I (Hempher) stayed in Baghdad for a time. Then, receiving the message ordering me to return to London, I left. In London, I talked with the secretary and some officials of the Ministry. I told them of my activities and observations during my long mission. They rejoiced greatly at the information I gave about Iraq and said that they were pleased. On the other hand, Safiyya, the girl friend of Muhammad of Najd, sent a report agreeing with mine. I found out also that throughout my mission I had been followed by men from the Ministry. These men also sent reports concurrent with the reports I had sent and with the account I had given to the secretary.
The secretary made an appointment for me to meet the Minister. When I visited the Minister, he met me in a manner that he had not shown towards me upon my arrival from Istanbul. I knew that I occupied an exceptional place in his heart now.
The minister was very pleased to know that I had obtained Muhammad of Najd. “He is a weapon our Ministry has been looking for. Give him all sorts of promises. It would be worth while if you spent all your time indoctrinating him,” he said. When I said, “I have been anxious about Muhammad of Najd. He may have changed his mind,” he replied, “Don’t worry. He has not given up the ideas he had when you left him. The spies of our Ministry met him in Isfahan and reported to our Ministry that he had not changed.” I said to myself, “How could Muhammad of Najd reveal his secrets to a stranger?” I did not dare to ask this question to the Minister. However, when I met Muhammad of Najd later, I found out that in Isfahan a man named Abd-ul-kereem had met him and ferreted out his secrets by saying, “I am Shaikh Muhammad’s [meaning me] brother. He told me all that he knew about you.”
Muhammad of Najd said to me, “Safiyya went with me to Isfahan and we cohabited with mut’a nikaah for two more months. Abd-ul-kereem accompanied me to Sheeraaz and found me a woman named Asiya, who was prettier and more attractive than Safiyya. Making mut’a nikaah with that woman, I spent the most delightful moments of my life with her.”
I found out later that Abd-ul-kereem was a Christian agent living in the Jelfa district of Isfahan and working for the Ministry. And Asiya, a Jewess living in Sheeraaz, was another agent for the Ministry. All four of us coordinated to train Muhammad of Najd in such a way that in future he would do what was excepted from him in the best way.
When I related the events in the presence of the Minister, the secretary, and two other members of the Ministry whom I did not know, the Minister said to me, “You have deserved to receive the greatest award of the Ministry. For you are the best one among the most significant agents of the ministry. The secretary will tell you some State secrets, which will help you in your mission.”
Then they gave me a ten-day leave during which I could see my family. So I went home right away and spent some of my sweetest moments with my son, who resembled me very much. My son spoke a few words, and walked so elegantly that I felt as if he were a piece from my own body. I spent this ten-day leave so cheerfully, so happily. I felt as if I were going to fly from joy. It was such a great pleasure to be back home, to be with my family. During this ten-day leave I visited my old paternal aunt, who loved me very much. It was wise of me to visit my paternal aunt. For she passed away after my departure for my third mission. I felt so sad about her decease.
This ten-day leave elapsed as fast as an hour. Whereas cheerful days such as these go by as quickly as an hour, days of grief seem to take centuries. I remembered the days when I had suffered that illness in Najaf. Those days of affliction had seemed like years to me.
When I went to the Ministry to receive new orders, I met the secretary with this cheerful face and tall stature. He shook my hand so warmly that his affection was perceptible. He said to me, “With the command of our minister and the committee in charge of Colonies, I shall tell you two State secrets. Later you will benefit very much from these two secrets. No one except a couple of confidential people know these two secrets.”
Holding my hand, he took me to a room in the Ministry. I met with something very attractive in this room. Ten men were sitting around a round table. The first man was in the guise of the Ottoman Emperor. He spoke Turkish and English. The second one was dressed in the attire of the Shaikh-ul-islaam (Chief of Islamic Matters) in Istanbul. The third one was dressed in an attirement identical with that of the Shah of Iran. The fourth one was in the attire of the vizier in the Iranian palace. The fifth one was dressed like the great scholar leading the Shiites in Najaf. The last three of these people spoke Persian and English. Each of these five people had a clerk sitting beside him to write down whatever they would say. These clerks were imparting to the five men the information collected by spies about their archetypes in Istanbul, Iran, and Najaf.
