Once Were Radicals (20 page)

The camp was divided into organisers, supervisors and participants. Each day we would sit through a lecture given usually by one of the organisers. Each organiser was a member of the AFIC executive committee who was always a middle-aged man. There were no female organisers. Mostly, their lectures were pre-prepared and involved reading long and rather esoteric passages from the kinds of books Mum kept in her library. The organisers' lectures sometimes went on for hours, and many participants (and at times, even supervisors) could be seen nodding off.

The supervisors were both male and female and were usually more experienced and knowledgeable people who were either studying at university or in the workforce. Many supervisors were either children of or related to the organisers.

At camp, there was the advanced and the beginners group, and we also had cabin groups. Each cabin had seven or eight kids, each with its own supervisor. My cabin supervisor was a Turkish guy named Refat who was extremely physically fit and quite strict with us. However, after a few days, he calmed down and even laughed when we poked fun at his name which some of us recited as ‘re-fart'. Later, Refat read to us from a small booklet he had which explained various textures, smells and even colours of flatulence one could make, even illustrating these using his own abilities.

One chap in my cabin was a Pakistani kid I occasionally saw at family gatherings. Waseem had curly hair with glasses, and reminded me of the musical satirist Wierd Al Yankovic. Then there was my other Pakistani buddy Arfeen as well as a half-Pakistani and half-Yugoslav kid we called Mukhi. It turned out that Mukhi was related to the Yugoslavs I had met some years back at the house of Lubna, my virtually adopted sister.

One evening, Sheikh Fehmi gave us a talk about the situation in Afghanistan. He told us about what the Afghans were suffering at the hands of the evil communists. Someone asked Sheikh Fehmi what happened to the Afghan Muslims killed. Sheikh Fehmi explained that they were martyrs who would enter paradise without reckoning.

That night, I joined with my Arab friends Kamal, Abdullah, Belal and Faris. We spoke about the situation in Afghanistan. Kamal seemed to know a lot of what was happening there, and he also knew people who had gone from Australia to fight in the jihad. He expressed a wish to go and fight. Having read Maududi's work on jihad, I also felt some zeal to go and at least see what was happening on the battlefield.

The next day, we approached Sheikh Fehmi to see if he could help us. Sheikh Fehmi deterred us from taking up the Afghan jihad by giving us the explanation contained in the Prologue of this book.

But Kamal was sceptical of Sheikh Fehmi's explanations. Kamal followed the Muslim group referred to earlier called Wahhabi who were aligned to Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the United States. He saw the jihad in the same way many American (and indeed Australian) Cold War warriors saw it—as a fight against the evil, godless communist empire. Kamal even told us stories of boys he knew of our age or a little older who had made it to Afghanistan or worked as volunteers in the Peshawar office of a charity that helped organise foreign fighters.

Sheikh Fehmi had an enormous amount of knowledge, as did his understudy Kamal. However, Kamal didn't process his knowledge with as much wisdom as Sheikh Fehmi. For Kamal, religion was all black and white. Rules were rules and had to be obeyed. Kamal would read the Koran and books of
hadith
and come up with his own views. At times, he even tried disputing what Sheikh Fehmi said. But the sheikh was much more patient and much more nuanced in his approach to religion. He would often caution Kamal
not to be so harsh to others and not to be so sure of his own opinions.

One rule I found strange was that the girls at the camp all had to wear a hijab which covered their hair in full. Even Sheikh Fehmi was strict on hijab, insisting that Islam teaches women to cover everything except their face and hands when going out or being in the presence of men to whom they aren't related.

One person who was also very influential at the camps was a Turkish man from Melbourne named Mahmud. He had a beautiful recitation voice, and his Koran recitations would often bring Sheikh Fehmi and the organisers to tears. I had seen very nice recitations on Ahmed Deedat videos at home, but to see a master recite so perfectly and melodically in person for the first time was an extraordinary experience.

Mahmud was also a kind of religious celebrity. He had come first or second in an international recitation competition in Saudi Arabia and had been awarded the honour of entering inside the cubic structure called the
Kaaba
in Mecca. This was an honour that few Muslims would ever experience. Mahmud was in charge of teaching people the Koran. He was the most senior supervisor and was held in awe by the others.

