"Urgent Departure" is the title of the 7th episode of this year's Ramadan series #Selfie. After a critical episode on ISIS that shook minds as people broke their fast on the first two days of Ramadan, this one tackles the immediate and intimate friendship of two Saudis who speak about their adventures with women as they lose themselves in stories and alcohol on a plane. However, only until their names expose their Shi'i and Sunni differences does this friendship last!
It also is a title for my own Ramadan breakfast today in which my mom and I had to "urgently depart" from a heated argument about this very same topic with a woman who believed that "these differences" entail that never would Shi'is and Sunnis be brothers and that Sunnis are obliged to judge (takfeer), correct, and perform jihad against those infidels.
She ignored entirely the fact that both men on the plane (in #Selfie) uttered the same words and mumbled the name of one God when they experienced turbulence, and that their dispute is in fact 1300 years old (as portrayed on the show too). She was however very articulate in choosing phrases from the Qur'an that support her argument, and leaving those that brought her defeat.
It is this articulation that scares me, this deep conviction that hatred is obligatory and necessary. I mourn the deaths in Kuwait, Tunisia, and France on this day and wish for our souls to grow more merciful, in imitation of a God who is most merciful.
- On a side note: Thank you Nasser Al-Gasabi & Khalaf Al-Harbi for diminishing the gap between new and traditional media and for keeping up with being real and truthful on the screen.
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