IN HIS OWN WORDS
Al-Sumait tells the story of a clinic among the Loko of Sierra Leone — and then turns it into a warning about zeal without knowledge, and finally into an accusation against himself.
The Loko
The other incident I remember is our work among the Christian Loko people in Sierra Leone. We began our medical work among them without preaching a word. They were moved by our doctors, and they asked them about Islam and were convinced by it. Two of the chiefs of the tribe became Muslim, and then most of the tribe did. Within a year and a half the proportion of Muslims among them rose from five per cent to sixty per cent.
We built an Islamic centre among them, and it has been opened, praise be to God. It holds a school, a dispensary, a mosque and a training house for women. We also built a number of mosques and schools and sent teachers to them, and we sent the chiefs of the tribe to Hajj. They were deeply affected. They came back full of energy for calling to Islam and spreading it among their own people.
Zeal is not enough
There are many sons of the Arabs and of Islam who are eager to do this work. But eagerness on its own is not enough — we have suffered a great deal from that. What we want is an eagerness built on knowledge and on following what is right. We do not want the line of Bashshār ibn Burd to be true of us:
A blind man leading a blind man.
Lost indeed is he whose guides are blind.
BASHSHĀR IBN BURD, QUOTED BY AL-SUMAIT
We want people who call to Islam and who know what they are saying.
By God, every time I pass through this region I feel the whips of my sins chasing me — because I leave these brothers of mine and do not stay with them to guide them to the way of Islam. I ask God to forgive me, and to forgive all my Muslim brothers who have fallen short towards their brothers.
SOURCE & NOTE
Riḥlat Khayr fī Ifrīqiyā (A Journey of Good in Africa), by Dr. Abdul Rahman Hammoud Al-Sumait. Maṭābiʿ Mirʾāt al-Umma.
«رحلة خير في أفريقيا» — د. عبد الرحمن حمود السميط، مطابع مرآة الأمة.
Translated from the Arabic for this site. The passage is given in full, without abridgement. The figures — five per cent to sixty per cent in a year and a half — are Al-Sumait’s own account; this site has not been able to verify them against an independent source. The Arabic text names the tribe as al-Lūkū, the Loko of northern Sierra Leone.
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