Koran Shopping With Omar Bin Jaffar
I was only looking for a ride, not a new religion.
But a man with a mustache made me an offer that was difficult to refuse: stylish transportation plus the path to eternal salvation.
It all happened on fringe of a dense tropical jungle in Kuala Lapis, Malaysia. I had hitchhiked from southern Thailand and was slowly making my way down to Singapore.
I stood near the roadside and studied the highway map, praying quietly that I wouldn’t be mistakenly taken to a remote termite farm in Borneo.
I tucked in my shirt and stuck out my thumb.
Within moments, a shiny black Mercedez Benz with white lacy seat covers pulled up. A businessman with a dry-cleaned shirt, olive skin, and a thick black moustache rolled down the window and asked me where I wanted to go.
“South. Towards Singapore.”
He popped the trunk and told me I could ride in the back seat. He introduced himself in fluent English as Omar, the director of a national air conditioning manufacturing corporation. First things first, he wanted to know where I was from.
“Uh... I’m from Canada," I lied.
(Now I’m 100 percent proud to be American, but sadly, caution urges to sometimes downplay my citizenship in some situations with strangers in Muslim countries)
“Oh really?” he perked up, “I got my Master's at UT in Toronto. Where did you go to college?”
I paused for a few uncomfortable seconds and tried, “I went to… um. . . BC University…in.. Vancouver."
Omar turned his head around and looked back, making me nervous that we might crash into the oil palm groves that lined the road.
“Are you sure you’re not an American, my friend?”
Busted!!!!
Omar was no dummy. He consoled me and said not to worry, as he fluently understood the unfortunate state of world politics that would drive an American to pose as a Canuck.
I anxiously began to apologize for the war in Iraq, and then I backpedaled by saying I wasn’t really very political.
Omar assured me it was okay – really. He’d lived in Canada, visited New York City twice and he had many “cool” American friends and associates. He liked America.
We relaxed and talked about Malaysian culture for a while. I tried to steer back on his good side by exploring the virtues of being in the air conditioning business in such a hot, rapidly developing country.
He rambled on about coolant, suddenly paused and asked me point-blank for the details of my faith and religion. I thought for a second and gave myself some breathing room with the “spiritual but not religious” cliché. He was savvy enough to grasp what I meant, but he wasn't satisfied with my wimpy answer. He went... deeper.
“So, Brett..,” he asked me in a hushed tone, “what do you think about the Islamic religion?”
There was something incredibly liberating about sitting on a white, lacy seat and cruising past the spectacular rock formations in the clearings of the Malaysian jungle with an educated professional who had lived in Toronto. The soothing Freon coolant of the air conditioning plus the quiet ride of the Benz made me feel disarmed, and dangerously frank.
I confessed how I’d been reading through the bedside Koran in my hotel rooms, and I was a bit shocked by how unabashedly anti-Semitic it sounded. Not all of it, I said, but certain parts sounded quite hateful and intense. It seemed inevitable that some folks would take it too far.
“Oh dear, my friend! You must have been reading Imam Abdul Habibi’s translation. The one the mullas put in hotels - No good! You really must read the translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali. You MUST!” he insisted.
I said that I might check it out. Someday. Perhaps. Maybe.
“Brett, I think you MUST read the real version of the Koran. You will come to understand our way. Then, perhaps, you will want to study the eternal truths of Islam on your own,” advised Omar, "I promise it will change your life.”
Doubtless, doubtless. (But what if I wasn’t quite ready for such a major life change?)
Omar announced that we were going to find a bookstore, and he was going to buy me the REAL version of the Koran, not the edgy one that the fundamentalists put in hotel rooms. He switched lanes and then pulled off the highway at the nearest exit.
(“Oh, Jeez!” I quietly prayed to myself.)
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust his recommendation; it was mostly because I couldn’t bear the thought of lugging another heavy object in my hernia-inducing backpack. I didn’t want to have to pretend to graciously accept a holy book from him and end up chucking it, just like I did with my stupid Lonely Planet tourist "bible."
But he was overwhelmed with a mild spell of religious excitement, completely fixated on the idea of me reading the right version of the Koran and appreciating it in the same light that he did. He couldn't bear to see his honored guest have a bad opinion of something that was so central and meaningful in his life.
For the next hour, he drove me around the unfamiliar market town looking for bookstores. He’d ask directions from the street vendors, roll up, put the Benz into idle and dash in to ask if they had this particular edition.
The first shop had the right version, but only in Arabic. (Darn!)The second shop had it also, but only in Malaysian. The third and forth bookstore had never heard of the particular edition.
Finally, my good host looked at his gold watch and gave up on finding the elusive book. (Thank goodness!) He lamented how easily we could've found it, if only we had been in Kuala Lumpur.
He politely digressed and decided we should go out to lunch. We went to a roadside café and had a pleasant, neutral conversation over fish curry, oily pancakes and lemon soda.
As he paid the bill, I reminded him I was headed south towards Singapore. He was going east in just a little bit, but offered to go miles out of his get me to a main connecting road. I forcefully assured him that catching another ride would be a breeze. Yes, really!
He gave me a firm handshake and his business card, and told me to give him a ring next time I passed through to Kuala Lumpur. I definitely will.
My afternoon of Koran shopping with Omar Bin Jaafar affirmed that people everywhere are innately honest and generous. Sometimes, along with their food and hospitality, they want to share their deepest truths and to have them validated.
There's nothing wrong with that.
It gets sticky when these deep personal truths and spiritual visions get standardized and packaged in the highly emotional areas of “politics” and “religion" - the two social buzzkills that Grandma wisely warned us against getting into at the dinner table.
You're either in or out; you're with us or against us. Those rascally politics and religions tend to polarize. And unlike expensive sunglasses, they cloud our eyes, making the waters between us appear all the more murky.
