Wednesday 15 March 2017

From Hadith to smuggling




In last week’s article, I wrote about the connection between Ibn Taymyia and Hassan el-Banna as the latter cited a saying or Hadith of Prophet Muhammed – Peace be upon him – and then he gave his own interpretation that has nothing to do with that Hadith. Based on his own interpretation of the Hadith, he said that the Muslim who is killed by one of the People of the Book shall have the Thawab or reward of two martyrs. Consequently, that means as interpreted by el-Banna in his comment which he published in his Jihad message, article no. 15 and which I mentioned in last week’s article: “In this Hadith, there is a hint that fighting the People of the Book is a must… and that God double the Thawab or reward of that who fights them… as fighting shall not only be against atheists… but against anyone who is not Muslim”!

The utter surprise that I did not notice or discuss while I was reading through el-Banna books is that this Hadith he cited and even misleadingly interpreted is a weak or unverified one… moreover, it is even denied by some Hadith professors to have existed… meaning that el-Banna did not only add his own false interpretation to the Hadith, but cited an unverified or even denied one.

In an e-mail I received from Mr. Mamdouh Ahmed on March 9th, 2017, he wrote: “Dear Sir, I am sending you a link showing that the Hadith which Hassan el-Banna cited is false… he did not even bother to check if it was verified or not… he made his judgment and issued his Fatwa for his followers… you can imagine, if that is the leader, how the rest of them are… they are lying muslim brotherhood… thank you very much for your decency and for reading the message”.

Here is the link:

What was written in Ahl el-Hadith forum regarding this Hadith in brief is: “Abu Hatem and Ibn Odai – the one who denied the Hadith – said that this Hadith is not verified… al-Hakem Abu Ahmed said so too… this Hadith was also deemed unverified by Abu Hatem, Abu Zara’a, al-Bukhari and al-Albani”.

The above lines are important not only because we are in a war against the terrorist muslim brotherhood group… but also because it has to do with the civilization and cultural conflict the nation is going through while it is trying to achieve renaissance and progress against those groups and orientations that claim to be the most worthy to decide what is right or wrong for the nation… whether they are muslim brotherhood, salafists or others… it is very clear that what is really needed is more deep careful reading and not just chasing other people’s mistakes… as maybe a young man or woman – whom they may about to fall in the trap of believing those hypocrites who take religion as an alibi to achieve their own malicious goals – start searching himself or herself for the true interpretation of religion.

Now I move to what I promised the readers to write about… it has to do with the question asked by many who exclaimed about how a jailed member of muslim brotherhood; that is Jihad el-Haddad, could manage to send an article to a famous American newspaper in which he talked about how he is muslim brotherhood but not a terrorist, in an attempt by the group to stand against the orientations of Trump administration.

What I am writing about here are incidents I lived myself and participated in some of them while I was imprisoned pending the suit no. 100, high state security, known as January, 1977 incidents… it has been almost 40 years since those incidents took place… the circumstances may have changed for the better or worse… I really do not know.

The matter has to do with the breaches taking place in prisons… whether committed by those in charge of the prison when they breach the by-laws or when some of them collude with the prisoners to help them breach the rules and by-laws… and sometimes it has to do with the prisoners themselves and their tricks in breaching regulations… it is a long list and so I will only mention some examples of it.

We start by the gates where the prisoners’ families wait until they are allowed to enter the prison for visiting… I remember when my name was called by the sergeant meaning that I had a visit… I went down from the second floor in the appeal prison waiting to see my family… I waited so long… then my wife, who was a physician – May she rest in peace – entered holding our daughter that was born less than a week after I was jailed… the mother was stressed and looked as if she was crying… I knew that she has been waiting at the gates since the early morning but she was denied access until it was 3 PM because she had no idea that each visit permission had to be accompanied by a paper quarter pound as a bribe… at that time, this quarter pound was really a significant sum of money.

I narrated the whole story to the officer in charge of the ward; first lieutenant Mamdouh el-Gohari – whom I later knew long years after this that he made it to be a general and died. The man did not say a word. Few days later, he called me… I saw him apprehending two police sergeants of inferior ranks almost naked after he searched them during his shift… those two were the responsible for receiving the visits’ permissions… he found more than 200 paper quarters of pound in their clothes… which was the revenue of only one day.

Another incident, when we went on a hunger strike and they incarcerated us in Abu-Za’abal prison, a statement about the strike was issued… the wording of the statement was a matter of big dispute between me and the communists… Salah Eissa was the one who wrote it starting by the title: “a statement from the prisoners of January, 1977 who are on a hunger strike in Abu-Za’abal prison…” then he said ” … we, the Egyptian communists… etc.”… He asked me and the Nasserists to sign on this statement… but I refused and suggested the statement shall start by: “we, cadres of the Egyptian national movement…”… Eissa refused this wording and the mediators between us were lawyer Farouq Thabet and Ahmed Fouad Negm – May they both rest in peace… two months later, we received “the Arab Left” magazine that was published in Paris… I found the statement that was smuggled by one of the prisoners published in that magazine issued in Paris! … the surprise was that, the statement was published in the wording I refused… I found my name and names of other Nasserists among the ones signing this statement while we are not communists!

Smuggling anything out of or into the prison depends in many times on a connection between the political prisoners and criminal ones… and also with some guards… in the break, we know the one who has a court session to attend the next day and he takes the paper required to go out of the prison… he then puts it between his thighs… and sometimes, in his anus if necessary… or the guard himself can deliver the message especially if the prisoner family is going to pay for the guard family a significant sum of money that equals the guard’s salary for a year for example… in this case, no one will pay attention to a piece of paper with the same size of that inside a cigarettes’ packet… meaning a paper of a 10 x 15 cm square area… on which a complete article is written in very thin line!

As to smuggling into the prison, the prisoner coming back from a court session works as a “ship”… meaning he is the one who delivers the things to be smuggled inside… he used to carry “ar-Raffassat” in his large intestines… Ar-Raffassat is the plural of “Raffass” which is a metal tube like the one of Cigar where the prohibited things like drugs and whatsoever are put… the “ship” guy used to inject “ar-Raffass” into his large intestines through his anus… in such regard, there are several types of “ships”… here I recall a real story that I lived with my colleagues in cell no. 27 in the appeal prison… the main character of the story was a “ship” prisoner called Samir… he kept telling us how he was medically diagnosed that he cannot be guy!!

There were a lot of incidents regarding this issue of smuggling into and out of the prison, including the daily smuggling of the prison food stuff of legumes and rice through the sewerage pipes… I used to watch that scene myself while I was clinching to the window… el-Haddad may have written his article on two papers of that of cigarettes’ packets and then sent it out with another prisoner or guard… and maybe someone outside the prison wrote the article and attributed it to el-Haddad… so that such propaganda can happen and we start to question the whole system.

We may continue talking about this later…

Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar


This article was published in Almasry alyoum newspaper on March 15, 2017.

To see the original article, go to:


#almasry_alyoum #ahmed_elgammal

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