[Editors note:
The
following article is taken from the September 1985 AFRICA EVENTS magazine, and
is concerning Al Hajj Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse.
The late Al
Hajj Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse of Senegal, a
Renowned Sufi Shaykh,
was a most extra-ordinary man, He
commands a
large following in the whole of West Africa
and beyond,
including France and the U.S. Sayyid Omar
Abdalla describes his encounters with the man.
La ilaha Illa-Llah, Mashaa Allah, La Quwwata illa
Billah. I
first knew of Al Hajj al-Allama Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse through a magazine, Al Arab, which used to be published in
Karachi under the able editorship of an Egyptian.
I had
read in the magazine that a highly spiritual man in Kaolack, Senegal was the cause
for a padre (father) from Eastern
Nigeria to embrace Islam. Eastern Nigeria was purely Christian and mainly
Catholic. Islam was not allowed to enter there. British administrators
co-operating very closely with the missionaries put up barriers against Islam
entering Eastern Nigeria. Then it transpired that a well-educated padre had a
dream that was to change the fortunes of Islam in Eastern Nigeria.
This is
what happened, and I heard this from the padre’s own tongue. I had met him in
Makkah. He was a very impressive man, very huge and wearing a Turban. His
English was fluent and good. I was so much impressed with him that I had to ask
him, “Where are you from?” “I’m from Eastern Nigeria”, he said. And immediately
I asked, “Are you Ibrahim Niasse, the priest who was converted by Shaykh
Ibrahim Niasse of Senegal and then took his name?” “Yes, indeed, I am”, came
the reply. I met him again in 1965, at a conference of Muslim scholars from all
over the Muslim World.
The
former padre related to me his dream. In his dream, he saw very impressive
people high up in the sky. With the padre there were two people, one white and
the other one black. But he was surprised because the white person, whom he
thought might be a European, was not in European attire but was in Islamic
dress. He had never met any Arab before. The white gentleman told him, “If you
want to join those people up there in the sky, the only person who can take
you, who can lead you and guide you to get there is this black person”.But the
black person was in Islamic dress. So the padre said to the white man, whom he
later realized was the Prophet himself, “How can this man take me there? I’m a
Christian, he is a Muslim”.And he was told, “That’s your business. If you want
to get there, there’s no other way”. He woke up. As he was an artist he
sketched the faces of the two gentlemen who were with him, and then he ignored
the dream. But the dream kept on recurring until he thought it was necessary
for him to go out of Eastern Nigeria to seek out the black man.
In
Western Nigeria someone told him that his sketch of the black man resembled
Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse of Senegal who lived in Kaolack. Having heard that, he
decided there and then to go to Kaolack. He arrived at Shaykh Ibrahim’s house at
3 o’clock in the morning. He knocked at the door. The Shaykh’s children came
out alarmed, thinking that he was a thief or an intruder. “I just want to see your father”, said the
padre, “that’s all there is. I’m quite a peaceful person”. Incidentally, all of
Shaykh Ibrahim’s children are illustrious. They all have memorized the Qur`an,
they are very learned, and they combine both secular and religious education,
of course in the Western sense of the dichotomy.
In Islam
we don’t have the distinction between the religious and the secular. They are
all one thing, all knowledge. And whatever helps you to approach God, to serve
God, to develop your personality, is Islamic. Any knowledge which makes you do
wrong, even if it is Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) or Tasawwuf
(Islamic mysticism), is un-Islamic. And that is why you find in the Traditions
of the Prophet, a prayer which says: “Allahumma a`udhubika min `ilmin la fanyaa”, O
Lord, I take refuge in you against knowledge which is not useful.
There is
no particular branch of knowledge that is not useful except knowledge that does
not improve a person, or that does not make a person develop his personality
and realize the existence of God and the unity of God and how to serve God,
through serving fellow human beings. That is `Ilmin la Fanyaa (useless knowledge). No wonder Muslims in earlier
times studied all sorts of knowledge, all branches of science, mathematics,
they improved on them and put them on the right path, on the right way to
become really scientific. But this is all digression.
Back to
Kaolack. Shaykh Ibrahim came out of his house and the first thing he said to
the padre was: “Join Islam, embrace Islam”.“That’s exactly what I’m here for”,
responded the padre.
