ßÊÇÈ The Wahabi Opposition Movements in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the Twentieth Century
INTRODUCTION: The KSA and us: A Pen against Oil Wells:

في الجمعة ٢٩ - مارس - ٢٠٢٤ ١٢:٠٠ صباحاً

INTRODUCTION:

The KSA and us: A Pen against Oil Wells:

 

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 We have the right to seek revenge against the KSA.

  Since we register here the history of the KSA, we feel bound to register at first its history with ourselves and its bad influence on our life since 1984 until the present moment. It all began when we were working an assistant professor in the Civilization and History Department, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt. We were struggling at the time against the dignitaries and notables among the Egyptians Sufis, led by the head of Al-Azhar at the time, Dr. Abdel-Haleem Mahmoud, who adamantly refused to hold the viva of our Ph.D. thesis about the influence of Sufism in Egypt during the Mameluke Era, because our thesis criticizes Sufism as a creed against Islam (the Quran alone) and details the negative impact of Mameluke Era Sufism within the religious, moralistic, ethical, political, cultural, and social aspects within the civilization of Egypt at that era. This persecution of us was perpetuated for three years (1977 - 1980), and it ended in our getting the Ph.D. degree with highest honors, only after the amount of two-thirds has been omitted from our thesis! The viva was held to discuss the remaining one-third only! We have been poised, since then, to discover the wide abyss between the Sunnite creed and thought on one hand and the Quran on the other hand, as we have did with tackling the contradictions between the Sufi creed and the Quran. During our work at Al-Azhar University as an assistant professor, the Saudi temptations and generous financial rewards were trying to approach us, and we kept refusing them, and the reason for their initial praise of us was that we authored a book titled ''Al-Sayed Al-Badawi between Truth and Myth", in 1982, in which we refute and debunk Sufism; we tackle in this book the true character of a Sufi saint in Egypt, Al-Sayed Al-Badawi, as a hidden political conspirator and agent who shrouded his being a spy with a veneer of Sufism, as his real mission was to topple the Ayyubid Dynasty and the Mameluke monarchs later on in Egypt. The KSA and its societies and bodies in Egypt received our book with hearty welcome, as Wahabis consider Sufis as their No. 1 enemy, and especially when such bodies heard of our anti-Sufism sentiments and our refutations of this creed as a foreign one in relation to Islam. Even one man of the KSA-affiliated bodies in Egypt sent a copy of our book to the Saudi sheikh Ibn Al-Baz, who wrote a word in praise of it, with some amendments suggested by him, in a message addressed to us. When this man gave us the message of Ibn Baz, we shouted at him in a fit of fury that we do not work as a servant to anyone; how dare he ask us to write in a manner that would please him?! We reminded this man, the message-bearer, that this Saudi sheikh never knew that our Ph.D. thesis submission was postponed for three years to coerce us to change and modify in it but we never relented. When our turn came to be seconded outside Egypt in 1983, all financial temptations were offered to us to accept a secondment to the KSA, but we adamantly refused to leave Egypt and our job at Al-Azhar University, whereas other professors and deans sought hard to be accepted for secondment by the KSA panel that tested them to choose from them, to the extent that they would flatter the panel in a self-humiliating spectacle; they were ready to sacrifice literally anything to get seconded: all this was for the sake of growing rich there!  We remember very well that our in-law felt enraged against us when we left the Egyptian capital, Cairo, and escaped into his house to avoid being nagged and urged by all means to accept the secondment; he wanted us to work abroad to save money and grow rich! We never knew how KSA-affiliated Azharite men managed to get the address of our in-law, who was not residing in our village; they sent us there a telegram, notifying us that they require urgently that we would meet with the KSA panel of secondments before the panel would leave Cairo. Our in-law felt enraged because of our refusal of such a rare opportunity that might have made us rich beyond measure! A secondment to the KSA was something to fight for and to die for, at the time; everyone would compete fiercely to get it! We tried to make him understand that there were some shared points of understanding between us and the KSA panel and some other, greater in number, points of contention and disagreement; the members of the panel were astounded by the mutual point of refuting and attacking Sufism, but they felt alarmed by our refutation and vehement attack against the Sunnite thought. We made our in-law understand that if we would accept the secondment to work there in the KSA, we would never hide such disagreement; rather, we would declare it openly and in an outspoken and vociferous manner. We felt keenly that the intention of offering us secondment was to work under the auspices of the KSA and be lured by its money as a bribe to write what the Wahabis would desire us to write; the Saudi Wahabis would never accept a professor who would teach them things they never knew before. This dispute about the offered secondment and our adamant refusal to accept it occurred in 1984. Earlier in 1982, we joined a well-known Salafist society, occupying the posts of its secretary-general and the editor-in-chief of its magazine. The head of this Salafist society went to the KSA within a