Peshawar to Paris {Aashima Talwar: Charlie Hebdo}

Words from the Author {affiliated with no gods}: This letter contains offensive, blasphemous views. I’m not sorry for voicing any of my views. Because I believe in them. If you believe otherwise I respect that.

Can you respect me for having a mind of my own? Or you gonna gun me down.

Ernest Hemingway said: “A man can be destroyed but he can never be defeated.”

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“Aashima & Adil don’t have rules.” That’s what the poster reads right above our bed. We moved in a month ago. You all know I’m not the marriage type of person. I do love Adil. He tells me the same. I know it is true because noone can lie that well. And Adil is a terrible liar.

Adil has never seen me cry in the 19 weeks we’ve been dating. It’s been 3 years since I last did. I don’t even remember why I did. I just remember I did. I must have cried about 7 times in my life. I’m a bitch you know so crying ain’t my thing.

It was late at night. It was an hour ago when Adil saw me crying. I was howling like a fresh widow on the stairs to our terrace. He sat next to me without words. I didn’t see his face but I could tell he was scared. I could hear his heart. I could feel it sinking.

I never imagined I was capable of crying such amounts & duration. I was gutted by what Adil had said the day before. What he said was almost innocuous; almost reasonable; almost true. That’s why it shook me; it shattered me for those two days.

Those two days I didn’t say a word to Adil. Last two days were the worst days of my life.

An hour ago I broke down completely. All poured out of me in those tears. It felt good. I felt light.

Few days ago 2 young men walked into the Charlie Hebdo office & killed 12 people. Everybody knows that.

Two days ago while we were making dinner on Friday night, it came up. And right after Adil said what he said, the conversation died suddenly. I was chopping vegetables. I suddenly couldn’t. My hands went numb. I felt cold like a dead person.

‘They had it coming,’ Adil had said point-blank. ‘One can’t ceaselessly mock another’s religion and expect to be forgiven under the guise of freedom of speech.’

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Charlie Hebdo has been publishing inflammatory, obscene, insensitive & deeply offensive cartoons of Prophet for a while now. In one of them Prophet isn’t wearing any piece of clothing. In another Prophet is smooching another man.

And that’s why Adil said they had it coming.

I’m no Muslim. I’m not pure; not even close. And I don’t believe in any god. My boyfriend is a practicing Muslim. Of course he isn’t radical & doesn’t pray 5 times a day. Also you’ve noticed that we live together & we aren’t married.

About 3 months ago I fell in love with Adil. I asked him to move in with me, he declined. I asked him again and this time I asked if he didn’t follow Islam would he have moved in with me. He nodded in affirmative. Seven weeks later he walked to up to me & said it doesn’t make sense to him anymore why we shouldn’t live together when we are in love & honest to each other. He said if he can’t respect my decision to not marry him then how can he really say he loves me.

Quran says love is not forever (Love is temporal - Qur'an, 3:14), and is material (Love is material - Qur'an,14:3).

Marriage as a mandatory rule is an attempt to bind two people forever, which is unnatural & oppressive in essence. Marriage cannot be forced but a choice for the two people in love.

We moved in together.  

A crucial tenet of Islam was broken. A tenet of love, a breakthrough from the dogmas was given birth.

I asked him to tell his family. I told mine. My Hindu & his Muslim family were heart-broken & deeply offended.

When I told mine & he told his father that we had no plans of getting married and neither of us plans to change religions. They felt betrayed by their own children.

Charlie Hebdo was also deeply offended by all the killings & suppression of woman’s sexuality by the preachers of Islam. Charlie was also offended by the basterds of Taliban who killed 132 kids in a school in Peshawar under the name of Allah & his messenger Prophet Muhammad.

It mocked the Prophet who is bloodthirsty & wants everyone who doesn’t believe in him to be slaughtered; fiercely slaughtered.

{Quran - 33:61 - "Accursed, they will be seized wherever found and slain with a (fierce) slaughter."}

When Charlie got offended he drew cartoons. When Taliban got offended they killed kids in a school. Those kids hadn’t even offended anyone.

It appears to be a fight between Islam and the western world, but if you look closer it is a battle within the Muslim world. It is a battle for power than abiding to the will of Allah.

Any religion, I don’t care which one, has got to rise above suppressing woman’s sexuality. No matter how I look it, that seems to be the most important objective of most religions. Sex is the only reason why people are offended by Adil and me living together.

Gandhi was assassinated because his message of nonviolence offended those who didn’t have the patience & the balls for it. Lincoln was assassinated because he asked for equal rights for the blacks.

We human beings love getting offended. All the killings get justified. Millions have been killed in the name of someone who doesn’t even exist. I don’t believe in any holy book. I only believe in my heart. It is wrong sometimes, awfully wrong. But it never lies. It doesn’t know how to.

At the same time I respect Islam. The real Islam.

If Prophet Muhammad is real; If he saw people making his naked pictures, kissing other men. Like Gandhi, like Jesus, Prophet would be big enough to say it’s all right. He will say “I can take it.” Without resorting to mindless violence & bloodshed. If God created us, he wouldn’t make us so weak that we resort to violence of any sort. Prophet wouldn’t be a narcissist who would want to divide people by the partitions of religion.  

I know that Prophet wouldn’t go rushing into a building & kill people who mocked him. Because the messenger of God, Prophet Muhammad is better than that. He’s better than Nathu Ram Godse, better than Abraham Lincoln’s killer John Wilkes Booth.

9-year-old French girl, Zōë, whose father was among the 12 killed in the Charlie Hebdo office, has forgiven the killers of her father. She is nine years old. If she could do it, then Prophet can do it too. After all he’s the messenger of Allah. He must have a big heart.

Perhaps you don’t agree with me. May be my answer is incorrect & I don’t know shit. May be I’ve no clue what I’m talking about. But I stand my ground on one thing. No matter how wrong my answer is, killing another human being is not the right answer. It never was.

Ernest Hemingway, a great writer & ambulance driver in the World War 1 had said “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

P.S. I’ve forgiven Adil for what he said. Because I love him. And love is the only thing that truly matters.