1001 Nights With Ali
(or) My Prescription For Peace in the Middle East
(a fable)

by Robert Guffey

"To proceed, I should like to inform the honorable gentlemen and noble readers that the purpose of writing this agreeable and entertaining essay is the instruction of those who peruse it, for it abounds with highly edifying histories and excellent lessons for the people of distinction, and it provides them with the opportunity to learn the art of discourse. This essay, which I have called ‘1001 Nights With Ali,’ abounds also with splendid anecdotes that teach the reader to detect deception and to protect himself from it, as well as delight and divert him whenever he is burdened with the cares of life and the ills of this world. Always remember, it is the Supreme God who is the True Guide. Praise be to Allah, the Beneficent King, the Creator of the world and man." --a paraphrase of the foreword to The Thousand and One Nights

Is Islam a Peaceful Religion?

An Afternoon of Fire & Brimstone With Abdel Malik Ali

I spent Cinco de Mayo trapped in a room full of Arabs and Jews. I barely got out of the place alive.

I wish the above paragraph were true, but I just said that to catch your attention. The truth is, I spent Cinco de Mayo trapped in a room full of robots. Now pull up a chair, dear Shahrazad, and please let me tell you about it. You’ve tired yourself out enacting so many of your delightful stories for me. It’s about time I did the same for you, eh?

Listen:

* * * * *

Have you ever heard of an Ontological Engineer? No? Neither had I until a couple of years ago when I was dating a Philosophy major. She once asked me, "What am I going to do when I graduate?" As anyone knows, the only careers for which Philosophy majors are suited are 1) Teaching philosophy, 2) whacking off, 3) being a bum, and 4) being Ontological Engineers.

An Ontological Engineer is a Philosophy major who also has a degree in computer science. The Pentagon hires them to devise philosophical quandaries to test artificial intelligence programs. As you no doubt know, despite the sophistication of modern day computers, even the most cutting-edge AI program is incapable of distinguishing between certain subtleties that humans should be capable of navigating around rather easily. For example, these programs find it very difficult to distinguish between metaphor and reality, fiction and non-fiction, truth and lies.

If a programmer asks the AI a question like, "Who is Dracula?" the program might respond with something along these lines: "Dracula was a vampire who lived in Transylvania until 1893 when he moved to London. He was subsequently murdered in the Borgo Pass by a Texan named Quincey Morris. He has no known descendants." Conversely, the programmer might ask, "Who is George Washington?" to which the computer might respond, "George Washington was the first President of the United States."

The computer would have no way of distinguishing between Dracula and George Washington, metaphor and reality, truth and fiction. To the AI, both biographies would be of equal significance.

Back to Cinco de Mayo: I hopped on a bus and went to California State University at Long Beach because my friend had a sculpture featured in an exhibit at the University Art Gallery. The exhibit was scheduled at 6:00 p.m. I arrived on campus at around 12:30 p.m. and somehow got roped into attending a talk by an African-American Islamic lecturer named Abdel Malik Ali, Amir of Oakland, California’s Masjid Al Islam mosque. My friend’s family is from Israel and was attending the lecture for the express purpose of protesting it.

The protestors stood quietly in the back and held up signs bearing slogans like, "PREACH LOVE NOT HATE" throughout the two-hour lecture. To their credit they did not try to shout Ali down and allowed him to complete the entire speech. No attempt was made to strong arm the protestors out of the room. The proceedings remained fairly civil throughout. I give both sides credit for that.

Too bad they’re a bunch of robots, though. They’re not destined to remain that way their entire lives, of course, but as long as they insist on misinterpreting metaphors as reality both sides are going to continue to get their kids ripped to pieces, whether from homemade bombs strapped to the chests of gung-ho Palestinians with hard-ons for violence or from lead flying out of an Israeli F-16. Meatball Fulton once said, "What’s coming at you is coming from you." Both the Palestinians and the Israelis would do well to take heed of that rather simple dictum rather than its twisted corollary: MY METAPHOR IS BETTER THAN YOURS.

When I was a teenager I remember seeing an interview with Joseph Campbell, the twentieth century’s foremost scholar on mythology. He and the interviewer (it might have been Bill Moyers) were talking about interpreting religion purely as metaphor. The interviewer seemed to have some trouble grasping this concept. He said, "But would somebody actually die for a metaphor?" Campbell spread his hands in the air and said, "They do all the time."

Throughout Ali’s lecture I was sitting among the protestors in the very back of the room. Occasionally one of the protestors would turn to her companion and mumble something like, "Everything he’s saying is a lie, everything, every bit of it, 100%, God, I can’t beli--!"

I was tempted to pause the tape of reality for a moment and give her a brief lecture on the dangers of Aristotelian thinking. As Count Alfred Korzybski, the great Polish mathematician and philosopher, demonstrated in his classic 1933 book Science and Sanity, to use terms like "all" or "none" is completely ineffectual and counterproductive to rational debate. Mathematically, of course, one can never know all or none of any given set. It implies that you’ve actually studied every member of that set in order to come to your conclusion. For example, one would have to carefully interview every Jew who ever lived in order to successfully make the statement, "All Jews are usurious," or interview every Palestinian who ever lived in order to claim, "All Palestinians are suicide bombers." To prevent oneself from making such a mistake, Korzybski recommended that people avoid using terms like "all" or "none" since they serve no useful function and lead to prejudicial, backwards thinking. In terms of mathematics, the statement, "Everything Abdel Malik Ali says is a lie" is the same as the statement "All Jews are usurious." Mathematically, they’re equally invalid and just as impossible to prove. This is the thinking of pre-programmed robots, not human beings.

