GUINEA BISSAU (FEBRUARY 2016)

 All praises to Allah, peace and blessings upon his Prophet.

It was the first campaign in this Portuguese-speaking country which makes a triangle with the Atlantic Ocean on the West, Guinea Conakry in the South and Senegal in the North, two countries where my centres are respectively settled since 2010 and 2008. It is of course the language barrier which caused this delay, but also the fact that Guinea Bissau is isolated on Islamic level: she does not participate on regional movements as students meetings, and we are hardly seeing any Bissau- Guinean coming for an Islamic cause. The country contains one and a half million people, including the foreigners. There is no mountain, just a hill somewhere, and all the ground is low: we often see rice fields flooded just two or three meters lower than the road. Thus all the soil is cultivable and fertile. Is it the reason of the laziness of the population? It seems that this minimum and easy income is enough for them and inhibits their ambitions. The country contains no deposit, at least nothing is exploited. The country had no political stability since the independence, and, for lack of anything better, the army and those in authorities have been enriched by organizing drug trafficking between South America and Europe; it is to say which point the corruption and the mismanagement have reached, and a few years ago, the CIA arrested the admiral, the chief of staff of naval forces for drug trafficking. As a result there is no factory in the country, the electricity is recent and very fickle. Poverty is widespread, people surviving with crumbs and in very primary conditions, but others have found ways to get big 4x4, thus a quite striking gap between classes.

At the Islamic level, the group of daâwa is the most active, with outings towards Senegal and groups which are coming from different countries, next the Sunnites of Guinea Conakry who have many schools and mosques, then the AMA who are very active, and an Egyptian group under the supervision of sheikh Wahid Abdessalam Bali, I met the responsible and it was a very interesting exchange. This leader, a young men approaching 40, had diplomas for the books oh hadith and tafsir, he presided over the establishment of an Islamic university in Central Africa and here he is in Bissau for the same project. Besides the courses he gives at the University for arabists only, he spends all his time for delivering courses to individuals or groups. He explained that sheikh Wahid rarely makes the ruqya because he had enough students for doing it, and because he spends half of his time in the Gulf countries to collect funds and other half in African countries to install schools, mosques, orphanages and health centres. I also showed him all our methods, as the jinn catching, he appreciates everything, and we discussed about tafsirs what he really enjoyed.

On the other hand, in Portuguese language, there is not much. The 7 Portuguese-speaking countries on the world are Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Guinea equatorial,Angola, Cap Vert and some small islands. As a result there is no rather important Portuguese-speaking Muslim community to translate and write, as what we know in French or in English, not to mention the Turk or the Urdu and I do not know international speakers in Portuguese. Thus I call the brothers in Portugal and in Mozambique to support Islam in Guinea Bissau with books and school curricula and other twinning because we cannot be satisfied with Islam taught in Arabic only and we need a broader solution for the Muslim community.

The result of the campaign was a very slow start up because the group which was committed to receive and to support us royally abandoned us without any explanation: because of bad experiences of the past or by fear of terrorism, only Allah knows. I had decided not to go on an adventure in a country without support, having to find a house, and contacts, and then authorizations, and looking for broadcasts, etc.; because it takes a lot of time for very few results and with my advancing age and all the countries which ask for campaigns, I have to choose what is the most productive, but Allah has Its reasons and we trust Him and we believe that the 23 days campaign- but others has preceded me and continue even after me- will be beneficial for this country. The good news was the discovery of four people already practising the ruqya by our method: three coming from Senegal and an Arabist having learned with my book. We finally managed to get a TV appearance which brought world. Despite our daily sermons in mosques and the auditors’ enthusiasm and the takbirs by seeing the djinn catching, few people came for the treatment that we lowered to 15.000 CFA francs equal to 22€. Fortunately in two other cities, Bafata and Gabou, the results were better, because there, the Sunnites and the Tabligh were with us for the training and communication; thus this adds up to 5 centers that we leave in Guinea Bissau. On the other hand, in all places, the team was shocked by all the gri-gris weared by the people; we would think we are at the Age of Ignorance as if the Islamic science had never arrived.

By the grace of Allah, we took advantage of the lack of patients and students to work on the group and I took new provisions. At first, everyone must have an exercise book and a pen to notate everything in each course, to learn conscientiously until one is able to reproduce the course. I am tired of repeating the courses many time without anyone is able to redoing them. That’s why I remain essential because nobody is able to make these sermons, and we cannot almost envisaged a campaign without me. I also selected a brother to completely draft this courses in order to disseminate them more easily and to enable everyone to work on them. As the brothers began to learn the courses of tafsir, now I ask to them all to give courses of tafsir in their mosque every day after sobh; this will be in sha Allah an excellent training. The other decision is to set up tarawih every evening to strengthen our spirituality and eliminate these evenings of useless talks which kill the Islamic work. These two measures have raised the level and strengthen links within the group.

