The Plot to Murder an Eminent Officer
Dear students:
The true sincere scholars are the inheritors of the Envoys of God, as we saw in the previous lesson when the people of our Master Ibrahim (pth) decided to burn him with fire, the criminals in this story also decided to kill the great scholar M. A. Sheikho (God has sanctified his soul)...but why?
The alarm bell should be ringing… the criminals have agreed unanimously to kill our officer, M. A. Sheikho! Will it be the end of our officer? Or will God defend and keep him?
Be with us, dear student, as this exciting story unfolds!
Indeed, our courageous officer dedicated his life to getting rid of criminals and cleansing the state of al-Sham [27] of them and their evil actions and inhumane deeds. He took an oath to his Provider once he had graduated from the military faculty of Amber as an officer. He swore that he would devote no time to himself as long as deception reared its evil head and prevailed. He would dedicate everything in his power to wipe it out and to support the truth and establish justice… and he set to work to achieve that exactly.
That period was the golden time for crime and criminals, when no man felt safe after sunset unless he were in his own home.
Once he took up his position as a security officer M. Amin dedicated his life to obliterating vice and criminality. He slept rarely, going to his work early in the morning and not returning until dawn the following day just to snatch a few hours of much needed sleep. Both night and day his pursuit of criminals was relentless. He broke into their hiding places, thwarted their schemes and confounded their criminal deeds, until they were beaten into submission.
Eventually there remained no more than thirty criminals who were, by then, in prison and he punished them even further when he discovered that after he had arrested them and sent them to prison they resorted to bribes and intermediaries to arrange for the court to discharge them. It was clear that they had not repented of their crimes and consequently they were still afflicted by the evil that they imposed on other people.
For example, he prepared an ambush for one of the criminals as he returned one night, drunk and disorderly. The drunkard was surprised when the soldiers pounced upon him, threw him on the ground and tied up his feet, then Officer Sheikho lashed the soles of his feet until the blood flowed, then he had him untied and said, ‘Listen to me you evil-minded drunkard! Carry on drinking wine every day and you’ll find me waiting to give you a warm welcome every time!’ The criminal groaned and pleaded but then thought better of it: it would be a high price to pay for the pleasure of drinking too much wine. And that put an end to this man’s bouts of drunkenness!
This is just one simple example of our officer’s approach when dealing with such criminals.
He was remorseless… he harassed them everywhere… closed every path open to them and plunged into their dens (taverns and such like places) until they were forced to disband and crushed them so that some of them fled to Iraq, others were imprisoned, and some others repented. However, the remaining few grouped together to discuss their situation as they realised how dangerous their lives of crime had now become, and to consider what the best solution might be.
During this get-together, the criminals spoke about their past days of glory and heroism which they could no longer even dream of! ‘Do you remember,’ they said, ‘the days when the market would close if just one of us went there, and how people got off the roads if they saw us… Ah! What days of power and glory they were! Whereas now, we just want to be safe… should we put up with this situation? We should be ashamed of ourselves… ashamed!’
They wondered how it was that one man could break up their unity, destroy their power and overcome them. ‘No,’ they said, ‘we don’t believe what’s happening… we have to find a solution and decide how to tackle it by tomorrow… we’ll kill him whatever the cost may be… we’re so desperate that we don’t care if some of us go down while getting rid of him. The most important thing is to kill him even if a few of us are killed… there’s just one of him but there are a lot of us… we’ve got to get rid of him now so we can get back to our previous position of power whereby we’re not controlled by anyone but we control whoever we want.’ They eventually reached their decision at midnight after much talking and scheming.
Remember! This evil crime was being planned to murder Officer Sheikho who had established peace, justice and safety in al-Sham, the place of the Prophet’s descent and the cradle of Divine messages.
That particular evening, suspecting nothing untoward, M. Amin went home and went to sleep. He reasoned that safety and security had been stabilised and there was no need to be alert all night as usual, as the criminal gang had been broken down and peace prevailed.
But… there was something strange… he felt an odd feeling as if a noose was being slowly tightened around his neck.
Our officer thought to himself, ‘I hope it’s nothing bad… maybe there’s something wrong at the headquarters… I’d better go at once to check if all is well.’
He got up from bed, put on his military uniform again and, armed with his pistol, he left for the headquarters without telling his wife who was sleeping soundly, completely unaware of his absence.
On the way, he met a sluggish drunkard staggering across the road, colliding with one wall and scraping along another, reeling right and left and about to fall, then trying to stand up, but swaying like a leaf in the wind. It was the same drunken sot that he had disciplined a few days ago, so he slapped and cuffed him a couple of times to get him to sober up enough to understand what he, Officer Sheikho, had to say to him, and in the hope that he would remember his words of advice this time.
