Hebrew Prophet Defends Shoe Thrower

The Dawn of the New Muslim Middle East

In all sincerity I am convinced that if I do not publicly express my thankfulness to Mr. Muntadhar Al-Zeidi, I would be disobeying God's Spirit. I personally have been attempting to stop writing for my website but my conscience could not find peace if I remained silent about Mr. al-Zeidi's obedience to his sensitive conscience.

This courageous man publicly expressed contempt and disgust for a serial murderer who most politically correct Middle Eastern leaders will not openly condemn or even openly criticize the innocent blood this President has shed.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you Mr. Shoe Man! You filled an ugly vacuum that others have refused to fill. It sincerely grieves me that you were severely beaten and tortured for what your conscience and your outrage forced you to do. But it does not bother me that after being severely beaten and threatened with a long prison sentence which would include more beatings and probably torture, you have now possibly apologized for actions which you now may have called "ugly."

I am sure that you realized that if you threw the shoes and shouted insults, you would be severely beaten and even tortured for what you did. But even though you knew in advance the great suffering you would be forced to endure, you still courageously threw your shoes and shouted your insults at the killer man, Bush. So the fact that while you are now under the pressure of severe coercion, you may be retracting the comments does not detract from your initial courage in doing what you did and saying what you said. Though others of us did not have the courage to throw our shoes at this murderer if we had done so and would be honest, we would later have retracted our actions in order to avoid future prison beatings and probably torture.

Rather than your shouted comments being disgraceful, from my viewpoint they were understatements considering what you could have said about this calloused Murder Man. Your words were: "This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is a farewell kiss, you dog." And with the second shoe, "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!" were badly needed statements of truth.

I personally find that in view of the extensive unjustified bloodshed that the U.S. President and his Vice President have brought to innocent people of Iraq, far more than justified the harmless, symbolic throwing of two shoes at a guest. Yet, one vocal critic of the action insisted that: "The American President is the guest of all Iraqis, so the Iraqi government has to choose good journalists to attend such conferences."

However, this response by the head of the Sahwo council in Anber province did not take into consideration a profound theological viewpoint that permeates the Scriptures preceding the Quran as well as being revealed in the Holy Quran itself. In fact, this theological perspective was the reason for the famous flood that brought a temporary end to the great wickedness of mankind at the time when the Prophet Nuh/Noah built his ark to escape the deluge.

That perspective that caused the flood is that ALLAH is totally against wickedness. In fact, He is against such wickedness much more than He approves of the man made tradition of not exposing the evil of a guest even when that guest is guilty of being the initiator of great wickedness.

Whether or not Mr. Al-Zaida realized it or did not realize it, I am strongly convinced of this. That the ALLAH/GOD of the three great Monotheistic religions was desiring for at least one person to at the very least symbolically stand up against the great wickedness of the most mighty military empire in the history of the world. But GOD did not find that person in Judaism. Nor did He find that courageous person among the many notable leaders in Christianity or among the Political leaders in the supposedly Christian U.S.

Nor did ALLAH find the person to serve Him in this needed way among the wealthy, powerful Monarchs of Islam. Also, the person was not to be found among the many notable religious leaders in Islam. But ALLAH did find that chosen servant to fulfill His purpose in the person of a humble Muslim correspondent who was constantly in the streets, homes and buildings of Iraq. As he was busy moving from place to place, he was closely observing and deeply thinking about the injustice and unnecessary suffering that was being imposed upon his people by an aggressive, calloused foreign government. He quickly realized that a majority of the suffering was occurring in order to advance that powerful governments own extensive self-interests. Thus, this man who GOD found to partially express His rage had identified with that rage of GOD. So he expressed it symbolically in throwing the shoes and shouting his deeply felt convictions.

Of course it is conventional wisdom and the secular thing to do for the religious and secular second guessers to find psychological and humanistic explanations of why a person would express such rage. They say that it was possibly because of the death of a loved one or because of some other such combination of circumstances. But their own fear of man's criticism prevents these analyzers from factoring in the possibility of a person serving GOD by expressing such rage, whether that person realizes or does not realize that he or she is serving GOD's purposes. Regretfully, even Mr. Al-Zaida may be psychologically coerced or manipulated into such an explanation of his own actions due to the enormous pressures which are being inflicted upon him including threats of a long prison term or conceivably threats upon his family.

