Once upon a time my father, Haji Warsame Ahmed Gurey Jowjowle, lived in Medina of Xijaas ( present day Saudi Arabia). One day he asked an Arab colleague of his to help him cut his nails. The Arab got annoyed with this strange request, considering it disrespectful. My father told the Arab that he (father) got used to people cutting his nails. Then, the Arab man agreed to cutting father’s nails.

In Xijaas, a Somali woman of Northwest Somalia reportedly got abused by her Arab husband. She heard that Haji Warsame was a prominent Somali Sheikh in the area. She approached the Haji for help. After listening to her, he took her to the local Sharia court to advocate for her divorce from the abusive husband. My father, in lawyering for the Somali lady, argued that this Arab man wasn’t fit to marry this lady in the first place. The Judge accepted father’s legal argument.

While my father was still staying in Medina, a group of Arab religious Sheikhs proposed changing the name of Harti Mosgue in Medina. My father, a well respected member of the community then and attached to the Mosque, intervened to strongly protest against changing the name of the Mosque. My father won the case and Harti Mosque remains open to this day in Medina.

In another related story, my father was the Sheikh of Erigavo. His title was Sayyid Warsame, a title he inherited after the collapse of Derwish Movement of Sayyid Mohamed Abdulle Hassan, as my father was a young mufti member of the organization. In Erigavo he represented Sayyid Muhammad Salih of Saalixia Tariqa of the Sudan. Based in Erigavo, my dad helped send Somalis to perform their Hajj obligations in Mecca. Out of jealousy, some unscrupulous personalities like Haji Afqalooc passed false reports about my father to the Saalixia leader in Medina. My dad was recalled to Medina. There in Medina, my father had strong argument ending up in fist fight with the leader. Saalxia leader ordered for the beheading of my father. Fortunately, a group of Harti community leaders intervened and secretly transported my father on a boat bound to Berbera. The situation led to the overthrow of Sayyid Warsame in Erigavo and looting of his properties by Dhulbahante and Warsangeli men.

My dad, after this, had joined the struggle for Somalia’s independence, becoming one of key elders of SYL (Somali Youth League), the main political party in the fight for freedom, getting arrested many times by the colonial Italian police and exiled once to Qardho, Somalia. Disillusioned with SYL policies after independence, he helped to form the Great League (Somali Democratic Union, SDU), a splinter political party of SYL. SDU was a leftist political party having ideological links to the former Soviet Union and China during the height of National Liberation Movements, a global anti-colonial rise of peoples in Africa, Asia and elsewhere in the world.

Salihiyya (Somali: Saalixiya; Urwayniya, Arabic: الصالحية) is a tariqa (order) of Sufi Islam prevalent in Somalia and the adjacent Somali region of Ethiopia. It was founded in the Sudan by Sayyid Muhammad Salih (1854-1919). The order is characterized by a puritanism typical of other revivalist movements.

Diagram showing Urwayniya as well as other Sufi orders.

Postscript

(You would read the full story in the book “HAYAAN” by the same author) at this link:

https://amazon.com/author/ismailwarsame