The horrendous telltale of the Henna tattoo on my hand

By Abdulkadir Mohamed (Ato)

" ... Beware! There is a piece of flesh in the body if it becomes good (reformed) the whole body becomes good but if it gets spoiled the whole body gets spoiled and that is the heart..." Sahih Bukhari,... "

The henna tattoo on my right wrist (it says Allah & Mohammed in Arabic - pictured below) caused two men to almost exchange violent blows. It all started when one man commanded me to remove it and when I said no, the charlatan started to bully me and call me names to the point where he threatened me that he would have cut my hand off if I was in Somalia. I know this bearded bozo very well and thank god we are in America. He is a hypocritical chameleon who interchanges tribal chauvinism with religious fanaticism quite comfortably and at convenience. The other gentleman came to my defense and told the fanatical bully to get lost. Both men supposedly came from the same regional and ancestral background but one is civilized and the other is a drifting loony on drugs.Things got worse and it escalated until a religious figure that I respect (though influenced by Wahabbi dogma because of his long stay - almost three decades- in Saudi Arabia) had to intervene, calm both men down and take me aside for an extensive and mind-numbing lecture. A lecture about how impermissible and not-Islamic it is to have a tattoo on any part of mens body. I thought to myself while lazily listening to the Sheik's lecture maybe this is the only time Wahabbi’s give women some slack. The Sheik censured me for and about how I cannot go to the toilet with Allah’s name tattooed on any part of my body. I tried to tell him that Allah’s name is tattooed on my mind and soul permanently (symbolic allegory) and I go to the toilet, bathroom, and restroom; call it whatever daily. I tried to reduce the one on my wrist as just an outer manifestation. I faintly rationalized maybe to Allah this is just nothing and trivial. Why would Allah care if you have tattoo or a piercing on your body which is basically a shell that you would eventually shed after you expire physically? All God cares is what is in your heart, I reasoned. I asked the Sheik if he was aware of those Aborigines or Polynesians in the pacific where tattoos are said to have originated or those in sync with nature and environment, say in places like the Amazon or even places close to home like Ethiopia who got piercings tattoos, branding ( they do branding in parts of Somalia and some form of face painting in Djibouti ). He said he was. Then I asked what his version of Islam would do to these people. The Sheikh joked that Sufi version of Islam would have embraced and tolerated these pagan practices but his Wahabi version would have gradually eliminated all animistic body arts by any means. I asked if the ultimate goal of the Wahabbis is to create one culture where men wear beige Khamiises and women dark Burqas and all artistic and stylish cultural forms of dresses and body ornament is shunned. From that point on, our debate went unpleasant and heated. My inquiries got labeled blasphemous and heretic. I couldn’t reason with the Sheik and had to tolerate his overbearing religious tirade obediently just to end it since it was futile to continue it to exacerbation.

After constant lecturing and questioning, I gave in and finally covered the henna-tattoo with another formless drawing. This conforming didn’t help and did not stop the questioning and curiosity of people. Many wondered if the black thing on my wrist was a birth-mark; many asked what happened to my wrist? I had to be creative with some who didn’t have the intellectual capacity to think through the whole thing and be honest with others and recount the whole incident to further provoke more rational discussion on it. it was the same story all over again: the Does, the Don'ts, the death threats, the dogmas, being called a devil and other name callings. I was almost equated with that awful apostate Ayaan Hirsi by just trying to provoke to implore the reasons behind some rituals. My schooling here was blamed for allegedly brainwashing me.

I thought to myself “if I wrote this Henna thing in Chinese or some other script Somalis couldn't read or understand instead of the Arabic, would all of this commotion and craziness materialized?"

Many of you would wonder why on the first place I put the Henna on. Well it was an unplanned and spontaneous thing I did on multicultural event. One of my female friends was there to do Henna on people and I just happened to promote my magazine at a Kiosk near them. It wasn't that busy and we were bored to death.

If I had known the Henna on my wrist would have created all this commotion and curiosity, I would have dubbed it a social experiment and maybe recorded all the laughable reactions I was getting from people.

The whole fateful experience shows how our society has been influenced by alien culture that shuns personal freedom and thought. Likewise, it shows an alarming cultural evolution for the worse: the swift tendency to solve things through violence and the rejection of reason. One would easily kill you if you disagree on things that mean nothing. Human life is nothing and has no value nowadays. You will be dead if you don't conform to dogmas. There is no room for debate and different opinion. There is no compromise, no consultation. You question, you Kaput! It is my way or the death way. The religious fanatics have got all the influences and their vision is by leading in fanaticism and ruling in violence. Many are indoctrinated and tamed that they became usable soldiers to commit crimes against their fellow brothers and sisters without giving second thought.This fearful phenomena of fanaticism amounts to sickness and mental imbalance. Majority of the people not only suffer of ignorance but psychological and mental traumas caused by two decades of senseless violence. Something needs to be done or this would be irreversible. We lost our culture of sanity and maybe we are losing our religion of peace.