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'Ritual' slashing baffles NZ police

Paritosh Parasher in Sydney

An Indian American is recovering in a hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, after an emergency operation for serious slash wounds he suffered in a religious ritual last weekend.

The Middlemore hospital authorities have declared the condition of Mohammed Safique, a Sunni Muslim from California, to be stable and said he is expected to recover fully.

The 40-year-old man had flown all the way from the US to New Zealand to participate in the Rativ ritual organised in New Zealand's largest city.

The man's stomach was cut "in a downward slashing movement" of a machete-like weapon as part of the ritual at a hired church hall in Otahuhu. In the process his bowel inadvertently got pierced.

New Zealand police expect to interview him later this week before taking a final decision on whether to lay charges in this complicated case that has made media headlines all over the South Pacific island country.

Safique had to face this ordeal of a deep cut to prove his faith in the healing powers of prayer. Several persons in a gathering of about 200 reportedly tried to heal his wound by reading from sacred Islamic books, but someone from the group called an ambulance as the wound failed to heal quickly.

Ironically, the priest who wielded the machete was his brother, Mohammed Rafique.

While this ritual has stunned the wider New Zealand community, a number of Muslim religious and community organisations in New Zealand have condemned the incident and termed it "un-Islamic".

A few newspapers have quoted Abdul Hafeez Rasheed, an Islamic scholar and former president of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand. He has expressed his anger at the Rativ ritual incident, dismissing it as a religious stunt.

The scholar said that such rituals have no place in mainstream Islam. Rasheed termed the Auckland incident an attempt to copy miracles attributed to Islamic saints and mystics about 800 years ago.

"These acts were not done as part of the religion; it was part of the power they had as individuals. So these people are absolutely wrong if they say it is part of our religion. There is absolutely no mention of such things in Islam," Rasheed told reporters.

In Rasheed's opinion, Islam's prohibition on bodily harm even extends to a ban on tattoos.

But the near-fatal stabbing of the Californian in the ritual has failed to dissuade some Muslims who were present during the incident. They believe that the medical attention was not required.

One such believer, Fraida Sahib, told reporters that the group gave up too soon. "We believe that he wouldn't have ended up in hospital if nobody had called an ambulance. He could have been all right if they had kept praying for two or three more hours," he said.

Sunnis conduct the Rativ ceremony twice a year. This ritual is usually performed in private homes.

The slashing incident has also put the police in a quandary, as they do not have a precedent to follow. They are finding it hard to charge anybody for inflicting the injury, as the injured person was a willing participant in the proceedings.

As part of their investigations, the police are now interviewing about 150 witnesses and hope to talk to the severely injured man in the next few days.

Indo-Asian News Service

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