Let’s examine the claim. "Everything Abdel Malik Ali says is a lie." I took extensive notes during the lecture, and can prove this is untrue. During the course of the two-hour lecture Ali uttered a number of statements that were valid and worthy of consideration. He also uttered a number of statements that indicated he’d mixed a few too many Fruit Loops with his halvah in the morning.

Let’s Start With the Positive, Shall We?
1) He criticized the Patriot Act as being a flimsy excuse to erode the civil rights of Americans, a charge all too few Americans are making these days. To hear this subject addressed in a public lecture on a University campus was more than welcome.

2) He rightly pointed out a linguistic bit of silliness that has always bugged me, namely the strange assumption that the term "Semite" applies only to Jews. As a professor of English, I think it’s only fair that words be used properly. The truth is that anyone who is indigenous to the Middle East is a Semite. Therefore, if someone maligns an Arab unfairly on the basis of his race then that person is being "Anti-Semitic" just as much as he would have been if he had persecuted a member of the Jewish race. If I had time, I’d tell you all about the misuse of the word "momentarily" which also grinds my gears, but that would take too much time. Onward . . . .

3) He made the point that the U.S. government has used the tactic of fear since at least the 1940s to appropriate more money for the military. First, they falsely magnified the threat of the Russians during World War II and manufactured Cold War paranoia for the express purpose of maintaining a grip on wartime-level appropriations. He pointed out that when he was growing up, the people of the United States lived in absolute terror of Russians attacking U.S. soil, so much so that they were building shelters in their own homes to survive an imminent nuclear attack. Yesterday it was the Russians, Ali said, now it’s Islamic terrorists. And the purpose of this fear-mongering, as in the 1950s, is to appropriate more money for the military-industrial complex. Corporations like Raytheon run this country, he said, and make profit through manufactured wars. As an example of this fear-mongering, Ali made the point that the U.S. government is constantly making official statements such as, "We’re surprised terrorists haven’t hit the food supply because it’s so vulnerable." If you were really concerned about such a possibility, would you actually go out of your way to announce your Achille’s Heel on national television? Ali underscored the fact that such statements are not to be taken at face value. The statement is not intended to be a genuine warning at all, but a trigger: a trigger of fear.

4) To top it all off, even while his personal friends are getting rich off the war in Iraq, President Bush is rapidly driving the U.S. into bankruptcy.

Valid statements all.

Now Let’s Move Onto the Negative, Shall We?
1) He claims that the Bush family is entirely controlled by Zionist Jews. That’s odd, considering the fact that Prescott Bush, Dubya’s grandfather, was convicted under the Trading With the Enemy Act back in 1942 for conducting business deals with the Nazis during World War II (Loftus and Aarons 360). If the Bush family has ever been controlled by any shadowy group of imperialist demagogues, I suspect Zionist Jews were probably the very last people to be included on the invitation list. Except, maybe, to provide entertainment after the borsch-eating contest.

2) Speaking of entertainment, Ali believes that the entire entertainment industry is controlled by Zionist Jews. In fact, all media are controlled by Zionist Jews. Here’s an exact quote: "Zionist Jews own the media. That’s common knowledge. C’mon, everyone knows this" (shrugs).

3) His main evidence for this assertion was that a close friend of his knows Whoopi Goldberg. Whoopi, you see, confided in this friend during a rare moment of candor (EXTREME CLOSE-UP ON the sweat beads trickling down Whoopi’s neck as she swivels her head from side by side looking to see if any spies have managed to infiltrate the alleyway) that she changed her name to "Whoopi Goldberg" because that’s what you have to do in order to get steady work in Hollywood. Okay. I’m sure that name change must have really flummoxed all those Jews in Hollywood. ("Funny, Sol, she don’t look Jewish.") That’d be as improbable as an African-American man willingly changing his Christian name to something silly like "Abdel Malik Ali" simply to become famous on the Islamic lecture circuit. I hear it’s good work if you can get it. Those dudes make a bundle in donations. Maybe Whoopi should think about changing her name again and starting a whole new career. Whoopi 14X has a nice ring to it. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Whoopi in a movie in a long time. Perhaps one of the Zionists finally got wise to her scam?

4) Ali claims that Palestinian "freedom fighters" don’t target children–not on purpose, at least. The children who are killed, however, should be considered nothing more than "collateral damage." Minor faux pas like this happen during every struggle for liberation, didn’t you know? During the course of the lecture Ali made it clear that he didn’t have a very high opinion of George Bush. I wonder why. After all, they seem to speak the same language.

5) After a homosexual Jewish man asked Ali a pointed question, I learned that Muslims can indeed be homosexuals, but they have to keep their mouths shut about it. Ali said to the man, "I get it. All y’all got your little thing goin’ on, but we can’t go into your bedrooms to see what’s happenin’ in there. That’s up to you. If you keep it to yourself, we can’t stop you. But the fact is, homosexuality’s wrong. If you want me to stand here and condone it, I can’t. To any Muslim, it’s an illegal sexual activity." As this essay progresses, Bush and Ali start to look more and more similar, don’t they? If these two gentlemen are ever trapped in an elevator together, at least they’ll have a lot to discuss. Perhaps they might find themselves becoming a little more intimate than mere friends . . . .

6) If the U.S. invades Iran, this will not only lead to Muslim-control of the Middle East, but eventually Muslim-control of the entire planet. Allah be praised. I can’t wait. Let’s get this party started. After having spent an entire afternoon with a whole room full of these dudes, I can imagine the bright and happy world that would rise from the ashes of this Zionist-controlled hell-planet. Only one problem: Who will be left behind to feed us our daily news and entertainment?

