Auron ka hai Payaam aur, mera Payaam aur hai, / Ishq key dardmand ka tarz-e-kalaam aur hai! (Iqbal)
I don’t know how one arrives at this number that simply knocks the wind out of your life and leaves you numb and speechless. But that is the number used by the Ikhwan themselves, by no less a direct source and authority than Dr. Badi’, the Supreme Guide of Ikhwan in Egypt.
Hindu, Jew, Christian, Muslim or Atheist, no matter who we are, what face will we show our maker when we meet him on Judgment Day, when there are figures like 15,000 total or Cumulative Jail Years floating around – even if some of those figures are exaggerated and even if only half of those figures are true?
NOT IN LYING BUSINESS
But the fact is that the Ikhwan of Egypt are not generally in the business of exaggerating or lying. They are, generally speaking, Tellers of Truth by profession.
Those are the overall number of years by some counts that the Ikhwan spent behind bars over the past several decades at the hands of blood-thirsty tyrants with Muslim names.
That is the picture that emerges from a statement made by an Egyptian Minister of Interior, in which he apologised to the Egyptian People for having deprived them, and the country, of the services of the Ikhwan people.
HERE IS SIMPLE MATH
In any case, here is the simple math, as worked out by Mathematics Professor Kalamazad: If one person spends one year in prison, that is = I year. If two persons spend one year each in prison, that is = 2 years. If 1500 persons spend ten years each in prison, that is = 15,000 years of human imprisonment. Wow!
From this point of view, the 15,000-year figure of estimated jail time for the Ikhwan in Egypt quite likely underestimates the total number of human years the Ikhwan spent in jail, or were sentenced to do so by a Kangaroo court of one kind or another.
BUT FOR WHAT?
And all this suffering and sacrifice for what? Just because they loved too, too much the land which God gave them as their home? And they loved too much God, their maker and master?
Or is it because they loved too much Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, the Prophet and Messenger of God to the whole wide world – in fact to all the worlds of all kind that only he knows?
And because they loved too much God’s book, the Qur’ān, which he sent as a guide to all of humanity everywhere and in all ages?
And they loved too much their own fellow-countrymen, Muslim as well as Copt (or Christian)? And they loved too much all of God’s creation including all human beings in all parts of the world regardless of their race or religion?
JAILED, TORTURED AND HANGED
The Ikhwan filled the jails, and suffered years and years of some of the worst torture conceived by man, and were hanged on the gallows, when the rest of us went about living happily ever after with our families and friends.
BUSINESSES CLOSED, PROPERTIES CONFISCATED
Over and over, time after time, using one false excuse or another, Ikhwan businesses were closed and their properties were confiscated.
And the Ikhwan were kept from all opportunity for advancement, from educational institutions to military service, in a society that was being robbed blind and bankrupt in broad daylight by the ruling tyrants with Muslim names and by their cronies and thugs.
All of this for what?
LET US ALL PRAY
Let us all pray and hope that God Almighty will not hold that against all of us, no matter what our faith or nationality or no matter what our political ideology.
Let us all hope and pray that God will not hold us all accountable, whether right here in this world or in the next world, for this most inhuman suffering of the Ikhwan at the hands of blood-sucking tyrants, supported and propped up by so many of us with wealth and power and voice and influence in so many places.
GOD DOESN’T LIKE INJUSTICE, OPPRESSION
For, if there is one thing God does not like, it is injustice and oppression perpetrated by one set of human beings on another set of human beings, no matter what their excuse, and no matter what their markers of difference – race, religion, wealth, status, gender, nationality or something else.
If there is one thing God Almighty holds people directly and immediately accountable, it is human beings depriving, through force and coercion, other human beings of their God-given rights of Life, Liberty, Honour, Dignity and Personal Property.