By Dr. Abasher Elhaj
Al-Maseed or the hospice is an umbrella lexical item which means the mosque that gathers everything from a Quranic school, hospice, hostess, to popular clinic. It is up to you to abide by this definition and you have the right to accept and comply with it, or disagree with it, but it is rather a depiction as I am not commissioned to plumb the sphere of these purgative territories propagating across Sudan since the advent of Islam in Sudan.
What triggered me to tackle the role of Maseed in stitching the social fabric and rescinding racism was tracking the so called “Sudanese People Call Initiative” sponsored by Sheik Tayeb Jid.
Founding any hospice is solely based on piety and surnatural prophetic advowson. The quality of any hospice’s sheikh is being sigh, lamented, heart shattered, and being free from the stains of the soul. Intransigent motif always nests on a line of descent traced continuously from an ancestor (pedigree) to manifest its alibi, and it presents itself as the authentic source of any religious cognition in terms of monotheism, jurisprudence, comportment, and Quran recitation and memorization.
The first Maseed was the mosque of the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him in which the prophet consolidated between ‘Muhagreen’ immigrants and ‘Ansar’ proponents. And by so doing, he laid down the foundations of brotherhood for us and told us that tribalism is melting and decaying within the true Muslim community. Luckily, Sudanese hospices behave the same way as they averse stinky tribalism since you can find all spectrums of society memorizing the Holy Qur’an, all of the students are sons of the sheikh and no discrimination in Qur’an memorization among them. One of Dec. 2018 revolution slogans was “Oh racist and authoritarian, we are all Darfurian!”. In hospice, theory meets practice, for the majorities of students memorizing the Qur’an have come and are still coming from Darfur since the age of Sultan Ali Dinar.
The prophet once said, “How is it with you and in a time when people, are sifted through a sifting, there will remain scum of people, whose covenants and trusts have been disregarded, and they differed and were like this.” He intertwined his fingers. Recently, sufi hospices have been casted aspersion and their names blackened to make people think badly of them; so, they are put through the wringer position. Lay man always overgeneralizes and never spots what deviates from the norm. No body recants the role of Sheikh Wad Badr sect in serving Islam. However, the “Sudanese People Call Initiative” , which took place at the Friendship Hall to close the stable door after the horse has bolted, has, superficially, got all hospices scolded, but introspectively those who are insight may have the constitution of an ox.
Back to the point, this sense of fascination is a bit of a curate’s egg, and hospices should show derring- do to lurking to let die in anger. For hospices have been playing axial different roles in Sudan and they were the first beacon in this ambit since the released of Islam in Sudan, they should continue transferring the pure genes that represent the prophet’s morals as Sheikh Saim Dima once said. He also, welcomed non-Muslim tribes from Southern Sudan in the floods of 1988 where the Friday prayer was disrupted, and he was firm not to harass them, and they were saying that the Sheikh had paid our fathers as he was your father. When he died, they came to mourn him. Furthermore, Sheikh Al-Yaqout has welcomed the sons of Darfur when they were expelled from Bakht Al-Ruda University. What prompted and encouraged me to write this article, the story of the grandmother of the Sheikh Mohamed Tom with the people of South Sudan and the kindness and affection that was between them and her. Can politicians behave this way?!
For learning is permanent change in behavior for the better, these hospices practice what they preach; they settle social disputes that are risqué to governments seeking neither compensation, nor gratitude. Moreover, their roles are not shorthanded in memorizing the holy Quran only; they have the top mug in settling in earth. Some terrains designated by sheikhs who were the first persons to dwell there, for example, el-Zareeba, Umdawan Ban, el-Kabashi, and Medani. So, one can infer that Sudan population geography is basically based on those vertuous sheikhs.In sum, Al-Maseed is a lofty and well-established institution that we are aware of the role entrusted to us and it will raise us to the heights of glory and majesty. Basically, they are in the know, because they have access to all the information about society, and should not be a mockery. Scum and foams vanish in the sea! hajabacher@gmail.com
