GABON (FEBRUARY 2015)

Praises to Allah and peace and blessings be upon his Prophet.

By the grace of Allah this first campaign in Gabon was a total success. But before let me introduce the situation of Islam in Gabon that is quite unique. The country in the form of rectangle on a very irregular side is mostly covered by tropical forest and enjoys significant petroleum deposits in the sea. The result is a weakness in the development of agriculture and industry and a mass of immigrants doing small jobs as taxi, house guarding, gardening, household, and mechanical, shopkeepers and sometimes big businessmen. Because it is an ancient French colony and speaks French, these immigrants come from French speaking west African countries and Cameroon and Tchad with some Mauritanian with their shops and rare Moroccan average traders and of course the Lebanese with their supermarkets of all kinds. In Gabon, the first religion remains Animism, Christian groups of all kinds proliferate and converts to Islam are much fewer than the Muslim immigrants but not negligible. What makes the very special situation of Islam is that president Ali Gombo is Muslim – as well as his father president before him - and supports Islam. This help is done through a High Council of Islamic Affairs attached to the Presidency and therefore constitutes an authority. All mosques and imams depend on this Council and any Islamic activity cannot be done without their approval. However the Organization of Islam is in its early days and the Muslims for example just opened their television and radio. Concerning Islamic activities we have the same four groups as elsewhere: Tableegh, Salafees who call themselves Sunnis (see the difference in the attached article), Sufis in this case Senegalese Tidjan and finally modern and moderate intellectuals who dominate the Islamic Council.

Now the campaign: it was excellent by the grace of Allah for two main reasons. First my coming was prepared and supervised by the High Council for Islamic Affairs so I had immediate access to the Islamic radio and television where I did the direct programs and also records on various themes, as well as access to the mosques where I preached almost every night, and of course the facilitation of administrative tasks which are not simple in Gabon, and finally those responsible brothers were available to support us in anything we needed. The second reason for this success by the grace of Allah is that many people already know me from their country of origin, by my books, by ruqya trainings, Internet etc. So many admirers rushed for training or treatment, and the imam of the Sunni mosque where we did the campaign knew me from internet. So we treated approximately 1400 people in 18 days and trained 40 and left a team. Nine brothers and sisters: 3 couples and three men who have accompanied me in this campaign have remained after me as much as their visa allowed it to complete the work. But it is very complicated to move people from West to Central Africa and one of the objectives was to establish a base in Gabon which would allow organizing campaigns in Brazzaville, Kinshasa and others in cha Allah.

What was particular in this campaign was the obvious and immediate results to treatment. Many people felt better immediately and the news was circulating everywhere. I remember this man who could not sleep for two or three months and who fell asleep during ruqya until the cups were removed and I was called to see him sleep in the middle of all the surrounding activity. The imam Presiding High Council was asking any patients he met and saw very highly positive results and was totally satisfied with this campaign. Moreover, two members of the Islamic Council witnessed at a full meeting of their passage with us and the amazing results they found.

Among the memorable moments of this campaign there was Friday prayer I led in the great mosque Hasan II where officials pray and transmitted through the Islamic television; also national TV program « God in Questions » where a pastor, a Gnostic, an animist priest and a Muslim discuss a given topic, for instance it was exorcism because of my presence. As soon as I explained the 4 symptoms they all stated that they deal with the same problems: subhan Allah, people suffer the same situations and the ruqya needs to evolve to reach non-Muslim populations. Especially in a country like Gabon where Muslims have an advantageous position it would be very interesting to show to others what good Islam can bring to them. In this TV program unfortunately the others are constantly aggressive towards other each and try permanently to prove their religion is wrong. What a pity because it would have been far more interesting to emphasize first on what is common and together condemn what we disagree about so we give people a positive message and then everyone can expose specific advantages in his religion. I also did a program on the Islamic radio on interreligious dialogue and this topic deserves an article to share. Finally there was a show on radio Africa n° 1: « one hour to convince », where four journalists shoot me with their questions trying to trap me. From ruqya we moved to Boko Haram who just killed over a hundred people praying jumua in the great mosque of Kano, then to Tunisia living its first democratic elections and the Summit of Francophonia, which was held in Senegal. I enjoyed it very much and after the program the four journalists were impressed by my spontaneous answers, my calm and my knowledge of all subjects. We could not demonstrate the catching in this show but we recorded it in the same radio so it will be broadcasted separately.

The negative point came from Salafees. In the path of Allah it would be unusual that everything is nice and happy. This was not the case, we have all suffered (10 people) to make the trip to Gabon. The pressure was great to treat all the patients and take care of the students. All praises to Allah, what a pleasure to spend our energy for Allah and to suffer for Him when that was done so much for dunya. So the tests are systematic in our work by the grace of Allah, even though we don’t always mention them, but what happened with the Salafees was very special. First the imam of the most rigorous Salafee mosque in Libreville had loved my videos on internet and wanted to receive the campaign in his mosque. This was very convenient for us because the mosque had a first and a second floors used Friday only, so we organized the space at our convenience. Our only requirement was to sleep in the mosque because otherwise the daily travel would be too bothering. The first week went well with just a few legitimate comments on noise and cleanliness and I was giving tafseer every morning after subh. The imam and his Deputy who practiced ruqya asked me clarification on the djinn catching method so I did and the issue was resolved. But then they discovered that I was a member of the Tableegh Jama'at and this imam is a virulent opponent to Tableegh. The situation became very difficult: they could not undertake anything against us because we were covered by the Islamic Council, which has authority over the mosque; they had absolutely nothing to reproach to ourselves or to our ruqya method; the hatred they wore against us could only produce small pettiness and words they said amongst them and there was a campaign in the city against us. I thank Almighty Allah that these people who hate us so deeply and hosted us for 15 days and observed all of our work have found no blame to us. What better evidence of the purity of our work by the grace of Allah? And therefore they have poured into the irrational and proved their bad faith by saying: the way I read the verse 'aynama takunoo' I distort it to turn the meaning into kufr and that is what brings the djinn! Subhan Allah, a fabricated charge, a grotesque lie and a slander. See how those who claim to be the true Muslims leave Islam in defiance of all rules that Islam imposes, by accusing who they want of kaafir and fighting Islam and Muslims, since all these Muslims have found cure and relief with us and moved away from shirk and had their faith increased. In addition, these are small leaders who orchestrated this campaign while their imams spoke in our favor by saying that they didn’t seen anything non-Islamic in everything we do. It is a characteristic of the Salafees: they don’t respect any ‘alim and whoever among their scholars would take a position they disapprove, they reject him without hesitation as if the truth is only what is in their heads. In addition we conducted a fierce battle against shirk that we denounce everywhere and djinn catching precisely is an invaluable tool to prove publicly the shirk contained in talismans (taweez) and others. But how to understand this situation? They have the certainty to be in truth and that all others are astray, so everything that comes from another than them is necessarily wrong, especially if it's a spiritual realm as ruqya that one can only do with the help of Allah. I just wrote an article on Salafees to explain the phenomenon of terrorism.

There is only one new point in the ruqya method: using of the verse: "fatafa alayhim ta'ifun min rabbika wa hum na'imoona fa'asbahat kassareem' (Alqalam) to destroy the blood when there is plenty.

May Allah accept and we use for the good of Islam and Muslims.