One of the most moving, the most powerful, the most poignant scenes I have ever come across, is this one limned by Martin Lings in his magisterial biography of our blessed Prophet, Muhammad (may peace be upon him) when the last Messenger of mankind and his Companions were forced by jinni Jahiliyya to flee their homes in Mecca, and cut off “all ties of home and homeland for the sake of God.” 

 

“Driven from their homes unjustly, for no cause other than for their saying: Our Lord is God,” the Prophet pauses, halting his camel on the outskirts of Mecca, for one last look at his homeland, Mecca, and apostrophizes: “Of all God’s earth, thou art the dearest place unto me and the dearest unto God, and had not my people driven me out from thee I would not have left thee.”

In their new homeland, Yathrib, later renamed, the city of the Prophet, or Medina, many of the closest Companions of the Prophet fell sick and sorely missed and sighed for their homeland, Mecca. This is when our blessed Prophet, Muhammad, is moved to cry unto Allah: “O God, make Medina as dear unto us as thou hast made Mecca, or even dearer. And bless for us its waters and its grain, and carry away from it its fever as far as Mahya’ah.”

 

Not only did Allah hear him and answer his prayer, Allah also graced the Prophet’s heart with peace and gladness and with this good news: “Verily He who made binding upon thee the Koran will bring thee home once more” to Mecca.

And as we all know the triumphant return of our Prophet and his Companions home to Mecca and the victory of Islam over clannish jinni Jahiliyya is celebrated by this sura:

 

When the help of God comes,

And victory,

 

And you have seen the people

Enter the religion of God in droves,

 

Praise your Lord

And seek forgiveness of God:

For God is most forgiving.

 

Incredibly, almost 14 centuries later, we Somalis are now being torn asunder and scattered helter-skelter all over the world by

Enmity and Evil born of the same jinni Jahiliyya, the same arrogant Ignorance, that had driven our blessed Prophet, Muhammad, out of his home, Mecca.

 

I have no doubt that if we Somalis now in exile repent and reaffirm our faith in Allah and persevere steadfastly in the Sunna of his last Prophet, Allah will also bring us home to Somalia once more for “Verily in the messenger of God [we] have a beautiful model for everyone who hopes for God and the Last Judgment and often remembers God.”

 

In the meantime, of all the wonders and miracles that Allah is working among us Somalis in the Diaspora, I can’t help but remember to share with you all the one concerning my late friends Abdullahi Aa-ga-ne & Paul Kraybill who did not know each other until that very auspicious day when Paul Kraybill, who was one of the greatest leaders of the Mennonite Church, walked into a bank in Chicago to ask for a loan of one million American dollars so that the Mennonites could hold their World Mennonite Conference (July 14-19, 1984) in Strasbourg, France.

 

Paul Kraybill was ushered into the office of Abdullahi Aa-ga-ne, the vice-president of the bank, who was in charge of international transactions. Mr. Kraybill was stunned and amazed when Aa-ga-ne hailed him and hit him with:

 

—I have just approved of your loan for one million dollars with no hesitation whatsoever. You see, I know you Mennonite folks to be honest and law-abiding. Furthermore, it gives me an exquisite pleasure to do you Mennonites a favor for I doubt whether I can ever repay you for all you had done for me and for my kind.  

 

—What had we Mennonites done for you and for your kind?

 

—Not only had you Mennonites done me a great personal favor by educating me in Somalia and here in the USA, you had also done my kind a great favor by establishing and running the best educational & medical systems for us Somalis in Somalia. Mr. Kraybill, you don’t remember me, but you and I met briefly in Somalia in 1964 when you were visiting the Mennonite Mission Intermediate Boarding School in Johar where I was then a student. By the way, I am also a graduate of your Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana. So is Dr Hassan Ali Mire, the first Somali PhD—Princeton—and the conscience of the Somali race.

 

On behalf of the Somali people, I thank you. You Mennonites have educated Somalia’s best and the brightest. So you see, Mr. Kraybill, helping you to secure this loan of one million dollars is no big deal when I think of all you Mennonites had done for us Somalis and all that you are still doing for us Somalis. For instance, I know that you Mennonites love and care about my country, Somalia, so much that you often pray for peace in Somalia—more often than we Somalis do—by hymning to Allah, “the Healer of our every ill”:

 

O healing river, send down your

Waters, send down your waters

Upon this land. O healing

River, send down your waters, and wash the

Blood from off the sand.

 

This land is parching, this land is

Burning, no seed is growing

In the barren ground. O healing

River, send down you waters, O healing

River, send your waters down.

 

Let the seed of freedom awake and

Flourish, let the deep roots nourish,

Let the stalks rise. O healing

River, send down your waters, O healing

River, from out of the skies.

 

Paul Kraybill walked out of the bank bemused, smiling and murmuring to himself:

 

—The Lord moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. Who would have thought that in Chicago, of all places, a Somali nomad will come to the aid of us Mennonites. I have news for Scott of the Antarctic, the English hero, whose last words found on his frozen corpse, were "I have done this to show what an Englishman can do."

 

Scott: What you have done is frozen peanuts embedded in a bagatelle, a cold comfort not even worth a chump’s change, compared with what a Somali has just done for us Mennonites in Chicago! It is most astonishing what a Somali can do once he has been able to jimmy his way out of the jungles of jinni Jahiliyya.

 

…………………………..

 

To learn more about the incredible derring-do adventures of Somalis in the US of A, do not miss this upcoming colloquy convoked by Dr. Ahmed Ismail Samatar:

 

Somalis in America: The Challenges of Adaptation

July 15 – 17, 2004 Macalester College
St. Paul, Minnesota

 

A more detailed program will be available in late spring. For additional information, contact Margaret Beegle, Program Assistant, at (651) 696-6332 or at the e-mail address Beegle@Macalester.edu.

For further information, check out this website:

http://www.macalester.edu/internationalstudies/

                                   Mahamud Siad Togane