Last night I received an email from a beautiful sister highlighting an urgent cause a cry for our attention and therefore Ive felt compelled to share it in anyway I can! Please do put yourself in Babar Ahmads shoes and try for a moment to imagine how he must be feeling knowing there are millions of Muslims out there in the very country he has been imprisoned in for 7 years without trial and with less than 1 month remaining his petition is still so far off from reaching it's target! This could be you or your blood brother, father, son wouldn't you then reach out to everyone to help? Anyways let's get on to the message...
Sometimes we receive emails about something and we don’t bother to read it to the end. This is one email that NEEDS to be read to the very end. It not only needs to be read, it needs YOU the reader to place yourself in the shoes of someone. It NEEDS you to ‘live’ his reality, to smell what he smells, to touch what he is able to touch, to see what he sees and to imagine his future in the way that he does.
Are you ready to completely switch off from what is surrounding you and give your complete attention and heart for JUST 3 MINUTES! For the sake of Allah please do, as it could seriously be a source of ajr (reward) for you and could make the difference to someone’s life.
Before you think, this email is asking for money – IT ISN’T! I simply want you to be this person for 3 minutes in your life…
You’re happily married, you have a wonderful close family mashaAllah. You have a good job and you love your Islam. Life is good Alhamdulillah and you are one of those few individuals who goes out of your way to help others purely to seek the pleasure of Allah. You sleep soundly, you have the choice to eat what tickles your fancy and you can choose whether you bask in the beautiful sunshine or you spend a day listening to a wonderful lecture. You are free – you can choose – life is sweet.
In a matter of seconds, your happy life is ripped away from you. Now your reality is very different: you have lost your spouse, you can no longer enjoy being with your family, your heart aches and longs to be close to your loved ones – but it is impossible. And so you only rely on your dreams at night to bring back what you yearn to be your reality: spending Eid together, walking through the park, praying with fellow Muslims, enjoying a bite to eat with friends.
This is the reality of one individual.
You know what’s really sad about this situation? This individual spent his life trying to help others. Those who knew him had such respect for him as he was one who tried to ease the pain and difficulty of others. The time has come where the Muslim Community can NOW help him to turn his dreams of freedom into a reality.
Yes, I’m talking about Babar Ahmad who has been imprisoned without trial for over 7 years and I want you to read til the end of this email as there is a message from him in the last few days which cut deep as I’m sure it will make you cry in both admiration for his strength and pain at his situation.
Thousands of emails have gone around about him, asking people to sign the petition. Sadly with only one month to go, there have only been 20,000 signatures. 80,000 more are needed.
It saddens me that with only one month to go, we the Muslim Community have not exerted enough effort to reach the number of signatures needed which will enable Babar Ahmed’s case to be discussed by parliament.
What faces Babar Ahmad should he be extradited to the US?
· He will face the rest of his natural life in a Supermax Prison
· He will be in solitary confinement for 22-23 hours per day
· Regular body searches
· Regular ‘extractions’ where fully kitted officers in riot gear ‘remove’ the prisoner by surprise and do a cell search which often results in serious physical damage to the prisoner
· One call per month to a family or friend
As one senior Supermax officer put it, “Do we have an obligation to take care of them? Yes. But do I have an obligation to provide him touching, feeling contact with another human being? I would say no. He has earned his way to [supermax] and he’s earned just the opposite. He’s earned the need for me to keep him apart from other people.”
Babar Ahmad has not done anything to deserve being sent to such a place and you can be a part of the campaign to have him tried here in the United Kingdom.
I have faith in the Muslim Community as I have seen wonderful things happen in such a short space of time. We can do this and we owe it to our brother to support him in this cause.
So, what can we do:
· Sign the petition and don’t forget to activate the link that is sent to your email address.
· Get every member in your household and extended family to sign it.
· If everyone could try to get at least 10 others to sign than we could actually reach the target of 100,000 signatures by 10th NOVEMBER 2011.
· Spread the word, forward this email on.
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/885
We all have excuses, but I wonder what excuse we will give to Allah when He (Swt) asks what we did to help a brother on our very own doorstep. What excuse will you give for not taking 2 minutes out of your time to simply sign a government e-petition.
I try to imagine how Babar must be feeling right now, only one month left and only 20,000 signatures from his brothers and sisters. I would have lost much hope but this is what he said to one of his sisters recently:
‘Whatever you do, never give up, because the only thing worse than failure is the failure to try’. Babar Ahmad, October 2011
The question is not whether you should sign the petition, the question is what is stopping you from doing it and from getting others to do it??? Don’t be a Muslim who merely shows his Islam though speech. ACT TODAY.
Revisit the above steps as to how you can help and before Shaytaan makes you think about something else – SIGN, SPREAD THE WORD AND GET THOSE ADDITIONAL 10 PEOPLE TO SIGN TOO.
May Allah reward you for reading this far. You never know what something like this could do for an individual’s life and future. More importantly – what it could do for your akhirah when everyone will do anything to go back to the life of this world to do the best deed they could do…
Wasalamu alaikum
And just a few things to clarify in case you’re thinking:
1. I am worried about giving my name and address to this
Addresses and email addresses are not published or accessible by any member of the public, 20,000 people have already signed this petition. Why would the Government spend time and resources chasing up on each of those 20,000 people in the middle of a recession when they have so many bigger issues to worry about-just because they signed a recognised and legitimate Government petition, acting within the law?
2) What difference would it make anyway? What's the point?
It took one woman to cause a revolution in Egypt, billions of tiny drops of water come together to form the ocean...there is always a point-even if it is just the fact that we can say to Allah (SWT) on the Day of Judgement "We saw a brother in need, we did this to try to help him."
3) We don't want to ask this "non-Muslim" or non-shariah government for anything, we should just make dua and not do this petition.
That would have been fair enough if this was an Islamic state. The bottom line is that there is no third option-Trial in UK or trial in the USA. No one has asked Babar what kind of trial he would like. Once you are arrested and locked up, you are bound by the laws of the authorities that locked you up in the first place-whether you like it or not.
4) I want to sign it but I have had so much on, I have been too busy to get to it.
This petition expires on 10th November 2011-then that opportunity to sign will be over.Imagine the feeling of sadness and regret if we miss out our target of 100,000 by just a small handful of signatures-that could have been if people didn't procrastinate. Or worse still, seeing the news that Babar Ahmad has been put on a plane to the US.
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