East Is East, And West Is West; And The Twain Shall Meet

 East Is East, And West Is West; And The Twain Shall Meet

M. Bakri Musa

 

[Excerpt from my Qur’an, Hadith, and Hikayat:  Exercises In Critical Thinking will resume next week.]

 

The recent video clip of UFC Superstar Khabib Nurmagomedov deliberately avoiding shaking hands with CBS Sports Reporter Kate Scott went viral in both East and West, but for very different and opposite reasons. To Westerners, that scene was viewed very negatively as being spectacularly rude and sexist. In the Muslim world, the reactions were the very opposite. Khabib was widely lauded for his strict observance of Islamic etiquette when interacting with members of the opposite sex who are not mahram (closely related thus prohibited from marrying).

 

            That incident brings to mind Rudyard Kipling’s “The Ballad of East and West” opening line:  “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet!”

 

            Kipling was an unapologetic colonialist, as well as the original orientalist long before Edward Said coined that dismissive label.

 

            For a very different perspective, many years ago a well-known Anglo-Saxon American-born guest Imam gave a lecture to our small Muslim group here in Silicon Valley, California. At the enthusiastic welcoming reception, he was seen shaking the hands of a few of the female members in the audience, Muslims as well as non-Muslims.

 

In the ensuing Q&A session, he was challenged for his earlier actions.

 

            “Yes, I breached our faith’s etiquette,” he admitted, “but I would rather break our tradition than my listeners’ heart!”

 

            He went on to say that when he saw that our gathering was not segregated by sex and noting the presence of many non-Muslims, he had made some certain assumptions. He would not have done what he did had he been addressing a group in Saudi Arabia.

 

            He agreed that he had broken his wuduh (ablution) as well as tradition in shaking the hands of non-mahramwomen. However, he reminded his listeners, he could always renew his wuduh.

 

            That Imam was on to something profound. That is, if you have to make a mistake, and given a choice, pick one where your mistake would be readily remediable or result in a lesser consequence. With the Imam, it was much easier for him to renew his wuduh than to break the expectations of his listeners, or not reciprocate the warmth and graciousness of his listeners.

 

This crucial lesson was also imparted on me early in my surgical training. That is, in selecting a course of action, choose one where if you were to make a mistake, it would be much easier to remedy and the consequences less severe.

 

            Decades ago I had a patient who had fallen off his motorbike and torn his spleen. He was stable but the accepted treatment then was immediate surgery to remove the spleen lest the clot would rupture at the most inopportune time. 

 

Except then there were a few early reports from the leading medical centers that recommended surgery would not be needed in the vast majority of such stable cases. I had two options:  Keep the patient locally, thus saving him and family great inconvenience as well as costs. However, if his spleen were to rupture in the middle of the night, I risk losing his life because of possible delays in setting up the surgical team. The alternative was to transfer him to a tertiary center where he could be observed safely with a surgical team available 24 hours. If I were to make a mistake and the patient did not need surgery, the costs of transferring would be quantifiable in terms of extra inconvenience and added costs. The mistake of keeping him locally on the other hand could be fatal.

 

I transferred the patient out. As it turned out, he did not need the surgery.

 

Back to Kipling and going beyond the first line:

 

               Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

               Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;

               But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

               When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

                                                                                                                                            (1-4)

            Reading the entire 96-line poem would lead us to a very different conclusion. That is, the two protagonists, the tribal chieftain Kamal and the Colonel’s son, like all humans, are at the elemental level, the same.

 

            Back to Khabib and Scott. Had he shaken her hand even if perfunctorily, imagine how pleased she would have been and what an image of a tolerant and gracious Islam that would have been projected. Likewise, had Scott had some minimal understating of Muslims and Islam, a major global faith, and had not extended her hand or on seeing and sensing his reluctance, quietly withdrawn hers, there would not have been a big fuss or deluge of shrill bigoted commentaries.

 

            Alas Khabib is no Kamal and Scott is no colonel’s daughter!