My introduction to Islam

5 days in to the 6 Day War

It was the middle of the afternoon on a sunny day somewhere in southern Yugoslavia. I was walking through town back to the main road to hitch a ride to the Adriatic.

I knew two guys had been following me for a while, muttering something, but didn’t really care.

Then one guy grabbed my knapsack from behind yelling at me and the other got in front of me yelling in my face.

I wasn’t really a fight, more like a long-drawn schoolyard wrestling match. I had the disadvantage, with a 40-pound pack on my back and this guy hanging on to it and the other guy trying to pull me around by my shirt.

They were my age, 20 or so.

This tussle went on forever. I finally got my knapsack off so I could move a little better because I could tell they weren’t trying to steal it; they had a real bone to pick over something.

Finally, I think because all three of us were getting tired, we started to just yell at each other rather than fight. We didn’t speak the same language but they were ballistic over the flag on my pack: it was the symbol for Canada’s 1967 Centennial.

I got my Mom to sew it on before I left home. Back then nobody in my family and my extended family would acknowledge the new Canadian flag the Liberals had brought in. So, I got a little Centennial flag, because someone told me everybody liked Canadians when you were on the road.

Well, that wasn’t working for me this afternoon in Yugoslavia.

I finally started to figure that these guys were Muslims and they thought I was a Jew walking through their neighbourhood with a Star of David on my back!

And I remembered a debate in Canada that whoever designed the Centennial logo had come up with something that was similar to a stylized Star of David. Was that an accident or intentional?

What compounded my situation was that this was day 5 or 6 of the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. Arab Muslims and Israelis were killing each other.

Of course, the hatred between Muslims and Jews had intensified 20 years earlier when Israel was created and we saw the mass migration of Jews and Palestinians in and out of the newly-created state.

My confrontation in Yugoslavia was my first but was certainly not to be my last in the Muslim World, primarily because of my disgust with the attitude of some men towards women.

In 1969, I spent considerable time in the World of Islam, from Libya to Pakistan, northern India, Tunisia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the Middle East. By and large I was received well as a traveller; welcomed to stay with several families and educated on their different approach to life.  I was always intrigued by the dynamics of families with two wives.

However, I saw the disgusting side hitchhiking with my girlfriend in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. She was German, blonde and buxom, resulting in me having to physically fight guys off. I broke a guy’s nose one night. Many had no concept of chivalry or respect for women, the polar opposite of my social and cultural way of life.

Back to that afternoon in Yugoslavia, it never did get resolved.

They thought it was the Star of David. I understood why they were angry in that it was somewhat akin to the movie clip in “Die Hard: With a Vengeance” where Bruce Willis is standing in Harlem wearing a sign that says “I hate niggers.”

But I wasn’t going to cut the flag off my pack, and eventually we three moved on.

A few days later I decided to remove it anyway. It wasn’t serving any useful purpose.