7) Another headline from Ali: "There’s no such thing as a Muslim who believes in the separation of Church and State." Which can only mean that this imminent Muslim-controlled paradise will be a theocratic one. It certainly can’t be a democracy. I find this interesting. During the entire lecture, Ali would invoke various amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Ali is definitely for the Freedom of Speech–when it suits him, of course. He’s definitely for the Freedom to Bear Arms–when it suits him, of course. But he’s strongly against one of the main pillars of American democracy, namely the separation of Church and State. Therefore, to sum it all up: Ali is pro-theocracy, anti-democracy, and anti-American. Why don’t we make him President? He’s got all the qualifications.

8) I learned that people often come up to Mr. Ali and ask him questions like, "Is Islam a peaceful religion?" I learned the answer to that question. Here it is: "If you’re friendly to us, you will find us to be a friendly religion. If you’re not friendly, well, you might not find us to be so peaceful. If you steal our resources, if you rape our children, if you murder our people, you will find Islam to be a religion of terror. We are not going to sit back and allow ourselves to be oppressed by you." In situations like these, it’s always important to keep in mind Mark Twain’s famous dictum: "The only people qualified to use the word ‘we’ are kings, lawyers, and tapeworms." I also learned that "The two-state solution is off the table. We will have one-state. In order for there to be peace in the Middle East, the Muslims have to control it. Just like we controlled it before, we have to control it again." However, Ali did offer one ray of sunshine in all this madness: "We’ll give you the right of return. You can go back to Germany or Poland or Brooklyn, wherever all y’all came from. You can go back there." So, you see, he’s not entirely hateful.

9) When asked if he hated Jews, Ali replied, "I hate Zionist Jews." He was then asked, "Do you believe most Jews are Zionists?" Ali replied, "Of course I believe most Jews are Zionists, that’s the problem." He was then asked, "So does that mean you hate most Jews?" Ali replied, "If most Jews are Zionists, and I hate Zionists, then that means I hate most Jews. So, yeah?" (Shrugs.)

10) Possibly the weirdest thing about the event was what I call "the Muslim death-chant." The first time it happened it almost made me leap out of my skin. It happened like this: For emphasis, Ali pointed at a woman in the front row and said, "We two are not meant to get along. You are I.D.F. [Israeli Defense Force]! And I. . . I am Hezzbollah!" At which point, in perfect synchronization, every single Muslim in the room did their best Pavlov’s dog impersonation and launched into a guttural death-chant that sounded something like "HOHDIMAHOHDIMAH-HUHR!" At the end of the last syllable they kind of beat their chest, crossed their arms, then resumed their robotic demeanor. The only other times I’ve ever seen such well-rehearsed synchronization was in German newsreels from the 1930’s, or maybe back in high school when I used to watch all the cheerleaders practicing their moves during lunch time. Sometimes I got the feeling Ali was making up excuses to say the word "Hezzbollah" just to see that crazy routine all over again. Why not? I would if I were him. Hell, man, that’s real power.

11) Ali claims that all children are innocent, perfect beings. In fact, he said (and I quote), "All children are Muslims." Let’s explain the logic of that statement for a moment. A true Muslim, you see, is a perfect being; therefore, all children are Muslims, no matter their race. Even Jews are born Muslims. Even gazelles are born Muslims. Even Jennifer Lopez was born Muslim. When some people are born, they fall out of the stupid-tree and hit every branch on the way down; there must be a hell of a lot of broken branches at the bottom of Ali’s tree.

12) Let’s discuss the assassination of Malcolm X for a moment. Ali’s all bent out of shape about it. He has a right to be. The ironic part of it is that he thinks Zionist Jews did Malcolm in–of course, their Kabalistic super powers of hypnosis and Svengali-like mind control would have been perfect for the job. The truth is, however, that the real research indicates the exact opposite: that members of the Nation of Islam itself helped engineer the assassination. The fact that the FBI’s COINTELPRO program had infiltrated the organization probably accelerated the dissolution of the organization considerably. That such a politically powerful organization would be so thoroughly infiltrated by government spies shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. More to the point, political researcher Dave Emory has underscored the fact that Louis Farrakhan, who managed to take up Malcolm’s mantle in the wake of his assassination, publicly called for the death of Malcolm X immediately after Malcolm broke with the Nation of Islam and condemned Elijah Muhammad’s leadership. Malcolm broke away from both the Nation of Islam and Elijah Muhammad for four reasons:

A) The Nation of Islam barred any cooperation between black people and white people. Malcolm supported this segregation himself until he visited South Africa and saw for himself how successful the cooperation between whites and blacks had been in fighting the apartheid regime. He concluded that a political alliance between the white and black communities in America was the only hope for the liberation of both races.

B) Malcolm uncovered the hypocritical, unethical behavior of Elijah Muhammad. Muhammad demanded strict moral behavior from his followers including outright celibacy, and yet had impregnated a bevy of his own secretaries behind the scenes. The true irony of the situation is this: All these women gave birth out of wedlock, and were then fined and censored by the Nation of Islam for the "immoral behavior." This was a great blow to Malcolm who quickly became disillusioned with the organization as a result.

C) Another problem that Malcolm had with the Nation of Islam was their sources of funding. Despite the fact that Muhammad condemned any cooperation between blacks and whites, he had no problem accepting massive donations from none other than George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party, and H.L. Hunt, an avowed racist who promoted the return of all black Americans to Africa, beyond a doubt one of the most far-right oil barons in Texas. As anyone who has studied the murder of John F. Kennedy will know, H.L. Hunt and his associates had so many connections to the assassination plot that his involvement is almost beyond question. (Dallas journalist Jim Marrs touches on some of these connections in his comprehensive 1989 book Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy.) Why a white racist like Hunt would be funding a radical black organization should be obvious, and ties into why Louis Farrakhan later developed such close connections to white supremacists like Tom Metzger and Robert Miles, a Ku Klux Klansman who was eventually imprisoned for firebombing school buses as a way of protesting compulsory busing programs in Michigan. The reason is that both organizations have the same goal: the segregation of the races. Malcolm realized what a mistake this was politically and did not wish to hop into bed with the very same people whose influence he was attempting to defeat. Given Hunt’s known connections to various U.S. intelligence agencies, his financing of the Nation of Islam might also have been connected to the government’s infiltration of the organization as a vehicle for agitation and provocation.

