The Redemption of Sidi Ibrahim Dimson, Part 5

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

The following is the spiritual journey of our Tijani brother, Sidi Ibrahim Dimson.  The story was written by him.  I have only formatted it and edited the language where necessary.  The spelling of the names have been left as Sidi Ibrahim Dimson spelled it.  The style of the writing has been left largely intact to preserve its flavour. 

“The prosecutor’s case hinged around the testimony of Coltrane.  There was nothing else to corroborate his story but the conspiracy charge made things a bit more difficult for me.  All they had to do was convince the jury that I at least knew about the crime and that would be enough for a conviction.  The conspiracy charge was my enemy.  It was my biggest fear. 

The prosecutor began with his opening statement, basically telling the jury about all of my arrests, even though I was found not guilty of the charges years earlier.  He told them that I was a seasoned criminal that has been arrested multiple times.  He told them that I was a convicted felon and that I was a criminal master-mind.  But all of that was expected.  What I did not expect, which hit me in the chest like a sledge hammer was that he also told the jurors that I was a Muslim that gave quite a bit to charities and often travelled all over the world for religious functions and events. 

My lawyer objected and questioned the relevancy of telling them my religious affiliation and charitable activities.  The judge sustained the objection but the seed was already planted in the minds of the jurors.  Not only was I being charged for a major financial crime; now I was being charged with being of the religion of the guys that brought down the World Trade Center and killed all those people only a year before.  I began to sweat and my lawyer began to sweat. 

The trial was highly technical with lots of financial jargon that I am sure confused everyone in the courtroom.  Finally, my accuser showed up to testify against me.  Coltrane could not even look me in the eyes.  He sat there and swore on the bible and lied about everything.  I was disgusted.  But what troubled me more than anything was the way some of the jurors were looking at me.  I saw hate and fear in their eyes.  My lawyer did his best in the cross examination.  He effectively showed the jury that Coltrane was basically avoiding prosecution in exchange for testifying against me. 

The trial lasted for a whole day and the jury was asked to either deliberate or return in the morning to begin deliberations since it was so late already.  al-Hamdullilah, they chose to return in the morning.  I drove back to New York in an extremely depressed mood.  The trial went pretty well actually, but the part about me being a charitable Muslim; that was not cool.  It was a low blow. 

I played off my worry to my family and simply told them that my ‘business’ in New Jersey was long and that I was tired.  I went to my room and laid down to think.  I was thinking about the possibility of being found guilty and having to do 20 years.  The only other option would be for me to get out of the bed and head to Mexico and leave from there to somewhere overseas.  I could get money from my brother Osman and be far away before the morning.  Over the years I have had to come up with these types of ‘hibernation’ plans in case something like this were to happen.  Well now, it was a reality and I made up my mind to go on the run.  But something told me to call one of my beloved teachers and surrogate father, Malam Ibrahim Mudaris. 

‘as-Salaamu’Alaykum.’ 

‘Wa ‘Alaykum as-Salaam, Mudaris, how are you?’ 

‘I am fine.  But you are not well, Ibrahim.  In your response of ‘Wa ‘Alaykum as-Salaam,’ I did not see a peaceful heart!’ 

‘You are correct, Malam.  I have something that is troubling me.’ 

Mudaris said, ‘I know.  But Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse just informed me before you called that you should call Shaykh Hassan now.’ 

I called Shaykh Hassan (q.s.). 

‘as-Salaamu’Alaykum, Baye.’ 

‘Wa Alaykum as-Salaam, Shaykh.  I just got home from the first day of trial.  Tomorrow, the jury will deliberate.  Shaykh, I think they will find me guilty.  They mentioned that I was a Muslim and I saw fear and hate in the jury.  I want permission to run and leave the country tonight, Shaykh.’ 

Shaykh Hassan (q.s.) said, ‘No permission, Baye.  None of us can run from the Decree of God.  You must stay and face this tomorrow.  Most importantly, you have to accept the Decree and Trust in Allah (s.w.t.).’  I was silent.  Shaykh Hassan (q.s.) said, ‘Baye, do you trust me?’ 

I was crying hard now.  ‘Wa Allahi, I trust you, Shaykh.’ 

Shaykh Hassan (q.s.) said, ‘Then you must trust God.  No permission for them in their intentions.  Allah wants to Teach you something and you have to accept and move with His Decree.  Don’t be afraid.’ 

‘Okay.’ 

