Jesus:The Guantanamo Years

By Beena Sarwar
29 August, 2007
The News


It's a bit of an absurd sight. A bearded man in an orange jumpsuit (badge no. 727), with a circle of thorns on his head, sits on a stool at a low stage ... Meet Abie Philbin Bowman a.k.a. Jesus returned to earth in his controversial, provocatively titled one-man political satire 'Jesus: The Guantanamo Years', which made its American debut recently .. in Somerville ... The show is based on the simple premise that if Jesus were to return to earth, he wouldn't stand a chance. When He lands in New York, the immigration authorities are immediately suspicious -- after all, he's a bearded Palestinian with a penchant for being a martyr. He's sent off to Guantanamo ...

... They face all kinds of interrogation, including the notorious 'water boarding' -- but the captors are so solicitous of religious freedoms that they allow prayer breaks. During one such break, Jesus falls to his knees, pushed beyond endurance, and for once finds it difficult to get 'Dad' to forgive them. But then, He reflects, when He asked his followers to "turn the other cheek", He did not mean putting up with abuse -- but turning around and 'mooning' the abuser ...

It started in Paris three years ago. People on the streets constantly yelled out to this long-haired, bearded songwriter, "Hey Jesus!" With enough of a sense of history to retort that "Jesus wasn't white!" ...

One such prisoner was the British citizen of Pakistani origin, Moazzam Begg, an educator and social worker who had moved to Afghanistan from England along with his family (pregnant wife and children), for humanitarian work which he had also done in Bosnia. Arrested in Pakistan in 2002, he endured over three years of solitary confinement and torture ... During our discussion, Abie calls him "the most Christian man I ever met," fully conscious of the irony of himself, an avowed atheist, referring to this devout Muslim in such terms ...

http://www.countercurrents.org/sarwar290807.htm