secondment in 1984, which made us the de facto head of the society at the time. This Salafist society, like all Salafist past and present societies in Egypt, was financed by the KSA, and such financing was used in building mosques in several Egyptian cities and governorates such as Greater Cairo, Giza, Al-Menoufiya, Tanta, Damietta, etc. and in covering the expenses of the magazine and the salaries of preachers/imams. The Saudi financier/sponsor of this society used to reside in Cairo, working in trade, and he felt extremely worried and wary of us because we used to refuse taking remuneration in return for our work in the magazine or as a preacher, as we used to be the No. 1 preacher within the mosques built by this Salafist society after the secondment of its head. In 1984, we began to preach Friday congregational prayers Quranist sermons, asserting using the Quranic verses that 1) Prophet Muhammad will never undertake any sort of intercession in the Hereafter and the Last Day, 2) his infallibility was confined to conveying God's verses lone, as in his lifetime he used to commit errors and mistakes as we know from the Quran itself, and 3) it is a grave sin to assert that Muhammad was the best among all human beings or among God's prophets and messengers, because God orders us in the Quran to make all prophets equal to one another, whereas preferring one of them above the other is confined to God alone in the Last Day. Preachers within this Salafist society began to be convinced with what we preached then, and when our sermons reverberated to the KSA, the Saudis hurriedly sent the head of the society back to Cairo to face the situation. This head brought with him tens of thousands of EGP to distribute them among the society council members and its main preachers, within a meeting extraordinaire held to discuss our ideas preached in sermons, considering them as a violation against the policies of this Salafist society. All preachers and council members turned against us despite their previous one-year-old admiration of our Quranist ideas, and we tendered our resignation and left them with no regrets. Meanwhile, we have authored five books on the above-mentioned topics (intercession, infallibility, and preferment) to teach them to Azharite students within History Department in the 1984-1985 semesters, and the titles of these books are as follows: "Prophets in the Quran", "The Islamic World between the Era of the Righteous Caliphs and the Era of the Abbasid Caliphs", "Separatist Movements within Islamic History", "The Moghuls Conquests", and "Studies on Intellectual Movements within the Islamic Civilization". To our surprise, Al-Azhar University took the decision on 5/5/1985 to suspend us from working, prevent us from traveling abroad, prevent us from getting promoted, and to interrogate us later on by an Inquisition-like committee within Al-Azhar University. Needless to say, we felt the Saudi influence behind all this; the KSA was trying to pressurize us so that we might step back, eat our words, and retreat into a puppet-like professors like the rest of the herd. We refused to surrender to such pressures, and within the interrogation, we showed additional proof from Quranic verses that support our views. Result: decisions of Al-Azhar University were not revoked; rather, a new one was added against us: preventing us from receiving our monthly salary and other due remunerations related to our post at Al-Azhar University until we declare that we give up and renounce our views in public. We adamantly refused such coercion; we tendered our resignation to Al-Azhar University in 1986, but it was not endorsed nor accepted, which led us to bring a lawsuit against Al-Azhar University at The Egyptian Council of State to force the administrators of Al-Azhar University to accept and endorse our resignation. Shortly before The Egyptian Council of State would issue a decision on our favor, Al-Azhar University administrators officially and promptly fired us in March 1987. This seemed an attempt of saving face of Al-Azhar University. Several Saudi and non-Saudi Arab newspapers and magazines published parts of the interrogation underwent by us without mentioning a word from our self-defense speech. This was a sign clear enough showing the influence of the KSA apparatuses and their being alarmed because of us, despite the fact that at the time in the 1980s, rapprochement and rapport between Cairo and Riyadh were almost nonexistent. The KSA and its agents/sheikhs held a conference in Islamabad, and within one of its events, they discussed our book titled "Prophets in the Quran" and another book authored by Dr. Al-Tayeb Al-Najjar on the topic of prophets as well. People within this conference unanimously agreed to give Dr. Al-Najjar an award for his book, within a celebration party attended by the Pakistani president at the time Zia-ul-Haq. Soon enough, Dr. Al-Najjar was appointed as the head of a center specialized in the so-called Sunna and Sirah (i.e., traditions and sayings as well as the life-story or biography ascribed falsely to Muhammad after his death), and this center was sponsored by the large sum of 4 million EGP, with the sole mission to face and refute our Quranist views! As usual, this center and its money vanished into thin air soon enough, leaving no trace. The next step of the KSA was to accuse us, as the author of book titled "Prophets in the Quran", of apostasy and rejection of Islam, urging our immediate trial and punishment! Such decisions were asserted once more within another conference held in the city of Jeddah, in the KSA. The Saudis began to pressurize the Egyptian government to exact a punishment against us. Meanwhile, we dedicated our time to sermons inside