Pocahontas and my Qari Sahab

Ever since I was little the Quran has been a big deal in our household. We were supposed to read it, understand it, revere it. Back in the 90s my parents did what every "good" Muslim couple was doing at the time and they got me and my brother a Qaari sahab. This was a guy well versed in the Quran who would come over to our house and teach us the Quran every evening. We began by learning how to read and correctly pronounce Arabic using what was know as a "Qaida". It was something like the book of alphabets. Having done that we moved on to the Quran itself. Our Qaari Sahab began teaching us the Quran in reverse i.e from the last to first chapter. I thought that was very cool in itself that we had to read this book in such a manner.

Our Qaari Sahab was a simple man. He was this thin, tall guy with a large black beard and a topi and he was always on time every day no matter what on his bicycle which he promptly parked at the gate.Then he made his way to our porch each day to ring the bell and call us out to study. We would sit on the porch in chairs and a table between us, him facing us with his characteristic soft expressions. His face was that of a kind man. He spoke very softly as if he had all the time in the world. In fact apart from a few times when we saw him angry he was a very nice person. He would only drink a glass of water everyday, teach us and then leave. As long as we studied the whole time like good little kids he wouldn't get mad or prolong our study sessions. If misbehaved however, well then we got 10-15 words to memorize so we tried not to.

We knew that reading the Quran was a "farz" or a duty. And we knew that Allah wanted us to read it. (Pfft) I wondered why he wanted us to read it and why couldn't we just be born with all the knowledge of that book. I mean that would've been pretty easy for Allah to do right? He was the Supreme the All-Powerful. He could do anything he wanted. If he really wanted the whole world to know the rules and to know how to behave in this world. If he really wanted us to know how to live our lives why couldnt we just be born with that knowledge already inside us? So I asked my parents and they laughed it off. I asked my teacher the Qari Sahab and he got angry. How dare I question what Allah wanted? He wanted me to find out for myself what Allah's teachings were. It was honestly just a silly thought. And I honestly thought the Qari Sahab would have an answer so smart that I would be convinced. Instead all I got was an angry lecture and yet more questions.
To a little girl like me, it seemed a very inconvenient way to spread the message of Allah. Through a book. To me movies were far more interesting. I knew that if Allah was really all that powerful he would be able to talk to every person and tell them what he wanted without ever needing to use a book to get his message across. Sometimes I thought if he really was so powerful he really wouldn't care if we believed in him or not. He was so much more powerful than us why would he care what we believed in or whether we worshiped him?

Anyway most of what we read we either already knew or we didn't care much about it. We read and read until our teacher was happy and then he would let us go play. To us it was a minor inconvenience at best. It was half to one hour of pure inconvenience that we had to suffer through. Because it was what Allah wanted and somehow it would make us better Muslims.
Now lets get down to the "Pocahontas" part of this story. Pocahontas came out on VHS and it suddenly became my most favorite movie ever. Those days I would run right out of school the moment it ended without spending any time in the playground just so I could watch it after lunch. Even then it was usually too late by the time I got finished with lunch and it was nap time so obviously no Pocahontas for me.

Right after our nap me and my brother would stick the cassette into the player and start watching. The movie wouldn't nearly be over when our Qaari Sahab would be standing outside our door calling us outside to come study. See children can be impatient. Children tend to get tired of routine. They want change and they usually need good reasons to do things that they consider boring like homework or chores or reading the Quran.
So just like that one day I and my brother decided we didn't want to read the Quran anymore because it was cutting into our cartoon time. We wanted to watch that movie every time we got away from homework and meals and school. But this Qaari Sahab was seriously cutting into our Pocahontas time always arriving whenever we were getting to the best part of the movie. So one fine day we decided lets let him sit outside and wait for us. Lets finish this movie. So poor guy is waiting outside probably thinking we're taking a really long time to finish with our "Wudhu" while we were inside watching this glorious woman teach an Englishman about adventure and nature. It was the best time because we knew were being mischievous, we knew we were getting in trouble but we didn't care.

A few minutes passed by and we got to the part where Pocahontas convinced John Smith to talk to the tribal chief and they shared a brief kiss when we heard a man cough loudly and shout LA HAWLA WALA QUWATA ILLA BILLAH. (There is no strength nor power except Allah). We both whipped our heads towards the sound and got off our couch to see our Qaari Sahab red in the face and going on and on in Arabic things we could not for the life of us understand. All we knew was we were in SO much more trouble than we originally thought we would be. Why did he have to enter at the exactly the only kissing scene in the whole movie. WHY!?

He took us both by our hands shouting all the way to the front porch where he seated us infront of the Quran and told us how we were going to hell if we kept watching these satanic movies. These inventions of Satan were only there to lead us away from the right path. That was their only purpose. We listened for some time to his sermon before I got angrier and angrier. The thing with my anger was whenever I got angry I would cry. No not sad just angry. Whenever I was angry with someone I just could not get my tears to stop.

So between stream of tears running down my cheeks and with a red dripping nose I tried to tell my Qaari Sahab why Pocahontas was worth watching. I told him about how kind-hearted she was how she prevented a war between people, how she protected her own tribe. How she was strong and didn't give in to destiny. And he scoffed at everything I said. He said if Pocahontas was ever real she would go straight to hell. Did I not see what she was wearing? Naked she was naked he repeated. We liked watching naked non Muslim women on the television instead of reading about the Prophet of Allah in this "glorious" book.

I held back my tears and told him she was wearing clothes and  I wanted to do both. Why couldn't I do both? By this time my brother had resigned himself to his seat and was watching this exchange happen. I was waiting for him to dive in any minute now and support me but all he did was listen to us. I guess since he was older he knew there was no convincing this teacher of ours. But I was young and I believed he was a good man. He would see the sense in this eventually wouldn't he? So I kept sticking to my guns and trying to convince my teacher that it was okay to watch this movie. I guess even then I obviously was scared of going to hell too. I wanted him to say it was alright. But he only said what we had done was very wrong. That movie was nothing but sin. Making our teacher wait like that was nothing but sin. We were sinful little kids who needed to ask Allah for forgiveness and never do something like this again. We could either be good little Muslims and pray and read the Quran and follow all its teachings. Or we could watch that sinful movie with the naked girl and be sure that we were going to hell. But we had to choose. We studied a whole fifteen minutes extra that day. But we never chose. 

I know now that even some Muslims will say that this particular Qaari Sahab was a bit "extreme". He was scaring us too much. I mean we were just kids and it is just a harmless movie. But tell me how anything he said is wrong according to Islam? They really were kissing you know. And watching anything remotely like that is haraam in Islam. So he wasn't really that far off when he told us according to his limited knowledge that we were going to hell. If not hell then were atleast going to be punished in the "hereafter" for our sins. Is that true though? Or is there supposed to be an age limit in Islam for kids committing sins and stuff? I'll need to read up and get back to you on that.

Anyway I watched that movie a lot many times after that incident. It just wasn't as fun anymore though. I never felt the same about that movie. And we made sure to forward the part with the kiss in it so as not to "sin". Now whenever I'm watching something and a kiss comes on or something even naughtier I sometimes think about that Qaari Sahab and his reaction. Poor guy. We put him through so much.