The secretary said, “These five people represent the five people there. In order to know what their archetypes think, we have educated and trained these people exactly like their archetypes. We intimate the information we have obtained about their originals in Istanbul, Teheran and Najaf to these men. And these men, in their turn, imagine themselves to be their originals in those places. Then we ask them and they answer us. We have determined that the answers given by these people are seventy-percent agreeable with the answers that their originals would give.
“If you like, you may ask questions for assessment. You have already met the scholar of Najaf.” I replied in the affirmative, for I had met the great Shiite scholar in Najaf and asked him about some matters. Now I approached his copy and said, “Dear teacher, would it be permissible for us to wage war against the government because it is Sunnee and fanatical?” He reflected for a while, and said, “No, it is not permissible for us to wage war against the government because it is Sunnee. For all Muslims are brothers. We could declare war on them (Sunnite Muslims) only if they perpetrated cruelty and persecution on the Ummat (Muslims). And even in this case we would observe the principles of Amr-i-bi-l-ma’roof and Nahy-i-ani-l-munkar. We would stop interfering with them as soon as they stopped their persecution.”
I said, “Dear teacher, may I have your opinion concerning the matter that Jews and Christians are foul?” “Yes, they are foul,” he said. “It is necessary to keep away from them.” When I asked the reason why, he replied, “It is done so in retaliation for an insult. For they look on us as disbelievers and deny our Prophet Muhammad ‘alaihis-salaam’. We therefore retaliate for this.” I said to him, “Dear teacher, isn’t cleanliness an issue of eemaan? Despite this fact, the avenues and streets around the Sahn-i-shareef [the area surrounding hadrat ‘Alee’s mausoleum] are not clean. Even the madrasas, which are the places of knowledge, cannot be said to be clean.” He replied, “Yes, it is true; cleanliness is from eemaan. Yet it cannot be helped because the Shiites are negligent over cleanliness.”
The answers given by this man in the Ministry were precisely concurrent with the answers I had received from the Shiite scholar in Najaf. Such accurate identity between this man and the scholar in Najaf amazed me utterly. In addition, this man spoke Persian.
The secretary said, “If you had met the archetypes of the other four personages, you would talk to their imitations now and see how identical they are with their originals.” When I said, “I know how the Shaikh-ul-islaam thinks. For Ahmad Efendi, my hodja in Istanbul, gave a detailed description of the Shaikh-ul-islaam to me,” the secretary said, “Then you can go ahead and talk with his model.”
I went near the Shaikh-ul-islaam’s model and said to him, “Is it fard to obey the Khaleefa?” “Yes, it is waajib,” he replied. “It is waajib, as it is fard to obey Allah and the Prophet.” When I asked what evidence he had to prove this, he answered, “Didn’t you hear about Janaab-i-Allah’s aayat, ‘Obey Allah, His Prophet, and the Ulul amr from among you’?” I said, “Does this mean that Allah commands us to obey the Khaleefa Yazeed, who permitted his army to plunder Medeena and who killed our Prophet’s grandson Huseyn, and Waleed who drank alcoholic spirits?” His answer was this: “My son! Yazeed was the Ameer-ul-mu’mineen with Allah’s permission. He did not command the killing of Huseyn. Do not believe in the Shiite lies! Read the books well! He made a mistake. Then he made tawba for this (he repented and begged for Allah’s forgiveness and mercy). He was right about his ordering Medina-i-munawwara plundered. For the inhabitants of Medina had become quite unbridled and disobedient. As for Waleed; yes, he was a sinner. It is waajib not to imitate the Khaleefa, but to obey his commandments compatible with the Sharee’at.” I had asked these same questions to my hodja Ahmed Efendi and received identical answers with slight differences. Then I asked the secretary, “What are the ultimate reasons for preparing these models?” He said, “With this method we are assessing the mental capacities of the (Ottoman) Sultan and the Muslim scholars, be they Shi’ee or Sunnee. We are searching for the measures that will help us cope with them. For instance, if you know what direction the enemy forces will come from, you will make preparations accordingly, post your forces at suitable positions, and thus rout the enemy. On the other hand, if you aren’t sure about the direction of the enemy assault you will spread your forces here and there in a haphazard way and suffer a defeat. … By the same token, if you know the evidences Muslims will furnish to prove that their faith, their madh-hab is right, it will be possible for you to prepare the counter-evidences to rebut their evidences and shock their belief with those counter-evidences.”
Tinggalkan Balasan