《Among the Believers are men who have been true to their covenant with Allah. of them some have completed their vow (to the extreme), and some (still) wait: but they have never changed (their determination) in the least》 AlAhzab:23

Indeed.. Death is an inevitable fate.. Resurrection is a settled promise.. Work is in a marked book..

Few are those whom God makes a tongue of truth in the worlds.

Few are those whom death would not be able to erase their virtues and legacy..

Few are those whose their memory cannot be hidden by durst..

A rare group of people are those whom God guides to reform, reconstruction, enlightenment and renewal..

Few are those who stand firm on principles and defend values. Their steadfastness is not shaken by calamities, their faith is not compromised by setbacks, and their sincerity is not affected by setbacks.. The crises increase their belief and conviction that a bright dawn for the Ummah is undoubtedly coming, and that a bright future for its youth will undoubtedly come. And the years of wandering are inevitably fleeting.. The calamities, setbacks and crises are no more than harbingers that precede victory, expedite the breakthrough, and enable the course to be corrected.

Yes.. You, Abu Ayman, you deserve to be one of those few for whom God will make a tongue of truth in the worlds, because you lived loyally and honestly for the Ummah, you dedicated your whole life to serving the Ummah, and you shunned the adornment of life’s luxuries for the sake of the happiness of the Ummah, and you sacrificed your health for the sake of its well-being.

You were, and it is befitting of you, to be one of those few who their legacy will never die, the death will never be able to erase in any way your virtues and contributions as far as it will remain lofty in the country of the Malay Archipelago, that ancient scientific edifice that you rebuilt, and transformed with your determination and thought from a submerged scientific institution to an international scientific institution. It is famous and keeps pace with the well-deserved competition and the power of the world’s oldest institutions around the world..

Yes, by God.. you transformed it from a traditional institution with limited colleges and humble ambitions to a modern, witnessing and ambitious institution that in a short period of time has been able to produce and is still producing thousands of bright, talented, active and capable youth..

Yes.. You successfully corrected the negative stereotype about scientific institutions labeled as Islamic, so you made an outstanding Islamic institution combining authenticity and modernity, creativity and innovation, and production and invention.. Its personnel have won and are still receiving dozens of medals and prizes for innovation and invention.. The last of which was the King Faisal Prize for the Service to Islam.. Rather, you did not want the contemporary Islamic scientific institution to be less beautiful and elegant than the leading international scientific institutions.. You built with the unparalleled support of the leadership of Malaysia one of the beautiful campuses in the world. That beautiful masterpiece is in a quiet valley where the beauty of nature is integrated with the beauty of the surrounding mountains, and the purity of water is harmonious around it. Rivers with clear sky at sunrise and sunset..

Yes..you were, and it is true that you should be one of those rare people who believed that sustainable change does not take place through violence and force, but rather through love and mercy..and that the desired reform must be based on sound thinking, accurate awareness and a solid understanding of reality, and it is based on positivity, partnership, cooperation and interaction with the internal and external environment.

Yes.. O Abu Ayman, you were and deserve to be one of those rare eminent who deeply and powerfully diagnosed the causes of the Ummah’s backwardness, setbacks and crises, and the case is that it is the best Ummah that was created to witness over nations, to build the universe, and to make mankind happy in every time and every place.

Yes.. you have provided an accurate description of what has become of this Ummah, which was once a leading and pioneering Ummah, then it became a withdrawn and dependent Ummah, and became a consuming Ummah after it was a productive Ummah, and it became a submissive Ummah after it was a daring Ummah, and it became an absent Ummah after it was an omnipresent Ummah. An Ummah which has become weeping over the past after it was an Ummah in control of its present and future.

Yes, you were, O Abu Ayman, and history is the best witness, one of those blessed elite of the Ummah’s sincere thinkers who emphasized on the horizons and proclaimed in forums that the Ummah does not lack resources, thus God has blessed it with enormous natural and human resources, and it does not lack the means thus it has all the means and capabilities.. And since this is the case and it is so, the disease of the whole disease lies in the seizure of that sick withdrawalist thought, which suddenly created a sharp conflict between revelation and reason, and the case is that they complement each other and do not contradict, and create a bitter schizophrenia between the world and the hereafter, and the case is that they overlap and do not scatter, and suppose an alleged conflict between science and religion, and the case is that they befriend and do not collide.. Therefore, you called and you were very right, forty years ago, that all reform should inevitably start from the reform of thought by rebuilding it in a sound ground that believes in complementarity between dualities, and refuses to contradict them.. Rather, you have rejected all forms of violence, whether psychological or physical, and you have believed that true reform is that reform that stems from inculcating the values ​​of love, mercy, kindness, honesty and altruism, courage, perseverance and sincerity in the child’s psyche, so that these values ​​become an integral part of his personality, and a reference to him when interacting with his surroundings.

Yes..Abu Ayman..You translated this conception into a tangible reality..when you established the first integrated international Islamic school from kindergarten to high school, concerned with implementing that vision and this message..

Almost thirty years have passed since I met you for the first time.. you were for me and for many of the sons of the Ummah a mentor to be followed in productivity, hardworking, perseverance and optimism.. I swear to God.. you were and will remain a role model in honesty, sincerity, chastity and altruism..

Yes.. you spent ten years and did not receive a penny of your salary. You refused to take a penny from the budget allocated to the office of the Rector of the University..