But, since our GOD definitely is enraged at wickedness, the very likely explanation of this journalist's actions is this. ALLAH has found a humble Muslim to express some of His own rage. Yes, this particular servant would partially express ALLAH's great rage against wickedness by a mighty empire that was acting in an exceptionally evil manner against the innocent Iraqi people.

A small part of this wickedness I will soon enumerate as a partial answer to the President's belligerent reply of "So what?" to a woman reporter who interviewed him after the shoe throwing theological event.

I personally am convinced that this obnoxious answer of the President vividly reveals how contemptuous our democratically elected President is toward the river of poured out innocent Iraqi blood. But, if any one had ever worked hard enough to deserve to have a shoe thrown at his head, it was our soon to be gone, President George W. Bush. The U.S. President was explaining to the journalist that the U.S. had to be in Iraq in order to kill Al-Qaeda. To this explanation the journalist replied with words similar to: But Mr. President, Al-Qaeda was not in Iraq previous to the U.S. invasion so…

However, at the word "so" the President rudely cut off her legitimate questions she was about to ask. (I wonder if the President would have been so rude to a male Journalist).

He abruptly interrupted her with the crude words: "So what?" His crudity was in order to shut off her legitimate questioning of the rivers of innocent blood the U.S. has shed in Iraq. Obviously the interviewer had been aware of the great amount of injustice, blood and suffering which had each been major factors in causing the rage that the Iraqi journalist was expressing when he threw the shoes and shouted his comments.

I will briefly but inadequately express my own answer to the Murder Man's impolite, So what?.

So What?

• So over one million innocent Iraqis would have not have had their blood splattered all over the streets and over the walls of demolished buildings in Iraq.
• So that tens of thousands more Iraqis would have not lost arms, legs and eyes in the war to kill the Al Qaeda who had not been in Iraq before the war.
• So that tens of thousands of homes and places of business would not have been destroyed bringing untold suffering to the Iraqi people.
• So that hundreds of thousands of women, children and the elderly would not have been infected with dysentery from being forced to drink contaminated water.
• So that millions of Iraqis would not have been forced to flee their homes and employment in their beloved home nations and become relatively unwelcome and unemployed refugees in many other nations such as Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.
• So that wives would not lose their husbands, brothers and uncles and children would not loser their brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, etc., etc.
• So that Iraq's hospitals would not have overflowed with the maimed and dying.
• So that well over five thousand U.S. Military men, women and contractors would not have been violently killed in Iraq.
• So that thousands of U.S. military men and women would not have returned to the U.S. from Iraq leaving their legs, arms or eyes in Iraq. (The same could be said for those war veterans from other nations returning home with missing body parts).
• So that families of service men and women would not have been torn apart psychologically so that divorce was the result.
• So that children could never adjust to the new father or the new mother which had returned home from the war but were very different from the father or mother who had left the children in order to fight Bush's war of choice in Iraq.
• So that the psychological trauma that was suffered from the war was so great, whether or not the victims were Iraqis, Americans, Australians, British or others, so that the individuals were so severely affected, that they never again would be able to have loving, human relationships with other human beings.

The samples that I have given are only the tip of the iceberg of what could be presented in repose to this calloused, irresponsible leaders ruthless: "So What?".

The Filthy Bottom of the Shoe

I had the privilege of being the Orientation Coordinator for the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1976. In our orientation of new employees there was one particular cultural misstep which we always were careful to instruct new expatriates to avoid. That was exposing the bottom of their shoes to the person sitting on their right or left if they were in the habit of sitting with their legs crossed. However, though I taught that to others over thirty years ago, my Jordanian wife often catches me forgetting that important cultural custom. So I am personally very appreciative of how strongly the Arab world feels about how symbolically insulting the bottom of the shoe can be when used against another person. It is an extremely strong symbol of disrespect and contempt.

