Azhar Vadi 23 February 2012

(Pic: Dr. Fowzia handing over an honoury award to Fatima Yousef  – Hamza Seedat)

The youth are the future; a cliché it may be, but the depth and truth of the saying cannot go ignored.

Young people have played the leading role in many of the world’s struggles against oppression.

The example of South African youth standing up against injustice is encapsulated in the 1976 protests against the apartheid education system. The faithful day in June of that year saw police open fire on the school learners protesting in the township of Soweto.

The 16 June 1976 is widely accepted as one of the turning points in South Africa’s oppressive history. The day the youth stood up.

Young South Africans have also stood up and made their voices heard in support of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani academic jailed in the US for 86 years on charges of attempting to kill and injure US soldiers in Afghanistan.

This time however they haven’t taken to the streets, with sticks and stones as they did in 1976, but put their pens to paper and crafted poems in support of the Free Aafia Campaign.

The campaign coordinator, Inayet Wadee from Channel Islam International said, “When the campaign started in South Africa, one of the reasons was to make people, especially the young, aware of what is happening to innocent people around the world.”

A poetry competition in honour of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was therefore held in the days prior to the arrival of Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui in South Africa. She is in the country to run an awareness and education campaign highlighting the plight of Aafia.

Learners from dozens of schools across South Africa took up the challenge and put together words and poems in honour of Aafia.

One of the award winning poems was written by Fatima Yousef, a Grade 11 leaner at the Lenasia Muslim School, residing in South Africa but originally from Egypt.  Her poem in the Arabic language was rendered by herself before Dr. Fowzia at an awareness lecture in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg.

Her powerful voice resonated in the Arabic language as she reduced many in the crowd to tears.  Fatima then translated the poem into English for the benefit of the non-Arab speaking participants.

The poem was rendered as follows:

Indeed,

Humiliation has a bitter taste

For the person who loves their religion.

And it almost destroys the noble

With shame

What taste of the world will we gain

When our sister

Looses her dignity

What is the value of this world

When the dignity and honour of our sister

Has been taken and attacked

For a very cheap price

Oh Skies

Shower your torture

And Oh Fire

Burn the hearts of these transgresses

And you, Oh Muslims

All over the world, Rise

Rise to the faith of your Lord

Rise with action

Because speaking is insufficient, Rise

Rise in saving our sister

And her dignity

Don’t leave her to these oppressors

How can you live an enjoyable life

In peace with false excuses

While your sister in Islam

Is crying and her tears are flowing like rivers

Her screams are like thunder

Can you not hear that warning sound

She’s crying

But her weeping

Is an earthquake

That will destroy the throne of tyrants

She is moaning

But her moaning

Is like a volcano of anger

Its lava will burn the faces of these oppressors

Oh Aafia

Oh my sister in humanity

Oh my sister in Islam

The religion of my God

For you is Allah

The Master, the Just

And from LMS, my school

And from my heart

And from every Muslim heart

Is a Dua for you.

The poem stirred the hearts of the attendees and Dr. Fowzia stepped forward to hand a gift to Fatima to honour her for the words narrated.