LOVE, ACTUALLY!

I was a member of one of the most militant groups in Egypt, Al-Gamaa Al-Islamia. My acquaintance with my brothers in the group started when I was 14 years old and lasted for six years. It took me then 5 years more to start to understand why I left the group but more and more years to understand why I joined them in the first place.

Nearly a year after I joined them I was on a holiday in my father’s village in Upper Egypt, a quiet place that I used to love when I was little boy. As a child, I used to go around playing football from 7 O’clock in the morning until the sunset then sit down chatting with my friends under the clear sky with thousands of stars shining over our heads. Stories about ghosts and haunted places were fascinating, so were the stories about girls and invented adventures. The day my family returned to my city every year was tragic.

But not this time.

During that particular visit, the first after I joined the group, I found out that I still had a part of my heart occupied with my love of playing football and having fun. I started even thinking whether I wanted to stay with the group or to return to my normal life. And this gave me fear. On the one hand, I loved my new brothers so much that I wasn’t able to imagine life without them, without this sense of being protected, of belonging, of being a candle in a huge holy project to spread the holy light all over the world. On the other hand, I realised that I wasn’t yet up to the mission which required its people to be whole-heartedly dedicated to it. The first sign of this dedication as I had been taught over the previous year was to love God, the prophet and your god brothers with every single cell in your heart.

One might think: why didn’t I just keep the two sorts of love? But this is not the case. ‘God,’ a verse in Quran says, ‘never gives a man two hearts.’ It means according to my god brothers that, in matters of love, you always have to choose in order to be a good believer. Another verse of Quran says: ‘people who believe in God and the Thereafter never love those who are the enemies of God.’ And my brothers defined the enemies of God as all those who don’t believe truly in Him. ‘Even,’ according to the next verse, if those others were our ‘parents, brothers or clan.’ Any activity that distracts you from thinking of God is condemned according to the Prophet Mohamad, my brothers told me.

Then I had to decide where I truly stood in the matter of love. Was my heart full with love of God, or was there still a space for other earthly things? With a heart and mind of a child aged 15 I decided and acted swiftly. I cut my holiday and returned to my city and my brothers.

So, my love test started with my friends and my beloved football games but didn’t stop there. Over the following years with the group I had to abandon this strong link with my close relatives in a society which worshipped family ties. I had an uncle who worked with police, time after time I asked myself: would I agree to kill him if I was ordered to do so for the sake of God? When I thought of myself as a true believer the answer was yes, not because I hated him, actually I loved this particular person more than the rest of my uncles, but because I sincerely loved God and I was ready to do anything to prove this love. At least, that’s what I thought.

In order for outsiders to understand this they have to familiarise themselves with the concept of “Love and Hatred in God”. This means that you love people because you think that God loves them, and you hate people for no personal reasons but because you think God does.

The sombre appearances of people with beards, together with the cruel acts they execute, hide the fact that they put so much effort in the issue of love. Plenty of my leaders back in Egypt modestly kissed my hands whenever I did something good. At the time when I was only a teenager and they were heroes. Those heroes sat down with people of my age to ask about ordinary things that even a family might forget to discuss. And I loved them so much that even a thought of living without them was now out of question.

Tests of love went on and on. And the obsession of love got bigger and bigger. It moved from examining your relationship with people and things close to you, to examine your position in the whole world according to the code of love you followed. The sign of God being in every cell of your heart is an irresistible desire to spread his word with all means possible, with all sacrifice required, knowing that He is watching you. This is our mission in life, and it’s driven by love not hatred. But, unfortunately, the whole love space in your heart is devoted to your brothers and your cause as this is the manifestation of true love of God and the Prophet. Unfortunately, you are blind to any other sort of love. Unfortunately, you are blind to any misgivings within this love; any damage to peoples’ lives, well being or even their existence is a trivial collateral damage.

If we search ourselves we find out that all of us have experienced this damaging sort of love once or more in our lives, though in much smaller scale. It might be on a personal level, when loving someone makes us unable to think clearly. It might be for patriotic reasons when loving our country closes our eyes to real justice. It might be for ideological reasons when loving some sort of text turns red words into golden ones. The problem with me and my fellow god brothers was that we had all these might-be’s in one dose at one time.

Whenever I hear people in the media talk about hate groups, or hate preaching, I realise that this message wouldn’t reach the militants. That’s what happened to me when I was one of them. I dismissed this as mere ignorance. I believed that when they talked about hate groups they didn’t mean me because I was full of love and full of tenderness. I cried for humanity that was misguided and misled, and for people who needed me to take them by hand to the shore of safety and holy content. And I felt myself obliged to do so because God had occupied my whole heart.

Prophet Mohamad was once talking to his disciple Omar; he told him that one couldn’t be a true believer unless they loved him more than they loved their properties, their sons and themselves. Omar told the prophet he loved him more than his properties and his sons but himself. The prophet repeated his statement and so did Omar. After some silence Omar said to the prophet that he loved him more than his properties, his sons and even himself. The prophet said, “Now, now, Omar.”

And now, the year 1990, the young man who 3 years earlier needed to struggle with himself in order to prefer being with the Islamic group to playing football, was taking another decision easily. Egypt qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 56 years but the young man didn’t even waste 2 hours watching the first game against Holland. And when the game became the obsession of the nation after Egypt managed to equalise with the Dutch, he didn’t watch the next two games against Ireland and England.

A year later, I was arrested then jailed for a very short period of six weeks. The first ten days in an unofficial detention centre were horrible, that I thought I was not going to see life outside the high walls of the prison again. There, I started thinking of very little and distant memories, of relatives and friends I hadn’t seen for years and most of all of my mother and my infant nephew. I realised that I still loved them. That they still had a place in my heart. The first thing I did when I was moved to another official prison was sending a message to my mother. I told her that I loved her and my family and that I was sorry because I totally neglected them. I didn’t mean at all that I was leaving the group, I was just trying to condole my family, but a word was spread in the prison that I was sending lots of letters to my family. The brother who collected the letters gave one of mine to a group leader in the same jail. A few days later I received a letter from him telling me that If I had thought that I was able to succeed in my study that year as I promised my family I would’ve been mistaken. He had known by then that I was sacked for one year from university where I studied medicine, something that I hadn’t known yet.

I didn’t leave the group after I came out of jail, but two things happened. First, I sued my university and won the case then managed to pass the exams of that year. Second, I became sure that I had other things in life that I loved, and my love of these things got also bigger and bigger. It’s never one love again for me, and it’s never one truth.