The More Serious Crime of Murder

Nevertheless, what the Bush and Cheney gangsters have done to the people of the Arab world is far, far beyond the symbolic contempt that the bottom of a shoe expresses. We have inexcusably and illegally invaded their precious land and maimed and murdered them, all under the cover of protecting the people of the U.S. from another terrorist attack. This suffering is all totally justified by the Bush/Cheney spin artists, though Iraqis had absolutely no connection with the terrorist attack on the U.S.

I was having great difficulty attempting to work through my deep emotions of realizing what an extremely insignificant action the symbolic throwing of the shoe was when compared with the very tangible and specific thousands of gallons of innocent blood that my nation has been responsible for shedding in Iraq. Of course my only conclusion had to be that the amount of suffering caused by the shoe thrower contrasted with the suffering the mass murdering Bush has caused, is not even comparable.

O'Reilly's Opposite Conclusion

Then, as I was later changing my cable news from MSNBC to CNN, I paused to watch Bill O'Reilly raving on Fox News. So I was very quickly reminded of why I almost never view Fox News, Dick Cheney's station of choice.

On his program Bill O'Reilly had come to the exact opposite conclusion that I have come to regarding the Middle East's Shoe Throwing Hero. This bizarre, calloused O'Reilly man has absolutely no appreciation of why Middle Eastern Arabs have any right to be enraged at certain murderous American leaders. Rather, he was exclaiming how the U.S. and Iraqi government should lock the shoe man up for years for not being appreciative of the wonderful things the U.S. has done for the people of Iraq. In O'Reilly's mind, that horrible, unappreciative war criminal journalist certainly went way too far when he became so degenerate that he would do the non violent act of throwing a pair of shoes at such a compassionate serial killer as President Bush.

Last Hebrew Prophet Defends Al-Zaidi

The very last Hebrew Prophet of the before Christ period, Prophet Malachi, was a man full of zeal for GOD. In fact he closed the final chapters of the Old Testament with a prediction that if GOD did not send a Prophet Elijah type person to the earth to clean things up, (This turned out to be Yahya/John the Baptist) God would be forced to "strike the land with a curse."

Quite significantly and very relevant to the courageous shoe thrower, the Prophet Malachi calls explicit attention to the importance of GOD seeking only one man to be willing to perform one symbolic non-violent act in order to visibly demonstrate GOD's own rage toward sin and disobedience. The Prophet Malachi presents GOD as proclaiming:

"Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you."

And Mr. Al Zaidi heard GOD's call in this eighth year of U.S. murder in Iraq:

"Oh, that one of you would do something to expose the tyrant Bush for what he is, a murderer!"

"Oh ALLAH! Oh Iraqis! Oh Arab World! Please forgive us for not restraining our Bushes, our Cheneys and our Bill O'Reillys! But we do thank you for providing one courageous shoe thrower."

When I just used the words addressed to ALLAH of "thank You for providing one courageous shoe thrower," it was quite intentional that I thanked ALLAH Himself for being the provider of this unique man. For I have a deep conviction that ALLAH in His wisdom led this man to perform this particular symbolic act against state sponsored wickedness that others remained silent about.

Yes, I am absolutely convinced that this unique event was not only a cultural event or a political event or a psychological explosion event. Rather, most of all it was a theological event arranged by ALLAH as what should have been our entire world rising up to condemn this state sponsored wickedness. But the majority of our world is in awe of the power and influence of the U.S. Therefore, the world remains mostly comatose in the face of our empire's wickedness. So ALLAH found one man to express the rage that a majority of the world feels but will not emphatically express.

Counting my many summers in Jordan and close to three years in Saudi Arabia, for a total of over nine years of living in several Arab countries, I have always been treated by Arabs who were mostly Muslim with wholesome respect. And it has been my habit, whether I am there or here, to pray at least three times each day for GOD's blessing on the Muslim World. So it has caused me great personal sorrow when I have observed how the neo-cons and the Wolfowitz, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld types have contemptuously treated especially Middle Eastern Muslims. However, I have realized that if I as a relatively short sighted human being am so upset at how the blood of mostly Muslim Iraqis is treated as refuse, (zabali) by the U.S., how much more our Compassionate GOD views what our nation has done to innocent Iraqis to serve our own self interests as excessively wicked. Therefore, as a small first step in revealing His deep displeasure He has raised up His shoe thrower. And in my mind this servant of ALLAH should not be exploited by comedians for laughs. Instead, he should be honored throughout the entire world for courageously standing for GOD against great wickedness.

