The Image, the Icon and the Covenant

I am not going to write about my overall response to the book primarily because I feel like I do not have a precise reaction and there are too many elements in the novel that I like. However, I am going to momentarily digress from a strictly post-colonial theme and look at a part of the novel where Khalifeh seems to allude to Karl Marx and his view on religion.

In the section where Ibrahim first goes to meet Michael, Ibrahim thinks:


"I was filled with anger. This is the ambiance he created, feeding on people's ignorance, on the peasants' poverty, bleeding the misery of the needy. He was feeding them opium.."(113).

Marx famously said "religion is the opium of the masses." The parallel between what Ibrahim thinks Michael is doing to the people and Marx's opinion of what purpose religion serves to the people is hard to ignore. According to Marx, religion was a way for people to project their desires for this life onto the next. They were so focused on the next life that they could forget about the oppressions of this current life (sorry I'm paraphrasing Marx and his contemporaries). Thus religion provided a comfort and way for people to forget their present struggles. Instead of focusing on how to change the current situation people where focused on their next religious "hit" if you will, the next life, the next justification for their current suffering, the next time they could feel comfort and the next projection of happiness after death.

In Ibrahims's point of view, Michael and his Reike are doing this same thing. Michael is comforting and distracting people of their current sufferings. He is providing a type of opium. Ibrahim may be most distraught by this idea when he hears Michael talking to Sakineh after she is beat by her husband. Michael, through hypnotism, tries to relax and comfort Sakineh. The implication of this, however, is that the situation in which Sakineh lives will not change. Instead of looking for a way to alleviate the situation, Michael looks for a way to alleviate the present pain.

Perhaps what is also present is the idea that no one knows how to fix Sakineh's problem and the most they feel like they can do is provide a means to ease the suffering. The suggestion may be present that Marxism is not the answer to this problem.