worldwide. Then came millions of Hindus, Buddhists, and others, all the way down to an unknown tribe in the Amazon that prayed to the gods of sun and rain. Therefore, when the day of reckoning came, billions upon billions of faithful followers of their respective religions would be disappointed.
Zain thought how ironic it would be if the people who were right were the three dozen Amazonians. However, that still left a third possibility—everyone could be wrong. Maybe humans simply turned back into the carbon they were made from and their consciousness simply ceased. Zain suspected most people didn’t want to think of dying as The End. That thought was scary. Believing that your consciousness mystically departed from your soul and fluttered up to a better place was more palatable.
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Zain’s girlfriend didn’t believe in any religion at all. She told Zain she felt religion was fabricated because humans had evolved to the point of questioning their own existence. They had also evolved to the point of being able to rationalize dying along with a sense of self-importance. Her theory was humans thought they were so superior to other species that surely their lives could not end in death. She further asserted that human lives yielded nothing more than a pile of biomass that would return to the earth from which it came.
Her position had ignited the first of many arguments between the staunch Pakistani and the liberal Swiss. Zain had argued his point, ending the conversation by telling her that she would burn in Hell for angering Allah.
She had laughed and told him that Hell didn’t exist and neither did Allah.
That single statement had pretty much shut Zain down. He lacked the ability to understand someone who didn’t have religious beliefs. It was like punching Jell-O. It felt good but there was no point to it. The wind had been removed from his sails. How do you reason with someone so... so...FREE? That was the word that best described her although his father would call her an infidel. Others might call her jaded.
He allowed himself to think about how wonderful it would feel to shed the shackles religion imposed. It often felt like a cloak of darkness and decay that dictated every aspect of his life. If it hadn’t been for his religion, would he have lived in a cave? Would he have spent years at a training camp for terrorists? Would he have been sent to college, provided an education his family never could have afforded without it being funded by terror? Yes, in a very tangled manner, religion had been responsible for some of the worst aspects of his life.
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As he sat in the endless row of chairs waiting to be handed his diploma and having his hand shaken by a man he had never met, Zain wanted to walk away from his old life of violence and into a new life of safety and serenity.
Then again, when those tainted thoughts popped into his head, his mind shifted to the plight of his brother, Naveed, stuck in that horrid lifestyle and brainwashed by his father’s hatred and cynical Muslim beliefs.
Zain’s name was called over the auditorium’s PA system.
He got up from his seat and made his way to the stage where a big-bearded blond man in a suit handed him a rolled-up piece of paper secured with a red ribbon. Zain thanked the man and shook his hand. He did not hold his diploma up in the air and wave it around as had his girlfriend and many of his classmates. He simply walked to the other end of the stage and descended the stairs.
Instead of going back to sit down and wait to throw his hat in the air, Zain quietly exited the building.
He walked all the way to his guardians’ home. They had left months ago since they no longer needed to look after him. Zain went to his bedroom and still wearing his graduation gown, stretched out on his bed and stared at the ceiling, lost in thought.
Zain had no idea what life had in store for him, but he knew he would never go out on another mission of terror with his father. That part of Zain’s life was over. He had no way to know his father would no longer be going on missions either.