mosques, discussing extremist Sunnite thought and notions and how they contradict the Quran. This resulted in immediate interference to hinder and deter us, especially after we published, in print, our book titled ''Are Sinning Muslims Getting out of Hell to Enter Paradise'', and we were about to publish another book titled ''Naskh in the Quran Means Assertion and Affirmation, Not Deletion and Omission''. Thus, we got arrested in November 1986, accused of forming a secret cell or organization to spread the notion of denying the Sunna. This accusation was laughter-inducing; why would anyone form a ''secret'' organization for the sake of intellectual thought, which has nothing to do with governing, politics, and indeed any transient worldly issues. Our intellectual thought has been related to correcting of concepts and notions of faith, based on the Quran alone, caring especially for the Last Day and the Hereafter. We wondered at the time: why such intellectual endeavor would bring animosity and enmity of people toward our person? The answer was simple enough: our intellectual school of thought denies, refutes, and contradicts inherited notions and traditions of the 'holy' forefathers. Why should we organize a secret cell while we seek no material rewards, worldly ambitions, or political gains of any type? We seek no reward except from Almighty God, and we used to bear patiently the harm done to us at the time by everyone. Secret cells or organizations normally seek control, power, authority, rule, and the struggle for the transient pomp and glories of the world, and thus would endeavor to please and gratify the masses. Within the police investigation with us, the accusation of forming a secret organization was dropped, for lack of evidence. In addition, investigators found out soon enough the differences in views and opinions between us and those arrested ones who used to attend Friday congregational prayers to listen to our sermons. Thus, investigations ended in our release with no bail and with no trial in courts. But before being released, we have spent, pending investigations, two months in jail in the (well-known Egyptian prison) ''Turaah Farms''. Later on, it was transpired that our imprisonment/punishment was part of the deal between the KSA and Egypt to normalize relations and to make the rapprochement gain momentum! Another reason for our being punished was to appease the anger of extremists, clergymen, and sheikhs who were appalled and felt troubled by our exposing the wide abyss between their schools of thought and the Quran. Later on, we will write elsewhere more details and secrets about this. We knew later on that the KSA had rewarded the Egyptian Interior Minister at the time, Zaki Badr, who framed us by this false accusation, by appointing him as their security consultant once he was fired from his ministerial position in Egypt. The file of this case of ours has still been open until the present moment under the sponsorship and auspices of the KSA and the circles of its influence in Egypt. Yet, what we have preached during the period 1985-1987 has become, to our surprise, well-known and circulated among some Azharite men, who preached it without being encumbered by fear. Despite all this, persecution of us went on since then (until we left Egypt in 2001), and this persecution was perpetuated by agents employed by the KSA, agents who were lured by countless sums of SR. We feel bound to mention here that during the 1990s, the Egyptian government paid a heavy price for persecuting a peaceful thinker like us to appease extremists inside and outside Egypt: when extremists returned from Afghanistan, they directed their terrorist attacks inside Egyptian soil, causing fear all over Egyptian cities for a while. It was the KSA the main culprit in this; it created an organization called Islamic World Union to collect and gather volunteers to fight in Afghanistan, and the head of such an organization was the spearhead of the relentless effort to incite the Egyptian government against us in 1985-1987, and maybe after this period as well. The KSA paid a heavier price for extremism when Bin Laden and his allies turned against Saudis, causing terrorist explosions and attacks inside the KSA, causing fear among citizens of the KSA for a while. Hence, our research and studies in this book stretch to cover the period from Middle Ages to the modern age of today and include not only the Sunnite heritage and traditions of imams and scholars of Abbasid Era to the Mameluke Era, but also extremist thought and faiths of contemporary figures of our age. This book includes the study of the roots of religious extremism in Egypt, a study that we once have submitted as the intellectual foundation of the Popular Movement for Facing Terrorism, an organization that we cofounded in 1993, and our research expanded and some of it was published in some periodicals. We prove in our research that the roots of religious extremism in today's Egypt hark back to the endeavors of the current third KSA and its founder, Abdul-Aziz Ibn Abdul-Rahman Al-Feisal Al-Saud, in spreading Wahabis in Egypt. We have been encouraged by our research results to go on to study the roots inside the history of the KSA itself since the era of King Abdul-Aziz and how he established the terrorist group Najd Brothers that turned against him in a revolt later on. Our intellectual and scientific appetite for research was whetted to study and research the opposition movements inside the KSA from Juhayman Al-Otaybi to Dr. Al-Masaary; thus, we end up researching historically all the Sunnite opposition movements and their roots inside the KSA in the 20th century, bearing in mind our unfulfilled revenge against the KSA.

