The Last Judgment (2 page)

Fifty yards away, along the front doors of the Islamic Center—within the portico of the pink-stoned building, with its graceful Persian arches and the towering minaret in the background—a dozen private security personnel walked nervously back and forth, eyeing the mobs from a distance. They would pause occasionally listening through their earpieces to the proceedings taking place inside the cavernous auditorium.

Within the Great Hall of the Prophet, as it was called, every red velvet seat was taken.

In the upper deck, a hundred additional Muslim visitors were standing, straining to catch a glimpse of the notorious “glorious mufti.”

Sheikh Mudahmid was at the podium. He was a man in his late sixties with a deeply lined face and a jet-black beard that reached down to mid-torso. He wore a gray-and-white robe with a white turban.

He had just finished his address. Now he was basking in the thunderous applause.

But here and there, in the pockets of shadow in the auditorium, there were a handful of voices. Questioning. Dissenting. They were whispering. But audible.

The sheikh surprised the audience by agreeing to take questions from the floor. When the Muslim clerics in the high-backed chairs behind him jumped to their feet and assured him this was not necessary, the sheikh waved them back to their seats with a slow, confident wave of his right hand. He turned back to the audience.

He was in absolute control. He feared nothing.

One cleric approached the floor microphone and asked a question that keyed into a statement the sheikh had made in his speech.

“Allah be praised,” the man from the floor intoned quietly as he began. “I want to seek your wisdom. What you said, about the possibility of
jihad
regarding the ‘American–Israeli Incest' as you called it—do you mean a
personal jihad
in our devotion to Allah and Muhammad his Prophet, and our personal war against the unrighteousness from the contamination of the infidels? Or do you mean an actual, corporate war of Muslims…a military gathering…a confrontation of Israel and the United States? I believe that the media has twisted your words in the past—there has been much misunderstanding.”

“What I have said,” the sheikh replied with a calm, pleasant smile, “I have said. There is nothing hidden. America is the beast of unrighteousness and Israel is its whore. What does the Quran
say? What does it speak regarding such filth? Do we not have the instructions of the Prophet to rid the world of such abominations? Are we not the kin of the great warrior Saladin? Are we men—or are we little children?”

A loud murmur swept through the hall.

A second man, who looked about thirty, with closely cropped beard, short hair, and intense eyes, approached the microphone.

“Greetings, Sheikh Mudahmid.”

The sheikh gave a half-nod, studying the young man carefully.

“I wish to return to the main theme of this conference,” the man said. “Is it not ‘The future of Islam'?”

The sheikh smiled broadly.

“I am heartened,” he replied with his arms outstretched to the audience, “that our young cleric-to-be has at least learned how to read.”

And with that, he turned and pointed to the large banner in back of him, bearing the words,
THE FUTURE OF ISLAM—ONE GOD, ONE PROPHET, ONE POWER.

Laughter rippled through the great hall.

The young man smiled back. But he pressed on.

“The banner says ‘one prophet.' And so you speak this day of Muhammad. But you speak
only
of Muhammad. What about Jesus? Doesn't the Quran also call Jesus a ‘messenger' of Allah?”

The sheikh leaned forward. His smile had evaporated.

“Sura three, verses thirty-three through sixty. Yes, that is what it says. Go home and read it. But Muhammad is the last and the greatest of the prophets. Why do you bother me with such childish questions?”

“And yet,” the young man retorted, “the true test of a prophet is whether what he speaks is shown to be the truth. Isn't that correct?”

The sheikh did not answer. His eyes narrowed as he cast a withering glance at the young man standing at the microphone.

“Those very same verses that you, Sheikh Mudahmid, just quoted to us—don't they also say that Jesus was, and I quote,
‘created by God from the dust,' just like Adam? Which means that the Quran teaches that Jesus was only a mere mortal.”

By now, several muftis and religious teachers in the audience had risen and begun commanding the young man to sit down.

But he was immovable, locked into place at the floor microphone. His shoulders were straight and his head rigid, as if he were fixed to some invisible scaffold.

And as he continued, his voice was becoming higher-pitched and more penetrating.

“But if what the Quran says is true, then Jesus is a liar. For Jesus tells us in His own words—not the words of the Quran hundreds of years later, but
His
own words, recorded by His apostles, His eyewitnesses, in the Bible—that ‘before Abraham was, I AM.' ”

The auditorium exploded. Half of the men in the audience were on their feet, yelling at the questioner.

“Sheikh, is it not true,” the young man was now shouting to be heard, his eyes fixed on the sheikh, “that if the Quran is correct, then Jesus
cannot
be a prophet—He must be a blasphemous liar, worthy of death!”

Someone on the dais gave a sign to the security guards in black robes scattered along the walls of the auditorium.

Up on the stage, behind the podium, the sheikh could see the point coming. So he began to speak to drown out the approaching heresy—but not quickly enough.

“Unless…” the young man continued, his cries filling the great hall, cutting and sharp like broken glass, “unless Jesus was no mere human prophet—but was the Son of God. The second Person of the Godhead. Who shall come to judge the living and the dead. He is coming—coming very soon—and
that
is the future of Islam you have failed to discuss…the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when He comes, then woe to you false teachers of the law…woe to you who lead millions upon millions astray…idolaters of religion, falsely so-called, vainly puffed up by your fleshly minds, taking delight in false humility and worship
of angelic creatures—but failing to worship Jesus the Alpha and the Omega!”

The great hall now filled with a roar as the young man was dragged away from the microphone by the security guards.