D) The last reason is the strangest. As Fortean journalist Frank Edwards used to say, "Strange but true!" One of the central tenets of the Nation of Islam was that the entire white race had been genetically engineered in a laboratory by a mad scientist named "Yakob" many centuries ago. I would give anything to go back in time and be a fly on the wall when Malcolm was presented with this stunning information. I imagine it was probably similar to the looks of consternation on the faces of the "true believers" who have worked hard to ascend through the various degrees of Scientology only to be told in the end that the sins of the entire human race were manufactured 75 million years ago by an extraterrestrial warlord named Xenu who is now imprisoned in a wire cage on a remote island in the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of Morocco (Corydon 365). I imagine the reaction would be two-fold: 1) I very much wish to believe this, because to reject it would require admitting that I’ve been a fool for the past ____ number of years, and 2) Where’s my chainsaw? Obviously, Malcolm managed to find some sort of middle ground and left the organization without dismembering anybody. It should also be noted, as Dave Emory has pointed out in his lectures, that promoting pseudo-scientific ideas (like that of the white race having been "evil mutations" genetically engineered in a laboratory), serves the purposes of segregationists like Robert Miles, Tom Metzger, George Lincoln Rockwell, and H.L. Hunt because such jabberwocky can only discredit the Nation of Islam and any related black organization in the eyes of mainstream America. Farrakhan, by the way, promulgates this bizarre science fictional genesis story to this very day. Is it possible that this nonsense was a direct result of COINTELPRO influences in the organization?

A full investigation of COINTELPRO’s involvement in The Nation of Islam and the assassination of Malcolm X can be found in Karl Evanzz’s 1992 book The Judas Factor. I recommend it for anyone who wants to know how easy it is for certain intelligence agencies to yank the cranks of the exact same political organizations who profess hatred for them.

Much of the preceding information about Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam was derived from an excellent lecture by Dave Emory entitled "The Assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. & Malcolm X" delivered on Feb 27, 1993 at Foothills College in Palo Alto, CA. A transcript of the lecture is available at <http://www.theconspiracy.us/9408/0027.html>. Recordings of other lectures by Emory concerning related topics are available at <www.spitfirelist.com>.

So ends our interlude concerning the life and death of Malcolm X, dear Shahrazad. Care to take a hashish break or would you prefer to continue? Very well, my child. I can see you’re eager to hear the rest of the tale . . . .

My Lunch With the Elders of Zion
The first session of this Woodstock-like love-fest ended at around 2:30 p.m. The Muslim Association drifted off to the Food Court for lunch. So did the Jewish protestors. (The Food Court is right next to the Student Union, where the meeting was held.) Since I was with my friend, of course, I sat with the protestors. Some of them seemed to wonder what I was doing there. I was going to tell them in a thick Irish brogue that I was drunken mick looking for a limey to blow up and had staggered into the wrong meeting by accident. Thankfully, nobody asked, so this contingency remained unnecessary.

The Muslims sat at one table. About fifteen feet away, the Jewish protestors sat at another table. A more motley crew I’ve never seen. Sitting at one table was a Jewish African-American gentleman in his late 50s dressed like Bob Marley, holding in his hand an immense bamboo staff that had a silver Star of David attached to the top. Sitting next to him was the homosexual Jewish man who’d asked Ali the question about homosexuality’s place in the Muslim religion. Next to him were two beach-blonde girls in their late teens who would have looked right at home in drill team outfits. Another guy was a rabbi who taught classes on the Kabbalah at UC Irvine; he identified himself as a professional comedian and could do pretty good impersonations of Detroit rap singers. I sat between my friend and a big dude in his early twenties who looked like he’d been weight-lifting hundred-pound Torahs a few too many years.

It was a strange melange of personalities. At a certain point one of the blonde girls gestured at the black man’s sandwich and said, "I want what he has!" Instantly Bob Marley said, "Honey, you can have all of what I got!" The girls sort of backed away slowly and retreated to the far end of the table. I was the only one who laughed, whereas everyone else either didn’t hear it or chose to ignore it. The black dude caught my eye and winked. I held up my thumb. He went back to seductively stroking his bamboo staff.

My friend began talking to the big dude in the red shirt sitting next to me. The conversation revealed some interesting details. It turned out these same protestors have followed Ali around from University to University. I guess they distribute the same exact flyers before each lecture, to which Ali responds by delivering the same exact speech all over again. I imagine the entire assembly simply teleporting from room to room, reenacting the same scene from campus to campus like Sisyphus in that old Greek myth, condemned to roll the same rock up a hill for all eternity. In a way, it could be seen as a metaphor for the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the same circular arguments replayed over and over again just in case a single carbon-based life form was born in the past two minutes who hadn’t yet experienced the profound pleasure of being forced to hear them. Apparently, neither side has anything better to do; helping the sick and the poor would be too trivial a task. Let me tell you, the day I find myself in a room full of religious fanatics who’ve taken even two seconds out of their lives to give a quarter to a homeless man on the street is the same day I’ll grow wings and hit a high-C note on a bagpipe. Onward with the story, fairest Shahrazad . . . .