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  Terrorist waves of violence struck Egypt since the early 1990s, reaching unprecedented rates at the time, and extremism reached a certain apogee and zenith in its control and hegemony in Egypt. We were living in dire impecuniousness at the time, making us wish to return to prison! We were authoring a book titled "The Quran and Secularism", and while we were in the process of writing it, the pen was suddenly empty of ink, and we had to stop writing for a while: for we had not the sum of 5 piasters to buy another pen! During such dire, difficult times inside our household, in Cairo, we heard by chance, through the loudspeakers, a silly, ignorant sermon preacher in the nearby mosque saying that Prophet Muhammad was born in the KSA! We felt extremely grief and shocked at such insult to Muhammad; this was worse than our painfully needy state of poverty at the time, and this insult was as deadly a blow as the despicable conditions of our beloved country, Egypt, as it has fallen prey to Wahabi/Salafist time bombs, with many victims of the Salafist thought who commit violence and aggression against their homeland and people. We remember very well at the time that we were engrossed in thought: what did this preacher mean?! Was this the corrupt culture of the generation of ignoramuses of the 1990s in Egypt, under the dominant Saudi influence which has caused several predicaments to us and to our beloved Egypt?! Did this ignorant preacher think that the KSA stretched back to the pre-Islamic era 7th century until now?! Was the Arabian peninsula called the KSA at the time Muhammad was born?! Ironically, this preacher held a university degree and a certain level of culture; yet, the Saudi impact on his mind controlled his brain. This preacher never knew that the KSA was established three times and came to an end twice, and is most likely to come to an end for the third and last time soon enough in the 21th century. This current third KSA was established within a process of bloodshed and struggle within the period 1902 and 1932, making it the newest and most nascent state within the region that came to be called Middle East, shortly before the establishment of Israel.  This ignoramus of a preacher was blinded by the Saudi impact on his brain to the extent that he never knew the true nature of our beloved Egypt; it is in fact the most ancient central country in the whole planet, from which all humanity learned the arts of writing, building cities, agriculture, politics, literature, as well as religion, divinity, conscience, and civilization. Egypt with its countless miracles and gifts to humanity is more ancient and came into existence eons ago before the existence of Arabs in Arabia. Arabs of Arabia were dazzled by the civilization and cities of Egypt when they conquered it; they found that Egyptian life and cities differed a great deal from the Bedouin culture and life style of Arabia. That was why the Arabic term for Egypt (i.e. Misr) meant originally and literally the modern, contemporary city or community, with its Arabic plural form (Amsar), meaning modern cities or communities. Egypt is the country mentioned in the Quran within Quranic stories about prophets and messengers of God, showing signs of its ancient civilization, buildings, cities, armies and troops, as we have detailed in our previous book titled "Egypt in the Quran". Egypt is humanity's most ancient state and civilization, the only one talked about in the Quran with details and features that still remain inherent in Egypt until the present moment. This great country called Egypt has been attacked since 1970s (i.e., the last quarter of the 20th century) with Wahabism/Salafism, the destructive school of thought coming from a new, recent country called the KSA, whose age is less than the age of the Egyptian Al-Ahram daily newspaper and the Cairene well-known clothes-stores Omar Effendi and Sidnawi. Thus, this ignorant preacher was so brainwashed that he forgot his great homeland and he was led to assert the flagrant falsehood of Muhammad being born in the KSA! Grieved and shocked, we added such immense grief to the accounts to be settled between us and the terrorist KSA. Such immense grief was increased by our impoverished state (when Saudis urged the Egyptian government not to hire us in any work and not to give us our dues in Al-Azhar University) and weeping over victims of terrorist Salafism, which was being spread in Egypt as Islam. Our seeking revenge was a desire increasing by the moment as an Egyptian thinker who cares for his beloved Egypt and Egyptians, who has authored many articles, books, and researches about its history past and present, both published and unpublished ones, and who felt urged to write the history of the KSA and its opposition Sunnite movements, so that we might learn and derive moral lessons from such history.

