A True Story
The man entered in terror, as if he was possessed by jinn. He was running forward in a headlong manner, and tripping over himself as he came. It seemed as if he had been wrestling with someone, for the sleeves and the collar of his clothes were torn. He started to call upon the people inside the mosque to fight to aid Islam, shouting in a tremulous voice: “O, sheikh! O, sheikh!”
Sheikh Emin Keftaro (may God have mercy upon him) and his disciples heeded this in astonishment as the man was interrupting the purity of their session.
They turned towards this terrified refugee, who swallowed his saliva and shouted again: “Oh, Sheikh! Oh, Muslims! You are still here while Islam has been ruined!! Oh, God’s jealousy! Oh, God’s jealousy!”
The disciples looked at each other in wonderment, then looked at him with inquiring eyes. He continued his shouting:
“The drum of Islam has been dented! Barza’s band has committed aggression against the band of the Kurds. They have slashed the drum of the band! Oh people of zeal and ardency! Islam’s drum has been dented!”
With firm confidence, Sheikh Keftaro smiled and turned calmly to his disciples, and said, “A perforation does not cause any damage to a sieve. My son! Islam has been violated before this. It has been violated by its sheikhs and its followers.
“Is there any violation greater than to estimate the status of religion through the status of the band’s drum?!”
At the time, Barza town was to the northeast of Damascus, but today it has become connected with the city.
In this suburb, there is a shrine to Al-Khaleel which is attributed to our prophet Abraham (peace is through him). The members of the band in question used to gather at this shrine for an annual festival where they would dance and feast.
Beside the shrine, there was a small window with a height of no more than one meter. Some of the active horsemen from among the local religious communities used to compete in going through the window on horseback. As the horsemen were passing through the narrow window on their horses, the drums of the band would be beaten at length in front of the watching circles of people that would gather each time. A skilled horseman was able to pass through the entrance with a little training, but some horsemen who were charlatans took this situation as an opportunity to use their magic artifices. They set to passing through Al-Khaleel’s window in order to cheat people and to dominate their minds.
Yet on that day a heated controversy came about between two of the bands’ sheikhs (who claimed to be people with supernatural powers or saints of God). The disagreement escalated from verbal slurs to hand-to-hand combat, until the members of the two bands became involved; at this point, the followers of Barza’s band slashed the drum of the followers of the band of the Kurd. Although that scene started off as very childish and very funny (if only these people had had a bit of rationality), nonetheless it changed into a bloody scene when the followers of each band called upon one another to avenge what had been done for the sake of Islam’s drum, which had been used to beat out the call to revenge in Pre-Islamic ages. For this reason, the saying, “Islam’s drum has been dented” was taken up afterwards as a proverb that circulated on the tongue of the common people in reference to matters that were seen to be trivial.