Too Much To Die For (rev)

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 you
spoke with deep respect would seem to be
at odds with ugly vagrant deeds that challenge
our belief you are as men all born of equal faith –
but yet you sadly shake your covered heads
forlorn and say it is God’s will, so leave it be,
and turn to walk away and mourn.

We know you made a plea to faithful then
at prayer, that they agree it is a sorry state,
agree God’s will is great for love and peace;
but wait, they aren’t the miscreants who
boldly break the faith and flout the law,
they aren’t the dispossessed who detonate
themselves in crowded shopping malls.

Whoever polled those evildoers filled with
revolutionary zeal, claimed they’d gain respect
from suicide, 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 history of shameful deeds and chequered
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, ugly deaths amongst your clan
suggests your leaders still are not the men God
filled with never-ceasing love of everyman.

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

And willing soldiers of the faith who spread
the written word in ceaseless quest to teach
the seething mass, save them from a sinless,
classless ignorance, enlighten them to reach
the state of one true faith with one true God
will surely find with greater ease the paradise
you’re said to want us all 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 livid court,
give it thought; religion teaches us consuming
love of life, enduring life which is withal
too much for anyone to die for.
© 18 September 2006, I.D. Carswell