Devilish Tricks
Devilish Tricks
A Sufi in Egypt told me that some families there hire people to claim miracles for their deceased, in hopes that people believe them and erect shrines through which the families may then accrue substantial amounts of money! This person’s family had done this with his grandfather’s corpse after his death, and he had witnessed all of these happenings as a child.
He said that his family hired men to carry the coffin, and once they reached the graveyard, they pretended that the coffin was pulling them back as they were trying to enter the coffin into the graveyard. This continued until they reached a plot of land belonging to the family, when suddenly the coffin became still. They said, “That’s it then. It is certain that this person wishes to be buried over here!” A shrine was erected for him there, and this incident was among the primary reasons for this person abandoning them.
I sometimes wonder, “Where are the minds of such people?”
Colonialism and the orientalists would laud this type of backwardness. People like Goldziher, the famous orientalist, praised these phenomena, as is found in his correspondences with Sheikh Tahir al Jaza’iri.
Similarly, during French occupation they commissioned the erection of many of these shrines for the Sufis. To the extent that Sufi Sheikhs do not deny this; they even claim it to be divine assistance!
I once saw a person on a television program on Al Jazeera saying he was guided to it by a Jew! These are the very people who take advantage of unsuspecting people’s ignorance about their religion.