Good News of Orphanage, Madrasa and Masjeed to Ghana!

Dr. Mehmet Riza Derindag

Ghana, or the Gold Coast after the exploitation, or officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in the west of Africa. Last week, we came to Accra, the capital of the country, with the Turkish Consul General of Ghana, with whom we have been in talks for a year. In the 2nd century of the Hegira (9th century Gregorian), Ghana, where Islam spread through Arab traders, especially Sudanese Muslims (perhaps this is why Muslims also called the country Tariku's-Sudan). Today, Ghana has a multinational state structure. (Ghana, after which the country is named, is actually the historical name of the Islamic State in the region.) There are many ethnic groups in the country. The official language in Ghana, where 79 different languages are spoken, is English. Apart from English, the most spoken local language is Akan. According to our Consul General, 80% of the population can speak and understand this language. When we passed from our first stop, Accra Kotoka International Airport, to the intercity airport, we encountered a strike by airport ground handling workers, our flight was canceled due to the strike. Consul said that there is no solution, we will go by road. We have witnessed once again that good works are troublesome, according to the secret that the things that are difficult and troublesome are better. We started our journey, which will take about 12 hours, by a car. Thanks to this journey we made towards the north, we got some information about the country. Halfway through our journey, we arrived in Kumasi, the country's second largest city. We met with Imam Başaş, who has 400 students on the way and who had previously carried out Qurban and Ramadan activities on behalf of the Care Assistance and Development Association. After our walk-in meeting, we continued towards our main destination, the Tamale Region. Along the way, we witnessed poverty, which are the traces of exploitation. Today, 71.2% of the population is Christian and 17.6% is Muslim. 1.5 million Ghanaians who define themselves as atheists do not belong to any religion. It is stated that the remaining population belongs to African religions. Did this beautiful and green country, where missionary activities are intense and where there is a church, a Christian school or hospital at every step, do you think they accepted christianity by their own will and free will? No! As in the rest of Africa, this religion has come here by force and oppression by the disgusting colonial system of the imperialist West, such as grudge, hatred, blood, exploitation and enslavement, which is inhuman and immoral. The expressions of our national poet do express the horror of the oppression;

“CIVILIZATION TRIES TO FINISH YOU FOR A LONG TIME, IT WISHES TO BREAK YOU FIRST AND SWALLOW YOU!”

Ghana essentially has a rich and ancient state tradition. Tribes became states through federations and even established empires. The Ashanti Kingdom, which will continue for about 3 centuries after the Dagomba and Bono kingdoms, is one of the most rooted examples of statehood in Africa. The Ashanti Kingdom, which was created by gathering the scattered Akan kingdoms under one roof in 1680, continued its existence until 1896. Before this date, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Germans, and then the British, who were the eternal enemies of Islam, who heard about the gold mines here! The reaction of a shark to blood, the nature of a snake that enjoys poisoning, the way a starving crocodile in the amazon rivers of the wild amazon forests approaches its prey, the British, who are the wild imperial snakes and hungry crocodiles of the superstitious West, approach Africa and Ghana. yea…

The United Kingdom has fully incorporated the lands it has dominated since 1896, the Gold Coast, as a part of the colonial system, as of January 1, 1902.

While these colonial bloodsuckers smuggled the riches of the continent to the West, on the other hand, they were trying not to wake up the black continent with their missionary activities. Think about it, the rate of Christianized natives reaches 60%...

