How Islam Became a Religion of Peace

[A fresh gift of fiction from the brilliant F. J. Dagg. -- FWP]

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    Muhammad set his tea aside and smiled. He picked up the papers in his lap and read again--for the third time--and his joy increased. His eyes lingered lovingly on the number, “1,500,000.” It was a very good number, but it was early and all indications suggested that the number would increase, likely dramatically. He recalled his earlier achievements in the United States and swelled with satisfaction. Allah must be pleased with him indeed to bless this first venture in a new location with such success.
    Ibn Sadr approached, bowing. Muhammad bestowed a rare smile on his subordinate.
    “News?”
    “Allah be praised, yes.” Sadr dared a smile as he offered a sheaf of papers. “You will be pleased.”
    Muhammad read. He let the papers fall to his lap and murmured, “Allahu akbar.”
    Ibn Sadr bowed and retired in silence.
    Muhammad reviewed his capital outlay for this undertaking. A nondescript freighter of Cambodian registry, an Iranian missile, a North Korean warhead--and the city of Shanghai was no more. An infidel entrepreneur of the Great Satan’s glory days would have burst with pride at such a rate of return on investment. The initial figure of a million and a half dead had soared to over four million, but the destruction was so great--and incomplete, as the firestorm continued even now--that no one could guess what the ultimate death toll would be, or if it would ever be known with certainty.
    “Allahu akbar,” whispered Muhammad.

*****

    Though Captain Han was not a sentimental man, he was tempted, briefly, to weep. But he gave no outward sign of his grief and quickly mastered himself. Command of a capital warship allows for no self-indulgence.
    He locked the transcript of the top priority message in his stateroom safe and went to the control room, musing that his crew would be happy to break the routine of cruising endless random patterns in the eastern Indian Ocean.
    To his navigator he said, “Make your course 280 degrees. Maximum cruise speed.”
    Han admired the smoothness with which the crew carried out his orders. He would tell them of Shanghai when they arrived on station.

*****

    The first bars of “Begin the Beguine” purred from Muhammad’s phone. He noticed that the faint pang of guilt the melody had always evoked had failed to come at all today. Surely Allah would excuse his guilty pleasure--this unmasterable affection for the music of Cole Porter--in light of the success of his holy labors first concerning the three cities in the US, and now, the first in China.
    “Allahu akbar,” he answered.
    He listened at length, then replied, “Yes, praise Allah, execute Phase Two. We must press our advantage and, Allah willing, the eastern jihad will be a much shorter affair than was the struggle in the West.”
    He listened again, briefly.
    “Allahu Akbar.”
    As he ended the call, a unexpected shadow passed over his mood. He had finished bin Laden’s work in New York with an emir’s yacht carrying a special cargo into the harbor, and had created a splendid symmetry with the simultaneous strike on Long Beach, where the container with Pakistan’s 40-kiloton gift to the infidels had slipped by. To keep them guessing--and because of the corrosive envy of the U.S. space program that had tormented his youth--he had chosen Houston for the third and final warhead, Iran’s contribution. It had come, piece by piece, across the line that had once been the United States’ southern border months before the Great Day. Evidently, those responsible for what the Great Satan’s leaders called “security” were so thoroughly occupied changing the diapers of Honduran children that they overlooked the stream of components that would be assembled in a Texas warehouse into a device of about four times the potency of that which had incinerated most of Nagasaki.
    In the aftermath, the President of the United States had prostrated himself before the Ummah, promising to apply the harshest measures to Americans who took reprisals against Muslims resident in the U.S., then imposing martial law upon his own people--that is to say, the people he ruled. (A jihadi of Muhammad’s acquaintance who had spent time in the U.S. and appreciated American humor said that the president “had his Gucci loafer on the neck of the infidel.”) It had been a success beyond Muhammad’s wildest imaginings--so why did this darkness pass over him at the moment of this fourth great triumph?
    He thought of his eldest son, now with the third team of the Asian offensive’s jihadis, and a man any father would proud of. Aarif was, to borrow a term from the infidels, a Renaissance Man--scholar of the Qur’an, nuclear scientist, and soldier. He would be well-fitted, Muhammad often thought, to one day lead the coming worldwide Caliphate.
    These happy thoughts chased away the shadow. Muhammad picked up his phone again and rang the number of his Minister of Information. How sweet it would be to announce to the world exactly who had just sent four million infidels to hell.

*****

    Captain Han kept to his cabin more than was ordinary during the transit of the Indian Ocean. Though a solitary man, he had had a deep affection for his sister and her children, a photograph of whom rested at a corner of his small desk. When he had last visited them they were settling into their new home in Shanghai. He reflected that it was a new age now, another world.
    Burning incense or candles would not do aboard a submarine, so he placed a candle before the photograph and imagined it lit. It would have to serve as their shrine for the time being, until he could make fire.
    A light knock at the door.
    “Yes.” The door opened a crack. The navigator saluted.
    “Eight hours until station, sir.”
    “Very good.”
    The door closed. Captain Han’s gaze returned to the picture of his lost family.

