A True Story
People spread the word far and wide, and came from everywhere around. It was really a marvel. For the past two weeks on the Plain of Al-Ghab, a sheikh had been sitting underwater, 2.5 meters beneath the surface of a fishing pool. He was holding prayer beads in his hand and extolling God, saying: “There is no God but Al’lah!”
He astonished the eyesight and astounded the mind. Since he had such supernatural powers, he absolutely had to be a great saint of God!
From every Syrian governorate – from Aleppo, Homs, and Idleb – people came regularly to that place so as to see God’s support for His saint who had such great power. A person is unable to stay under water for more than one minute, so what would you say if you knew that our saint was still alive and moving despite having been sitting beneath the water for nearly two weeks before people’s very eyes?!
He became known all around, and the story of this man spread until people everywhere were talking about him.
It so happened that because of security concerns, some Syrian government authorities decided to take certain measures to stop disturbances to security, and so they went to the sheikh’s house in search of troublemakers. When they arrived, the people there expected that an affliction would descend from the sky, or that the earth would sink down beneath the feet of those who would dare to trespass on the holiness of the great saint’s house. People froze in speechlessness and extreme caution, anticipating an earthquake or a stunning punishment, while a man of such supernatural ability was still sitting beneath the surface of the pool.
The policemen were serious in their search for rioters inside the house.
Suddenly, they came upon a tunnel under the wooden floor of one of the rooms, and so they entered it. There inside the tunnel, they found the sheikh sitting comfortably. He was surrounded by plentiful food and water that was sufficient for many days’ survival. His concealment here was not known to anybody at the time: even the sheikh’s closest relatives were unaware of this. The security forces took him out, shackled, into the village, where all the people saw him. How strange was that which they saw!!! They saw the sheikh with shackled hands being driven forward by the policemen, but at the same time they knew that the sheikh himself was sitting beneath the water, holding prayer beads in his hands. It was then that they realized that the person under the water was the sheikh’s jinn-companion.
In a hurry, they went to the pool, but the jinn-companion had disappeared by the time they got there.
Verily, the sheikh had been responsible for great magic, but he achieved nothing by it, as the truth of the situation had been uncovered.
God refused to let the people be deceived by this magician in spite of their weak belief, so He drove the policemen to arrest him so as to allow people to see both the hidden sheikh and his jinn-companion who was sitting beneath the water.
And God’s Saying was proved to be true as He indicated in the noble verse: “I would never take the misleading as an assistant.”
The Holy Qur’an,
Fortress 18, Al-Kahf (The Cave), verse 51