Dua of the Oppressed

My mother called me when I was still in Egypt, a few days after my husband was killed. She was very worried about me - she thought that the Egyptian police would find me because I was speaking out against what they and the military scum did to my husband. She thought they would find me and then who knows what they'd do. My response to her was "what can they do to me, omee, that they haven't already done? What else can they take from me? If they kill me, that would be a mercy."

And that's what I feel now, what else can any person do or say against me that is worse than murdering the person I loved most in this world? I'm not scared of speaking my mind and telling the world that the Egyptian military killed my husband in cold blood. I'm not scared because when they took him from me, I felt I had nothing more to lose. Nothing more to fear.

I actually feel sorry for the people in Egypt who are doing and supporting the killing, perhaps it's an odd emotion to pity someone who has oppressed you. But in those first days after finding out what happened to my husband, I reached deep into a place in my heart that I didn't even know was there. A place that was reserved for this moment...I made the kind of duaa against them that they should fear every waking moment, because in that moment I was oppressed - they had unlawfully taken something that didn't belong to them, they had spilled a Muslim's blood. Our prophet (pbuh) said: "Fear the supplication of the oppressed, for there is no barrier between it and Allah."

To that soldier who aimed at my husband and pressed the trigger as though he was playing a video game, I asked God to make his every waking moment full of despair, torture, and the kind of pain that he made me feel. And I asked God to punish him eternally in hell - him and all those above him who gave the orders to kill unarmed protesters with no mercy or warning.

And every mother, father, spouse or child who lost someone they loved dearly, I know in my heart that they made the same duaa as I did. And because of that, I feel sorry for people who think they are above the control of God. Because there is no barrier between what we asked and Allah. And Allah is Al-Mujeeb, He is the One Who Responds to the caller when he calls upon Him.

Ya Allah, answer my duaa and leave none of them on this earth except that he or she is tortured just as they have made my heart and those of thousands upon thousands of families tortured. Ya Allah bring them to their knees, and let them feel the despair that they brought upon themselves.

There is truly no one to fear in this world above Allah.