To A Suicide Bomber Poem by Rafey Habib

You do not speak for me:
You who soak yourselves in blood
Are far from the prophet's mantle.

You who act beyond the Book
Are far from the Word.

You do not speak for me:
You who do not know, and kill,
Murder your own soul.

You blew up a young girl.
A mother's heart will bleed forever.
A father's will is broken.
Because of you their world is ended.

What good have you done?

Your own wife, young,
Curses you in her sleep, her nightmare.
Your children betrayed
To a myth; they do not know where you are,
Where you have gone; they still ask for you.
Your parents dragged
Through your empty dream.
Because of you their world is ended.
You have brought not paradise
But hell: hell to all around you.

What good have you done?

Because of you, I am reviled;
Because of you, your own people suffer;
Because of you
Oppression speaks louder.
Because of you, my religion reels in shame.

Because of you, two countries lie in ruins.
Because of you, a deserted nation suffers.
Because of you, the corrupt have grown stronger.
The bigots can speak without shame.
Because of you, the good people the world over

Have no name.

With each act of your violence,
Your enemies grow stronger, harsher
More justified in killing and conquest.
Each life you take weakens your cause, turns
An indifferent world against you.

You call yourselves holy warriors:
But you have never read the Holy Book
Never tried to understand
Never struggled with yourself.
You took the easy way:
And what will you say on the Day of Days?
What will you say to your Lord, to
Those you killed, to your family?
What good have you done?

It is not you who bear
The prophet's sword; the
True sword is a word, a thought, touched by light
Forged in wisdom and
Relentless in love.

It is not you who wear
The prophet's mantle but those who
Strive , armed not with bombs but with patience, with
A Book, high in words and deeds.

You do not speak for me
Or the sweetness of my God;

You do not speak for me.