30/5/1981,
I am supervising two Fijian seminarians on their cross-cultural pastoral year. They studied Fiji Hindi in Suva for 4 months and are now living with Indo-Fijian rural families. I am also introducing them to the other world religions here – Hinduism and Islam.
A couple of years ago Islam in Fiji was so open that I was invited to give a speech on Prophet Mohammed’s Birthday in a rural settlement. I was helped to write my speech in Urdu from a very friendly maulvi (preacher) at the Labasa mosque. His office was bare and there were no books on the shelves but he was very helpful.
I was also invited to give a speech at a Muslim wedding a few weeks later. One of our local Indo-Fijian Catholics met me a day or two afterwards and declared that my Urdu speech was so good that he didn’t understand a word of it!
But today was different. On arrival at the mosque with the two seminarians I found that my maulvi friend had been replaced by a maulvi who had been trained in Pakistan. I noticed that the shelves in his office were packed with books and leaflets. He immediately went on the attack, trying to persuade us to become Muslim if we wanted to get to heaven.
When he didn’t make any headway there he said, ”Christians are people of the Book. You have some chance. But Hindus have no chance at all. When they die, God will wrap them in red hot chains that will burn their flesh away. When their flesh is all gone God will give them more flesh so that it can burn again. I shuddered at his concept of God and quickly took the two seminarians away.
by Fr. Frank Hoare
