SOUTH AFRICA (DECEMBER 2013 - JANUARY 2014)

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

This first campaign in South Africa has been very rich and rewarding by Allah’s grace. Let me introduce you to the country. The most surprising thing is the level of development: roads, infrastructures, laws… you can hardly find in what Europe is better. It starts by the great airport: I think it is bigger than the Roissy Charles de Gaulle (main Paris airport) or at least similar. Moreover, I have been to wholesale shops 4 times as big as the French wholesaler “Metro”. Driving the 1600km from Durban (north-east) to Cape Town (south) the car reached 200km/h; don’t worry about radars, the driver had removed the number plates. Police is quite visible in this country which has one of the world’s highest crime rates, but we have never been checked. I usually say that people would never know about crimes if it was not the news, but there we received many patients who had been robbed in their shops and houses, many have been shot, many widows because of robberies and many patients carrying guns, which is common in this country.

The development of this country does not come from its natural resources - the problem everywhere in Africa is the contrast between its natural potential and its social and economic situation, the development is due to the management by white people in time of Apartheid, and they remained very active in politics and economy, and also because of the influence of Great Britain who has left better situation in their colonies than France. A simple fact surprises me: at a crossroad without priority sign, you see cars coming from each side of the road, hesitating, each one wanting to give way to others.

One of the consequences of the development of the country is that we spent all our campaign in guest’s houses: houses for rent used as hotels, sometimes including breakfast, I mean that we have never had such a luxurious campaign, not mentioning the generosity of our Indians brothers, especially in two places where we had caterers dedicated to us.

The coast are mountainous, so driving between sea and mountains you have a splendid view, lakes and cascades, monkeys by the roadside and in trees. As the country is developed you will find that all touristic areas provide horse riding and golfing facilities.

Another aspect of development and criminality is protection of houses: electrified barbed wires on top of walls and armed security companies with their logo on all houses. Even in townships houses are protected with barbed wires, these slums are the only thing reminding us that we are not in Europe.

After introducing the country, let’s talk about Islam in South Africa. Muslims are mainly from Indian origins, settled there since four or more generations. The first immigrants, sometimes former slaves, fought to establish businesses, mosques and Islamic schools. The result is fantastic. Many students stop for one or two years their studies after first secondary school degree to learn Quran. You have madrasas producing mawlanas and muftis in every city. It is rare to find a Muslim child attending non Muslim public school. A remarkable scene is this public primary school that received us and where hundreds of students in qamis and scarf play in the schoolyard. Yes, you read right, I am talking about public school, there are some non Muslim students and teachers there but you will think that you are in a Quranic school. Of course you find a prayer room there and ablution facility for women. There is an amazing level of attachment to religion, like this very rich family owing a closed neighborhood with a house for each child, son-in-law and grand-child who gets married and where not a single woman works, or this female patient telling me how she left her pharmacy to learn religion and now teaches in girls madrassa with her Alima (scholar) degree. I asked her if she was happy with the change and she said: “Of course, what is better than teaching Allah’s words?!” How beautiful it is to see scholars couple expatriate in Argentina or elsewhere to establish madrassa and produce ulamas in local communities! Yes, South Africa exports Islam, a real driving force for the whole region, islands, South America and Australia. Even if Ahmed Deedat, may Allah have mercy on him, was a great man, he did not come from nowhere. Muslims are only 2% of the 52 millions of south African but the chicken is halal in all the country, many Mac Donald and other fast foods are halal, in some areas you can have reminding boards: subhan Allahi wa bihamdihi: glory and praises to Allah and other words, the GPS tells you where you find the nearest mosque, banks fight to have muftis specialized in Islamic finance working with them in order to offer halal service to the rich Muslim clientele. The Indian Muslim community is wealthy by the grace of Allah: car importers and concessioners, building companies, food wholesaling, supermarkets, luxury restaurants, etc. most of the time belong to Muslims and you won’t find any haram article; you would rather find prayer and ablution facilities. It is actually the first time I feel like the desire to settle in a country. I didn’t tell you about the mosques: they are the jewels of each city and neighborhood. Equipped with gardens and parking, order and calm are the masters in the mosque. You systematically will find little towels for individual use after ablutions, then you drop them in the laundry. The last mosque I saw even had boxes with lockers for the regular brothers who wish to have a personal box for their shoes – I was astonished.

Yet everything is not pink, and one should know his lacks and his challenges. First of all the direct consequence of richness and facility is the fragility of personalities and lack of combativity: we received many patients of all ages suffering of « depression », taking tablets, and housewives wasting money and unable to hold their houses.