Red Shirt raised his big beefy arm and gestured toward the table full of Muslims fifteen feet away. In a ticktock monotone he said, "LOOK AT THEM. LOOK AT WHAT THEY DO." I turned to look, and I saw all the women sitting at one table and all the men sitting at another table. I couldn’t help but notice, as well, one particular woman who I’d been eyeing during the lecture. She was stunning. Really stood out from the crowd. The others looked like the Arab equivalent of haus fraus, but not this chick. She looked like an Arabian princess, like that cartoon character in Disney’s Aladdin given three dimensions. For a moment I toyed with the idea of approaching her table, snapping my fingers, pointing my index finger directly at her and saying, "Hey, honey, you want to have my terrorist?" But then I thought better of it . . . .

So I turned back to Red Shirt and said, "Yeah? So?"

He said, "LOOK AT THEM." His fingers were digging into the bench; cracks formed in the table. His voice grew deeper and louder. "THEY’RE FUCKED. THEY’RE FUCKED!"

"Excuse me," I said, "I can’t remember the name for it right now, but isn’t there, like, some Jewish ritual in which men and women are segregated?"

He just stared at me for a moment. He said, "YES . . . BUT THAT’S DIFFERENT."

"What’s different about it?"

He looked at me as if the answer should be obvious. He said, "THEY’RE FUCKED. THEY’RE FUCKED!"

My friend said to him, "Saying shit like that isn’t going to help anything."

He just stared at her. In his robotic tone he said: "YOU’RE RIGHT. IT WON’T." Then he went back to eating his Chinese salad (sans chicken).

"The only thing that’s going to help is communication," she said.

Red Shirt took his time pulling the plastic fork out from between his clenched teeth, strategically scraping his pearly whites on the plastic, thus creating an ear-piercing fingernails-on-chalkboard sound. He pointed the fork at her. "COMMUNICATION IS DEAD. PEOPLE CAN’T TALK TO EACH OTHER ANYMORE."

"Then who do they talk to?" I said.

"THEIR TELEVISIONS."

Being conversant with the work of media critic Marshall McLuhan and the field of postmodern literary theory that has arisen in his wake, I couldn’t help but say, "Nah, I don’t think that’s quite true. The televisions are actually talking to each other."

He just stared at me again for a long time. At no point in the last five minutes had the slightest trace of a smile distorted the stoic expression frozen on his face. He said: "YOU’RE WRONG." Back to his salad. "WE’RE AT WAR."

"You can’t think of it as a war," my friend said. "If you think that way, you’re just being like Ali."

Red Shirt paused for a long moment while he masticated a piece of iceburg lettuce sprinkled with bits of red onion, then said, "YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T MAJOR IN PUBLIC RELATIONS."

"No," my friend said, "I’m an art major."

Another long pause. The sour, somber look on his face resembled that of a man choking on a lemon peel. "YOU AND I SEE THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY," he said.

I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I just started laughing. "Hey, are you ticklish?" I said, wiggling my fingers in front of him. "Can I tickle you?"

"NO."

"Have you ever seen any Marx Brothers movies?"

"NOT LATELY."

"I recommend you watch their first seven - Coconuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera, and A Day at the Races - all in a row. It might make you feel better."

He didn’t say another word to me after that. Maybe he hates Jewish comedians. Who knows?

At one point or another my friend got up from the table and left me stranded among these madmen. She was gone for a long time. A rabbit turned to me and asked me if he could butter my pocket watch, then Bob Marley thrust his staff out in front of him, nearly taking my head off, and said, "Look!"

I turned. My friend, who’s about five foot three with boots on, was standing in front of Ali and about three dozen muscle-bound Muslims. She seemed to be having a conversation with Ali. And he was actually listening.

One of the women said, "Look at that. David and Goliath."

Bob Marley laughed and said, "Yeah, and she’s Goliath."

"Look at her," someone said, "she doesn’t look intimidated at all."

"Oh, trust me," I said, "she’s not."

A few moments later the conversation ended and the swarm of Muslims buzzed away. My friend approached the table and said, "They agreed to begin the second session with questions and answers."

Everybody was stunned. "He’s actually going to allow that?" one woman said. "How is that possible? What did you do?"

"I just asked him," she said.

I guess nobody there had ever thought of taking that approach before. Red Shirt, the guy who insisted that communication was dead, didn’t bother to comment on the fact that his theory had just been proven wrong. He kept eating his salad, looking more morose than ever before.

Go Ask Ali
We returned to the room in the Student Union where the next session was to begin. While waiting, I saw three protestors studying large glossy photos hanging in the window. The photos apparently depicted various atrocities committed against the Palestinians by Israeli soldiers. One photo depicted an Israeli soldier aiming a gun at an old woman.

One female protestor said, "Look, that was done in PhotoShop, you can tell."

"What?" I said. "How do you know?"

"The resolution in the background is different."

"It is? Looks the same to me."

"I work with photographs all the time."

"Okay. Still looks like a real photo."

"It’s not. I-It’s just impossible."

"Impossible? I don’t get it. Are you, like, saying it’s against the laws of physics for a soldier to abuse his power or something? I guess that’s never happened before, right?"

"No, I’m not saying that. It’s just highly unlikely, that’s all."

"Why is it unlikely?"

"It just is. Have you ever been to Israel?"

"No . . . but you can cruise around Los Angeles on any random night and watch police officers abusing their power for fun and profit. Why the fuck would it be any different in Israel?"

She didn’t respond at first. "It’s a fake," she whispered.

Suddenly, I was very glad that PhotoShop didn’t exist when the first photographs were taken of Holocaust victims in Auschwitz.