Why is the U.S. Not Trembling?

In this 21st Century shoe throwing event, GOD was not revealing that He was simply "not pleased" with the murderous activities of the Bush/Cheney gangsters. Rather, for the extensive death and destruction needlessly inflicted upon the sovereign innocent people of Iraq, this eye-opening event was symbolic not of GOD's displeasure but His RAGE!

Importantly, because of today's ubiquitous media, more people were able to view this appropriate expression of human rage than had every viewed such an event in the entire history of the world. My own estimate is that I personally viewed the two powerful symbols of filth and contempt flying toward the U.S. President's head no less than forty times (through a combination of MSNBC, CNN, FOX, and BBC TV). If forty is a reasonable estimate, this figure could be the symbolic, spiritual equivalent to the forty years the Children of Israel were sentenced to wander aimlessly in the barren wilderness as fitting punishment for their rebellious unbelief in GOD's miraculous care of them.

If there were another such blatant example of unbelief in a just GOD which would deserve severe punishment, it is the unbelief in His very existence being arrogantly exhibited by the delusional Bush/Cheney duo. These two calloused men cannot seriously believe that a GOD of justice exists as they publicly claim that they do. For if they do believe that such a GOD exists, how can these two elected leaders possibly conclude that He approves of the outrageous suffering our nation has inflicted upon the innocent Iraqi people?

Furthermore, the people of the U.S. and even the leaders of other nations are virtually delusional for allowing themselves to be sub-consciously persuaded that what has been inflicted upon Iraq for seven long years has GOD's stamp of approval. For one powerful nation to inflict such extensive devastation on a vulnerable people of a different language, ethnicity, culture and religion under the deceitful cover of national security for the powerful nation has not received His approval. Rather, it has awakened His wrath. Yes, it has brought His condemnation and not His approval. So it is an indefensible contradiction to believe that a Just GOD will continue to restrain Himself from punishing those who are guilty of supporting such a deplorable crime. Are the American people not aware of the prophetic warming of the author of our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson?

"I tremble for our nation when I reflect that GOD is Just."

It is a pathetic commentary on both the political and moral realities in this nation that the new U.S. President must publicly base his own main reason for our withdrawal from Iraq on a morally deficient reason. For if it were not for the overriding belief of the American people, which becomes confused with supposed patriotism, that might makes right, our nation's main reason for withdrawal from Iraq should be morally different. It should definitely not be the obvious fact that our war and violent occupation there has been a colossal strategic blunder that has virtually bankrupted our nation. In contrast, if our nation had any substantial moral fiber we would publicly acknowledge that by any decent standard of morality it has been absolutely morally corrupt that we have brought the needless suffering and destruction to the innocent people of Iraq that our self-serving country has.

To bluntly put the immoral circumstances in religious terminology, to prevent GOD's judgment on our nation we must repent of our immoral Cheney induced delusion that our own National Security and safety has fully justified the immoral carnage that the U.S. has visited upon Iraq, a nation which had nothing to do with 9/11. To think for one second that the ALLAH who made it possible for the virgin Mary/Maryam at Bethlehem to give birth to Our Messiah, buys into the Cheney delusion is ludicrous. But regretfully this immoral delusion is being spoon-fed to the entire world by the deceptive and pervasive American propaganda machine.

The Dawn of the New Muslim Middle East

In addition to the two shoes thrown at the U.S. President being a theological expression against wickedness, I believe that this courageous throwing of two shoes may even have signaled a psychological/political turning point in U.S.-Middle Eastern relations. That is, beginning December 15th 2008, the predominantly Muslim world will no longer allow itself to be shamed by being treated as the figurative footstool for the U.S. to rest its own soiled shoes upon. Instead, the Muslim Middle East will now self confidently shout to the U.S.: "If you expect to be treated by us as our respected guests, you must treat us and the blood of our innocent citizens with the great respect our nations and our religion deserves. And if you do not it will be you who are stupidly continuing to cultivate the rage that gives birth to terrorism that no amount of bombs, bullets and blood will ever eliminate no matter what Dick Cheney tells us when he lies to the American people.