The Apartheid system imposed separation of races in housing, work, transport and marriage. The Indian Muslims, who already are very conservative, benefited from this system to keep their religion and preserve their habits from non Islamic manners. But now society is open and youth are exposed to drugs and sex and some fall in sins. Others are attracted towards secret sects that promise richness and power to their followers. So prevention against these facts should be added to Islamic education. In the education of girls, directives and recipes should be given for marriage live because if they are kept in shyness they cannot compete with the other women that will do anything to seduce their husbands.

Let’s now get to ruqya. Ruqya comes in South Africa like the missing piece of a perfect set. The need is tremendous: blockages in work, businesses collapsing, couple problems, divorces after 6 months or 30 years of marriage, superficial or very bad health problems… The sorcery problems don’t reach the point of destabilizing the community like in Reunion Island or Mauritius where the religious and material advantages of the community are declining because of the systematic sorceries from other communities on their wealth, marriages and children, plus the sorceries Muslims do to one another. So the situation in South Africa is bad: too many people suffer and see their lives ruined, but that doesn’t affect the general level of the community. On another hand, ruqya is unknown to the public: some ulamas know it exists, I met 2 people who said they practiced ruqya, but each time I speak about it in the mosque the people have never heard about it. The best moment for me was when a great mufti in Durban who was training ulamas coming from many countries to become muftis asked me to expose the ruqya subject in front of his students. We agreed on one hour but the demand was such that we took two. After the exposition, I answered the ulama’s questions and I greatly thank Allah because I had the answers to all their questions with reference of Quran and hadeeth and without hesitation; the great mufti was impressed and asked me to come for a seminary for ulamas. That course was one of the best moments in my life. A similar demand to come specifically to train ulamas in Capetown was addressed to me by the responsible of the organization of ulamas that handles everything related to Islam: hajj, halal food, divorce, Islamic radio, and he wanted this activity under their authority like the ones I mentioned. May Allah make it easy and allow us to transmit His Word.

As a result we had a continuous flow of patients: an average of 50 a day. By the grace of Allah, the last days in Durban we stopped radio programs because the appointments were full. We had many good results by the grace of Allah, like this lady who brought her mentally retarded 25 year old daughter and returned next day to thank us because she was much better; it was the first time I experienced such a change in a mentally retarded patient. There were many other spectacular improvements, mainly pains that disappeared immediately with the cupping and 4 patients who became catchers with always the magic moment where the djinn converts to Islam, the situation reverses, we bring the others to convert them and the pray becomes the predator.

But we had 2 new problems. The first is the numerous complaints about burns due to cupping and water bubbles. Yet, we were only using plastic pump cups, so no risk of fire burning. So the possible reasons are too much pressure in the cup, or too much time, or the person has sensitive skin. It is generally a superficial problem that goes within a few days but in some rare cases it got infected. The conclusion is that we must 1) make sure the pressure is not too much 2) organize the process so the patients don’t wait too long 3) if we have blisters and water bubbles we must pierce them with a new blade and press with cotton to evacuate the water then apply a cream for superficial burns, and not let the patient leave with the bubbles and discover the mat home and get panicked. The second problem is that many patients improved then their problems returned and sometimes got worse. In all those cases the explanation was revenge of djinns or sorcerers that did not want people to be cured by Quran. Alhamdu lillah, we read Quran on the patients, we practice cupping, we give coranized water and products, so there is no way we can cause direct harm to the person. So the question is to what extent can we anticipate and prevent the reactions of djinns and sorcerers. The best weapon we have for that is prayer : pray every day for our patients, for Allah to cure them, protect them and guide them; for the converted djinns so they stay in Islam and fight for its sake; for the sorcerers and their clients, may Allah break them and return their evil against them. Then we have the catching: do the maximum with each patient to remove the djinns of his sorcerers to stop them repeating, get the spy djinns that inform them about their victims with the verse: wa lahu ma sakana fillayli wannahari wahuwa ssamee’ al’aleem (Anaam 12), and catch every day for the djinns who attack the center and the patients. And we must seriously engage the patients in duaas for protection and dream fight.

The result is that by the grace of Allah we have trained about 40 people who want to professionally continue ruqya. Some have started and others are getting organised. The potential is great in South Africa because the Indian community has the advantage of social position and religion, thus capable of taking ruqya further, but the tests will also be there, may Allah purify our hearts and accept us to serve Islam and Muslims.

Next program in sha Allah for myself is campaign in Burkina Faso from 2 to 17 march, Scandinavia in July and England in August.

Campaign with Mohamed and Abdelaziz in South Africa