Next to the work of awareness, treatment and training on the human, there was a big work on the djinns who are more accessible for us than the human beings, and we did our utmost to clean as much as possible the country. In addition to the systematic djinn catching with the patients, for their sorcerer and in the mosques and radios where we preach, we pursued a strategy drawn up in Guinea Conakry which is to walk the markets and to catch every 50 meters; people meet to look, and then we explain and distribute leaflets. It’s of course a communications operation but also a clean-up operation for these markets and these people. I am going to tell you the most remarkable moments in the djinn catching.

1) Trees

These are the cheese trees: big impressive trees with roots going out of the earth, one was so big ma cha Allah that roots were used as benches, et which do not give fruits, which are chosen as places of worship and sacrifices, because the animism is very present in Guinea Bissau. Islam represents 57% of the population, Christianity is represented by a multitude of churches, but the animism is in the mores. Thus we are going to these trees to catch. We did it in the middle of the big market, just next to the Sunni mosque, and the guardians of the tree refused, and one shouted: you came to remove our djinns! Thus we went a few metres further and we did the catching. The jinn refused and there was a good fight whereas a crowd surrounded us. He finally accepted Islam as well as his colleagues. When we began to leave, one of the persons in charge came and began to shout that if he was there he would beat us with his machete to prevent us for doing it, but on this occasion he could only shout to us. After the catching of this first tree, we had some waves of angry djinns came to take revenge, and then nothing. We went to visit another tree, buried in a neighbourhood, but there we left the neighbourhood to do the catching in the car because the brothers of daâwa had already come to preach on the tree and people of the neighbourhood wanted to beat then, that’s why we preferred to avoid the tensions. I discovered during a morning walk another tree adored in our district; it was the most impressive of all, with roots as benches, the tree was so big that two others trees growing on its side were combined with it. There was also a small hut with hanged oxen’s’ skulls and diverse elements of worship.

2) Carnival

I told you which behavioural disaster the carnival was. Furthermore, cars were prohibited from circulation from 1 pm till 11 pm thus we could not go to preach in mosques. So we consoled ourselves by going out at night around all the sites of the party to catch the djinns. Last night of the carnival, we did the catching in the centre and we catched a lot of sorcerers’ souls that we killed according to the method developed in Guinea Conakry: we ask Allah to send the monstrous beast with the verse “daabba” of surah The Ant, then we ask Allah to return the souls of the sorcerers with “innama amrouhou” from surah Yasin and the beast devours them. This applies to the sorcerers who left their bodies to be transformed and go to devour the souls of people, but for other catchers, this applies to all the sorcerers; that also applies to the djinns, but this is more to frighten them when they are stubborn. But this evening there was a strange phenomenon: we finished to kill the sorcerers souls, then we brought the djinns that permit them to be transformed with “Fitrata Allah”, then we brought again souls of sorcerers, then again the processors, etc. and that did not finish. But I was very patient because I had the conviction that this would give special results and I continued. Until a djinn came to speak and said that he was sent by the sorcerers because the beast is devouring them and that they cannot speak to me. They ask me to stop because of 2000, they are only 130 left, all the other were killed. Others, their jinns converted while they are transformed into animals and they cannot return to human state and they are obliged to end their lives in animals. He explained that originally the carnival was a festival for sorcerers before being transformed into a popular festival, and the sorcerers take advantage of it to detect people they want to sacrifice. I had welcomed these good news and I reminded him all the evil doing by the sorcerers and that I would continue by the will of Allah to exterminate every one of them, but he would have the privilege to become Muslim. When we finished them all, I asked if all this sorcery was the reason which made the people lazy and that only the foreigners worked, they said that actually they attached all the population and only the foreigners were active. So we hope our passage will bring about a tangible change in this country. This extraordinary catching was recorded and will be in cha Allah on YouTube.

The day of our departure for Senegal, an extraordinary thing happened. At one o’clock in the morning, in Cotonou, an owl landed on the roof of the second district city chief house. Then the owl fell and began being transformed into an old woman. The local residents gathered and stayed with her until bringing her to the police station in the morning. A brother from Benin part of the group sent us this information around 10 in the morning. We did the catching and the djinns said: she suddenly lost her powers, we don’t know why, and in addition, the witches had been made the sorcery between them. Then we made her djinns come and they said: Muslim djinns came to convert them and they suggested to be converted when she will be in full transformation to unmask and humiliate her publicly. I have insisted on asking if it was not humans like us which had converted them and they confirmed that they were truly djinns. So we have brought these djinns who converted them and there were our djinns of the Bissau carnival: they had organized themselves by groups and went in different places to make the daâwa to the djinns. Allahou akbar!

