God is Great

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Preface

To understand this story you have to know that, in Libya, women who marry keep their maiden name.

Sue and I got into our VW to drive home after work. The passenger side front door of our Beetle tended to stick and so I reached across Sue to pull the door shut. A policeman saw this and ran across the road to our car. “Stop,” he yelled. “Stop. You are under arrest.”

We weren’t very concerned, because we’d already been stopped or arrested by the police on dozens of occasions. However, we were curious about what we were supposed to have done wrong this time.

It turned out that the policeman had misinterpreted my reaching across Sue to close the door. He thought we were making out in the car and so he was arresting us for public immorality.

Luckily, it didn’t take very long for us to convince him that we were a respectable married couple. To prove our status, I handed him our ID cards. An interesting scene followed.

He looked at my ID. “So you are English. And your name is Mohamed.”

“That’s right,” I confirmed.

“You are Muslim.”

“Sorry. No. I’m Christian.”

He looked puzzled. “You are English and Christian but your name is Mohamed?”

“Yes.”

“An Englishman who is not Muslim but has a Muslim name. This is amazing. El hamdulillah! Praise be to God!”

He took Sue’s ID. “She is English but her name is Susan Mohamed. Ah, so she is Muslim.”

“No. She’s a Christian, too.”

He looked puzzled. Then the puzzled look changed to one of comprehension. “Ah. You are related. She is your sister.”

“No. We’re not related. She’s my wife.”

“Your wife?” He was totally stunned. “So you are both called Mohamed but you are both Christians. And you both lived in England, where you met each other and got married.”

“Yes.”

Faced with evidence of what seemed to him to be a supernatural string of coincidences, he responded with a reverent “El hamdullillah!" Then he handed back our IDs, saluted me and watched us drive away.

What a great story he would have to tell at the mosque on Friday!