And if I forget, I will never forget that difficult day at Kuala Lumpur Airport on December 29, 1998 AD when you were returning permanently to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Director of Financial Affairs, Br. Zilan, asked you, saying: What do we do with your frozen salaries with the Financial Division, which has reached hundreds of thousands of years of your work as the university’s Rector?..

You answered him, with your usual smile on your face, and your well-known altruism filling your sides.. Make it the first donation to an endowment fund that you established to take care of the international students who were stranded and narrowed, and they were just around the corner from returning to their country as a result of the cessation of supplies and the help that was coming to them from those who were roaming the horizons in order to collect donations for them, he is Abu Ayman..

Yes..Abu Ayman, I could not control my tears on that day when I saw you boarding the plane to return to the land of the Two Holy Mosques..

Yes.. ten years, no salary, no reward, no bonuses.. ten years.. you used to drive a very modest car.. ten years.. and your office space does not exceed a few meters..

Ten years.. you were the last to return to his home.. Until Umm Ayman, may God protect her, one day said to your beloved friend, Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim: You are also married to the university, because you used to return daily to your home very late at night.. for ten years.. you proved to the whole world that reform is very possible. And that the future of the nation is promising and prosperous, and that change is coming.

Ten years.. you rebuilt an university whose number of students was a few hundred, divided into three faculties with limited programs. While when you were leaving you left behind you an university whose numbers of students were more than twelve thousands of students, twelve faculties which were offering more than a hundred programs..

for ten years.. you provided the opportunity to educate more than five thousand male and female students from all over the world.. The number of international students there before your arrival was less than a hundred male and female students.. Praise be to God, as those students who received the honor of education in that institution have become leaders and pioneers in their countries and societies..

for ten years.. God granted you success to plant a blessed tree, whose root is firm in the earth and its branches are in the sky, God willing..

O my father.. and my teacher.. and the father of the thousands who made up, rather hundreds of thousands of whom you have favored..be assured that your memory will remain as long as there is an iota of life left in the soul..and that your enlightened thought that you vowed your lives to spread will remain alive and vibrant as long as the Ummah remains. Young people, you built them..and that your reward will remain, God willing, as long as a bird ate from those blessed trees that you planted in the village of Gombak in the suburb of Kuala Lumpur..

It is a covenant upon us and the sons of the ummah to pray for you for the mercy, forgiveness, and contentment of Allah, as long as we prostrate ourselves to God..and as long as we do fast..and this is the least you deserve..

O Mother.. Umm Ayman.. kindly accept my condolences and the condolences of my humble family to whom you were a mother and grandmother.. and please accept the condolences of thousands of university graduates and its employees whom Abu Ayman extended love and care..

Indeed we know for sure that Abu Ayman would not have been able to make achievements and successes he has achieved..if it were not for God’s success and then your support, patience and companionship..

Please accept the condolences of all those who believed, worked and defended the reform of Islamic thought..

And you, my dear brothers and sisters, the sons and daughters of Abu Ayman, accept our heartfelt condolences, and the condolences of the Ummah in this affliction.. And always and forever remember the grace and benevolence of God upon you that He made you from the offspring of Abu Ayman and Umm Ayman..

And our condolences to you as well, companions in the path, Abu Muhammad, our father, Dr. Ahmed Totonji, Dr. Hisham Al-Talib, Dr. Omar Kassoli, Mr. Anwar Ibrahim, Dr. Fathi Malkawi, and many others who were for Abu Ayman a bond and support, may God bless them all with health and wellness..

God bless their companions The late, Dr. Ismail Al-Farouqi, Dr. Taha Al-Alwani, Dr. Jamal Barzanji, and others who preceded us all to the abode of bliss, God willing.

Yes..our condolences to the country of the Two Holy Mosques – may God protect it – government and people for the passing of one of its honorable and loyal sons who raised her head high, and proved with worth and power that the nation is still capable of producing nobles and reformers.

Our condolences are also to the beloved land of Malaysia, which opened its door wide to Abu Ayman, and put its resources and capabilities at his disposal to achieve the remarkable achievements and great successes he has achieved.

And last but not least.. our condolences to all the employees of that immortal scientific edifice that stands tall today and bears witness to the intellectual, administrative, organizational and architectural legacy left by Abu Ayman.. I mean all of you, my colleagues who are still serving the International Islamic University, or who once served and made a contribution to the advancement of this institution, may God protect it and increase it in success, steadfastness, progress and development.

Oh my God.. to You we raise the palms of submission, humility and hope on this famous day of Your days, the blessed Friday, and we are soon coming to pray for his funeral after Friday prayers, may the soul of our father, our teacher and our educator, my father Abu Ayman, be blessed with Your mercy, your generous forgiveness, and greatness.. Please forgive him.. Oh God, and put him in the vastness of Your heavens..

O our Creator and O Creator of the univers.. we ask You to light his grave, and gather us and him on a day when neither money nor children will benefit, among the prophets, the truthful, the martyrs and the righteous, and the good of those are companions.

Oh God, make him one of the owners of the reasured and calm soul that You said about them, and Your saying is all true:“Oh, the reassured soul, return to Your Lord well-pleased and well-pleased, so enter my worship and enter my heaven.”

“Those who, when misfortune befalls them, say, We belong to God and to Him we shall return.” Al-Baqarah: 156

Your son/ Koutoub Moustapha Sano

From Al-Haram Al-Sharif in Makkah Al-Mukarramah