Too much to die for

The ordinary words you said will have
to do their very best to keep your claim
for peace, your gestures did not make
the madness cease – you spoke with calm
and reverence, a quietness of great dignity,
defused the barbs, disarmed the cannons
ranged against the scowling Imams’ heads.

Alas, those words of commonsense
and deep respect would seem to be
at odds with ugly vagrant deeds that
challenge our belief you are indeed
men born of equal faith – but yet
you sadly shake your covered heads
and turn to walk away forlorn.

We know you made a plea to faithful
then at prayer, that they agreed it was
a sorry state; but wait, they aren’t the
miscreants who boldly break the faith
and flout the law, they aren’t the
dispossessed who press the detonator
causing deaths in crowded shopping malls.

Whomever polled those evildoers filled with
revolutionary zeal, claimed they’d gain respect
from suicide had lied when teaching them, said
it’s written in the holy book that God agreed
there is no crime to murder non-believers
and their families who have no rights. And what’s
the Prophet’s final word on that?

Your chequered history of shameful deeds
and acts of gross brutality which surfaced at the
Prophet’s death were all foreseen, and though
the potent word is spread from common man to
common man, the ugly deaths amongst your
clan suggests your leaders are not still the people
God would fill with never-ceasing love of everyman.

To say you can’t condemn what other leaders
may incite within their faithful flock is but a crock
of trash. Surely greater status comes from
them embracing life at your behest, not soulless
death by suicide, not soulless death amongst
the mangled innocents who die because some
zealot lies about the true and rightful peace.

And willing soldiers of the faith who spread
the written words in ceaseless quest to teach
the seething masses, save them from their sinless,
classless ignorance, enlighten them to reach
the state of one true faith with one true God
would surely find with greater ease
the paradise you’re said to gladly seek.

If this is a tenet of the faith you say predates
today’s religiosity, uniting all the ancient strands
in peace, a single faith of one true God to serve us all,
the ball resides within your seething court,
give it thought; religion teaches us consuming love
of life, enduring life which is withal
too much for anyone to die for.
© I.D. Carswell