 

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  An important query is raised: is this revenge-seeking spirit of ours for the sake of personal settling of accounts and for the sake of saving Egypt, as a national duty, will influence our writing here on the topic of the KSA history? It is a well-known fact that writing about the KSA has never been objective anywhere on the whole planet; because of the might and influence of the Saudi money, the SR, used to bribe, lure, and tempt some of the cultural elite members in Egypt them to write in praise of the KSA.  On the other hand, the Saudi Wahabi extremism led several free secular thinkers among the cultural elite members in Egypt to vehemently attack the KSA. Thus, between exaggerated praise and heated censure and rebuke, objectivity is lost when writing about the KSA. Of course, our revenge-seeking spirit toward the KSA might lead readers here to think that objectivity will be out of the question in this book. We personally believe that objectivity is lacking in most, if not all, writings on human sciences and controversial issues, even if authors claim otherwise. The claim of our lacking objectivity in this research/book is reinforced by our public, well-known stance against the Wahabi thought, showing that any writing of ours on the KSA would be biased against it and against its Wahabism, especially when our stance is supported by Quranic verses and countless proofs from history and from the Sunnite traditions and heritage, making Salafist scholars and imams unable to refute us, and their inability to refute us led then eventually to coerce us in religion and to terrorize us by making the Egyptian government persecute us and to reduce us into the impecunious state in the 1990s. it is naturally that we would seek revenge using our pen, the only thing we have, of course after our deep faith in God and in the Last Day. Hence, we have every possible reason that would lead us to be biased against both the KSA and its Sunnite opposition movements that emerged in its soil, while claiming to be 'objective' and adhering to neutrality, based on our depending on the authoritative sources, speeches, and history of both the KSA and its Sunnite opposition movements. Yet, our methodology here in this research/book on the KSA and its Sunnite opposition movements includes an introductory chapter in which we assert using some Quranic verses that the KSA lack legitimacy from the very inception of its establishment. The reason: because its Wahabi principles contradict the Quran: such Wahabi/Salafist principles led Wahabis to endorse the massacres, rape, and looting of Muslims. After this introductory chapter, we assert this lack of legitimacy when we tackle the Sunnite opposition movements against the KSA during the reign of Abdul-Aziz, as he endorsed mass-killings and murder of all non-Wahabis, as well as looting and conquering countries of others. We cast doubts on the legitimacy of the opposition movement of the Najd Brothers too, the former allies of Abdul-Aziz who turned against him later on, become more extremist that he was. The same goes for other foes of the KSA, like Juhayman Al-Otaybi, whose aggression led him to attack and occupy the Kaaba Mosque in Mecca, and like the Committee of Defending Legitimate Rights, as both opposition movements sought to coerce and compel people in religion. We conclude this book/research by asserting the curses against the KSA and its opposition figures/foes that were more extremist and violent than the KSA, thus achieving our revenge against the KSA, on both the personal and national levels, and if we lack objectivity and if we are biased, no one, however, can possibly refute us. The reason: we oppose, refute, judge, and condemn the KSA stances and views along with the views and stances of the opposition figures using the Quranic verses. The Quranic verses have distinct, lucid, clear, undeniable, and irrefutable meanings, and no one can deny the scientific body of history-literature about the KSA and its Sunnite opposition figures and Sunnite/Salafist scholars and imams, as we have used information from well-known authoritative and acknowledged Saudi published sources. Our book here is filled with appetizers: a heavy dose of sarcastic, funny tales and scandals, copied from the writings of the Saudi opposition figure Dr. Al-Masaary, about the KSA royal family members, with details, names, numbers, locations, and timing. Saudis ignored Dr. A,-Masaary and never cared to refute his writings, a heavy mark showing their inability to refute him, as his writings and those of others are historical facts that condemn the Saudi royal family. Such facts will certainly increase the readability and readership of this book, thus gaining the wide spread and never losing objectivity.

