Christchurch as the Modern Day Ukhdud

The story is told in the last testament; the story of Ashab al-Ukhdud- the companions of the Ditch. But exactly who are they? Of these, little information is available to Muslim exegetes and Jurists. Exactly where is the ditch located? Again, there is little consensus among Arab historians and cartographers with reference to this. While […]

The story is told in the last testament; the story of Ashab al-Ukhdud- the companions of the Ditch. But exactly who are they? Of these, little information is available to Muslim exegetes and Jurists. Exactly where is the ditch located? Again, there is little consensus among Arab historians and cartographers with reference to this. While some of them  posit that the event took place somewhere around Najran, on the Arabian Peninsula, Ibn Kathir, however, says it was somewhere in Persia. But do these questions matter? Not exactly.

The story of the companions of Ukhdud occurs only once in the Quran- in Surah al-Buruj: the chapter of the stars. But in naming the Chapter, Chapter of the Stars, the Almighty desires, as is the case in other parts of the Quran, to engage human cognition. He desires to divert our contemplation to portents above and beyond us; portents which argue His munificence and magnificence; portents which emphasize our nothingness and insignificance in relation to other entities in nature.

Thus, the Almighty begins by saying: By the heaven with its impregnable castles; by the Promised Day and by the witness and what is witnessed: the people of the ditch were killed with fire abounding in fuel, while their (tormentors) sat around it and were witnessing what they did to the believers. Against the believers they had no grudge except that they believed in the Almighty, the Most Mighty, the Most Praiseworthy, to Whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth. The Almighty witnessed everything. Surely those who tormented the believing men and the believing women and then did not repent, theirs shall be the chastisement of Hell, and theirs shall be the chastisement of burning (Quran 85: 1-11)

When the story of the nameless terrorist and shooter who entered those mosques last Friday in New Zealand and shot innocent Muslim worshippers to death reached me, I immediately remembered the companions of the Ukhdud. I remembered our brethren in the primordial period who were burnt alive in a ditch for no other reason other than their belief in the Almighty. They became known as companions of the ditch in acute reference to the torment they suffered after saying “there is no god but God”. Yes. A special ditch was dug for them and into it was kindled a blazing fire. Once it became certain that the companions of the ditch would not abjure or deny the Almighty, the faithless assemblage began to throw the believers into the ditch one after the other. The faithless assemblage sought to exterminate the light of faith in the heart of the believers by subjecting their bodies to cremation while they were alive. Those who deny the Almighty usually think that by killing the believer, they would extinguish the light of faith, the illumination of certainty. What an error!

The story of the companions of the ditch took place eons ago. In other words, while the Quran was being revealed to the Prophet neither he nor his companions would have thought, a thousand four hundred and forty years ago, that another Ukhdud would be birthed in the 21st century, in the age of the postmodern and in one of the cities of the so-called advanced countries. None of us would have imagined what the world witnessed last week; nobody could have thought that another Ukhdud would be birthed in that sleepy and hitherto quiet town of Christchurch in New Zealand. But that day, last Friday, Christchurch lost its innocence. It became host, an unwilling one for that matter, for the new disease in the contemporary period – white supremacist movement. Two mosques played host to an insidious merger between violent racialism and egregious religious fundamentalism. At the end of the supine and atrocious carnage, fifty souls were violently plucked from the tree of life. The solemn and catholic space of the two mosques in the city became a slaughter slab. The bodies of innocent Muslim worshippers became the target of the heinous attack of an imbecilic so-called white-supremacist who wanted a space devoid of all colours but whiteness. He wanted to be a hero by being a villain; he wanted to free Christchurch of all other religious subjectivities but that of Christianity!

Thus he entered the mosques while the Muslims were deep in prayers. He sought eternal recrimination from the Almighty by turning the hallowed spaces of the mosque into haunting spaces. He murdered fifty souls, boys and girls, old and young. But while those souls had the heavens open for them, the terrorist had more spaces allocated to him in hell. And as is always the case whenever Muslims came under iniquitous treatment of the Other, Islam witnesses more acceptances. Unconfirmed reports are to the effect that over two hundred and fifty citizens of New Zealand have just accepted Islam. The terrorist thought he could stop the sun from shining; he spat, out of hatred, up to the skies; his face is now a mess, striven with smite and detritus!