Here we have the history of Ghana in our minds and all the sufferings of the Muslims in our hearts, we arrived in Tamale region. We reached the village of our Consul General. The next day we went to the tribal chief of the region. We were greeted with applause and prayers in this building, which they call a palace and which has a strange architecture. We explained ourselves to Sagnari Naa Yakubu Abdulay, Chief of the Sagnarigu Tribe (Sagnagiru Tribe Chief of the Dagomba Tribe), why we had come and what we wanted to do. He himself stated that he donated 10 acres of land to us. If the grace and mercy of the Anatolian people are with us, we will build a madrasa, orphanage and mosque project, insha'Allah. The late Benna; "For us, the land where every Muslim who says 'La ilaha illallah, Muhammadun Rasulullah' lives is our homeland. There is dignity and greatness on our floor. We love and respect it; We strive to improve.” The truth he said brought us to Tamale. We do not separate Ghanaian Muslims from ourselves, we consider every part of our heartland as our own, we call out to those who are deceived by them, not to the west, which tries to sell the feeling of separation and continues its life by dividing Muslims;

"How did you get sense of separation in to your brains?

Did the devil put the idea of separation in your mind?

So many different varieties from each other,

Keeping Islam under the same nationality,

The earthquake that will destroy islam foundation is the tribalism

To forget this for a moment is eternal extinction ...

This nation cannot work with Albanism or with Arabism...

This is the last policy! This kind of nationalist politics never works with islam

The Creator created you as a family member;

Remove the cause of separation among you now.

If there is natinalism while you are in this dawa, nauz-billah,

Foreigners will be the owner of the property of yours.

Let alone our ancestors tells us the truth; Citadel is taken from within.'

There is no one person to hear me? Our Nation get deaf!

Not one but destroyed state of Islamiyya...

They entered the whole land with the same policy.

An enemy cannot enter a disjointed nation without disuniting them first;

As the ball hits, the hearts cannot digest it.

Let the former governments be in the square

It grows, if there is anyone who looks like this and takes a lesson.

Here is Morocco, here is Tunisia, here is Algeria, gone!

Now they are dividing Iraq as well.”

It's time for our mercy to relinquish! Let's end our article with the following words of Bediuzzaman, who is mentioned in his work, which we see as a sermon addressed to this time, not a sermon of advice which has been said a century ago;

Oh brothers who are listening to these words of mine here in the Umayyad Mosque and Muslims in the mosque of the world of Islam for- ty to fifty years later! Do not absolve yourselves by saying “We do not cause harm to anyone, but neither do we have the power to do anything of benefit. Therefore we are excused.” Your excuse is not accepted. Your laziness, and your lack of effort by saying “What is it to me!” And to not display the endeavour arising from the unity of Islam and true Islamic nationhood causes serious harm and injustice to yourselves.

And so while just as an evil act can increase to becoming a thou- sand, a good act –that is, a good relating to the sacredness of Islam– will not remain restricted to the person who performs it. Rather, this good can potentially provide spiritual benefits to the millions of people of iman. It can strengthen the bonds of its spiritual and material life. That is why, it is not the time to throw yourself into the lounge of lazi- ness and say “What is it to me!”

Moreover, with this idea of nationhood those foreigners have taken from us, one of their people becomes as valuable as a nation. Because the value of a person, is in proportion to their level of endeavour. Who- ever has their nation as their endeavour, that person will become a small nation themselves.

Through carelessness and taking up the harmful characteristics of foreigners, and while having such a strong and sacred Islamic na- tionhood, by saying “Me! Me”, and not considering the interests of the nation by restricting our attention to personal benefits, a thousand people, will descend to as though being one.

That is, whoever restricts his endeavour to his own self, cannot be considered human. For by creation of their nature humans are social beings. They are compelled to consider fellow human beings. Their per- sonal lives can only be sustained by their social lives. For example, simply consider the number of hands a person depends on for a loaf of bread, and in return how he kisses (appreciates?) those hands for it, and the number of factories he is connected with for the clothes that he wears. Since unlike animals, humans cannot live with only a layer of skin, they have a natural connection with other fellow humans and is compelled to pay them a spiritual price, by their very nature they are inclined towards civilisation. Those who restrict their attention to personal benefits will cease to be humans. They will become a heinous animals lacking any innocence. If there is nothing the person can do and they have a legitimate excuse, that is excepted.