Hi, I'm Orlando Matamoros
OP - November 30, 2010, 02:23 PM
It is a pleasure to be a member of this forum and, as requested, I will now introduce myself. I'm a Pakistani by birth - (a Rohilla Pathan originally from outside Rampur if anyone is interested). My father was in the diplomatic service and I grew up thinking of myself as quite hispanic. I learned Spanish as a kid and I learned about an entirely different way of looking at the world than my relatives and friends back in Isloo.
As a Muslim and, by culture, a Latino, I had always loved swords. The hardest part for me to give up as I realized Islam was The Great Deceit were the tales of the early battles, zul-fiqar, and the legacy of great swordsmanship and battle from the Rashidun to the Mughals. Christians had their crusader heros, of course, Richard Coeur de leon, etc..., but Christians were always of two minds about the sword. Christ told them that he who lives by it dies by it so Christians have never lived by the sword in the same way. As a son of many generations of warriors, I was sad about that.
With time and the seasoning of years, the flaying of hateful and irrational acquaintances, colleagues, lovers, and, yes, family, I finally came to realize that Christianity had its sword too.
I realized what it meant that Christ came not to bring peace but the sword. I realized that by hiding my conversion from my family I was a coward - I was running from the sword that was waiting for me all the time. I was living in fear of being a true warrior, a true Pathan.
Now I have accepted it and every time I travel abroad I know there are those who would kill me for my faith. I don't carry a sword to defend myself but I have a cross. And it is funny that a sword and the cross have similar shapes.
When I chose the name Orlando Matamoros, it was because Orlando is the Spanish form of Roland, the trumpeter of Charlemagne during the time of the incursion of The Darkness into France who gave his last blast of breath blowing his horn to alert his king that the moors were attacking from the rear.
Matamoros is a nickname or epithet of St. James (Santiago). Unlike those whose faith is simple and literal, I do not believe that this saint will send down a ghostly hand and pick up my keys for me when I've left them in the car. But I can - and do - pray that he will guard me from the next momin who opens fire in the shopping mall shouting the name of God's falsest prophet or from my cousins who dream of a U.S. visa just so they could come and kill me.
But in the larger sense, I believe that the enterprise of moving away from Islam, one person, one family at a time is as august and dangerous - and inevitable - and beautiful - as ever any human venture was or will be. And such a noble movement must have a patron spirit, a guiding narrative, a mythos, an avatar.
Santiago Matamoros - Ora Pro Nobis.
Topic: Hi, I'm Orlando Matamoros