Preacher boy stuns believers in Gaza mosques

[SOO MAAL]

 

Palestinian boy given title of sheikh

Friday, 10 June , 2005 08:22:00

Reporter: Mark Willacy

PETER CAVE: At 13 years of age you'd expect Amjad Abu Seedo would be like other Palestinian boys in the Gaza, attending high school and playing football with his friends.

 

Instead the boy who's already preached at 40 Gaza mosques is being hailed as a religious wonder and given the honorary title of "sheikh".

 

Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad are falling over themselves to claim him as their own, but young Amjad is rejecting their overtures, saying he'll remain independent.

 

Middle East Correspondent Mark Willacy reports from the Gaza Strip.

 

MARK WILLACY: Jammed shoulder-to-shoulder into Gaza's El Imam Alshafe'e mosque, more than a hundred worshippers have come to see the boy they call the "young Sheikh".

 

Small children, their fathers, even old men sit entranced as 13-year-old Amjad Abu Seedo fires out God's message.

 

For more than 10 minutes the young preacher recites some of the most complicated verses of the Koran, the congregation responding to his calls.

 

Wearing the red and white "ar-mama" head covering and long robe of a devout Muslim, the 13-year-old looks tiny standing on the elevated platform in the front of the congregation.

 

But what Amjad Abu Seedo lacks in size he makes up for in sheer belief.

 

"My main aim is to remind people about the importance of Islam and the prophet Mohammed," he tells me.

 

"I have visited more than 40 mosques, giving lessons after the main prayers," he says.

 

After today's prayers the freckle-faced teenager is approached by grown men who speak to him with the unfailing reverence usually reserved for the most senior of sheikhs.

 

"It is something very amazing to see a small child having this power and ability," says this Muslim worshipper. "I wish my kids will be like him and will memorise the Koran," he says.

 

"I want to be just like this boy and to be able to memorise the Koran," says this youngster.

 

Amjad Abu Seedo’s ability to mesmerise crowds has brought him to the attention of the Islamic militant groups.

 

Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have tried to woo the boy, but so far without success.

 

"Some leaders mentioned that I belong to specific militant groups, they say I'm with Fatah, or I'm a Hamas boy," he says.

 

"I don't belong to any organisation or group," the teenager tells me.

 

It's the final day of the academic year at Amjad Abu Seedo's Islamic school in Gaza.

And the guest speaker is none other than the boy preacher himself.

 

"My friends, you have to work hard to prove to the world that we, the Palestinians, are still standing firmly on our land," he tells his classmates. "We the Palestinian youth still have the ability of using the weapon of education to choose our own future," he says.

 

Words of wisdom which are not often heard from adults here, let alone a boy of 13.

 

This is Mark Willacy in the Gaza Strip for AM.

 

 

Teen makes his mark in Gaza mosques

By Matthew Gutman, Special for USA TODAY

GAZA CITY — The 150 men stuffed into Gaza City's A-Shamma Mosque were riveted by each word of the Friday sermon.

 

Honorary Sheik Amjad Abu Seedo, 13, delivers the traditional speech during prayers at a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.

By Kevin Frayer, AP

 

Over the past year, Amjad Abu Seedo, a baby-faced 13-year-old, has captivated a swelling throng of faithful with his spellbinding Quranic tales and trance-like delivery.

 

The boy's sermons, punctuated by sweeping gestures, have injected a dose of vitality into mosque life, where sermons had become monotonous during the recent years of the intifada, or Palestinian uprising. "Our mosques in the intifada have become too politicized," says A-Shamma Mosque's muezzin, or regular prayer leader, Muhammed Fayyis Radwan. "We hear the same sermons over and over, and now we need to go back to social issues. Amjad was great in this respect, because he delivered something different."

 

Jihad Yassin, a 15-year-old carpenter's apprentice, couldn't believe that "a boy his age could utter the words that came from his mouth." Amjad's sermon so moved Yassin that afterward he vowed to "be in the mosque a lot more," and to stop "wasting time watching TV."

 

And the appearance of the imam prodigy may be just another sign of Islam's growing hold on Gazans.

 

Since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000, "there has been a marked increased traditionalism," says Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestine Center for Policy and Survey Research. "In a society under stress with a weak central government, people return to traditional sources of protection: generally family and religion."