Shaykh Hassan (q.s.) said, ‘Remember that Prophet Yusuf (a.s.) was falsely put in prison, but Allah Promoted him to a high spiritual station while in there.  So don’t fear anything but Allah.  As for the 20 years they want to give you, that is not my agreement with Allah concerning you.  Read Surah Yusuf tonight and understand the power of the madrasah of Yusuf.’ 

‘Okay, I love you, Shaykh.’ 

‘I love you more, Baye.’ 

I read Surah Yusuf that night and understood what Shaykh Hassan (q.s.) was telling me.  I felt some relief the next morning as I headed back to court.  I knew that somehow, it would all work out. 

The jury deliberated for three hours and came back with the verdict. 

The judge asked, ‘How does the jury find the defendant on one count of conspiracy?’ 

The jury foreman said, ‘We find the defendant guilty.’ 

As soon as I heard those words from the jury foreman, I went into a trance-like state.  They were finding me guilty of the one charge that I feared more than the other.  I could no-longer hear or see anything that was going on around me.  I found myself in a whole other world.  Time had ceased. All there was at that moment was the voice of my shaykh, Shaykh Hassan Cisse (q.s.), telling me that I must trust in the Decree of God.  My life flashed before my eyes.  Everyone that was dear to me, my parents, brothers and sisters, my brothers in faith, my teachers and all of the shuyukh that cared for me; I saw and heard all of them.  They were all smiling.  I was smiling.  I found myself feeling a sense of relief, peace, happiness.  My will had surrendered to God’s Decree.  Nothing mattered at that moment, besides the fact that my soul was completely satisfied and content with God’s Decree.  I was found guilty and that had triggered one of the greatest moments I have experienced so far in my life.  It had triggered complete submission to the Will of God and His Decree.  At that moment, I did not exist.  All that was left was God’s Will.  I did not matter in the least bit.  All that mattered was God Doing what He Wanted with His Creation.  The only other time that I had felt that type of peace and annihilation was when I had done my tarbiyyah in Kose-Atlanta, years earlier. 

While I was being annihilated by God, the jury foreman was reading the verdict for the rest of my charges: ‘Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty…’  My lawyer was shaking me really hard.  He did not realise that I was ‘there but not there’.  He was shaking me and trying to bring me back.  He was saying, ‘Ibrahim, are you okay?  Are you okay?  Congratulations!  Congratulations!  They only found you guilty of the conspiracy charge.  The judge said it only carries a maximum of 18 months based on your criminal history.  You’ll only have to do 18 months, Ibrahim!’ 

I could hear him but it was not registering.  I was still trying to deal with the annihilation in God’s Will that I was experiencing.  I was not ready to leave that peace, that total submission.  I was not ready to ‘return’.   But when a person experiences annihilation of that sort, it is imperative that he return.  I felt myself retreating from everything.  I wanted to stay in this moment.  I could see myself in the courtroom.  All eyes were on me.  The court officer was on alert because I was looking crazy while sitting there.  I began to slump in my seat.  I was fading, fading into the annihilation that I was experiencing.  I was dying.  I wanted to die, so that the feeling of total peace and calm would remain.  But one of the jurors quickly came out of his seat and ran over to where I was sitting.  He held me in his arms.  As I focused in on his face, it was Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (q.s.)!  He was one of the jurors?  The shock of gazing into his smiling face and the words he said to me, ‘You must return now, Baye.  Shaykh Hassan is waiting for your phone call.  Return, Baye, return ...’ 

I gazed at his blessed face without blinking!  Here was my grand shaykh, an heir of the Blessed Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.) holding me in his arms and talking to me, telling me to return from annihilation, telling me that Shaykh Hassan (q.s.) was waiting for my call.  But then I blinked, and he was gone.  I was on the floor, being held by one of the jurors.  He was a doctor.  They thought I was having a seizure or something.  I stood up on shaky legs, thanked and hugged him.  He must have thought that I was insane for hugging him.  Then I sat back down and my lawyer began updating me about what was going on. 

The good news was that I was not going to do 20 years after all.  I was being told that I had to do 18 months at best.  The strange thing is, that news did not give me any happiness.  I could have cared less.  I had experienced such peace and happiness in God’s Decree and seeing Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (q.s.)!  Nothing else could have compared.  Nothing else could have given me more happiness.  My lawyer was really confused.  I thanked him, and allowed the guards to escort me to the jail house. 