“What is your name, infidel?” the sheikh bellowed from the stage.

The young man broke free and ran back to the microphone.

“I am Hassan Gilead Amahn…servant of the Lord Jesus Christ…”

“You are the enemy of Allah—and you are accursed!” the sheikh shouted back.

“There is no condemnation for me,” the young man shouted as three security guards dragged him away by the arms, “nor for you, if you embrace Jesus the Messiah—His love is great enough even to save you, Sheikh Mudahmid…”

The audience poured into the main aisle like a rush of ocean surf, grabbing at the young man, slapping, shouting, and striking.

The three security guards had managed to drag their captive to within just a few yards of the exit, but the surging arms and fists of the angry crowd were pulling them down.

Hassan Gilead Amahn felt himself crushed to the floor under the human wave. As he tried to get up, fists flew at him from all sides, smashing into his jaw, his eye sockets, his forehead, pounding on his back.

He stumbled, dizzy and losing consciousness.

Then there was a face of a bearded man with a scarf wrapped around his head—he was wide shouldered, and strong. He grabbed Gilead by the neck, and pulling violently, launched him up and away from the floor and the crowd and yanked him safely through the doors.

For just an instant, Gilead's eyes focused, and he looked the bearded man in the face as he shoved Gilead through the front doors and out into the night air.

Then the man with the beard disappeared.

The law-enforcement agents were already running at a full sprint toward the great hall. A contingent of the protestors, seeing
their opportunity, knocked down the barricades and surged forward onto the sprawling lawn that led to the front doors of the Islamic Center—where hundreds of screaming Muslims were pouring outside.

The police started swinging their night sticks and calling for the Muslims to go back into the building—and for the protestors to retreat.

But it didn't work.

Tear-gas canisters flew overhead, and bitter clouds swept over the yard. People covered their faces and fell to the ground.

Someone, somewhere, yelled to the police to arrest Gilead.

“He provoked it! He started a riot!”

Gilead was thrown to the ground, cuffed with thick nylon ties, and then led roughly to a squad car and pushed into the backseat—where he sat for close to an hour under the watchful gaze of two deputies standing outside.

Then one of them got in the front, looked over the seat at Gilead, and read Gilead his rights.

Then he asked, “Do you have a lawyer?”

Gilead looked back at the deputy but didn't respond.

“I said, do you have a lawyer?”

Gilead shook his head.

“Fine,” the deputy replied.

Then, as he turned to his clipboard to retrieve the waiver of rights form, he muttered to himself, “Buddy, you're going to need one…”

2

T
HE ELEGANT HOTEL BANQUET HALL
was filled with the sound of clinking coffee cups and after-dinner conversation. Waiters scurried quietly and deftly between tables, serving small plates with dessert. Hanging from the podium at the front of the banquet hall, a satin banner read, “INSTITUTE FOR FREEDOM.”

At a table near the podium, lawyer Will Chambers tugged slightly at his starched tuxedo shirt. His wife, Fiona, in a sparkling black evening gown, bent over and adjusted his silk bow tie.

Looking nervously around the room, Will turned to Fiona.

“Okay. Len is still not here. How am I going to introduce our honored guest when he isn't here? Boy, this is awkward…”

Fiona glanced around the room, then looked back at her husband. She reached a slender, manicured hand to sweep one of her husband's long, unruly, silver hairs back into place. She smiled.

“Darling, you'll have to do what you've done so well for thirty years as a trial lawyer.”

“What's that? Oh, you mean…
when in doubt, raise an objection?”

Fiona giggled a little.

“No, that's not exactly what I was thinking about,” she replied. “I was thinking of something else. What you told me after we had been married for a few years. You were preparing a case for a trial at the time. What you said really stuck with me.”

“Oh, yeah,” Will said with a smile. “That's it. Pump up my deflated male ego right before I walk up to that podium and start improvising like a bad stand-up comic…”

“Hey, I'm serious. You were preparing a case. And just to prove that I really do listen when you talk about the practice of law—you said that preparation for trial means preparing to handle the surprises you can't prepare for.”

“It's interesting you should remember that statement,” Will replied with a half-smile.

“Why?”

“Because I first learned it, years ago, from our honored guest.”

The master of ceremonies appeared at the podium. He gave a short introduction of Will Chambers as the award presenter, reminding the audience of Will's career as a civil-liberties trial lawyer. And that Will had been the recipient of the Freedom Award the year before.

With that, Will took a last swig from his coffee cup and made his way to the podium.

The audience quieted. Will glanced quickly at his watch, and then gave the crowd an assured smile. For a moment, Will felt personally responsible for the nonappearance of his old friend, Professor Len Redgrove. Will couldn't help but think that he should have personally contacted Len about the banquet…perhaps even driving him to the banquet himself.

Len hadn't seemed like the same man over the last year or two. Ever since his wife had lapsed into Alzheimer's, and after retiring from his post at the University of Virginia Law School, Len Redgrove had not been just an absentminded professor. His brilliant mind and intellectual passion had apparently fallen into disrepair—even bizarre abstraction.

Will mused over his thirty-year relationship with Len. It had started in his law-school days, when he had first met Redgrove while he was a visiting professor at Georgetown Law School. Later, through Will's spiritual conversion and throughout much of Will's law career, Len had become both a professional and personal mentor. In Will's first criminal case before the International Criminal Court in The Hague in the Netherlands, Len Redgrove had been Will's co-counsel.

I should have picked him up and brought him here myself,
Will thought to himself.