The second session began at 4:00 p.m. on the dot. I sat with my friend on the left side of the room. I had my notebook out ready to begin writing. I couldn’t help but notice the words on the screen behind Ali: "The Martyrdom of Malcolm X and COINTELPRO." Huh, I thought, now we’re finally going to hear something relevant. I wonder if they’ll get around to mentioning Yakob and his weird laboratory where all my ancestors were created lo these many years ago.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see one of the mean-looking Muslim dudes staring down at me. "Could you move to the other side of the room?" he said.

I stared at him. "Huh? Why?"

He gestured toward the right. "We need all the men to sit over there, on that side of the room."

I glanced over to the right and saw that nothing but men, mostly Muslim, were sitting there. I glanced back to where I was sitting and realized I was the only man in that section. Oh, I thought, it’s another kooky religious thing. Okay. Cool. Whatever. No weirder than having to sing the National Anthem every god damn morning back in freakin’ elementary school. So I immediately got up and sat on the other side of the room. And by "other side of the room," I mean only about five feet away.

Enter: this middle-aged redheaded woman who’d been eating kosher sandwiches in between the cheerleaders and the Bob Marley lookalike during the break. She sat down next to her husband. Muslimdude came over, put his hand on Husband’s shoulder, and said, "Could you move to the other side of the room?"

Husband stared at him. "Huh?" he said. "Why?"

"We need all the men to sit over there, on that side of the room."

Husband glanced to his right, saw all of us sitting there, at which point the light of realization dawned in his eyes. He started to get up.

Wife said, "Why does he have to move?"

"It just has to be that way," Muslimdude said.

Wife said, "That’s outrageous, I’ve never heard of such a thing!"

Husband was looking at all of us. It seemed to me like he just wanted to move. Muslimdude was getting more and more exasperated. He just stood there, pointing toward our side of the room.

"You people have no right to force him to move," Wife said.

Bob Marley, who was sitting in the row ahead of me, turned toward Wife and said, "Hey, listen, just tolerate it for now, okay?"

"I refuse to tolerate this behavior, why, I--!"

One of Red Shirt’s friends, who was sitting right next to me, said to her, "It’s just like a _______." (He reeled off the name of that Jewish ceremony where men and women are segregated, I can’t remember it right now–and I don’t really want to bother looking it up, okay?)

"But that’s in a synagogue!" Wife said. "This is a public University! They don’t own this place. Do they think they can walk into a place and just . . . just take it over?"

I almost laughed at the irony of that statement, but nobody quite seemed to get the humor except for me. I just groaned and put my face in my hands. My friend had done an honorable thing by confronting Ali and politely asking him if he would allow questions and answers before the second session. Ali, to his credit, politely agreed. Now this momzer has to waltz in and ruin it for everybody.

This useless distraction delayed the beginning of the meeting only by a few minutes. Soon, however, the Muslims got wise and just decided to let this one go. In the end Wife was the one who came off looking like a schmiel, not the Muslims. And Husband . . . well, I don’t know if there’s a Yiddish word for pussy-whipped, but if so I would have used it right here (if you’re Yiddish, please fill in the blank): __________.

Ali announced that the meeting would begin with questions and answers. "Since the young lady in the front here is the one who requested this, we’ll let her begin."

My friend deferred to the woman sitting next to her: "Have you ever been to Israel?"

Ali said, "No. They probably wouldn’t let me go over there. They’ve got check points you have to go through, you know. I don’t know if I’d be welcome."

"I’m not surprised you haven’t been there. If you had, you wouldn’t be saying some of these things that you’re saying. They’re just not true. For example, how can you say there are Jew-only roads in Israel?" (This was a comment he’d made during the first session.)

"I don’t have to be there to know it’s true," Ali said. "But I’d like to go to Israel. I’d like to go just to see the indomitable spirit of the Muslim people managing to survive in an apartheid state. The problem is, a whole lot of Israelis are living in a state of denial. Do you think the Palestinians are an oppressed people?"

With only a brief hesitation, the woman replied, "In many ways they are."

A different woman spoke up and said she felt sorry for what had happened to the Palestinians over the years. She even apologized for it.

Ali replied, "If you’re so sorry, why don’t you give the land back? Everybody says they’re so sorry. Let’s forgive and forget. Let’s live in peace. Why don’t you give the land back?"

The woman replied, "Should the United States give L.A. back to Mexico?"

Ali didn’t respond to that question. He continued talking: "If you want to be friends, right the wrongs. Otherwise, there’s no reason to talk. Go back to pre-1948 and then we’ll talk about it."

I thought that was one of the most revealing quotes of the evening. I mean, anybody who requires the invention of a time machine in order to negotiate a problem is definitely unworkable.

The funniest exchange of the session, however, was when a woman stood up and said, "Do you believe Jesus lived in the same region where Israel is now?"

"Of course," Ali said, "that’s something we can both agree on."

I thought it was amazing that the one point both sides could agree on was the only one that was historically in doubt. Nobody knows for sure if Jesus even existed, but that’s the one point both sides could get behind? I would have been just as shocked if Ali had said, "Well, at least we can both agree that Puff the Magic Dragon was born in the Middle East. That goes without saying, right?"

Even if Jesus did exist, the fact is that by now he has become nothing more–and nothing less–than a METAPHOR. But a metaphor for what: Peace or Sacrifice? Either way, a metaphor that martyrs all around the world choose to die for every single day. Joseph Campbell was definitely right.

The Q&A began to wind down when Wife felt compelled to open the hole in her face and ask an eight-minute long question interspersed with irrelevant autobiographical details. Reduced down to its essentials, the question was pretty much as follows: "How can you say that the Israelis have no right to live in that region given the fact that the whole world already agreed to give the region away back in 1917 when the League of Nations decided to divide it into separate nation-states?"

