Children of Dust_ A Memoir of Pakistan - Ali Eteraz [104]
The answer, as always, came in the form of Islam.
A leadership crisis had formed within the MSA. Apparently the few people being groomed as potential presidents were dithering and doubting their qualifications. Part of their reluctance was proper Islamic etiquette—following the example of the first caliph, Abu Bakr, a Muslim being offered a leadership position was supposed to turn it down a few times—but part of it seemed serious. The possible lack of a president seemed to have shaken the community, and the organization’s elders were worried.
The whole situation reminded me of the upheaval in sixth-century Arabia. After the death of a man named Abdul Muttalib in the final quarter of the century, there was a leadership vacuum in the tribe of Quraysh—the primary guardians of the Holy Ka’ba. As lesser men haphazardly competed with one another, a figure by the name of Muhammad pushed himself forward as a leader. It occurred to me that perhaps Muhammad had been a postmodern before his time. He recognized the weakness of others and, like any strong poet, saw an opportunity to assert his authority.
I told myself that I had to be Muhammad to the MSA. In the spring of my junior year, I nominated myself for president and began campaigning.
My platform, which I prepared with no sense of irony, was one of social conservatism and restoring the moral center of the organization. The campaign speech was a skit featuring a sinful drunk brother who, by participating in one of my MSA meetings, reformed his ways and became a pious believer. The elections followed shortly, and I became the first-ever unanimously elected president.
I now had power over an entire flock of Muslims. What’s more, I was the representative, the immediate authority, for one of the three Abrahamic faiths—the fastest-growing one. Though our campus organization numbered less than a hundred, I could speak on behalf of a billion people. When a former U.S. president or the Dalai Lama or Archbishop Desmond Tutu came by, I was sent a special invitation to do a meet-and-greet. I went to large Christian churches around Atlanta, where I gave talks and held Q&As about Islamic history.
I also became responsible for giving the Friday sermon, which made me the spiritual head of our little community. After Friday prayer I held court in the hallway as, one by one, supplicants and spiritual mendicants, brothers and sisters, came to me, shook my hand, bowed to me, and spoke their secrets in my ear: the brother asking how he should make his non-Muslim girlfriend turn toward Islam (with patience); the sister asking whether she should put on the hijab (yes); the brother who didn’t know what to do about his parents’ divorce (admonish them); the sister undergoing a nervous disorder (pray for a cure).
I was, finally, the imam my father had once wanted me to be. Islam had given me prestige. I placed great emphasis upon the fact that my full name was Amir ul Islam—Prince of Islam. It didn’t matter that it was all a charade.
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The responsibilities of leadership in the MSA were anything but princely.
Balancing budgets, begging the student government for money, vacuuming the prayer center, organizing dinners, setting up cheesy social events, attending interfaith meetings in the early morning, meeting with the heads of other MSAs in the area and pretending to care about their thoughts and concerns, and meeting with Rabbi Aaron, the Jewish campus chaplain, to try to establish a joint halal-kosher deli—these things, inglorious and tedious, occupied most of my time as president. The rest of my time was spent supporting my staffers, whether by making late-night runs to Kinko’s to make colored copies or driving around the university and plastering up posters advertising MSA events.
I also learned that leadership came with a whole host of new restrictions. Consider:
Some congregants thought that my favorite shirt, which featured a man in a fedora and had the letters NPA—National Pimp Association—written underneath him, was now inappropriate.
When