Charles Henderson - Terminal Impact

“A very good question indeed,” Elmore said. “Perhaps old Lucifer fooled the young prince.”

“That would make sense,” Jack said.

“Muhammad’s father, Abdullah ibn Abdul-Muttalib, and the whole Muttalib family ran the Kaaba in Mecca. Today the most holy site in Islam. But in those early days, the Kaaba was the temple where Hubal the moon god resided among 360 gods that the people worshipped, all called Allah in those times, meaning the gods, one god for each day of their calendar year. That was until Abdullah’s death in AD 570. Six months before Muhammad was born,” Elmore went on.

“In fact, after Muhammad’s encounter with the angel, and he began to spread the word and fear of Islam across the lands, he destroyed all the demigods in the Kaaba, except the idol of Hubal. Which I am told stands in the Kaaba today and represents Allah.”

He cocked an eye at the tall coffeemaker sitting at the side of the office, and asked, “That oil fresh?”

“I was just going to get a cup, sir,” Jack said. “Decaf okay? That’s all we serve around here.”

“Decaf is what I like,” Snow said, and filled a clean mug that had sat, turned upside down on brown paper towels next to the pot.

Then the colonel returned to his perch on Jack’s desk and carried on with his history lecture.

“With his father dying the year he was born, Muhammad was sent to the desert to live with his mother and the Bedouins, which they thought was healthy for a child. Fresh air and camel dung.

“The lad’s mother soon expired from that healthy desert life on the move, when the lad was three or four years old. So little Muhammad went to live with his uncle, Abu Talib ibn Abdul-Muttalib, his father’s brother.

“Uncle Talib, now the Muttalib in charge of the family business, ran the Kaaba. So you’ve got to figure that young Qasim Muhammad al-Muttalib ibn Hashim, known to us as the Prophet Muhammad, very likely did not worship the God of Abraham, the father of Ishmael, to whom Muhammad claims kinship but there is no proof of it. More likely, like his father and mother and uncle and kin before them, he worshipped the moon god, Hubal.”

Elmore took a big drink of coffee and let that sit with Jack to ponder.

Nothing better to do, Jack enjoyed relaxing with his decaf and hearing Elmore prattle, so he tossed out more bait.

“So you’re telling me that Muhammad was out in the desert six hundred years after Christ, worshipping the devil in a cave, when he claims that an angel appeared and told him he was now a prophet of God?” Jack concluded.

“Correct,” Elmore said. “Do you suppose that God Almighty would visit His own herald, Angel Gabriel, on a man out in a cave one night worshipping Hubal and Ishtar under the crescent moon and Venus?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Jack said.

“Thus God declares this devil-worshipping swordsman His prophet? Does that make a lick of sense?” Elmore ranted, raising his voice as Billy-C came back to the hooch.

“What devil-worshipping swordsman we talking about?” the staff sergeant asked, seeing the two Marines drinking coffee and going and getting himself a mug of it, too.

“Muhammad,” Jack said.

“Oh hell yeah!” Claybaugh chimed in. “You know, my grammy back in Alabammy told me these Islams is a bunch of devil-praying zealots from the dark side. And I needed to watch my step over here, or they’d hex me.”

Elmore frowned at the Marine. “I’m talking verifiable history, Billy, not raging superstition or advocating hate at anybody. Most of these ignorant people believe they worship the true God of Abraham, not Satan. I’m just explaining how Satan has likely misled them. It would explain why Muslim extremists perpetuate so much evil in the world. God is Love, not hatred and murderous bloodshed.”

“Unless you provoke His wrath,” Jack added.

“God’s wrath is nothing to joke about, Gunnery Sergeant Valentine,” Elmore cautioned. “God destroying people is not the same thing as Muhammad riding on his rampages, putting Christians and all kinds of other people who would not convert to Islam to the sword. Committing bloody murder!”

“So when the Christians put the Muslims to the sword in the Crusades, that was a good thing?” Jack asked, baiting his longtime friend. He had heard Elmore’s rants before and enjoyed their entertainment.

“I think it was terrible!” Elmore said sincerely. “I don’t believe God sent the Crusaders. They took it upon themselves to slaughter a lot of innocent people, along with the jihadi villains that sacked Jerusalem. We suffer many of our problems today because of that misguided Christian zeal. The Crusades were perpetuated by kings and villainous popes, not God. We should have sent missionaries to save the Muslim people, not the Knights Templar to eradicate them.”

“Way I understand it, boss,” Jack said, “the Muslims started that fight by massacring Christians and Jews, and taking Jerusalem. The Crusaders came here for pretty much the same reasons we’re here today.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Elmore answered. “Don’t forget that the Kurdish Sunni king, Saladin, wound up ruling Jerusalem along with Egypt, Syria, and all lands of the Levant in 1187, and sent the Crusaders home on their shields. We should bear that in mind. Especially today. We can handle things better. We need to win these people’s friendship, not their scorn.”

“Sir, I think if we sent missionaries over here instead of armies, they’d end up with their heads rotting on pikes,” Billy-C said.

“We have Christian missionaries here today, son,” the colonel said. “All kinds of Catholics and Evangelicals. In fact, one of the oldest Evangelical Christian churches in Iraq was built in Mosul by the Presbyterians in 1850. Many Presbyterians, Baptists, and other Evangelical Iraqis live here today. There’s a Presbyterian church in Kirkuk, Saddam Hussein’s hometown. We just have to try harder to win these people to the Lord.”

Jack and Billy-C saw the colonel’s sincerity, and that gentle side of his good heart that they loved in the man. He held no malice for anyone, nor hatred. He was the classic noble warrior, a Bible in one hand, a sword in the other, and poetry on his lips.

“I guess we need to love these bastards while we light ’em up,” Jack said, and flashed a wry grin at Billy.

“Kill ’em but don’t hate ’em. And just kill the ones that need killing,” Elmore said.

Jack laughed. “Colonel Snow, I can’t help but love you, sir. We’ve walked down these roads together a lot of years, and you do not change. You’ve never hated anybody, but you have killed plenty of bad hombres. You’re a special man.”

“I thought the Good Book says, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’” Billy-C said, and looked at Jack, then at the colonel, honestly puzzled. “Ain’t us killing them just as bad as what they’re doing? Except they leave a lot of innocent folks murdered in their wake. We pick and choose ours.”

“King James Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but that’s not a true translation of the actual Hebrew that God wrote with His fiery finger on that stone tablet for Moses,” Elmore said.

Jack looked at Billy-C, then at Elmore, a bit surprised. He had always heard the Ten Commandments told as “Thou shalt not kill.”

“Yes, all our lives we have heard, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ thanks to King James. But God truly wrote on the stone and told Moses, ‘Do not murder,’” Snow said. “The correct translation says ‘murder,’ not ‘kill.’ A very big difference in the two words. Billy, we do not murder…”

Elmore stopped before he said it and Jack finished it for him. “‘Bastards,’ sir? Or did you mean ‘motherfuckers’?”

“Evil ones,” Elmore mumbled, hiding a grin.