Our troubles for praying in congregation

Navideshahed - At the first days of our captivity, we said our prayer at the back of the forefront with fear since we were under the pressure of the Bathi forces. They moved us from Basrah to Baghdad after a week. As we wanted to say our prayer, we faced with the Bathi opposition. They never let us to stand or drink water and even wash our hands. They knew nothing from Islam. They did not let us to say our prayer for three days. As we woke up for prayer they hit us by wood and whip.

It was Tuesday that we moved from Baghdad to Mosul, they hit us there by wood and power cable. When we entered the camp, they divided us through the sanatoriums. Our sanatorium was located in the Iraqi's sights exactly. At the night we started to say our prayer, suddenly we heard a terrible sound. They were the Iraqi's forces that screamed:

Hey you the infidels… are you Muslim that you pray? They told us in Arabic … if you are Muslim… why are you at the battle with Imam Hussain's relatives? They continued. They threatened us, but we all kept silence and continued our prayer. During the night we all were thinking about tomorrow … what would be happen? We changed the night to morning.

At the morning we woke up stressfully they shouted again toward us … we said our prayer under the blankets. It was 8:30 that the door opened and 18 Iraqi forces came in and hit our face, head and waist. The room was full of blood. After the day, we decided to pray in congregation and stood against them. We knew that the Bathi regime wanted to downgrade our beliefs.

At the noon we started our congregation prayer with 5 people. The next day the other added to us and made our prayer more magnificent. Suddenly all the Iraqi soldiers and high ranked commanders entered the room and hit us, it lasted for 2 hours. Finally the Bathi forces got satisfied to let us to hold our congregation prayer.

Narrator: Mohsen Shafiei

Source: Prayer in the Captivity

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