An Alternative Spelling of Eed

Ibrahim is not a historical character. Here’s how he reaches the Muslims of India.

Indians, converting to curry favor or escape persecution, believe a story about an Arab warlord. Among the legends associated with him is his genealogy relating him to the patriarchs of another group of Semites, the Jews.

This is how the Jews learnt about their patriarchs: through oral records their storytellers tried to recreate the essential conversation between their forefathers and a partisan deity. These storytellers ended up putting a number on the birthday of the universe while trying to portray their elders in a positive light. This is the Torah.

Ibrahim's historicity is not on the same lines as Mohammad (about whom much has to be false) or Jesus (a faint figure at Least related by a non-Gospel chronicler Josepheus). There’s even a mention of an official named Moses in the court of an Egyptian pharaoh (not Ramesis). The Arab warlord may have provided motivation for Arab expansionism; the idealistic martyr may have precipitated the off-shooting of the Jewish Messianic movement called Christianity and this Egyptian court official may have disappeared the same time that these Hebrews were reputed to be escaping, but there’s no single identifying event associated with this Ibrahim guy!

He may have wondered stuff about heavenly bodies; he may have disputed with his father about them; he may have been in trouble with the local authorities (the Namrood story). All the stuff attributed to him is furiously un-historic with petty details, especially him raising the walls of Kaabaah and praying the prayers.

A long long time ago (we don’t even know how long ago), in Iraq lived this sterile man. Blaming his wife, he honored a slave girl to the position of a concubine. The guess is, nothing happened here either (as demonstrated by a subtle interpretation of events later), but reportedly the slave girl somehow conceived. Maybe it was a girl but we don’t care until we get a boy. This, he named Isma-el (after the pagan god El). Suddenly, the lady of the house also conceives. And this is attributed to the special favor of a deity instead of an active attempt by Mrs. Ibrahim to get pregnant either by hook or by a crook. You see, Ibrahim had been sterile and then suddenly upgraded to ’not sterile’. Poor Ibrahim, full of faith, was looking for miracles and ignored foul play, attributing the whole thing to the Lord. And the ladies and their lovers sighed in relief...

Now, if the Christians had any equal, then they would get a similar clue that when a woman suddenly gets pregnant and is unable to name the father of the child, then she probably was raped from behind; her eyes forced shut by the rapist and therefore never could see the rapist (or maybe she did, but he probably was too close of a kin). When there are possible explanations - perfectly coherent explanations - then there’s no need to bring in the immaculate nonsense.

Now Ibrahim was naive and impressionable and when confronted with little rain and no grass and a whole lot of cattle, he looked to see what his pagan Joneses were upto. Unable to wait for the water cycle to be delayed by weeks, the Joneses resorted to pleasing the Sky God. Starting out with the most charming heifers and virgins, they had even resorted to sacrificing the dearest thing in sight and nothing is dearer than a first-born son. The inevitable thing about rainfall is that the more you wait, the nearer it comes to fall because it has to come! The idiotic thing about rainfall seekers is: giving credit to their dancing and sacrificing for the change in weather. It’s like looking forward to the boom in the down-sliding stock market, and thinking your prayers may have something to do with its eventual turnaround (which is actually the only thing a down market can do: turnaround eventually).

Anyway, a harassed Ibrahim must have sacrificed a lot of his favorite cows and baseball cards before he went to sleep as usual. Just like a man cornered, the famine and booze must have impinged all sorts of options on his impressionable mind and when he actually saw the unexercised option of sacrificing his first born, he must have been convinced that that’s what the Sky God had wanted all along! How else do you pledge allegiance to such an eclectic god? Like most simple men, he must have also felt the pangs of guilt on account of the immoral behaviour that he had been indulging in since the last rainfall. In one night of immense drunkenness, he had even declared the Sky God an idiot who dared not come down to meet him. All this must have weighed heavily on the poor Ibrahim’s mind and the first born (or the most beloved son) was his license to redeem himself. And the license to kill.

Determined, he got up. Snatched the boy out of his mother’s arm and hurried up the hill. He blindfolded the little one, put him on the ground. And then suddenly... as the believers believe, he was told by the Creator of the universe (who had dropped everything to watch all this) to proceed no more!! Now, how did the Creator communicated this? Did He whisper in Ibrahim’s ear or throw down a leaflet? A good guess is, the raindrops started to fall, and they had to fall because this is how it has always worked! If the rain didn’t fall every year then, Ibrahim, do you know how catastrophic it would be for the environment up there?

But of course the prophet with the knife in his hand thinks that the Sky God is personally communicating with him. That He has tested his faith (umm, what faith??) and that He has accepted the sacrifice and that the boy be spared. He also concluded, through that rainfall communication, that the Sky God promised him innumerable offspring. Therefore, Ibrahim was dressed for some action, so he got a nearby ram and slaughtered it to tell everyone that’s what the Lord brought down from up above. Meanwhile, even though the little boy grew up to hate his father, the later generations had no quarrel with grandpa and extolled him all the way to India.

After a few years, Ibrahim took the concubine and her son and left them in the desert.

He didn’t lead an army (Mohammad), or frame a constitution (Moses) or died inspiring folks (Jesus). He just wondered about idiotic stuff, listening to the voices in the rain or in dry grass. Now why would an Indian convert want to risk death by being trampled on (Haj) just because a warlord said Ibrahim was his daddy? Think about it, the likes of Ibrahim are a dime a dozen who don’t do anything but apologize and backpaddle repeatedly about their idiotic dreams and ramblings. The warlord was cool but guys like Ibrahim -- we treat them as institutions, no?