He then embraced Islam, stayed with Shaykh Ibrahim
for sometime, learned the main principals of Islam, and the ritual practices
required. After that he returned to Nigeria as a Muslim and with a new nam,
Ibrahim Niasse, the name of his Shaykh, the man who helped him convert to Islam.
There
were two churches in Eastern Nigeria that the padre was the responsible for
looking after. But now he was a Muslim. He burned them down to make things
easy. When he was taken to court for such a sacrilegious act, burning down
places of worship, he told the English judge, “Mind you, I did not do that as a
contempt of religion, of Christianity. I did that because I used to worship in
those two churches, and I was in charge of those churches, which were built as
a result of my efforts. Now I am a Muslim. I can’t pray in there. I have
demolished the churches to build mosques instead so that I can go in and pray.
If I were to go back to Christianity I shall burn down the mosques and build
churches again”. The case was dismissed.
From
what I read in Al Arab and what the
man himself told me, within six months 6,000 people in Eastern Nigeria had
embraced Islam. Shaykh Niasse of Eastern Nigeria was a tremendous person who
made gigantic efforts with enormous enthusiasm to serve Islam, to spread Islam,
and to explain Islam. And he did that very successfully.
When I
read about this in Al Arab, I decided
that whenever I was anywhere in Europe I would go to Senegal to see Shaykh
Ibrahim Niasse of Kaolack, the man who possessed such spiritual powers. In 1961
or 1962 when I was up at Oxford, I received an invitation to go to Ghana to
attend the conference on The World Without the Bomb organized by a committee in
Yugoslavia and sponsored by Kwame Nkrumah.
I
decided immediately, that it was an opportunity for me to go and see Ghana. It
was not very easy because the Commonwealth scholarship I had did not allow
people to be away from England for more than two weeks, during the teaching
period and even during vacations. Anyway, I managed to get to Accra. The driver
who was to take me around Accra decided that he would show me some of the
buildings that the senior British administrators used to live in. He took me to
one very imposing building, and outside the house I found people performing the
zikr saying La ilaha illa-llah, La ilaha illa-llah, La ilaha illa-llah (There is
no God but Allah).
I recalled that at one time, during the same period
of Nkrumah, one of Zanzibar’s pre-independence politicians who was going to
Ghana went to say good-bye to al-Imam al Habib `Umar bin Sumeyt, our Grand
Shaykh. He was as Grand in East Africa as Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse was in West
Africa, or probably more as Shaykh Ibrahim himself said. Sayyid `Umar said to
the politician: “You’re going to Ghana. You’ll find people of our party there.
When you have taken what you want to take for your party, then take for our
party because you’ll find our people there”. When I saw the zikr I said to myself, “this is the
party of Al Habib `Umar, the party of La
ilaha illa-llah”.
The car
stopped there. Someone approached and I asked him what was happening. He told
me that there was a very great Shaykh inside the building. “A great Shaykh?
Could I meet him?” “Let us go and inform him about it”, the man replied. Then
he went inside and came out with a positive answer.
I went
in and found a very impressive, highly dignified gentleman with a copy of the
Qur`an in his hand. I was surprised because I thought he was a Ghanaian and I
had not met any Ghanaian Muslim back in England. When I was there earlier
between 1951 and 1953, I hardly met any Muslim Ghanaians, and I though that
there were very few Muslims in Ghana.
But of course this time I discovered that there were a lot of them. The
reason why I did not see any of the educated Ghanaians who were Muslims in
England was that education was left in the hands of Christian missionaries. One
or two people whom risked sending their children there had them converted.
Education was made a means of converting people to Christianity.
I was
surprised to see that Shaykh. And I said, “Are you a Ghanaian?” He said he was
not. “I am from Senegal”. I asked him if he knew Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse. He said
that he knew him well because he was he. He was one of those invited to join
the conference. Nkrumah used to get on very well with him. He used to take his
advice because Shaykh Ibrahim knew a lot about the world and its ways. He was
well versed both in diplomacy and politics and was deeply mystical. Very well
read in Islamic subjects - fiqh (jurisprudence),
tawhid (unity of God) and tasawwuf (mysticism). In him all sorts
of learning merged in one whole. He was an internationally respected figure.
