Elegy for Muhammad Mursi, president of Egypt

Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un! We are from Allah, and to Him shall we return. Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un! We are from Allah, and to Him shall we return. Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un! We are from Allah, and to Him shall we return.   For all the elegies written on […]

Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un!

We are from Allah, and to Him shall we return.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un!

We are from Allah, and to Him shall we return.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un!

We are from Allah, and to Him shall we return.

 

For all the elegies written on this page in the 13 years of the life of this Column (and the elegies have been quite a few), only today’s carries THREE Istirja’s – Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un! This is because the loss of President Muhammad Mursi of Egypt (Professor, PhD, Engineer, Hafiz, Khatib) is a loss of gargantuan proportions, first for the Muslim World, secondly for Egypt, and thirdly for the Ikhwan al Muslimun, the Muslim Brotherhood, and all its adherents worldwide including, by the Grace of Allah, this Columnist.

Our brother, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who stood with Mursi throughout the latter’s tumultuous one-year presidency and his later incarceration by that Great Usurper General Sisi, paid tribute to the departed leader thus: “May Allah rest the soul of President Mursi, our brother, our martyr, in peace. I offer my condolences to all of my brothers who walked the path with him. I offer my condolences to the Egyptian people.”

This Column squarely places the blame for Mursi’s death – nay, murder – on the neck of the Sinister Anti-Islam Quartet of Sisi-Netanyahu-Salman-Trump. Each component of this quartet has a bloodied hand in this murder, and in the murder in 2013 of hundreds of Ikhwan Brothers at Cairo’s Rabi’a Mosque and all over Egypt. They financed the coup, supported it, and were joyful of it.

One may claim that two ‘components’ of the sinister quartet (Salman who became Saudi King in 2015, and Trump who became US President in 2017) can be said not be officially on seat at the time of Mursi’s ouster by Sisi in 2013, their actions, inactions, omissions, commissions and those of their predecessors (King Abdullah and President Obama) all point to one thing – they are both culpable as are their countries.

Allah Ya isa, O Sinister Quartet!

For some historical background, we may recall that after Mubarak was ousted by a popular uprising in February 2011, the Ikhwan al Muslimun (Muslim Brotherhood, which had been banned since the time of General Gamal Abdel Nasser) was legalised. It entered the political process through the Freedom and Justice Party and won the largest number of seats in the Parliamentary Election of the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012. In the June 2012 Presidential Election – the first free and fair presidential election in Egypt’s history – Dr. Muhammad Mursi, the party’s candidate, won.

Mursi’s Inaugural Address to the Egyptian people in 2012 was full of references to God, Allah – and that was what Sinister Quartet could not stand: “I call out to all of the Egyptian people from the depths of my heart…and from whom I seek no reward or thanks, RATHER I SEEK THE PLEASURE OF ALLAH ALONE…I call out to the people in the plains and on the coast, in the villages and cities, in the deserts and countryside…to stand together united on one platform to protect the fruits of the revolution…THERE IS NO POWER OR STRENGTH EXCEPT WITH ALLAH. La haula wa la quwwata illa bilLah! O Allah, guard Egypt, protect our people, and do not destroy us because of the actions of the foolish people amongst us. Ameen.”

After the bloody 2013 coup against Muhammad Mursi in Egypt, we all took solace in the words of one of our leaders, Dr. Yusuf al-Qardawi, a pillar of the Ikhwan and President of the International Union for Muslim Scholars: “We need to be certain that THE RELIGION OF ALLAH WILL BE VICTORIOUS. Whether it is with or without us does not matter, what matters is that Islam triumphs. We must not lose sight of the fact that the outcomes are in the Hands of our Lord. Our duty is to stay on the right path; certainly, the real meaning of success is to remain on this path throughout our lives.”

The Economist, that well-respected London-based news magazine, had summed up it up nicely after the 2013 coup in Egypt: “The Muslim Brothers-and other Muslims across the Middle East-will conclude from all this that the West applies one standard when secularists are under attack and another when Islamists are. Democracy, they will gather, is not a universal system of government, but a trick for bringing secularists to power. It is hard to think of a better way for the West to discourage the Brothers from re-entering Egypt’s political process…The Brotherhood’s principles include firstly the introduction of the Islamic Shari’ah as the basis of controlling the affairs of state and society; and secondly working to unify Muslim countries and liberating them from foreign imperialism.”

So when it comes to so-called Islamists entering – and triumphing – in politics (as did Hamas in Palestine, Ikhwan in Egypt, AKP in Turkey, Annahda in Tunisia, et al), it becomes a scary scenario to internal secularists in Muslim countries, to the West represented by the US, to Middle East Monarchies, and especially to Israel. The Sinister Quartet!

Death is inevitable for Allah says in the Qur’an: “Every person (nafs) shall taste of death; and We try you with evil and good as a test, then unto Us you shall be returned.” But death is also not the end, for Allah says: “When the Angels take the lives of the righteous, the Angels say to them: ‘Peace be upon you. Enter paradise because of the good deeds that you used to do (during your life).”

In sha Allah Muhammad Mursi is one of those – and may Allah count us among them too. His death had come; ours and that of the Sinister Quartet will also come, and may Allah have mercy on the soul of Mursi and our souls. Bi ayyi zambin qutilta ya Mursi? For what fault were you murdered? May Allah accept your martyrdom, O Mursi! For the Prophet had also said, “man mata duna irdhihi fa huwa shahid” (whoever dies protecting his honour is a martyr).

To the Ikhwan in Egypt, we end our lament with “sabran ya aala Misr, fainna mau’idakum al jannah” in sha Allah (Patience, O Family of Egypt! Your abode shall be paradise by Allah’s Grace), a paraphrase of what the Prophet of Islam Muhammad, upon whom be peace, told ‘aal Yasir’ (the family of Yasir, Islam’s premier martyrs).

For the faithful believers, Allah says in the Qur’an: “Those who have said ‘Our Lord is Allah’, and then have become upright, the Angels will descend upon them saying ‘Do not fear nor be sad, but receive good news of the Paradise which you have been promised. We are your protectors in this life and in the hereafter: therein you shall have all that you desire; therein you shall have all that you ask for.”

May Allah forgive Muhammad Mursi, President of Egypt, whose first term should have ended in 2016, and his second term in 2020. We plan, and Allah plans; but Allah is the best of Planners. What happened to us – and to Mursi and to the Ikhwan – is brazenly wicked and unforgivable, but based on Tawakkul, we know it to be within Allah’s Grand Plan. O Allah we submit! Make it easy for us to bear all these indignities from the Sisi-Netanyahu-Salman-Trump Quartet. Allahumma alaiKa bihim! O Allah deal with them! And may Allah help us free Palestine and Quds and Masjidul Aqsa, amin.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji’un!