*****

    “... confirmation that the event in Shanghai was a nuclear explosion, we now have reports of a second detonation and fire at Tianjin. The President of the United States is holding a press conference at this moment. He assures China that the U.S. is in no way responsible, pointing out that Chinese intelligence assets should by now have verified the dismantling of most of America’s nuclear forces...”
     “Nothing about Guangzhou,” said Muhammad, turning from the television. “We should have heard about Guangzhou by now.”
    His lieutenants exchanged furtive glances. Though Shanghai and Tianjin represented a stunning success promising to parallel the Holy Day when they had all but slain the Great Satan, all knew that Muhammad’s son Aarif was with the Guangzhou team, and all knew that Muhammad loved Aarif second only to Allah.

*****

    When Captain Han received word of the strike on Tianjin, his vessel, the newest of the Jin class of ballistic missile submarines, was four hours from its newly assigned area of operations. Besides news of the second city destroyed, he received an amendment to his orders. He summoned his officers. He told them of the destruction of the two cities and allowed them a few moments to absorb the enormity.
    “The second attack, and an alteration of our orders, require immediate action.” He opened his safe and handed a paper to his fire control officer. “Your coordinates.”
    The officer read, then frowned as he looked up. “But this last one...the South China Sea?”
    Captain Han regarded him in silence. The officer nodded, saluted, and left.

*****

    Allah had not smiled on Muhammad’s plan for Guangzhou, His apparent displeasure manifest in the malfunction of the Iranian missile’s guidance system. Halfway between its launch point--a lonely tramp freighter three hundred miles west of Manila--and its target, it deviated from its trajectory, violently earthward. In seconds, it collided with the stratosphere and disintegrated, a serpentine plume the only trace of its existence--and a brilliant indicator of its point of origin. The Chinese satellite passing overhead could not have missed it.

*****

    Muhammad stopped pacing, but only for a second. The television yammered ceaselessly of Shanghai and Tianjin, and of how the American president continued to abase himself before the Chinese, begging their indulgence--as if the U.S. were responsible for the millions of Chinese dead--as he had abased himself before the Ummah not a month earlier while three of America’s great cities still burned. Yet not a word of Guangzhou. Nor was there a word from Aarif or his team.
    The air had become close in his command center, or seemed to have, and Muhammad stepped outside. Had harm come to Aarif, he should be happy, confident of his son’s place in Paradise. But he was not happy. He had arranged, discreetly, for Aarif ’s assignment to the southern team, in the knowledge that Chinese naval assets would be concentrated in the north in exercises with Russia on the day of the attacks. But as the silence lengthened, his mind ran away with him, conjuring terrible images.
    “Jets!” Muhammad looked up to see a sentry pointing high and southward. Indeed, four vapor trails etched the sky, very high, very fast, and heading his way. He could not, however, recall seeing contrails quite like these, coming, it seemed, from nowhere, at such angles, and at such speed.
    If only Aarif were here. He would know...
     It was his final thought. Four warheads of ninety kilotons’ yield each detonated simultaneously at a mile’s altitude, bracketing the village that hosted Muhammad’s headquarters.

*****

    Aliyah gently placed the fig in Aarif’s mouth. He thanked Allah again for this girl. What would I do without her?
    What indeed? Captain Han’s pattern of warheads aimed at the southern team had not been as accurate as those that had done for Aarif’s father, yet they were close enough to set the team’s ship instantly ablaze, kill most of the crew outright, and cost Aarif both of his legs. He kept his right arm for three more days, until the surgeon of the vessel that had miraculously rescued him took it off to save his life.
    In the last thirteen years Aarif had engaged in much meditation and reflection. Both of his wives were dead of cancer--the cancer that had taken so many of the few survivors--his daughter Aliyah, severely irradiated while still in the womb, was quite deficient mentally, but, Allah be praised, sufficiently functional to feed him, dress him, and keep him more or less clean.
    Information was hard to come by in this new world, but as far as he could determine, the Ummah had essentially ceased to be. He did know with certainty that many cities--Tehran, Riyadh, Baghdad, Kabul, Karachi, and alas, Mecca and Medina, among numerous others in the Middle East, Africa, and the western Pacific--no longer existed. He knew that his father--he who had brought the Great Satan at last to its knees--had vanished in the desert. Most of the rumors suggested that the Chinese had virtually annihilated the Ummah in retribution for Shanghai and Tianjin, but the few remaining faithful knew it was Allah’s hand that had crushed them.
    And Aarif knew, too, that for the first time in fourteen centuries, a new beginning was necessary. He knew beyond doubt that it was Allah’s voice he heard--so quiet, yet so deep and near. It was Allah himself who guided his one remaining limb, scarred and shriveled, to write:

    In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful,
    A new Covenant, and a new Scripture are hereby given the faithful.
    Recite thou! For thy Lord is the most Beneficent,
    Who hath taught the use of the pen,
    Thou shalt henceforth renounce war in thy Lord’s Holy Name...

    [February 5, 2015]