One aspect of the camp I was most uncomfortable with and which I found most un-Islamic was that boys and girls would mix freely. In Indo-Pakistani culture, this was regarded as almost sinful. I rarely if ever spoke to Indo-Pakistani girls unless they were friends of my sisters. At the camp Muslim boys and girls were joking and laughing
despite the fact that they ate separately to us boys and slept in separate cabins on opposite corners of the campsite.

I was extremely shy when it came to talking to girls. However, some of the older girls liked my taste in music and thought I asked interesting questions which sometimes tripped up the uncles giving the lectures. Some of the girls were friends of my sisters' friend Lubna. Among them were female supervisors including a Yugoslav ‘sister' (we always referred to each other as ‘brother' and ‘sister') Sylvana, her younger sister Ajsa (pronounced Aisha) and their Tasmanian friend Enisa.

One of my least favourite (and most memorable) moments at the camp was when we had a visitor. I had heard that the AFIC people would always bow before leaders of Muslim countries, hoping a few currency crumbs would be thrown their way. But I never expected AFIC officials to involve us in such sycophantic nonsense. One day after the pre-dawn prayers, one of the organisers stood up and made an announcement.

‘Brothers and sisters in Islam. This afternoon at lunch time, we will have a very special guest joining us. His name is Tunku Abdur Rahman and he was the first prime minister of Malaysia. I know you will all be very excited by his visit. I will provide you all with instructions on how we will greet him later on.'

We? Excited by the first prime minister of Malaysia? By some dude with a name that sounded like Tonka Toy? Heck, if Bob Hawke or Paul Keating were coming over, I'd have been impressed. But me, excited about this Tonka guy?

Just before lunch, one Uncle Kazim stood us all in two long straight lines, boys on one side and girls on the other.
The distance between our lines had to be wide enough for a car to be driven in between—Uncle Kazim even tested this by driving his car in between. Once he was satisfied by the width of our lines, the supervisors distributed some rice and flower petals to us. By now I wasn't sure what was going on, and sought advice from my friend Shaf who was a rather irreverent Fiji-Indian bloke.

‘Hey Shaf. What the bloody halal's happening here?'

‘Mate, I dunno. Some arse-kissing of an overseas leader again.'

‘Does this happen often at camps?'

‘Irfan, this is nothing. You should see what they do when the Saudi ambassador rocks up!'

Uncle Kazim then instructed us that when Tunku's limousine arrived, we should shower it with rice and petals and call out ‘Welcome to Tunku'.

An hour after these instructions were relayed to us, the limousine still hadn't arrived. In the absence of mobile phones, we had no way of finding out which part of Victoria Tunku's driver had taken him to. Then finally, after an almost two-hour wait, a black Mercedes Benz entered the driveway with an old man seated in the back seat. I was standing at the far end of the line. Shaf stood next to me. He expressed some disapproval of the welcoming process.

‘Buggered if I'm gonna welcome this old fart like royalty. He can take some of my rice and shove it where the sun don't shine.'

One of the other cabin supervisors overheard Shaf and told him to quieten down. Then at the other end of the line, the absurd spectacle began as we were led in throwing
rice and petals and calling out repeatedly the chant of ‘WELCOME TO TUNKU!'.

Tunku's windows were still up, and it was unlikely he could hear anything we were saying. With that in mind, many of us chose to be somewhat less compliant. Indeed, the welcoming message became gradually more and more disrespectful. By about a third of the way down the line, it sounded like someone had said: ‘G'DAY, TONKA TOY'. One of the Lebbo (i.e. short for Lebanese) girls then screamed out: ‘HOWYA GOIN', TANKO WANKO?'

Things then got really out of hand when some of the Yugo guys didn't want to be part of it. One Yugo kid screamed out this welcoming message: ‘FUCK YOU, TONKA-MAN!' He was soon led away from the line. Shaf and I followed him without much prompting. I later asked Shaf what message he would have called out. ‘I would've told the dog to drive his shitty little Tonka Mercedes to the nearest airport and catch the next Tonka plane back to fucking Malaysia.' Shaf always had a way with words.