He went
to China as the Shaykh of Islam of West Africa. It was during the time of
Mao-Tse-Tung and he was well received. He used to get on very well indeed with
King Faisal and President Gamal Abd al-Nasir. He reconciled the two of them
when they fell apart. I remember to have seen him in Makkah sitting besides
King Faisal at the grand Party that the King throws for all the pilgrims. I can
now call to mind a picture that was taken at al-Azhar which has Gamal Abd
al-Nasir sitting next to Shaykh Ibrahim. They were attending Friday prayers.
Shaykh
Ibrahim was a man whose prayers have been answered. His favorite prayer was “O
our Lord give us of this world the good things of this world and give us the
good things of the next world and protect us from the punishment of hell-fire”.
Immediately
we became very close. If I can let my audacity run away with me, I will say
that we became very good friends from that particular day. We used to meet
while I was in Ghana and I used to cantilate to his some religious qasidas, especially those from the
anthology of al-Imam al-Mujaddid Al-Habib Abdalla ibn Alawi al-Haddad and
al-Imam al-Kabir al-Habib Ali ibn Muhammad al-Habshy. I remember that he was
absolutely spiritually intoxicated and he lost his balance when I recited this,
“Lidh li fil `ilmi inni bil fanaa atlaqtu qaidee.” “If you know
the knowledge of the knower, with knowledge of annihilation your chains are
unlocked.”
This is
taken from the Diwan of al-Habib al-Murshid, al-Imam al-Kabir Ali ibn Muhammad
al-Habshy. I also used to recite this from the anthology of al-Imam al-Mujaddid
al Habib Abdalla ibn Alawi al-Haddad, “Anaa mashghoolun bilaylaa, `an
jamee`al kauni jumlahu fa’idhaa qulta min dhaa, qul huwas sabbul
maulahu.”
When I
recited the first he was overwhelmed, and he said he did not know in which
world he was. He absolutely was out of the material world - his essence. Shaykh Ibrahim expected to
keep on repeating these qasidas from
the anthologies of as-Sadat al-Alawiyyah.
I asked
him all about the conversion of his namesake who was in Eastern Nigeria, and
who in turn converted thousands of Muslims. Shaykh Ibrahim confirmed the truth
of the whole story.
I was in
Senegal again to attend a conference on the teaching of economics. I was then
the Principal of Muslim Academy in Zanzibar. On arrival the very first thing I
did was to go to Kaolack to see the Shaykh. I was told he had gone to a
neighboring country to open a mosque but would be returning to lead Friday
prayers. When the time for prayers came his Khalifa
took me to the mosque and put me right in front of al-mihrab (the pulpit). I found the Shaykh delivering the Friday
sermon. What a pleasure it was, when while coming down from the pulpit to lead prayers, he turned and faced
me. He said, “Ahlan Wassahlan, how is
Shaykh `Umar”, that was the first thing
he asked me. By that he meant Sayyidina al-Imam al-Habib `Umar ibn Ahmad ibn
Sumeyt.
In these
countries, when someone is called a Shaykh, he is really a Shaykh in knowledge,
in upbringing, in training people, in guiding people on the path to God.
We went
home in the afternoon, and from a rather ornate cupboard he brought out the
photo of al-Habib `Umar, the very one I gave him. Then he gave it to his Khalifa, who was equally bawled over.
And then Shaykh Ibrahim took the picture reverently and put it back where it
was. I mentioned the incident to al-Habib `Umar, and he said “Aha! We have
known him now and we shall pour into his heart spiritual endowments”.
That is
the testimony to al-Habib `Umar’s great stature. For after all, Shaykh Ibrahim
was a great personality in many spheres, political, diplomatic, spiritual,
widely respected by people in all walks of life, and highly regarded throughout
the world including China, and yet there he was paying homage to al-Habib
`Umar.
Once he was passing through Rome, when
someone approached him and asked him to go and see the Pope. Shaykh Ibrahim
said it was a wonderful idea, but “the Pope must come to me”, he said, “I
represent Muhammad, upon whom be peace and blessings of Allah, and he
represents Christ, upon whom be the peace and blessings of God, and Muhammad is
greater than Christ. If he won’t come to me, then I won’t go to him.” *** Copyright
Sayyid Omar Abdalla Africa Events September 1985.
This article, The Eternal Islam, and The 17th Anniversary of
the Disappearance of Shaykh Ibrahim were published in Newsletters of The
African American Islamic Institute, in 1998, but the newsletters were not
distributed. You may contact us by e:mail for copies. Insha-llah.