As If All the Philosophy United
They were not in a room. They were not real. They were not even present. But they were there — more vividly than the bruises on Arslan's skin, more audible than the slurs thrown at him, more alive than anything he had ever known. As the rot of Uch Sharif clung to his nose and the sun boiled his insides from above, Arslan slipped out of consciousness and entered clarity.
Not peace.
Clarity.
A theatre, without seats. A chamber, without walls. Thought, without sound. Yet every syllable thundered. Arslan wasn't speaking, but they all heard him. He wasn't there, but they all saw him. And he wasn't guiding, but he had created the space — perhaps his final gift to himself. One last rebellion, not by standing up — but by listening.
A young Kafka stood by the edge of an invisible circle, his face thin, haunted.
> "In the struggle between yourself and the world, side with the world," he murmured.
"But what if the world is a fraud wrapped in holy verses?" Arslan wondered silently.
Beside him, Camus lit a cigarette he couldn't inhale.
> "There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn," Camus said.
"Even absurdity must be mocked."
"What do you call religion?" someone asked.
"A machine of meaning in a meaningless universe," Camus replied. "But a lie, repeated in God's name, becomes a prison."
Arslan flinched. That sounded like home.
Nietzsche laughed. Not with joy, but with despair that sounded like rage.
> "God is dead," he said flatly. "And we have killed him."
"You think that's liberation?" a voice asked.
"No," Nietzsche replied. "It's burden. It means no one's coming to clean this mess."
"But they said we'd be rewarded for patience," Arslan whispered to himself.
"They said a lie so well — it became culture."
In the back, Søren Kierkegaard sighed.
> "The sickness unto death is despair," he said. "And faith is not submission. Faith is risk. The leap into the absurd. Not blind obedience."
"Then what is Islam?" Arslan asked.
"In your hands? A whip. In others? A drug. In God's hands? We may never know."
Suddenly, the room — which wasn't a room — flickered. It expanded. A familiar man, smaller than most, entered. Par Lagerkvist's Dwarf.
> "Hell is the absence of understanding," he growled.
"And heaven is a lie built by those who need slaves to carry them there."
"I told them," he continued, eyes wild. "I told them that cruelty is the nature of power. The Dwarf is not fiction. He is every minister, every priest, every father who quotes heaven while pressing a child's neck into the floor."
"You," he pointed at Arslan, "you were their mule. The cost of their moral theatre."
Arslan didn't weep. He was incapable of it now. But his heart responded. It beat once, like applause.
Jean-Paul Sartre leaned forward.
> "If hell is other people, then religion is the institution that weaponizes them."
"You are not damned for being disobedient," he added. "You are damned for seeing clearly."
A heavy silence. No one disagreed.
From the shadows, an older man coughed, dusting off parchment.
Aquinas? No. Al-Ghazali.
> "If the Qur'an is from God, then it must contain no contradiction," he stated.
"But interpretation has made a God of men."
"You say religion is corrupted?" someone asked.
"No," he answered. "Religion was fine. But scholars — we became the problem."
"When?"
"When we stopped fearing our own words. When 'in the name of God' became a business model."
Maryam of Bethlehem appeared next — not the icon, the woman. A voice that had always been used, never heard.
> "They used my silence as doctrine," she said. "They made modesty a weapon. They called submission a virtue. They made my name a cage for women."
"They told girls to be like me," she added, "but they never let them speak."
"You spoke?" Arslan asked.
"No," she replied. "That's why they loved me."
And then — absurdity.
A stagehand, faceless, placed a television in the void. It flickered on. A Pakistani TikTok imam appeared, shouting "Islam is peace! Islam loves all!" as girls danced behind him, women praised him, and comments flooded in: "SubhanAllah!"
Everyone stared.
> "That," Kafka said, "is the trial. Not of guilt. But of truth. You are not judged for your deeds. You are judged for disrupting comfort."
"They loved Arslan's prayers," Camus added, "as long as they didn't have to feed him."
"They believed in the book," Sartre said, "as long as it didn't interfere with profit."
"They feared Allah," Nietzsche added, "but worshipped Rizwan."
Arslan listened to them all. He said nothing. But they could feel his thoughts — the contradictions carved into his ribs, the hypocrisy lodged under his fingernails.
One voice emerged. A child.
No one knew who he was.
> "I memorized the Qur'an," the child said, "and when I asked what slavery meant, they beat me."
"When I asked why women weren't allowed to speak, they said I was becoming a liberal."
"When I said I didn't want to hit my sister, they made me sleep outside."
"I was nine."
A theologian tried to protest — but the words didn't come. He had none.
The philosophers began to overlap, not in chaos, but in crescendo. A chorus.
> "The soul needs freedom — religion fears it."
"Obedience is a virtue when choice exists."
"You cannot legislate God into a family."
"The Book is not a bat. It is not a belt."
"And if Heaven is sold with threats, it is no Heaven."
Arslan, now weightless, spoke.
> "They told me God was kind. But His followers weren't."
"They told me Islam was beautiful. But the ones who screamed it the loudest had blood under their nails."
"They told me Heaven was waiting. But the contract was unreadable. The rules infinite. The punishment eternal."
"They told me I was free. But every choice was sin."
"And still… I believed."
The theatre went silent.
No applause. No judgment. Just presence.
And as Arslan's breath grew thinner, the voices dimmed. One by one, each philosopher, each thinker, each ghost returned to their place. Not gone — just quiet. Their words etched in the blood of one man who never raised his voice but raised a question that would haunt any honest mind:
If God is love, why do His messengers love pain?
And then, Arslan faded. The chamber remained.
The theatre of clarity went dark. But the echoes — they stayed.