oppression – My Little Breathing Space – I write for the few, not the many. The few that are left out!

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

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Heart breaking! Allah help the people of Ghouta and all around the world who are being oppressed make dua for them and give to trusted reliable charity

?please be aware the following text is very upsetting – an account from a Doctor in Ghouta, Syria – Allah have mercy on them and all the oppressed and may He grant them ease soon and may He protect us all?

Please, please take a few minutes to read what Doctor Housam Adnan wrote from #EasternGhouta yesterday:

From the womb of the dead
For more than twenty years, the scalpel was my companion
Dancing between my fingers, while I do my work very quietly
At the end of each day I whisper to it:
You did very well, and we saved many together
But everything changed now
The scalpel wasn’t what it used to be, lately
My fingers can’t handle it anymore
As if a part of my soul was taken into its teeth, and it can’t bear the wounds it witnesses anymore
Children without parts
Without eyes
Without faces
Women and families covered by sheets full of soil from the home land, with more of her children’s blood
The smell of gunpowder and its abhorred black color hangs over those hungry, withered faces
The screams of children, the wailing of women, the oppression of men, the impotence of doctors, reached my dead scalpel, creating a spirit of the misery inside it, that it stopped working after what it witnessed, but those cries did not reach the hearts of the world to awake it

Today, all those who came to us are slim skinny bodies that haven’t tasted food for days. Buried with their children under the rubble of those barrels that do not distinguish between stones and human.
Today from under the rubble of our homeland they brought to me a mother in her seventh month of pregnancy, with two of her children.
If I told you that the misery of the world came together in the eyes of those children, I wouldn’t be describing enough,
The first child without a right leg and has a broken arm. The other has lost his eye and shrapnel entered his chest, and the mother is struggling to survive. The shrapnel has broken all of her slim body sending to our hands to witness her last breath.
I see her struggling for survival, her eyes are fixed on her little ones being in that situation
The father left them, dead, a few months ago
They brought them to me in one cover, because we lost our Patient stretchers, we used them as beds, because beds are full
I beg you to imagine with me, just for a moment that scene and that torn, torn blanket that carried the four lives: the mother, her fetus and her two children.

A colleague whispered in my ear
Maybe we can save her baby
For the first time, I sat down thinking with my head down
“do we save him, or leave him happy with his mother without seeing the ugliness of this world,
Do I let him go with her
No.. no
My mission is to save him
I looked around
Her torn children
Her soul that’s leaving her body
The noise of planes and exploding barrels
Children’s crying that burns the heart
And my colleague whispering:
What are you waiting for
Come on

There’s a life we should get out
I looked at my scalpel and friend

To what life will you get him out?
The world of barrels, fire and disappointment?
The world of orphanhood, oppression and hunger?
Who will breastfeed him?
Who will change his pampers?
Who will rock him?
Who will hear his weeping?

Yes, he has a god that won’t give up on him, but I became unable, along with my scalpel, to even think
My colleague’s voice awoke me from my fantasies
“her heart stopped”
I’ll take him out now, with her dead
And for the first time in my life, I couldn’t do it, my scalpel stopped me. I put it on the table, and left in silence.
My colleague continued his work, his eyes full of tears, while looking at me in surprise
All that incident took only a few minutes, but it marked a years-long wound, a wound made of defeat and impotence. I didn’t imagine I’d read in the stories of Tatars’ massacres, inquisition stories, or even the pharaoh’s tales.

World, leaders and kings of the world:
Your silence over these massacres affecting hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, who did nothing except being on a land called “Al Ghouta of Damascus” is a shame
I’m not going to ask you to save #Ghouta, but to save your humanity
Save your people
Your children
And be sure, this baby coming out of his martyr mother is your responsibility
Feed him
Keep him warm
Give him his right in living a decent life
Stop these sky monsters with the barrels of death
Come and join the children of Ghouta
Touch their faces, listen to their hungry stomach’s noises
Aren’t they humans?
Announce that you care about all humans, not only your blood like, this would save what’s left of god’s spirit in you

#SaveGhouta
#Save Syria

Dhulm: Oppression or Depression?

In the Name of Allah the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.

All praise is due to Allah, the all-knowing, the all-seeing and we beseech Allah to send His noblest blessings on the Seal of the Prophets, Our Master and Prophet Muhammad (Sallallaho Alayhi Wasallam).

The first crime or sin we could say, committed on the surface of the earth was perpetrated by the son of the noble Prophet Adam (peace be upon him) whose name was Qabil RH. As it is known, the sin he committed was no ordinary sin; it was none other than murder and what degree of murder could be worse than murdering a family member, his own blood brother, Habil RH. So ever since that day, every person that gets killed unjustly, the burden of the sin not only falls on the killer, but also on Qabil RH as he initiated killings.