At the conclusion of the camp, we were awarded various prizes for sporting and religious competitions. I managed to pick up a prize for the camp essay competition, and was given a certificate and a copy of a rather boring book which seemed to have nothing at all to do with Islam. The book was called
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion
, and was published by a group called IIFSO (which stands for the International Islamic Federation of Students' Organisations) and printed in Kuwait. I could tell the book had something to do with Jews, but I wondered what relevance it had to Islam?

I was still confused when packing the book and certificate in my bag along with a camp booklet which we had all received and which had the names and contact details of all the participants and supervisors. Sheikh Fehmi encouraged us to keep in touch. I certainly wanted to, and looked forward to attending next year's camp. Sadly, that wasn't to be. When I got home and started spending hours on the phone chatting to camp friends, sometimes even talking to the same person twice a day, my parents thought enough was enough.

More important to them was the prospect that I was now in the two most important years of my schooling (and quite possibly my entire) life. I was entering Year 11, and I was to focus on entering a medical faculty. I was to put my religious books away, end my near-obsession with camp friends and focus on my studies. The only extra curricular activities I was permitted were school debating and listening to rock music.

It's impossible to exaggerate just how important their children's academic achievement was to my Indo-Pakistani parents and their friends. The pressure became particularly acute when we reached Years 11 and 12. In my home state of New South Wales, a child's worth was measured by the mark he or she received in the Higher School Certificate.

This extreme pressure was made even worse by the fact that my next eldest sister had managed to reach one of the highest HSC scores of any Indo-Pakistani family in Sydney. She genuinely wanted to study medicine. I, on the other hand, wasn't sure what I wanted to study or what kind of career I wanted.

There was another student who had just started at St Andrews and who was also being pressured to study. Brian was from Sydney's eastern suburbs and was one of
our school's few Jewish students. Brian and I immediately clicked, and joining us was an atheist of Catholic background named Tim.

Brian, Tim and I used to enjoy manufacturing disorder in Divinity classes, firing questions at Rev Alex, Mr Martin and other Divinity teachers. I had by this time memorised just about every polemical booklet of that aggressive South African Muslim missionary Ahmed Deedat, and was able to fire questions and biblical verses (usually quoted out of context but still sounding impressive) almost at will. Brian also borrowed my books and managed to memorise Deedat's arguments in less than a week. Tim didn't bother memorising anything. He just enjoyed the spectacle of religions at war over the nature of a God whose very existence he denied.

On one occasion, we noticed another new bloke in our class named Jesse was receiving a hard time. Jesse was a Mormon, and was being harassed by the guys from the Christian Fellowship, most of whom, ironically, were good friends of mine from our debating team. There were now many sides to our Year 11 mass debate over religion.

One afternoon after school, the Christian Fellowship organised a movie session where lots of soft drink and cake would be served and we would watch a video. Jesse had been tipped off that the movie being screened was an anti-Mormon documentary, and asked Brian and I (a Muslim and a Jew!) to turn up to defend the Mormon faith. I had to admit to Jesse that I didn't know much, but I'd try my best.

We watched the film, called
The God-makers
, which alleged that Mormons believed that human beings would
be transformed into gods after death. After the film, Fellowship leader and fellow debater Julian stood up and confidently threw this question in the general direction of Jesse the Mormon and his Muslim and Jewish supporting think tank.

‘After watching this movie, I'm sure you'll all agree with me on the answer to this question—could there possibly be a more silly belief than the suggestion that man can become God?'

Brian whispered something in my ear which made me almost die laughing. He wanted me to provide the answer, but I was already in stitches. Brian then responded loudly: ‘The only belief more stupid than man becoming God is to believe God would become a man!'

Jesse and I lost it completely. We were rolling around on the floor in extreme pain, trying to stop our sides from splitting. The Christian kids weren't impressed, one of them calling out from the other side of the room to Brian, ‘What would you know, you bloody Jew!'