As I walked down the long underground corridor to the jail section of the court-house, I began thinking of everything Shaykh Hassan (q.s.) had told me the day before, all of the stuff about me accepting the Decree of God, and about me having to do a 20 year sentence not being ‘the agreement with Allah concerning you.’  I began thinking about what I was yet to face in this ‘school of Prophet Yusuf (a.s.)’ that I was about to enter and stay for the next 18 months. 

I found out later that the jurors could not see the evidence that proved that I was actually guilty of securities fraud, bank fraud or investment fraud, so they compromised and basically hit me with the conspiracy to commit these crimes instead of me actually committing the crimes.  In their minds, that was the least that I could be guilty of because they just could not let me walk. 

It never occurred to my lawyer and I that they could actually find me guilty of only one or a few of the charges and not all at once, which would have given me the 20 year sentence.  So, my worst fear, the conspiracy charge, actually turned out to be my greatest ally.  Without them adding that charge in, I am sure the jury would have forced a guilty verdict on the other charges. 

That night, I called Shaykh Hassan (q.s.) from my jail cell.  He picked up on the first ring and immediately knew it was me. 

‘Baye.’ 

‘Yes, Shaykh.’ 

‘I’ve been waiting for your call.  al-Hamdulillah, Allah can never lie!’ 

‘Wa Allahi, Shaykh, you are right.’ 

‘Make sure you learn and teach while you are there, Baye.  This Faydhah will enter everywhere.  Good places and bad places will taste it, and all will be overwhelmed by it.  Now your work begins, Baye. Work hard.  Work for Allah (s.w.t.) and Rasulullah (s.a.w.).’ 

‘Okay, Shaykh.’ 

There was no need tell him the details of what happened.  He already knew, by the Grace of God.  He hung up the phone, and almost as soon as I moved to sit on my bed, the cell door opened.  The guard was escorting my cellmate in.  He was about a foot taller than me, with a beard extending down to his chest.  He had a huge bruise on his forehead.  His jump suit was cut at the legs, almost to his knees.  He introduced himself as Abu Dharr al-Salafi.  I introduced myself as Ibrahim al-Sufi. 

I actually did not mean to introduce myself as ‘Ibrahim al-Sufi’.  It was a natural response.  I had learned a bit about Salafis and their ideology years earlier, but apparently, I had not learned enough.  The Salafi guys that I was exposed to back in Fairfax County jail, years ago, were like puppies compared to Abu Dharr al-Salafi.  He was the real deal.  The hatred that permeated from his body and spirit was palpable.  He was looking directly into the eyes of his avowed enemy.  I. on the other hand, was looking into the eyes of a human-being that had been indoctrinated and taught to hate.  There is a subtle difference between the natural or passive feeling of hate that a person can have for a thing and the deliberate teaching and indoctrination of hate for a thing.  The Islam that I had been taught by my parents and shuyukh was one that had at its core, love and respect for every single thing in the universe.  My tarbiyyah, years earlier, culminated into one single idea; Love for all.  Shaykh Hassan (q.s.) had taught me to show reverence, respect and honour to every living creature because of its inherent nature.  He had taught me that adab was the core of the religion and that everything was deserving of my good manners because everything had a special spiritual quality that made it worthy of me treating it with respect and good manners. 

We stared at each-other for a few minutes until he broke the silence.  ‘You’re the first Sufi I’ve ever met.  You know your blood is halal according to the scholars, right?’ 

‘I don’t understand what that means, brother.’ 

‘I’m not your brother.  It means, you people are committers of shirk, and it is permissible to kill you on sight.’ 

As soon as I heard that, I switched into defensive, street mode.  This guy, who was supposed to be my brother in faith, had just told me that it was permissible by God, for him to kill me.  You guys have to understand how wild this was to me.  Just an hour earlier, I had felt the greatest peace and tranquility ever.  Then I was given the good news that my sentence would be a small fraction of what I expected.  And I had seen and was nurtured back to life by my grand shaykh, Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (q.s.)  I had a wonderful conversation with my shaykh, Shaykh Hassan Cisse (q.s.) and now, it seemed as if either I was about to become a killer or was about to be killed, by a Muslim.   All of this in the span of an hour. 

‘Why is my blood halal?’ 

‘Because you all are grave-worshippers, you follow ‘madzhabs’, you worship the Prophet Muhammad, you worship your ‘shaykhs’, you cut your beards and you misguide people.’ 

‘I don’t do any of the things you described and I’ve never been taught to do these things.  Where do you get your information?’ 

‘Yes, you do!  Our ‘shaykhs’ say you do!’ 

