An Elegy for a False Prophet (2024)

"The Hour will not be established until about thirty liars appear, and each one of them will claim that he is a messenger of Allah."
— the Holy Prophet (pbuh)

"The actions of Judas Iscariot were not, as most men think, arbitrary. They were necessary preconditions of the Redemption.”
— Three Versions of Judas, Jorge Luis Borges

“You are my little moon.”
It begins, as all things do, in the faintest stirrings of memory. A voice, small and fragile, brushing against the edge of my mind, as if it were a fragment of a half-remembered dream.

“You are mylittle moon, a light in this dark world. You are a good boy, and you will be a great man. Always remember,” my mother once told me, her hands gently resting on my shoulders, brushing the hair out of my eyes, her tender eyes soft with the fortitude of faith that only mothers possess. I clung to those words once. I held them close, as a talisman, a shield against the darkness I did not yet know would come. That darkness is me (as I am, not as I was.)

Those words will save me someday.

But then came the voice of theother.The one that grew to dominate all the rest in my head, the one that continued to pollute, pullulate, proliferate, pontificate, persist, press, and possess. No less me than this voice. (They’re all me, after all.) The one that expanded to consume every corner of my being. It began as a gentle murmur, my gift to mankind. My tongue, its instrument of war.

“This man is our hero, our king, oursaviour!” screamed the tired and hungry hordes. I believed them.

Sorrow is a funny thing. It not only begets deception but is itself deceptive.

Men think they became hard with sorrow. No. They become vulnerable. A man in pain will believe anything. It is in man’s nature to thirst for hope. Gloom is fertile ground, you see, one where you can plant the seed of whatever truth you like.

God forgive me for I have sinned.

With every year, thevoicedeepened, turned sharp-edged, serpentine, whispering in languages that felt foreign even as they moved my tongue. It became demanding, ridden with ego, riddles veiled in darkness. And the people, they loved me for it. I could see it in the white of their eyes, the foam in their mouths, the straight of their backs, ready to bend, ready to break for me. For me? For the voice in my head. Thatothervoice.

It grew louder with time; reverberant, relentless, filling my dreams with cities burning, skies choked with smoke, the earth splitting with rage, and finally, the shining crescent moon dropping suddenly out of the sky and onto me.

I’d wake, cold sweats, her voice hushed but trembling: “Shh, my little boy, it’s just a dream.” I would nod, and she would sit beside me, rubbing my back like when I was a boy, saying, “You are good. You were born for good things. Never forget that.”

I knew better. These weren’t dreams— oh, no, no, they were warnings clawing their way from posterity into my present, every thought like ash that clung to me like sickly sweat. Destined for ruin.

I wasn’t alone either, no. There were others who sought me out, those marked by strange gifts of their own, bearing signs and burdens they could not abnegate. I saw in them the same hollow desperation, the same anguish of being chosen for a fate they couldn’t understand.

We were the rakes before the spring, the wildfires before harvest. Liars, murderers, blasphemers.

We were those destined to wander history’s condemned depths. Destined to push deeper.

I know that I was once loved, cherished as the little moon itself.

It is that affection alone that has wrought this jagged, hidden shard of my psyche. The one that knows what’s going on. It is in this little germ of primitive adoration alone that I am able to see what the rest of me has truly become.

I went from spark to inferno. I whispered of light, pointed to glory, it lay just beyond the hill. That hill consisted of bodies. Not simple violence, but distended pleasures.

What nobody understands about corruption is that it never arrives as such. It always promises delight. Evil, therefore, first and foremost, isdeception.Truth, ergo, is the cardinal virtue. This is why we are not the murderersor the thieves: we are theliars.

"Then Satan whispered to them to reveal to them that which was hidden from them of their private parts and said, 'Your Lord did not forbid you this tree except that you become angels or become of the immortal.'"
— Qur'an, 7:20

Adam was promisedtanzih(transcendence) and what he got wastashbih(immanence).

And in this verse is everything anybody needs to know about the nature of Sin. Sin always comes as candy.

And so, they followed me. With hollow eyes and broken hearts, they flocked to me, hungering for deliverance. And I—how could I have known?—I gave it to them, the sorry bastards. I promised them salvation, a world free of suffering. A promise that, in the end, was as vacant as their eyes, as my soul, as the depths of history. Salvation is cheap. Promising salvation, however, is expensive. It costs you your soul.

God forgive me for I have sinned.

This jagged, hidden shard of my broken mind wanted to stop, to return to quietude, to a life that could’ve been mine. But each time I tried to pull away, theotherintervened.Qismatitself.

A man can run, a man can hide, but his destiny always finds him.

And then, sudden as the sunrise, he arrived, the man in white. They call him justice; I call him fate. My contrapoint. God’s great stage is wide, life is tragic, life is comic. Spare a thought for me: villains are the most tragic of all, the most deserving of pity.

My chains rattle and I awake with the rough splash of water in my face. I glance around through my swollen, bruised and battered eyes at the gathering crowd. They reek of bloodlust. My neck chafes against the raw iron. How barbaric. My time has come.

I remember now: the wooden contraption that holds a man’s head in place for the guillotine’s terminal fall is called alunette.

Little Moon, that was me once.

I think of my mother and sob uncontrollably. I am anguish unparalleled. I amLacrimosus Domini —the Tears of the Lord.

I am sacrifice incarnate; not only have I foregone my existence, I have also foregone my salvation, all in the name ofQadr.Few men will ever suffer the way I will suffer.

“Remember, you are my little moon, you will show people the way,”my mother would say.

O God Above, I am accursed but she is free.
Curse me but save her, she’s innocent in all this.

Iron chains tinkle, the Man in White ascends the steps, approaches me, the crowd roars in animal glee. Fear grips me, chokes me, envelopes me. Eyes wide and glistening. I’m going to throw up.

I struggle against my restraints spasmodically, and with every heave I hear the crowd “ooohhh” and “aaahh”. A condemned conductor to an orchestra of savages.

I slip, gag, and gurgle on the chains, the iron slicing into my throat, a rehearsal for the inevitable. I still myself, defeated, my heart pounding. I can’t bear to look at them—those faces twisted in wild grimaces, watering in anticipation, starving for my torment. Disgusting.

Instead, I tilt my head back, begging for escape.

And, there it is: the bright crescent moon in the dark sky, impossibly serene. For a single heartbeat, the noise of the world ceases. I am alone with its haunting light.

And then it strikes—no, ruptures—inside me, piercing and undeniable:her word has saved me. It left me this jagged shard of my psyche, offered me a way back home. A small window through which to pour myself out in repentance. Her mercy was God’s Mercy. It was Him offering me a lifeline to tug on at the end of my journey. Her reassurance is Him beckoning me off-stage. Well, I’m here.

Through the phlegm and the moonlit tears and the blood, I see the Mahdi, the Saviour, look at me, his intense, cutting gaze turns soft. He doesn’t just see me, heseesme. But he also has to do what he has to do.

He has a part to play in the Greatest Show on Earth. I have mine.

And somewhere small, quiet, and deep, in the quivering waters of my quintessence, I pray with whatever sincerity this jagged shard of me has preserved all these years that I have done my duty, that my corruption has paved the way for Mankind’s imminent salvation, that in so playing my part, I have earned some small measure of redemption in the vigilant eyes of Heaven. I hope that that’s enough. A lifetime of hoarded sincerity spent in a moment of infinite grief.

Wild fear, selfish desire, suffocating guilt.
Sacred serenity, fervent grace, enveloping inspiration.

"All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,"
— William Shakespeare, As You Like It