I thought to myself, What do you mean ‘the whole world’?

Ali responded, "What do you mean ‘the whole world’?"

Wife said, "I mean the League of Nations."

I thought, The League of Nations isn’t the whole world.

Ali responded, "The League of Nations isn’t the whole world. The League of Nations had no right to give away someone else’s country."

Wife had little to say to that. I thought, God damn, these people are some of the worst debaters I’ve ever seen. I mean, after a whole ninety minute break you’d think you’d be able to lead off with a better question than, "Have you ever been to Israel?"

Anyone even vaguely schooled in logic and argumentation could immediately point out what’s wrong with this approach. There’s a reason why historians are barred from employing primary sources in their scholarly work. Primary sources are colored by emotion and selective perception. The argument "I’ve been to Israel, you haven’t" merely gives Ali another opportunity to make his point again about the Israelis living in a state of denial. If someone firmly believes you’re living in a state of denial, it doesn’t matter how well-traveled you are. Your word won’t mean anything to them.

After the meeting I asked one young woman about Ali’s allegation concerning Jew-only roads in Israel. First she told me there weren’t any at all. Then she said there were, but they only lead to Jewish settlements. Then she told me she didn’t know. She wasn’t lying, of course, she was just confused. Despite the fact that she’d been to Israel many times, she had no answer to the question. Does this mean she was mentally defective in some way? No. It simply means that having lived in a country doesn’t make you an expert in it.

If someone from another country asked me if there were white-only roads and black-only roads in Los Angeles, I would say, "Yes, there are. But they aren’t marked that way on the map. You just have to figure it out, sometimes the hard way."

Now if that same person asked me where the best place was to buy heroin in Los Angeles, I wouldn’t be able to tell them. Does that mean I’ve never lived in Los Angeles? No, it means I’ve never bought heroin in Los Angeles. Living in Los Angeles doesn’t necessarily make me an expert in every aspect of it. Some people can live in Los Angeles their entire lives and never leave their immediate neighborhood. Some people live and die on the same damn block before they even hit the age of eighteen. Those people could tell you a lot about white-only roads in L.A., but they might not be able to tell you about the best place to buy a baguette.

This is why the question "Have you ever been to Israel?" was really a waste of an opportunity. Ali agreed to open the floor to questions, but the chosen questions were ultimately meaningless. Not one of the people who had arrived to debate Ali could source any facts. They hadn’t bothered to do any hardcore research. They hid behind their heritage as if it was a "Get Out of Jail Free" Card. Or more specifically, a "I Don’t Have To Do Any Research Because I Already Know I’m Right" Card. It’s fine to have this attitude, but don’t claim to be an effective debater because of it. If you show up to "dialogue" with a Muslim, how about reading the Koran first? Same goes for a Muslim. Read the freakin’ Torah? Why not? Will it cause your head to spontaneously combust? Everyone in that room should be forced to take comparative religion classes as soon as possible.

All in all, some of Ali’s responses were educational, but not in the way he probably intended them to be. In fact, that could pretty much sum up the whole event. I took a lot out of it, but not quite what either side would have wanted me to.

I did want to stay and hear the lecture about Malcolm X and COINTELPRO. I wanted to know if Ali had ever read John A. Williams’ book The Man Who Cried I Am, an obscure but important novel set in the late ’60s that involves a U.S. government contingency plan to toss thousands of minorities into concentration camps. Though ostensibly fictional, some believe that Williams based the book on actual documents he got his hands on while working as a journalist. The plan, called "King Alfred" in the novel, sounds eerily similar to what’s happening on Guantanamo Bay right now. It would have been interesting to hear Ali’s take on what might be an important piece of literary history, but instead there was an immediate exodus of protestors out of that room at the end of the Q&A, which I thought was unfortunate. They probably could have learned something from the lecture. Alas, I couldn’t stay either. I had an art exhibit to attend. That was the main reason I was there, after all. I hadn’t expected this detour into the Twilight Zone.

Nonetheless, I was satisfied with the experience. I’ve now got all three major religions under my belt. Last October, purely as a sociological experiment, I attended a massive Billy Graham rally at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. I found it quite invigorating being surrounded by thousands of people who all want the world to end yesterday. Please remind me to tell you about that little incident sometime.

Having now shared close quarters with Christians, Jews, and Arabs, I can attempt to answer the key question . . . .

If I had a choice, and I had to be stuck in a room full of fanatical Christians, fanatical Jews, or fanatical Arabs, who would I choose? Though this is definitely a quizzer, I think I’d have to pick the Born Agains. At least you know the hardcore Christians are definitely into twisted, kinky sex. I mean, at least we’d have that much in common. You can’t really be assured of that when it comes to the Arabs and the Jews. By the way, perhaps that’s why the Christians seem far less angry than the Arabs and the Jews. The immediate after-effect of any perverted sex act usually carries with it a calm, soothing effect. I recommend it. (Allow me yet another brief tangent, fair Shahrazad. Isn’t it weird that "sodomy" was named after Sodom and not Gomorrah, when the word "Gomorrah" more accurately reflects what it feels like to be sodomized? Things like that never fail to amuse me. What would the Buddhists say about such zen-like koans? I can’t help but recall what Confucius once said to me: "‘Tis better to engage in a crazed orgy with a bunch of Christians than spend 1001 nights with your forehead stapled to the floor.")

