IN MEMORY OF MOHAMED MAHDI AKEF (May Allah have mercy on him)
We are grieved to hear of the death of Mohamed Mahdi Akef, former
General-Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. May Allah have mercy on him. Ta’ziah
– condolences to his family and his brethren.
His daughter Aliya Mohamed, announced last evening the loss of her detained
father at Qasr el-Eyni Hospital. A statement posted on Aliya’s Facebook page
read: “My father has passed away. To Allah, we belong, and to Him, we shall
return.”
It is sad to hear that Mr. Akef’s family had requested he be released from
custody because of his medical condition but the request was declined by an
Egyptian court. Akef who is 89 years old had cancer, heart problems and a broken
thigh. His daughter affirmed that lately he was isolated in the prison hospital
and was only allowed a visit once a week, despite his old age and poor health.
The pleas for compassion by his family were totally ignored by the regime.
Mr Akef had already relinquished the post of the Brotherhood’s general
guide in 2010. He was arrested on 4 July 2013 despite not being part of the
Brotherhood’s current leadership at the time of the bloodiest crackdown by the
Egyptian army in a brutal coup which killed 2,600 defenceless people in Raba’a
Square alone.
The illegal coup brought down Egypt’s first free democratically elected
government and president. Western and world governments refused to condemn or
even acknowledge the military coup. Western, Arab and Muslim leaders ignored
the massacre and gross violations of human rights with thousands being
imprisoned and tortured. Many had to flee Egypt to seek refuge abroad. US, UK
and European governments were exposed as most hypocritical in their responses
and their scheming. They seem to only relish dealing with corrupt and decrepit
dictators until a time that these despots reach their expiry limit.
The Muslim Brotherhood had renounced and rejected militancy and violence,
and has always maintained free democratic elections and contests of ideas as
the means of achieving its political goals. It believes in the path of gradual
reform of society. The Brotherhood became the most powerful political
opposition in Egypt, winning support because it showed leadership, it provided
health care and other social services that the state did not. It offered
political Islam as a solution and it has proven to be not corrupt.
Under Akef’s leadership, the Brotherhood won 20 percent of parliamentary
seats in 2005 legislative elections, a historic achievement for the then banned
but tolerated movement. The group emerged as the most organised opposition
force against President Hosni Mubarak's regime, campaigning against police
brutality, corruption and rampant inequality.
Akef said that Arab and Islamic countries suffer from severe backwardness,
and the Western world wanted to make them even more backward. It did not want
these countries to progress at all. Many interpret this to mean advanced
technology and even implied that Akef encouraged Arab and Muslims countries to
acquire nuclear capability. It is becoming clearer what he meant and what the
Muslim brotherhood is all about currently and politically.
Analysts have concluded that calling for political participation and
electoral legitimacy, of which the Muslim Brotherhood is perhaps the best
example, was seen as almost an existential threat, because it offered a
different model of Islamist politics to that of despotic Arab regimes.
For far too long, Arabs especially have been living in self-contempt and
accepting the worst of leaders and the most corrupt regimes to lead their
nations into further ruin. Akef said that the US and such governments fear real
freedom as much as the despotic regimes fear it. They conspire to change the
education system, dictating the religious, cultural and media discourses in
Arab and Islamic states, to force the Ummah to its knees, to weaken its creed,
to corrupt its ethics, to alienate it from its identity and to distance it from
its unique cultural roots. US and European initiatives are being used to
pressurise and blackmail the regimes of the region to make further concessions
on national and regional issues, over and above their total acquiescence to the
will of the US on the Palestinian, Afghan, Iraq and oil issues.
Egypt, the largest Arab country and the one most capable of spearheading
real reform, instead continues in its same repressive policies. Its leaders
have neither any feeling of responsibility for either the security and
stability of the country, or for its development and its need to attract
investments to it; nor the ability to create an environment of political
openness that can accommodate all political forces and provide the opportunity
for all social forces to express themselves; nor even a sense of awe of the
inevitability of standing before Allah, ‘Who will ask them about [how they have
treated] their people’.
Akef lamented the role of Egypt in Gaza as aiding the occupier instead of
serving the cause and interests to free Palestinians. He said it was the duty
of the Brotherhood to expose ugly and unjust practices, which violate human
rights and the dignity of man.
Akef stressed that real reform in the country could only be achieved by its
people, who have the real interest in change. "Verily, never will Allah
change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves"
(Qur’an 13:11). The Muslim Brotherhood strives to achieve this goal in
accordance with its gradual approach: reform of souls, building families,
counselling society and liberating motherlands.
Akef went on to state that the Brotherhood will continue to call upon the rulers, to whom
Allah has entrusted this Ummah, to fear Allah in their peoples, and to know
that they will be taken before Allah on a day in which no secret will be
concealed. He warned the regimes that they will be asked about every little and
weighty thing, about the groans of the tortured, about the blood of the martyrs
and the suffering, about the tears of the widows, bereaved mothers and orphans,
about the cries of the families of the imprisoned at the gates of jails and
prisons, about the millions of unemployed, about the stolen money, about the squandered
development, and about everything else. "But how (will they fare) when We
gather them together against a Day about which there is no doubt, and each soul
will be paid out just what it has earned without injustice?"
Akef stated that real reform entails to replace crooked loyalty and
patronisation with merit and qualifications; to replace the unbridled power of
the security services with the rule of law; the principle of accountability as opposed
to squandering public resources.
Akef noted that the depth of the crisis which the Arab societies are
undergoing, with the regimes’ dependence on the big stick of the security
services to kill, torture and arrest whoever it pleases, and to transform the
Arab countries into big prisons. Arab regimes still have the same police-state
mentality, and are still using the same old tactics, and that the only thing
that they care about is to consolidate their grip on power, even over the dead
bodies of their victims.
He pledged to be loyal to religion and mission, to country and motherland,
to shoulder all the possible sacrifices for the sake of God until God granted victory.
"Or do you think that you shall enter Paradise without such (trials) as
came to those who passed away before you? They encountered suffering and
adversity, and were so shaken in spirit that even the Messenger and those of
faith who were with him cried: ‘When (will come) the help of Allah?’ Ah!
Verily, the help of Allah is (always) near!" (2:214).
Akef spent more than 33 years of his life in jail, the first time after a
purge by pan-Arabist leader and Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954.
He was sentenced to 3 years in prison by Hosni Mubarak in 1996. After President
Morsi's ouster he was sentenced to life in prison which implied 25 years of
detention.
Too many and too long have the finest sons and daughters of Egypt been
imprisoned and tortured for their principles, their conscience and beliefs.
Akef led the life of honour and dignity serving the path of Allah and he
died a martyr in His cause.
It is apt that Aliya Mahdi Akef made the announcement on Facebook, saying
"my father is in the care of Allah”.
In the name of Allah; praise be to Allah, and peace and
blessings be upon His Prophet and those who followed him...
"Among the believers are those who have been true to their covenant
with Allah: of them some have died and some [still] wait; but they have never
changed [their determination] in the least." (Qur’an 33: 23)
Ahmad Azam Abd Rahman
President
Wadah Pencerdasan Umat Malaysia (WADAH)
Movement for an Informed Society Malaysia
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