Immediately, the officer spoke to him in a stern voice, ‘I thought you had repented your past behaviour and promised me that you wouldn’t go back to your old ways! Have you become a drunkard again?’ Then he left him and continued on his way to the headquarters, walking fast, as he felt a sense of unease and needed to monitor the situation there.
As for the criminals, they had finished their meeting and gone out to put their plan into action at whatever cost to themselves.
Officer Sheikho, their arch enemy, was only one man against their twenty-two, so even if one or two of them were killed in the process they didn’t care. One of the criminals went off to look for him and to find out whether he was at the headquarters or not. If he was there, they would all attack and surely they would manage to kill him even if some of them were killed, and the rest could go back to enjoying their old life of crime happy in the knowledge that there was no longer anyone with the tenacity and courage to pursue them.
The criminal reached the headquarters before Officer Sheikho arrived, and when he did not find him there, he returned to his gang and told them that the officer must be at home. This was good news for them, for it would be much easier to kill him in his house where he would be alone and have no police back-up.
By God’s Will they rushed off in a different direction to that which Officer Sheikho had followed… and when they reached his house, they drew their weapons and all attacked it, with their evil intentions seemingly written clearly across their faces.
In the meanwhile, as mentioned before, our officer had arrived at the headquarters. The criminals launched their united attack on the house of M. Amin (as they thought!) but by God’s Will they got the wrong door and smashed the door of his neighbour’s house instead. And while all this was going on, that drunken sot whom Amin had just disciplined, arrived on the scene… where he flared up and shouted at the gang in the loudest voice possible (keep in mind, reader, that he was quite drunk!): You dogs…! What are you doing? You fools…! And he heaped abuse upon them – because of his drunken state – so the band of criminals thought that the drunkard was, in fact, their opponent, the noble officer, so they left the door and jumped upon him. They thought, in the darkness of the night, that he was the chief officer who rarely slept at night… and that it was he who was defending his own house… and that their prey had walked straight into their hands. How wrong they were! They fired at their target… and he fell down covered in blood. They fired, and fired again, until every part of his body was riddled with bullets: his feet, legs, head and chest, and then, their pistols empty, they had quenched their thirst for revenge. They quickly turned tail and left him where he was, on the ground, dead. In their eagerness to get rid of Officer Sheikho and to make a quick getaway, they had failed to notice that the man was just a drunken passer-by.
After some time, our officer went home having visited the headquarters and checked the situation there: he saw that all was secure, calm and peaceful, and the unease that he had felt earlier was now dispelled. But then he was surprised at the terrible clamour that cut through the night… people were shouting… and he was astonished to see the drunkard whom he had disciplined, lying on the ground dead and blood-stained.
Fortunately none of this hubbub or sound of shooting reached the ears of Mohammad Amin’s wife because God’s Wisdom had ensured that she remained asleep and in blissful ignorance of the whole affair.
In fact, Allah the Merciful willed that because if she had woken up and not found her husband at home, she would have guessed that he was involved in a bad situation and been extremely concerned about his safety.
But it was God’s Will that saved Officer M. Amin, defender of the truth and destroyer of the pillars of evil and its supporters: “You who believe! If you help Allah, He will help you and make you stand firm.” [28]
In fact it was Allah who turned the criminals towards the wrong direction so that they failed in their quest… they caused Officer Sheikho no harm and He spared him their attack, for “Whenever they kindle the fire of war, Allah will put it out. They try to spread corruption in the land, but Allah does not love those who corrupt.” [29]
In his spirit M. Amin always addressed all criminals by saying, ‘You will perish because of your rage unless you turn away from your crimes… if not… woe betide all that is evil and the people who perpetrate it.’
Questions and Exercises:
1- What was the pledge which the great scholar M. Amin Sheikho gave to the Almighty God after his graduation as a security officer from the military college?
2- How was the security situation in Damascus city in the latest of Ottoman era?
3- How were the criminals getting out from the prisons after the brave officer M. Amin arrested them?
4- What speech did the brave officer M. Amin talk with the criminal who had been fallen in the ambush, after he had disciplined and punished him?
5- Why did the rest of the criminals, who were outside the prisons, decide to kill the brave officer M. A. Sheikho?
6- What is the Godly wisdom behind the deep sleeping which the wife of the eminent scholar sank into, that she didn’t hear the sounds of the shootings near her house?