How To Bring Peace To the Middle East
After having spent an afternoon stuck in the middle of a all-out holy war, you might wonder if I have a prescription for change. I do. Please listen closely, my dearest Shahrazad. I should be allowed to appear on both Israeli and Palestinian television to tell the following story: When I was ten years old I was a fan of a super hero comic book called The Defenders written by a fellow named J.M. DeMatteis. The book starred off-beat outsiders and misanthropes like The Hulk, Doctor Strange, The Sub-Mariner, The Silver Surfer, The Valkrie, and something called The Gargoyle. In one issue (hold on a minute while I pull it out of the closet . . . issue #115, to be exact) four of these characters get sucked into this alternate dimension that resembles a Dr. Seuss book. Except for our main characters, the entire issue is purposely drawn to mimic the good doctor’s artistic techniques. Our Heroes get involved in a war between two different races of funny little creatures who speak in rhyme. They’ve been at war for centuries. At the end of the issue, we learn the reason for the war. One side claims they live in a place called "Here" and the other side lives in a place called "There," while their enemies claim they live "Here" and the other side lives "There." They can’t agree which side should lay claim to the name "Here." That’s the entire reason for the war.

Now, if I were to go on the Jim Lehrer Newshour and repeat that story, it would pretty much just shut down the whole problem. Everyone in the Middle East would feel so silly, they would instantly drop their weapons, break into tears, and give each other great big bear hugs. But until that’s allowed to happen, I’m afraid the Middle East is screwed.

(The weird thing is, whenever I tell people this story, I often leave out the fact that the story is from an obscure comic book called The Defenders because I don’t want to bother explaining what the hell that is. So I just tell them it’s an actual Dr. Seuss book. Invariably, at least one person will say, "Hey, I remember reading that book!" Of course, they don’t remember any such thing, they just think they do. Which means DeMatteis did his job rather nicely. Far better than Abdel Malik Ali.)

At the end of the day, Ali didn’t come off too well. He was good at reeling off well-rehearsed slogans that were actually intended to fire up the Muslims in the room more than sway the uninitiated. My gut instinct after hearing him speak for over two hours was that he was the kind of guy who lacks confidence and needs to surround himself with yes-men 24/7, a pissant martinet who got his fingers stuck between a "Louis Farrakhan Sings Calypso Hits" eight-track and the top of the tape deck way back in ’78 and never managed to get them out again. He’s the kind of functionary who’d sit behind a desk at the DMV and screw you over by shifting your appointment around at the last minute just for the pleasure of hearing the frustration in your voice and watching the blue vein bulge out of your right temple, the kind of pain in the backside who wears an orange coat on the side of the freeway and purposely waves that little red flag above his head when he doesn’t need to just to see traffic back up for six miles.

One woman in the audience compared Ali to Hitler, but that’s silly. At least Hitler had the capability of converting people to his cause. All Ali can do is couch-surf from campus to campus collecting spare change donations from hungry students while preparing for the imminent dawn of a Novo Muslim Ordo Seclorum. Well, good luck, Sahib. Maybe you’ll treat the world better than the cabal of Zionist Jews who hired me to write this article, but I doubt it.

I have a feeling that all the protestors I spent the afternoon with on Cinco de Mayo would be a little annoyed by this article if they ever read it. After all, I didn’t trash Ali for 9,000 words. I actually managed to say some positive things about the man here and there and you’re not supposed to do that. You’re just supposed to see the world their way and shut the eff up. Fanatics come in many flavors. Some of them are goyim and some of them are infidels. I prefer orange sherbet myself.

Before I go, let me tell you one last story:

When I was unemployed about a year ago, my friend Wendy said to me, "You should think about getting on S.S.I."

"Huh?" I said. "I don’t have a disability."

"Sure you do," she said.

"What’re you talking about? What’s my disability?"

She paused for a second, then with utter sincerity said, "You see things too clearly."

The sad side effect of this disability is that if I end up dead over this article, you won’t know exactly who to blame.

I say pin it on Whoopi. She needs the publicity.

* * * * *

Well, that was a delightful little tale, wasn’t it, my child? In fact, I believe I shall - oh, my! It seems dear Shahrazad has expired due to a strange mixture of amazement and boredom. I must inform her father. Vizier! Take this message down at once: "I’m afraid the bitch is dead. If you have any other daughters, please send them along posthaste. I love nothing more than to hear fantastic stories. Alas, the real world is often stranger and far more tragic. Dear Shahrazad discovered this the hard way. Try not to follow in her delicate footsteps. Let the Supreme God be your True Guide. Praise be to Allah, the Beneficent King, the Creator of the world and man."

Works Cited

Corydon, Bent. L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1987.

DeMatteis, J.M. and Don Perlin. The Defenders. No. 115, Jan. 1983.

Emory, Dave. "The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. & Malcolm X." Lecture.

Foothills College. Palo Alto, 27 Feb. 1993.

Evanzz, Karl. The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X.. New York: Thunder’s Mouth P, 1992.

Haddawy, Husain. The Arabian Nights. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990.

Korzybski, Alfred. Science and Sanity. Lakeville, Conn.: International Non-Aristotelian Library, 1948.

Loftus, John and Mark Aarons. The Secret War Against the Jews. New York: St. Martin’s P, 1994. I highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to combat the whole "Zionist Jews control the White House" flim-flam. Despite its melodramatic title, this well-researched work of investigative journalism is one of the best books detailing the complicated history of U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern politics. A more accurate title might have been The Secret War Against Everybody (That Means YOU!).

Marrs, Jim. Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989.

Williams, John A. The Man Who Cried I Am. New York: Signet, 1968.

©2005. Robert Guffey currently teaches English at California State University at Long Beach. His short stories and articles appear in After Shocks, Mysteries, New Dawn, Paranoia, Riprap, Steamshovel Press, The Third Alternative, and the 2004 compendium The New Conspiracy Reader. He is a staff writer for Paranoia: The Conspiracy Reader. He may be contacted at rguffey@hotmail.com.