 

Over the past five years, hundreds of mosques have sprung up all over Gaza, where unemployment hovers near 40%, according to the World Bank.

 

The mosque increasingly has become the hub of male social activity here. Gaza's Islamists shuttered movie theaters more than a decade ago. Palestinian-brewed Taybeh Beer was banned in Gaza in 2000, Nadim Khoury, the beer's master brewer, says in a telephone interview.

 

 

AP

al-Amari mosque, Gaza City

 

Amjad, who spends hours a day poring over the Quran, discovered his talent for oration only a year and a half ago. A friend at the Waqf School, where he is in eighth grade, asked him to present a composition he had written. "So I memorized the sermon and delivered it, and people kept asking me to do it again." Since then, at an age when his peers in Israel celebrate their Bar Mitzvahs — the Jewish ritual passage into manhood — Amjad writes and then pumps out his sermons.

 

Swaying in his preacher's robes, and showering the kneeling men and boys with fire and brimstone, Amjad riffs on mystical Islamic fables, and harangues the faithful, "I beseech you to cease sinning ... to return to the mosque, the critical place in your life, the place to reach God."

 

The men on their knees in the gallery murmur in assent. Women pray at separate times.

 

Amjad has preached in 40 mosques in the Gaza City area over the past year, and his popularity is growing. While Islam commands its faithful to pray five times daily, preachers only deliver sermons at noon prayers on Fridays.

 

Most imams are older men, who have studied for years, and few people can recall an example of a preacher as young as Amjad.

 

"To preach at such a young age is indeed unusual, but it is possible if the lad memorizes the Quran and is well learned," says Muhammed Abu Layla, chairman of Islamic Studies at Cairo's Al-Azhar University. Amjad himself says there are stories in the Quran, Islam's holy book, of teenage boys leading Islamic armies into battle.

 

Outside the mosque, the flags of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad flap in a dusty breeze. Portraits of "martyrs" — Palestinians who either blew themselves up trying to kill Israelis or died in urban fighting against the Israeli army — decorate the street. (Related story: Sharon warns against Palestinian violence)

 

Amjad says militant groups constantly try to recruit him. At home after the sermon, he logs into his e-mail account and produces an angry message from a group purportedly linked to the Palestinian Authority's ruling Fatah Party. Amjad says he has rejected their recruiting attempts.

 

A newspaper clipping with a headline calling Amjad, "Hamas' Wonder Boy," hangs over the young preacher's desk. While he likens himself to Quranic Islamic warriors who in their teens led Islamic armies into battle, he angrily denies any affiliation with the militant group.

 

"There are some youth who hold a gun in their right hand," he says, "and others, like me, who hold the Quran in their right hand. ... I depend on God."

 

During his life, Amjad could depend on little more. His father, who left his mother to marry a woman 20 years her junior, has had no contact with the family in years. Amjad's home is a five-story walk-up in Gaza's Shejahiya neighborhood. Plastic flowers complement the red, plastic lawn set that serves Amjad and his five siblings as their living room furniture.

 

He receives nothing for his preaching. "It is a holy duty," he says. The family is supported with the help of his older siblings.

 

While he delights in pleasing his mother, Zinat, through his preaching, Amjad insists, "I am a normal child. I play with my friends and love swimming in the (Mediterranean) sea

 

Preacher boy stuns believers in Gaza mosques

 

 

13 year-old Amjad Abu Sidu dreams of becoming an ‘alem’ like his two role models Kishk and Shaarawi.

 

 

By Adel Zaanoun - GAZA CITY

 

Robed in a white tunic, his head wrapped in a turban, the tiny figure climbs the steps one by one to the pulpit to address the congregation.

 

 

Amjad Abu Sidu is only 13 years old and already has the makings of a preacher who can leave his congregation spellbound.

 

 

"I have already delivered 140 sermons in more than 50 mosques in the Gaza Strip," the youngster said. "I think that I have been accepted by the believers who come to see me preach every Friday."

 

 

"Sheikh Amjad" delivered his first sermon last June to a congregation of 2,000 people in a mosque in the town of Jabaliya, just north of Gaza City.

 

 

Initially surprised to see one so young preaching from the pulpit, which has traditionally been a platform for venerable imams, the crowds were soon captivated by his words.