 

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  Despite of all of the above, we have decided to remain really objective by researching the Sunnite opposition movements against the KSA and their intricate, complicated relation with the KSA with a neutral, objective historical research, with no prior claims of writing the decisive, final word about the subject or having the absolute truth about it; rather, our writings remain intellectual conclusions and innovations in light of research findings and results, and no one is kept away from making errors or mistakes in any research. We bore this in mind as we were writing this book, as enmities are transient, whereas writings of historians and researchers outlive authors, and Time will judge for or against such writings. Every one of us will meet Almighty God in the Last Day, and our belief in God and in the Last Day entails us to verify the truth and the justice in all our writings on all topics. We must adhere to justice as the supreme value of Islam in the Quran; thus, all our past and present troubles caused by the KSA and Wahabism/Salafism dwarfed before our eyes while we were gathering all material for this research and studying them carefully, and we could not stop ourselves from admiring Abdul-Aziz in terms of the political aspect only, as we used to consider him a very demon from Hell. Yet, we admired more the KSA opposition figure Nasser Al-Saeed, despite the fact that many of his views differed from ours. Imitating the manners and ways of a judge who verifies truth and justice, we passed historical judgments in our book here as per available knowledge within historical facts that we hope to be deemed true; as there was no lawyer on behalf of the defendants. We had to extract from the sayings of the defendants what they might have said in their own defense, as we did in tackling the topic of Dr. Al-Masaary and his stances regarding the KSA, the country that never paid heed to refute his accusations against it. Thus, we had to examine carefully his accusations leveled against the KSA by comparing them with assertions of other neutral witnesses to examine different views on the case. In most times, the KSA refused to respond and to refute any of the accusations laid on its doorstep! This lends credibility to the narratives asserted by the opposition figures like Dr. Al-Masaary and Al-Saeed. Our analysis was confined to demonstrate all opposing views and their historical conditions, weighing every view against its opposite one trying to follow all traces and come nearer to the truth as much as possible, as will be felt in this research. Within the conclusion of this book, we focus on the future of the current third KSA, and factors that will possibly lead to its downfall and how to remedy this. Our book is filled with quotations that are taken from some pages of some authoritative resources on which our book is based, and as per scientific research methodology, we had to quote such passages with no change at all: we offer our apologies here for any offensive material in them, and we declare here that we never approve of general accusations and virulent attacks and verbal abuse of the KSA royal family members. Yet, this is a chance for readers to perceive how we dealt with such texts objectively, never taking them as absolute truths or facts despite their authenticity and the stamp of truth apparent in them. Yet, we extracted from these quotations different views, as long as the KSA defendants remain silent and never defended themselves against any of the accusations leveled at them. The quotations include excerpts from the book titled ''History of the Family of Saud'', authored by Nasser Al-Saeed, excerpts from the letters of Juhayman Al-Otaybi, from writings of Dr. Al-Masaary, and finally from documents of human rights organizations. Last but not least, we have written this book basically to satisfy our scientific research appetite for knowing better those who have harmed our person, our sons, and our homeland (beloved Egypt), and caused countless trouble to us. We know quite well that this book will never appeal to the Saudis and to their fundamentalists Sunnite opposition figures among the extremists; we seek only to gratify and please Almighty God, and we hope He will come in our aid in our life-journey.

 

Signature:

Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour

26th of June, 2001, Cairo, Egypt