WHY AH PREFERS
JESUS CHRIST TO MAHOMET
BY MAX FLACK
Now Ah’m not a religious man. Ah takes mah religion like Ah takes mah whiskey—straight. No beating around the bush, no hosannas, no Holy Rolling, no chanting, no flagellating, no pious righteousness. Ah couldn’t tell a Bishop from a Cardinal if Ah had to. Ah guess one of them wears a taller hat than the other. Ah know who the Pope is because he has a number after his name. Not that Ah don’t pray now and then—Ah have, but Ah got to have a good reason for praying. Ah would never pray for a Mercedes Benz like Joan Baez did. The most praying Ah ever did was on an LCI. It came to a stop and the ramp went down and we must have been a million yards short of the beach. Ah started to say The Lord’s Prayer but Ah couldn’t remember the words. To this day Ah don’t know what scared me worse—not being able to remember The Lord’s Prayer or the shrapnel buzzing around my head. But it you want war stories you will have to go to Ollie North.
Ah never thought of praying to Mahomet or Allah in them days and it’s just as well. You will notice Ah calls the Prophet ‘Mahomet,’ not Mohammed; that’s what mah Pappy called him—Mahomet—and if it was good enough for mah Pappy and for Thomas Jefferson, it’s good enough for me.
Now if Ah was to start praying and Ah had to choose between Jesus Christ and Mahomet Ah would choose Christ. First of all, this Mahomet feller was too dang religious for his own good—he prayed five times a day! Five times! Rasputin only prayed four times! Jerry Falwell took a day off every now and then. Even Jesus Christ didn’t pray five times a day. If you do it right the first time there shouldn’t be any need to do it over and over again all day long. It’s redundant—a word Ah learned in college. Of course, if you can’t concentrate or don’t mean what you’re saying, it doesn’t matter how many times you pray, none of it counts.
And there is that dog thing. Ah don’t understand that. If
the shadow of a dog passes across you while you’re praying, the prayer doesn’t
count. Ah can see if it were the shadow of Paris Hilton or Britney Spears—that
might be a bit distracting, might even cause someone like St. Francis of
Assisi to lose his place in the Bible and reach for One Thousand and One
Nights.
But a dog…Muslims should do what the Scientologists have done, put some kind of a machine in their mosques—an antigravity simulator or something—that measures how hard you are praying. A feller could say his prayers right the first time. By eliminating all that running back and forth he could save at least an hour every day. Could go to the dog races or engage in some other useful activity.
Did Ah say dog races? Yes, Ah did. Dogs—that’s another thing Ah got against this Mahomet rascal. He didn’t like dogs. He wanted to kill all the black dogs because they were meaner than the red dogs and the yellow dogs. How did he know that? Was he a phrenologist? Did he study the bumps on their heads? Was he some kind of prehistoric Cesare Lombroso? Or was it just a whim? Ah don’t like religion by whim. Ah suspects some schnauzer caught him by the seat of the pants trying to sneak into Scheherazade's tent. A man that doesn’t like dogs ain’t fit company for man or beast.
Mahomet said—and you can correct me if Ah’m wrong—“If a dog drinks from the utensil of anyone of you it is essential to wash it seven times.” Seven times! That might sound logical to Lucy van Pelt who was terrified of dog germs but to most folks once would be enough provided the utensil in question is properly washed, rinsed and dried. Now Ah could be wrong about the number of times—mah memory ain’t so good—but on the face of it, seven sounds, at best, extravagant. Nonetheless, Ah’m willing to give Mahomet the benefit of the doubt.
But the Qur’an says: 5:101 “Believers! Do not ask
questions about things which if made plain and declared to you, may vex you,
causing you trouble.”
Ah guess there’s a lot about Islam that troubles and vexes me.
And that Mahomet had one nasty temper! While Christ went around making the lame walk and the blind see, Mahomet was urging his followers to smite off heads and fingertips! Fingertips! Can you imagine that! Smiting the fingertips off them! Himmler never thought of that!
Christ raised Lazarus from the dead. Did Mahomet do anything of the sort? No, but there was this poet—Asma bint Marwan. Maybe he didn’t understand her poetry; maybe it didn’t rhyme; maybe she drew the first word-picture Mohammed cartoon. “Won’t someone rid me of this woman?” he said. So one of his lowly minions snuck into her tent, removed a suckling babe from her breast and plunged his sword into her. If Christ had suggested something like that He would have been called a Nazi.
If Ah had to compare Mahomet with one historical figure it wouldn’t be Jesus Christ—it would be Adolph Hitler. Mahomet and Hitler had armies; Christ had a flock—the poor, the sick, the aged; the homeless. He gave them hope. His was a message of salvation. He threw the moneylenders out of the temple; he turned water into wine, which as a drinking man is something Ah can appreciate. He never referred to anyone as an ape or a pig—maybe as a Pharisee, but that’s not so bad, no worse than being called a Democrat. He was more like a cross between Jed Clampett and the Reverend Fulton Sheen than anything else.
Mahomet was a warrior—he was like Hitler. Christ had the Bible, Mahomet had the Qur’an and Hitler had Mein Kampf. Now Ah don’t expect to read all three—haven’t got through the Bible yet, but Ah can count the crosses in the cemetery and it brings tears to mah eyes.
Killed at the World Trade Center! Killed at the Pentagon! Daniel Pearl! Robbie Stethem! Leon Klinghoffer! Who would kill an old man in a wheelchair because of some words in a book? Himmler? Goebbels? Streicher? Bin Laden? Atta? Muqtada al-Sadr? Of course!
Died at Auschwitz! Died at Treblinka!
Christ killed no one. Ah don’t know how He would have slid into home plate with the game on the line in the ninth inning—spikes high or a fade-away slide—but Ah know He would have scored. Ah suppose if He had caught me at a cockfight Ah would have sworn off for life. That’s the kind of Man he was.
Mahomet and Hitler—there wasn’t much difference between them. Mahomet didn’t eat pork; Hitler didn’t eat meat of any kind. Mahomet didn’t drink and neither did Hitler. They both hated Jews. They were both conquerors. They both believed in brainwashing. The Nazis had their Hitler Youth; Islam has the madrassas. They were both responsible for millions of deaths. The only difference was Hitler liked dogs and was content with one woman. And, of course, he died violently. In the end he wound up no better off than Horst Wessel. At least Lenin had a tomb.
Reminds me of what General Charles Lee said after the Revolutionary War when he was approaching the end of his allotted time. He said that after he was dead he didn’t want to be buried in any church or churchyard or within a mile of any Presbyterian or Anabaptist meetinghouse because he had kept so much bad company during this life he did not wish to continue to do so in the next. Ah don’t know if Ah is ready for the eternal boredom of Heaven but there are two places Ah want to stay away from: Hitler’s Valhalla and Allah’s Paradise.
Christ died for our sins; Mahomet and Hitler made millions to die for theirs.