"Somalia's Nelson Mandela"
This man has a life lessons to teach us all."It is a cruelty which, if you have not experienced it yourself, you can not imagine."
The man who spoke those words, Dr Yusuf Al-Azhari, was speaking about solitary confinement, which he endured for six years. It was an experience which would have broken the spirit of most of us, but which transformed Al-Azhari's life.
"It was as if I had found a new identity," he would say later, describing himself as having been freed from hate, despair, depression, and the desire for earthly greed and enjoyment.
Al-Azhari's torment began with the overthrow of his father-in-law, Somalian President Shermarke, who was assassinated in a military coup staged in the 1960's.
The incoming dictator Major General Mohammed Said Barre had Al-Azhari thrown in jail, tortured and held in solitary confinement. For six years he was held in a dank, dark cell measuring 3 metres by 4 metres, with nothing to read, no one to talk to, no one to listen to - his jailers refused to speak with him.
For the first six months of his imprisonment, he was tortured daily. He became consumed by hatred and afraid that he would have a stroke or become insane or die. "My brain was trying to burst," he said.
Then one night, he recalls, he knelt down at eight in the evening, soaked with tears and asked for guidance from the Creator. "We all look for alliances but the only alliance you can have in solitary confinement is with God Almighty."
When he finally got up from his knees, it ways four o'clock in the morning. "Eight hours had passed as if it were eight minutes."
His inner voice told him: "be honest to yourself and those around you, and you will be the happiest person on earth. Don't limit yourself to earthly matters only, go beyond that."
Al-Azhari decided to accept prison life instead of fighting it, dividing his hours into time for physical exercise and time to conduct debates with himself about his past. He spent hours thinking back over the wrongs he had done in his life and also reviewing the good things.
In 1991, the Supreme Revolutionary Council which had taken over the country, was deposed and Al-Azhari was release from prison. He was still wearing the same trousers he had on at the time of his arrest and wore a beard down to his waist.
His wife, who had been told he had been shot trying to escape, fainted upon seeing him when he finally tracked his family down to a hut in Mogadishu.
One day he was overwhelmed by the feeling that he should forgive this man who had caused him so much misery. "I found I could no longer resist the need to forgive."
But without money - his bank account and land had been confiscated - Al-Azhari had no way of getting to Barre who had fled to Nigeria.
Some time later he was asked to represent Somalia at an Organisation of African Unity conference in West Africa and thus was able to visit the eighty-seven-year-old former dictator.
"I went all the way there just to tell him, while he was still alive, that I forgave him. I could see tears flowing down his cheeks. I thanked God for letting me fill the heart of such a man with remorse. He said to me: "thank you. You have cured me. I can sleep tonight knowing people like you exist in Somalia."
Al-Azhari later confessed, in a 1996 address to a South African conference "Healing the Past, Building the Future", that forgiving the man who had killed his father-in-law and treated him so callously, and who had never asked for forgiveness, was "a big challenge".
Today Al-Azhari is working unofficially to bring peace and reconciliation to his country, a country without a government, a judicial system, or schools, where at least 40 percent of children die before reaching 10.
He is currently in Australia to attend the "Sharing our Hope" conference, organised by Moral Re-Armament, to be held in Sydney from December 3 to December 7.
On Monday (November 8) attended a lunchtime discussion hosted by the Brisbane Institute. In the words of Professor Peter Botsman, "he had a big impact on every one in the room".
"It was like being in a room with East Timor resistance leader Xanana Gusmao. It was as if there was suddenly a whole different value system and things we take for granted, couldn't be taken for granted anymore," Botsman said.
Al-Azhari described the situation in Somalia where there is interest in moving to a new federal system of government with the five major ethnic groups creating five provinces that have some form of national alliance, much like Australia or the United States.
He is therefore, particularly interested in the Australian constitution and how it works.
Al-Azhari is sustained by his prison experience. "Love had been planted in my heart and I vowed to serve my fellow countrymen and women, poor and rich, to reconcile and settle their differences with harmony, love and forgiveness."
--------------------
