It’s almost nine years since the notorious images depicting kneeling Muslim men attired in the signature orange clothing of Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, were unleashed through the world’s media. Their eyes covered with blackened-out goggles, their mouths masked and their ears covered with earmuffs. They saw no evil, spoke no evil and heard no evil: they only experienced it. Ironically, they were – and are still – regarded by the world’s most powerful military machine as the epitome of evil, the ‘worst of the worst.’ My time with them was comparatively short but, I had the honour of being in these men’s company for three years.

The president of the USA called them ‘bad men’, ‘terrorists’ and ‘murderers’ who were so dangerous they would ‘gnaw through the cables of an aircraft in order to bring it down’ (hence the justification for face masks.) Despite not one person being convicted of any crime related to September 11 (the whole reason why Guantánamo was allegedly instituted as a prison facility) the men are still treated worse than convicted criminals. In fact, they are still regarded as ‘the worst of the worst’ at worst or, with deep suspicion at best – even by Muslims. So how is one meant to judge these people, especially when we learn what these men were doing before they had the fortune to be tested in the manner of the Prophets of old? 

It is now clear from released prisoners and mountains of US military documentation that the overwhelming majority of those detained in Guantánamo had nothing to do with the targeting and killing of innocent civilians in America – or anywhere else. Although this fact has not been conceded by the US in word it has been in deed with the release of nearly 600 of us to date. But 181 still remain in Guantanamo and, more disturbingly, thousands have been simply ‘disappeared’ or held in ‘ghost’ detention sites around the world. 

Some of the men were abducted from places as diverse as like Gambia, Zambia, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, the Persian Gulf – no where near the ‘theatre of combat operations.’ But most of the men, me included, were in Pakistan and Afghanistan working on benign projects to build schools, wells, orphanages and aid centres. Others had come to this region to live under what they believed was a land of hijra (migration) for the sake of Allah, or to study the tenets and jurisprudence of their faith, or to live as exiles from their various homelands – like the Chinese Uyghurs – escaping terrible persecution. It is also undeniable that some came to repel the occupiers of a Muslim land by non-Muslim forces, in the way that thousands had come before them during the last superpower’s occupation of Afghanistan. But that’s very different from what they stand accused of being: terrorists. 

Hitler’s propaganda minster, Joseph Goebbels once said: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” This formula has been adopted by many of today’s leaders and those who follow them. We know how these men – and Muslims in general - have been described by certain western leaders and their Middle Eastern sycophants. But how does the one who created them and gave them purpose of life describe them?

‘Those who believed, and emigrated, and struggled for the faith in the cause of Allah, as well as those who give (them) asylum and aid― these are indeed the true believers: for them is the forgiveness of sins and a provision most generous.’

Are these men not Muslims – believers in fact? Did they not emigrate for the various reasons cited? Did not the Prophet (saws) say that hijra [migration] in the way of Allah wipes out all prior sins, even more so than Hajj? Did they not struggle in the cause of Allah with their wealth and in person against all the hardships one must endure to live in one of the world’s poorest and destitute countries? Did not Allah promise them the greatest of rewards in the Hereafter for their struggle and sacrifice? Did they not come to give support and aid to the beleaguered people of impoverished lands?

And when Allah continued to test them in the way He tested his beloved Yousuf (as) did we find they faltered or changed? When tortures and humiliations like those meted out to Bilal, Ammar and Summaya were inflicted upon them did they not hold fast to their faith and cry out: ‘Hasbuna Allaha wa ni’mal wakeel’ (Allah is the sufficient protector for us)? When they heard about the births of their children – or their deaths – during their time in prison did they despair and lose hope in Allah’s mercy and deliverance? Did not the very earth shake under their feet after such tumultuous trials until they said: ‘When will the help of Allah come?’ Were they not contented with His words: ‘Surely, the help of Allah is near’? 

There is a verse I came to learn, to know, to recite, to contemplate and to believe in – even during the bleakest of times: 

‘And whoever fears Allah He will make for him a way out and provide for him from whence he never imagined.’

The word at the end of this verse is ‘makhraja’ which in Arabic literally means exit and although it refers to a set of circumstances relating to marital affairs the rule therein was, for us, devastatingly simple: fear Allah, turn to him, keep to your duty and He will find you a way out. And so we were released – at least some of us were. But what of those who remain? Does it mean they did not fear Allah, did not keep to their duty and promise to Allah? Of course not. The Prophet (saws) said: ‘When Allah loves a person He puts them to trial.’ And if He did this with his beloved Prophets then what of us? Was not Yusuf thrown into a dungeon for years, despite his innocence? Could the Torah, the New Testament and even the Quran have been complete without this story of wrongful imprisonment?

I am honoured to have been in the company of these few men who held on to the rope of Allah when many others would have wavered and fallen. They have not all been released, but they have been mentioned specifically by the one in whose hands their souls lie:

‘Amongst the believers are men who remained true to their covenant with Allah; of them some have fulfilled their obligations, (i.e. have left this world) and some still are waiting, but they have never changed in the least.’

In the last nights of Ramadhan some of us will be praying all night at home, in the mosques and even in the Masaajid al-Haraam (in Makkah and Madinah – where rewards for prayers are multiplied in their thousands). Some of us will be doing ‘itikaaf [prayer in seclusion], qiyaam al-lail [the night prayer] and reciting the whole Qur’aan several times and attending Friday prayers with record numbers of worshippers in continually expanding mosques. 

My imprisoned brothers have not prayed a single prayer in congregation in nine years. They have not prayed Jum’ah once in nine years. They have had no Eid with their families in nine years. They are waitng with the patience of Yunus (as) for deliverance. But they have made ‘itikaaf in their tiny cages for nine years. Some of them fasted every Monday and Thursday – even when they were given no food to break the fast; some of them fast on every alternate day outside of Ramadhan (the fast of Dawood [David] (as)).And their recitation and memorisation of the Quran far surpasses that of freemen; their supplications during the night prayer have brought tears to the eyes of men who have encountered every hardship imaginable, men whose tears you’d have thought would have dried up by now. But their tears are not of grief and sadness for this world: they cry fearing what might become of them in the Hereafter. Yes, they fear Allah still. It is the only way they will find an exit.

This article was first published for Cageprisoners in September 2008. It has been adapted to represent the current situation in Guantanamo