"The Vision
I do not know how but I fell asleep while invoking Allah, and it was then that I experienced the first of four visions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) that I was to see during my stay in prison. There in front of me, praise be to Allah, was a vast desert and camels with hawdahs as if made of light. On each hawdah were four men, all with luminous faces. I found myself behind this huge train of camels in that vast, endless desert, and standing behind a great reverent man. This man was holding a halter which passed through the neck of each camel. I wondered silently:
Could this man be the Prophet (peace be upon him)?
Silence has no safeguard with the Prophet, who replied: 'Zainab! You are following the footsteps of Muhammad, Allah's Servant and Messenger.' ....
.... I woke up feeling I owned the world. "
Above was an extract from the book Return of the Pharaoh by Zainab Al-Ghazali (1917-2005). Return of the Pharaoh is an autobiographical piece of literature which tells the story in first person the prison tortures and humiliation that occured during the reign of Jamal Abdul Nasir's regime.
What's her contribution to Islam till she was blessed with such an honour (dream above)? As related by the author, she was whipped, flogged, tortured using savage dogs and snakes, forced to stand for days, immersed in cold water for hours etc. All was done to coerce the members of the Muslim Brotherhood into giving false allegations. Not content with tortures, Nasir's goons resorted to various trickery and worldly offers (including ministership) which were all rejected with great Iman and dignity.
This book opened my eye towards 2 contrasting situation.
On one side, a supremely unyielding, unbending, sagaciously vehement Iman potrayed by the torturees.
On the other, how a person (the torturers) can lack even an iota of humanity, let alone 'Belief'.
*Spoiler* In the end, the torturees won... you just can't beat 'this people'. Either they win the battle, or they die in the pleasure of Allah. How can one lose? :)
All in all, a very well translated version of the book, excellent reading and relatively short. Although the tortures tend to be repetitive (graphical but suitably gruesome), it was told (and translated) in such a way that the repetitions were lost in 'transliteration'. A must read for those who want to understand the history of contemporary Islamic movement.
It has roughly 200 pages but I finished it in a total time of no more than half a day. Just as a proof; it is 'quite' good :)
I do not know how but I fell asleep while invoking Allah, and it was then that I experienced the first of four visions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) that I was to see during my stay in prison. There in front of me, praise be to Allah, was a vast desert and camels with hawdahs as if made of light. On each hawdah were four men, all with luminous faces. I found myself behind this huge train of camels in that vast, endless desert, and standing behind a great reverent man. This man was holding a halter which passed through the neck of each camel. I wondered silently:
Could this man be the Prophet (peace be upon him)?
Silence has no safeguard with the Prophet, who replied: 'Zainab! You are following the footsteps of Muhammad, Allah's Servant and Messenger.' ....
.... I woke up feeling I owned the world. "
Above was an extract from the book Return of the Pharaoh by Zainab Al-Ghazali (1917-2005). Return of the Pharaoh is an autobiographical piece of literature which tells the story in first person the prison tortures and humiliation that occured during the reign of Jamal Abdul Nasir's regime.
What's her contribution to Islam till she was blessed with such an honour (dream above)? As related by the author, she was whipped, flogged, tortured using savage dogs and snakes, forced to stand for days, immersed in cold water for hours etc. All was done to coerce the members of the Muslim Brotherhood into giving false allegations. Not content with tortures, Nasir's goons resorted to various trickery and worldly offers (including ministership) which were all rejected with great Iman and dignity.
This book opened my eye towards 2 contrasting situation.
On one side, a supremely unyielding, unbending, sagaciously vehement Iman potrayed by the torturees.
On the other, how a person (the torturers) can lack even an iota of humanity, let alone 'Belief'.
*Spoiler* In the end, the torturees won... you just can't beat 'this people'. Either they win the battle, or they die in the pleasure of Allah. How can one lose? :)
All in all, a very well translated version of the book, excellent reading and relatively short. Although the tortures tend to be repetitive (graphical but suitably gruesome), it was told (and translated) in such a way that the repetitions were lost in 'transliteration'. A must read for those who want to understand the history of contemporary Islamic movement.
It has roughly 200 pages but I finished it in a total time of no more than half a day. Just as a proof; it is 'quite' good :)