Now, I was looking at the dude like he was crazy.  ‘Yeah, you can believe whatever you want, bro, but I’m telling you that your information is wrong.  It’s always best to do your own research before accusing…’ 

Before I could finish the sentence, Abu Dharr was lunging at me with a small and shiny object in his hand.  I stepped to the side and he fell onto the bed.  He recovered and now we were facing each-other, him with a shank in his hand and me thinking, ‘What the hell?’ 

He came at me.  All I could do was pay attention to the knife in his hand.  As we met for the second time, I grabbed his hand before he could stab me, my other hand clawing at his eyes.  For a moment I thought I had him, but this guy was way too strong and managed to knock me to the ground.  We wrestled for a bit but finally, he was able to stab me.  He struck directly on the right side of my stomach.  As soon as he realised that the knife was in me, he began to try and release himself from my grip.  I let him fall away, as I lay there with the knife in me.  I lay there in shock, not believing that this dude actually stabbed me for no other reason than the fact that I followed a thariqa’. 

What was interesting was that, he had crawled to the opposite side of the cell and was sitting in the corner quietly watching to see if I was going to close my eyes and die or not.  As he watched me, I was reciting as many prayers on the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.) as I possibly could.  All I could think of was that if I were to die there, I wanted to die with prayers on the Prophet (s.a.w.) on my lips. 

As I lay there praying, with knife in my belly and Abu Dharr sitting there watching me, it dawned on me that I was not dying.  When I finally brought myself to look down at the knife in my belly, I realised that I was not even bleeding.  As a matter of fact, I was not even in pain.  I took hold of the part of the knife in my stomach and began to pull it out of my belly.  Abu Dharr laid there with shock in his eyes, shock and fear, as I pulled the knife out.  I stood up and began peering at the piece of metal.  The metal knife was actually a really big nail.  As I lifted my shirt to look at my stomach, I realised that he stabbed me directly on the patch of skin on my stomach that was grafted onto my stomach at a very young age when I had an accident in my mother’s kitchen.  That accident almost cost me my life when I was only about 2 years old. 

I was in my baby-walker and running around in my mother’s kitchen when I bumped into the stove and a pot of boiling water fell onto me.  It burned my little stomach and I nearly died from the wounds.  A small patch of skin was taken from my thighs and grafted onto my stomach.  That small patch of skin is much thicker than the rest of the skin on my stomach, and has always been a source of imperfection on my body.  My mother still recounted the guilt and misery she endured for a long time because of that accident.  Well, I have never told my mother this story and I suppose my brother, Osman or one of my other siblings reading this will in-fact tell her now.  But, al-Hamdulillah, she should know that that piece of imperfect grafted skin, the accident that has haunted her with guilt all of her life, was the thing that saved me from dying in a dirty prison cell. 

The nail that Abu Dharr stabbed me with penetrated my skin, but never reached a vital organ.  The thickness and extra padding on my belly from the skin-graft actually served as a barrier.  I did not even bleed.  He sat there in total shock, amazement and fear as I stood there with his weapon in my hand.  The law of the streets said that I was supposed to stab him back, and take this dude’s life.  But, the Law of God called for mercy.  I threw the weapon out of the cell and told Abu Dharr that it was time to pray swalah al-‘aswr.  I walked over to the sink, made wudhu and turned to him again and asked if he would join me in the congregational prayer?  He sat there in total shock.  He finally got up from the corner he was sitting in, made wudhu’ at the sink and stood next to me for prayer.  I asked him to call the adzan.  He said he did not know the adzan.  So, I pronounced the call to prayer and led him in the prayer. 

After we finished praying, I told him that love will always defeat hate and that my love for Allah (s.w.t.) and His Messenger (s.a.w.) was the only reason why I did not stab him back.  I told him that the way of the Sufi aspirant was the way of ihsan, the way of the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.). 

That was the first time that I had consciously realised that I was no longer the same person that I use to be.  That incident changed me permanently.  It was a tarbiyyah that has been of benefit to me in many other similar situations that were yet to occur.  We spent the next two hours talking about Islam and taswawwuf.  As the guards came to take him away to his next destination, Abu Dharr asked me, ‘Will Allah Forgive me for trying to kill you?’  I told him that Allah (s.w.t.) Forgives far greater transgressions.  I told him that I would pray for him.  He looked at me with tears in his eyes as the guards took him out and away from the cell.  I have never missed a day praying for Abu Dharr.”