In this worldly life, we see many forms of oppression, and Almighty Allah allows this oppression. Many people, Muslim and Non-Muslim ask why? It is NOT because Allah is pleased to see his servants committing ‘dhulm’ , rather it is something termed as ‘al-Istidraaj’. Something you could loosely explain as Allah loosening the rope and giving respite to stop and repent. It is when Allah Almighty gives fortunes to someone despite Him not being pleased with him/her. Our Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) explained in a Hadith (Prophetic Tradition), “When you see that Allah Almighty gives good fortunes to his slaves who are always committing sins (disobedient), know that the person is being given istidraj by Allah.” (At-Tabrani, Ahmad and Al-Baihaqi)

However, it is the duty of others to stop dhulm as is explained in the Prophetic Tradition (Hadith),“Help your brother; be he the oppressor or the oppressed.” It was said, “O Messenger of Allah, I shall help him if he is oppressed but how do I help him if he is the oppressor?” He said:”Prevent him from oppression, that is you helping him.” Bukhari and Muslim.

But what exactly is oppression? It is normally termed for what goes on in war and when one takes another’s right. The literal meaning of al-Dhulm is, ‘to place something somewhere it does not belong’. For example, if one were to place his shoe on his head that would be classed as al-Dhulm as that is not the correct place for the shoe. But dhulm (oppression) in Islam has a much broader and deeper meaning. We only need to pick up a newspaper or turn on the television to see the oppression that goes on around the world, the young children suffering, the babies dying, women as well as the elderly tortured and their menfolk beaten and humiliated in front of them – the world accepts this as wrong, no matter which creed or race you are from and no matter which religion you follow.

But what I would like to shed light on is the dhulm you and I may commit; even though we would never like to be associated with dhulm or be called a ‘dhalim’ (oppressor), but sometimes we do commit oppression knowingly,or unknowingly. Because oppression is not just what we see in Gaza or Syria, oppression is also what goes on here, in the UK; a man who beats his wife is oppression, not treating your children fairly and equally is oppression, to show ingratitude and display disobedience to your parents is oppression, to deprive a sibling of their rights to inheritance is oppression, bullying and harassing someone weaker than you in school or college or at a workplace is oppression, taking one’s anger out on an innocent individual is oppression, showing favouritism at a work place to certain employees due to unjustified reasons such as family connections, being from the same race or same sex (sometimes the opposite sex simply because they are attractive) is oppression, being ungrateful to your spouse or not spending time with him/her is oppression, not letting a father see his child without a valid reason is oppression and relaying lies or slandering someone out of jealousy and spite is oppression! The list really can go on, unfortunately.

The very sad reality is oppression is everywhere and for many of us, our hearts bleed because others cause us to bleed. Usually it is those closest to us; a family member or a relative. Hence the title of this article has been named, ‘Dhulm: Oppression or depression?’ despite the fact dhulm is normally translated as oppression it can consequently ‘lead’ to depression. And this is what we see when we look around the world; people are either suffering from oppression or depression, they are either bleeding or weeping! My little message to every brother to every sister out there who is suffering, be it equal to a prick of a thorn or the weight of a mountain, “DO NOT DESPAIR IN THE MERCY OF ALLAH!” (39:53). “Indeed, Allah is with the patient ones” (2:249). We are promised time and again in Qur’an and Hadith that Allah will give us justice for the oppression we face in this world and the injustices we have to endure. Abu Hurayrah reported that the Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace) said, “Give people their rights. Even the hornless sheep will take retaliation from the horned sheep (on Qiyamah)” (Adabul Mufrad).

Nothing is hidden from Allah, not even the black ant crawling on a stone in the darkness of the night nor its footprint! Let oppressors think not that Allah is unaware! Allah Almighty says, “And never think that Allah is unaware of what the wrongdoers do. He only delays them for a Day when eyes will stare [in horror]” (14:42). In another verse, “And those who have wronged are going to know to what [kind of] return they will be paid back” (26:227). And to serve as a final reminder and warning, Jabir ibn ‘Abdullah reported that the Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace) said, “Fear injustice. Injustice will appear as darkness on the Day of Rising. Fear avarice. Avarice destroyed people before you and led them to shed one another’s blood and to make lawful what was unlawful for them” (Adabul Mufrad).

To conclude In Sha Allah, we pray Allah protects us from committing dhulm and from being the victims of dhulm, as well as giving us the ability to help the oppressed and stop an oppressor, as the saying goes, ‘Evil spreads not because of the violence of bad people, rather because of the silence of good people’ .

Ismail Ibn Nazir Satia (In dire need of Allah’s mercy, forgiveness and pleasure).

27th Shawwal 1435