3) Abderrahamane battle

The city of Gabou is the first one by coming from Guinea Conakry. This is where Islam came: the Peuls of Fouta from Guinea came to Islamise the animistic tribes who were there. The history as presented by the Peuls, and the griots like adding it, is that there was a bloodthirsty animistic monarch who hated Muslim people which he killed in every occasion. It happened that he burns them lively then gives their brains to his wives who made it creams. The Peuls went to complain about the situation to the elders of the Fouta who decided to raise an army against him. After many losses and heroism, the army finally triumphed and all these people were converted to Islam. However, nobody knew what the bad king became or where he is buried. But the one thing that we do know is that the ground battle remained black and nothing more grows to it. This place is situated about thirties kilometres from Gabou. You have understood, we went to this place to catch the djinns, to have their version of the legendary battle because the Peuls consider it as their “Badr” and it is a source of pride they continue to tell to their children and which the griots swell with fantastic details, thus the brother Kane who underwent it since his childhood wanted to have a clear mind about it. There was also the ground secret where nothing more grows and we left. Actually the ground was strangely black and there were still trenches that the fetishist king had ordered to dig before the battle to pile the bodies of the Muslims into it, because too many roting bodies would be harmful. When we settled down for the catching, I began to present the subject in front of the camera, the catcher was immediately possessed by an angry djinn who exclaimed: what do you want to know? What do you want to do here? There was a very long battle after with several successive djinns, I will let you discover this on YouTube, but essentially, the djinns told that it’s them who prevented the earth to produce because all the people become Muslim turned away from them and stopped adoring them and making sacrifices for them, so they take revenge by preventing the human from taking benefits from the land. They said that the Peuls had come with prayers, readings of the Koran and dhikr that’s what beat them, in addition Muslim djinns were with them in the fight. We asked if they had no gri-gris and anti-bullets but the djinns reassured us that they had come with devotion only. It was an important point because it would have been disappointing that this victory which makes the Peuls pride, is based on the sorcery, as the marabouts who found the way to overcome fetishists to be more satanic than them with gri-gris and satanic dhikrs. Then they said that the king at the end wanted to be converted but the djinns has been striking the lightning on him and so nobody knows what happened to him and what his body became. This explanation was plausible; these djinns were so strong and irascible because there were adored during generations and brutally everybody became Muslim, I am not surprised that they were able to eliminate the king who wanted to become Muslim. Finally, they said that the battle took place in 1866, exactly 150 years ago; it was actually quite strange because generally the djinns have not the same notion of time as us, but this corresponded because during the catching the village chief came and introduced himself as the great grandson of the king.

4) The police commissariat

It was wonderful. We had in Gabou good relationships with several policemen and we went to visit them at the police commissariat and for proposing the catching. The first part of the catching was for the policemen and was tumultuous. But when we began with the fatal accidents and criminals –because there was a whole bulletin board with photos of the dead accident victims- a terrible djinn came to say that it’s him who takes the people souls in sacrifice and it became the big disorder in the policemen office: some people begged us to stop while the police chief asked us to continue still quite and smiling. It is actually the partnership I hope for a long time: that the policemen expose the criminals they are looking for and the unsolved cases so that we catch, because on the limited information available in the press we saw extraordinary results with the catching.

5) The marabouts village

Pour terminer ces captages, nous sommes allés au barrage et nous avons trouvé les djinns déjà convertis alhamdou lillah. Après une bonne baignade et quelques plongeons, nous fûmes rejoints par une sorcière qui voulait se repentir. Une chose exceptionnelle s’est produite à Télémélé : 4 sorcières sont venues nous voir pour dire qu’elles voulaient arrêter la sorcellerie et qu’elles voulaient qu’on enlève leurs djinns. Quand on captait, les djinns disaient qu’ils étaient convertis et qu’ils s’étaient retournés contre les sorciers et c’est parce qu’ils ont senti qu’ils allaient mourir qu’ils se sont dépêchés de se repentir. Mais quand on a capté pour la quatrième, ils ont dit que les djinns du barrage les avaient convertis à leur arrivée. Nous espérons vraiment que le changement sera grand dans cette ville.

During a journey, we crossed a village and the guide explained us that the village was completely composed of marabouts and that it was known in all Guinea Bissau for that, that the children learnt to make the gri-gris at the age of 7, that people among them went to Europe to make gri-gris. We were not able to stop and bring people but what we catched in the car was impressive. May Allah destroys all these sorcerers disguised as Muslims.

May Allah destroys all these sorcerers disguised as Muslims.