Sheikh Said Rageah is on a journey of faith

Sheikh Said Rageah ,Chairman 'Journey of Faith' from Canada during the interview with the Sunday Standard at the Nairobi Serena Hotel. March 29th,2016. Photo/Elvis Ogina (Nairobi)

You can take this to any Shariah-compliant bank.

Said Rageah is the real sheikh. Been to Mecca, done the hajj. Prays at least five times a day. Gives zakat. Has read the Koran, back-to-front, innumerable times.

And for three days last week, Sheikh Rageah and his fellow clerics took thousands of Muslims through a conference called, Journey of Faith.

But his personal pilgrimage, as a little boy from the sticks in Somalia, to the hodgepodge that is the Middle East, to faith forays in North America, to sharing the same lectern with other esteemed Muslim clerics has been one helluva roller-coaster.

“This conference is a journey of the faith,” Sheikh Rageah says, with a nasal drawl, stressing the definite article.

“Our faith. The Islamic faith. And also all other faiths. Because, as Muslims we respect and honour other faiths. In an Islamic state, no one is allowed to tamper with another person’s religion.

“As a matter of fact, if there is a war between a Muslim and a non-Muslim state, if they overcome that land they’re not allowed to touch places of worship of other religions. That is contrary to what is out there in the media.”

“I do not know if I want to tell my age,” the lanky baby-faced barely-bearded Sheikh exclaims. “Let’s skip that part. I was born in a small town, which is on the border between Somalia and Ethiopia.

“My father participated in World War Two, fighting for the British. When he returned home, he decided to leave the big city and settle in a small village. My parents both died when I was around five years old.”

Sheikh Rageah, who is the last child of nine siblings, left Somalia after the death of his parents and went to live with his brother in Saudi Arabia.

In the late 80s, he moved to North America, which was even before he finished Middle School. Being plucked from hearth and home, twice, then getting planted in a totally different environment affected his religion.

“It allowed me to reflect on everything. To reflect on Christianity. To reflect on Islam. To reflect on different walks of life. I went to the church. I read and studied the Bible in Catholic school,” Sheikh Rageah explains, adjusting his white kufi and the collar of his kanzu.

“The Father of the school was always such a wonderful priest. I went to different churches. But what changed my mind was once the teacher asked, ‘What would you like to write about?’ I said was going to write about Jesus in Islam.

Context of Islam

“Then I went back to the Bible and Koran, and I realised that the Koran has by far more detail about Jesus’ personal life. How he born, the journey, the details, word-for-word, what Mary said, who raised Mary. So I was like, wait a second. I read more.

“In the end I decided to study more about Issa in the context of Islam.”

During the last day of the conference, in the afternoon session, there was a Question and Answer session. An anonymous Muslim woman literally proposed to the Sheikh, saying she would not mind being his second wife. Rageah took the admiration in Sheikh-like stride.

“I have heard it before,” he humbly offered, after recovering from momentary bewilderment. And then he told the story of how in a conference in Connecticut, after hearing him say that – (as long as one can treat all women equally) — Islam permits men to take up to four wives, he realised he had set himself up. An African-American Muslim woman cornered and proposed, “But my Muslims brothers rescued me just in the nick of time.

“My wife is Italian and had a Catholic background,” the proud father of six fills me in. “When we met, she had already converted to Islam.”

Seriously, though, when Sheikh Rageah talks about the youth, what comes to mind is what transpired an hour earlier on the conference’s podium when a young man converted to Islam.

After saying the shahada, which is the profession of Muslim faith, he chose the name Yusuf. To which shouts of, “Takbir” and “Alhamdulillah” rent the air.

The latter means, “God is great”; while the former means, “All praise is due to God alone.”

A Sheikh counseled the new-convert that he had chosen the name wisely, and prayed that Yusuf would be just as wise.

And therein lies the challenge that may face new-converts: ignorance. Gullibility. Not knowing what they are really getting into, which may make them fall into the bloody hands of extremists. “One of the key elements that, as an organisation, we emphasise on, is to make sure young people walk out of these conference respecting everyone, irrespective of their religion. We want them to respect themselves first, as we would not like someone to impose something they do not like on them.

“We lecture. We travel. We have such sessions as this. We answer questions from youths. And we clear their minds and set them free from extremist ideologies.

“We are doing a lot of work concerning that. As everybody knows, terror groups have nothing to do with Islam. We all want to go through this journey with understanding. And deliver it in a way the youth can understand.”

I query the sheikh about surging cases of Islamophobia. Especially about the rise and fouls of Donald Trump, whose campaign juggernaut has been the veritable crucible that depicts how a cross section of America perceives “different” faiths and faces.

“You know, Donald Trump, he could be arrogant. He could be rich. He could be whatever. But he is not a hypocrite. In Islam we are taught and told that we have to be just.

Trump is not a hypocrite. He does not have two faces. He does not have like, you know, I am smiling in your face but I am gonna stab you in the back.

“But hes like; I don’t like you, I don’t like you. Muslims: I don’t like you. Spanish: I don’t like you. He is keeping it real. However, the other guys ... the other politicians are playing the hypocrisy card. They are playing the politically-correct card. They are double-faced.”

Hidden Hands

He says Trump, is saying what many Americans had in them, but they could not say. “And Trump’s followers keep saying that Trump is speaking the same words they are feeling.”

On Somalia, and the issue of self-determination, Sheikh Rageah says politics is a very slippery ground. But he opines that there could be different forces in play.

“I think there could be hidden hands, behind curtains, moving the puppets in the form of politics and power play.

“We have the same language, same colour, same religion ... so it should not be this hard for us to solve our issues and live in peace,” he says.

“I once went to Hargeisa, in northern Somalia. It was the most secure place I have even been to. I have been to many world capitals in the east and west, but the most secure I have ever been was in Hargeisa.

“However, if you hear the name, Somalia, the first images that come to mind are civil wars, killings and terrorist groups.”

He says he flew from one ‘stable’ capital city, where “I had to ride with car windows rolled up because of insecurity, to this town in Somalia where people were exchanging thousands of dollars on the streets, and old women selling gold on the streets without fear. But the media paints Somalia in a completely differently hue; as a land flowing with blood.”

Speaking of misconceptions, there are a tons being bandied about. Which are now being treated as Koran-truths. I ask Sheikh Rageah about virgins. A whopping 72 celestial virgins, to be exact.

“The Koran states that if you kill yourself as a Muslim, there is no paradise — called, janna — for you,” he explains. “And you will be in a place of torment, called, jahannam. In the Koran, there is no mention of 72 virgins.

“In some Hadiths in the Koran, there are virtues of those who died in the battlefield, but not those who killed themselves ... and that war must be justified.”

If, in your opiate mind, you are strapping a suicide vest, all eyes and thoughts on an orgy-filled paradise, Sheikh Rageah has a word of caution for you: it is not happening, loser. You are going straight to jahannam, where you will be in torment forever.