 

 

His sermons - sometimes fiery and impassioned - focus on the need for solidarity and justice within Palestinian society, while warning about the danger of hypocrisy, he says.

 

 

"It makes me very happy when I see the congregation coming to the mosque to hear me or to hear other preachers on Friday," says Amjad, who cuts a diminutive figure at just under five feet tall (1.40 metres).

 

 

"Many people have shown their support and encouraged me to continue."

 

 

After requesting donations to help fund a Koranic school, Amjad presses the flesh with the worshippers before going to a section of the mosque reserved for women to deliver a course in religion.

 

 

Raised in a theological school run by the Palestinian Authority's ministry of religious affairs, Amjad says he has long dreamed of becoming an "alem" (man of learning).

 

 

Two of his role models are Egyptian sheikhs: Abdel Hamid Kishk and Mutawalli al-Shaarawi, whose words of wisdom continue to inspire the faithful on the banks of the Nile years after their deaths, as well as the Saudi cleric, Khaled Errashed.

 

 

Nidal Aissa, an official at the ministry of religious affairs says they decided to allow Amjed to preach on Fridays "because he is a sound boy, an excellent speaker and a strong personality."

 

 

Amjad, Aissa predicts, has "a rosy future".

 

 

The teenage cleric, who comes from a poor family from a working class neighbourhood in western Gaza City, receives a monthly allowance of around 110 dollars which he shares with his mother to cover household needs.

 

 

However, Amjad says it is not enough to cover the cost of a telephone or Internet connection.

 

 

He would love to finish his theological studies in Saudi Arabia, he says while admitting that his ambition is completely at odds with his family's extremely difficult material circumstances.

 

 

Amjad's mother and father have separated, and his dad has remarried. "He does help us out but only a little because of his own financial difficulties," he says.

 

 

During the holy month of Ramadan, Amjad is fervently hoping he might be able to make a trip to Jerusalem's Old City to preach at the Al Aqsa mosque -- the third holiest site in Islam.

 

 

"I've asked the ministry if I can go to preach at Al Aqsa during Ramadan like Sheikh Ekrema Sabri," he said, referring to the Jerusalem Mufti.

 

 

Aside from studying in Saudi Arabia, Amjad has another wish: to meet Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas

 

 

"I want to meet our brother president Abu Mazen during Ramadan and to tell him that Palestinian children are not only martyrs, but they are also sheikhs and young geniuses who need someone to take an interest in them and to encourage them."

[SOO MAAL]

13 Year-Old Palestinian "Sheik" Wins Hearts and Minds in Gaza

 

The following are excerpts from a a report about a 13-year-old "sheik" Amjad Abu Sidu, who gives lectures in Gaza. Al-Arabiya TV aired this report on June 7, 2005,

 

Reporter:With confident steps, the 13-year-old went up to the mosque's podium to deliver the Friday sermon, in a rare spectacle.

 

Those present seemed to be in a distant world of faith because of the powerful words of the boy-sheik Amjad Abu Sidu and because of his coherent sentences and his profound, logical ideas, which are conveyed in an interesting and impressive manner. He gesticulates with his hands in a manner displaying the depth of his insight into the sermon's topic.

 

Abu Sidu: "I must study the content of a Hadith, who delivered it, and the meaning of the words I will use in the sermon. I must raise the question in the sermon, and answer it. I must prepare the message of the sermon and its structure, step by step."

 

Reporter: Amjad, the boy who pursues the path of the great religious scholars, comes from a small and humble family in a Gaza neighborhood. His life was not easy before people came to know him and sing his praises.

 

At first he was not allowed to lecture at one of the mosques, but he persevered in his short journey, and now he lectures at forty religious centers and mosques, including the religious school where he studies.

 

Abu Sidu: I grew up in a family that cared about religion and education. I grew up in a family that raised its sons to love Allah and His messenger. Allah be praised, I delivered my first and second lessons in the mosque, and I have continued in this mission for over four months, without help from anybody.

 

Reporter: The admiration of those who love the little sheik does not prevent him from getting on with his life as a child, who plays and uses modern means to communicate with the world. He receives hundreds of petitions, and he responds to each and every one.

 

Woman: I have attended his lessons more than once. Each of his lectures is devoted to a specific subject. When he lectures to women, he deals with women's issues. He was very impressive. Some of the women even burst into tears.