Story of Leon Klinghoffer

Malady Today

Exactly 21 years ago today, on the afternoon of October 8, 1985, Leon Klinghoffer - a wheelchair bound 69-year old, was cruelly murdered for the dual crimes of being a Jew and an American. He, and his wife Marilyn Klinghoffer, were celebrating their 36th wedding anniversary by taking a cruise aboard the Achille Lauro, sailing from Alexandria to Port Said in Egypt. Following a plot masterminded by Abu Abbas, four Palestinian militants hijacked the ship, and shot Leon Klinghoffer in forehead and chest while he was sitting in his wheelchair. The ship's barber and a waiter were forced to throw the lifeless body and wheelchair overboard. The body was found by some Syrians on October 14-15, and returned to the United States around October 20. Leon Klinghoffer was buried at Beth David Memorial Park in Kenilworth, New Jersey.

The crime makes any reader sit-up and dwell on what human race is headed for. It was made into a television movie in 1990, Voyage of Terror – The Achille Lauro Affair. John Coolidge’s second opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, with a libretto by Alice Goodman, raised controversy in 1991. A television movie based on this opera, directed by Penny Woolcock in 2003, was winner of the Prix Italia, an Italian broadcasting award.

However, 21 years since the event, we aren’t any better. In fact, the situation has worsened. Everyday we hear of similar well-planned and coolly executed heinous crimes borne out of religious rivalry or one up-man-ship. As is apparent, religion has been reduced to achieving supremacy in terms of number of followers, physical power¸ and power to decimate other sects. The religious intolerance leads to conversions, riots, discrimination, and takes its final toll in the form of deadly crimes. Elevating religion to its original status is thus, an immediate necessity, for ultimately it is we who need the religion, and not the religion that needs us.

Even for those of us who aren’t directly affected by the present religious rut, and would rather focus on bigger concerns in our immediate lives, it’s essential to ponder over the trend of ritualism that has gone beyond redemption. According to one religion, it is wrong to eat non-vegetarian food on Tuesday; another says it is wrong on Thursday. One set of people find it inauspicious to wash clothes on Friday; some other set finds it wrong on some other day. Such paraphernalia is further strengthening religious demarcations. And the boundaries of religion, if they don’t serve any other purpose than what is observable today, are nothing more than trouble-rousers.

Humans were, and are, being created by the same One, the same Supreme. Then, why at all is there a need for different sects? Humanity alone should be enough. So, perhaps all the religious heads should get together, and declare that each religion is respectable, and that conversion to one religion is an insult to the rest? Impossible. Perhaps a new movement called ‘Humanity Re-invented’ is the need of the hour? Under this, religion will be given a five year holiday, identities of various sects omitted, and humans will live as humans only; the colour, the beard, the hair-cut and the dress won’t identify a person’s religion. That might work. But, there could be an easier way, too – if we understand that none of the existing religions is wrong or incomplete; if we understand that the baseless dimensions given to religion mar its actual meaning and thereby lead to suffering in various forms; if we understand that unless a bell rings within us, there is no point ringing thousand bells in a temple; if we understand that unless we wake up from our deep materialistic slumber, there is no point staying awake for the ‘Jagratas’; and, if we not only understand, but also adopt the saying ‘Live and Let Live’.

“Mazhab nahin sikhaata, aapas mein bair karna…”

Hence, let us not oblige religion. Religion obliging us would be more beneficial. Let us not just stop at feeling bad for Leon Klinghoffer who might have been 90 today, but resolve to contribute our bit by being secular in heart and soul, if not as revolutionaries.