The evening of Sunday the 24th day of September 2017 will remain indelible in my memory as I engaged a Tijaany-cleric in an approximately two-hour religious debate. He had garrulously fumbled prior to the day that he would win the dialogue. So he came hyperactively prepared with a book filled with messages not in tandem with the topics of discussion.
While defending the alien practices of the Tijaaniyyah heresy, he lousily echoed that he had once seen Allah. “How?” I probed in shock. “You can’t understand because you don’t do dhikr (remembrance of Allah). Tasawwuf is about dhikr. And the more you do it, the better your chances of seeing Allah. All that I am reading from this jotter now was revealed to me,” he replied spitting nonsense with confidence.
I should have ended the debate at that point when it was apparent that some luciferous spirit was the one blabbering through his mouth. But I was tenacious to get the viruses in his head formatted. I was really determined to rescue him from the danger of kufr. So I gave him all the time in the world to make it seem like he got me bamboozled, after all, he had earlier boasted of victory.
“Allah is in me,” he pointed to his stomach. “Hmm! Akiiika!” I soliloquized. “Prophet Muhammad lives inside here,” he arrogantly tapped his stomach times uncountable. “In fact, Muhammad had once appeared to me live like he did appear to Sheikh Ahmada Tijaani,” he added alum to salt thinking the meal would be sumptuous. While smiling to his laughable but pitiable ill-health, I asked him how the Prophet looked like. His response was not just heartbreaking, but head-blowing.
“The holy Prophet was bearded and looked exactly like Zainul Abideen,” he answered with his eyes colouring red. “Subhaanallaah! What! You are obviously a deranged liar,” I exclaimed while the observers present involuntarily got their jaws laughed out. We gazed at one another in surprise to the man’s unprecedented, impudent mendacity. Sheikh Zain Abideen Yusuf is one of the popular imams in the community. I know the imam would not want such trash attributed to him because he is a good person and does not belong to the claimer’s gang of fabricators.
He had thought that he would win the debate. Maybe he got the assurances from the strayer-jinns playing Sudoku with his brain. But he was fatally subjugated. He therefore, turned it into a pandemonium and began threatening to do and undo – the debate rather ended in a debacle. I wonder what one can do for/to oneself, let alone for/to another person. The power to make things happen only lies with the Creator of all creatures.
It was more heartbreaking when he said that one chant of Ahmada Tijaani’s salaatul faatih was better than reciting Allah’s glorious Book (Al-Qur’aan) 70,000 times. Who could be more guilty of kufr than such a garrulous reducer of the worth of the holiest Scripture on earth? Even the earlier Scriptures – Zabuur, Taorah and Injeel – were not as worthwhile as the holy Qur’aan, let alone a mere Arabic coinage borne out of pure hallucination.
According to him, the white cloth usually rounded by Tijaanees during wird is used to welcome Angels who will descend from the heaven in company of the holy Prophet. “Your proof, sir,” I asked. He rather went equivocal – beating around the bush. Not even a single Quranic verse or Hadeeth was presented to adduce his fictitious claim.
Why would people accept Islam without wanting to practise it as prescribed by the Owner of the religion – Allah? Two things determine the acceptability of worship in Islaam – Ikhlaas (doing it for the sake of Allah alone) and Mutaaba’ah (practising it as demonstrated by the noble Prophet and his companions). Anything short of this is no Islam. Such is what is called Bid’ah (innovation), which breeds misguidance, and whose aftermath is hell. May Allah save us from it.
My pity for the ignoramus cleric is not as I do for his teeming madrasah students and our innocent mothers and fathers who enthusiastically attend his weekly asalatu programme. I can’t imagine how much those people would have been seriously infected with the seemingly ‘unformattable’ viruses residing with the apparently sick man. I pity the future of those poor kids and the generations they will pass the shaytanic ideologies to.
I wonder why parents have eyes but cannot see – that not all clerics are worth teaching their children. I wonder when parents will realise that madrasah education isn’t only about learning the Qur’an. I wonder when parents will come to know that ‘Aqeedah (Islamic ideology) and morals of the cleric must be fundamentally considered in choosing madrasah for their children.
May Allah save us, our children, our children’s children, our parents and the generality of muslims from the evils of the allies of shaytan.
English 
