The other events of the day were equally popular with the crowd. Mawlana attended many different meetings with hundreds of people waiting for him. After dinner he said he had just received an inspiration from Mawlana Shaykh Nazim, who was saying that Imam Koudous, Ivory Coast's Grand Mufti, and Shaykh Hisham's host there, had done his best for making this trip a success, and had been therefore been granted the spiritual station of Shaykhu 'l-Islam for the Ivory Coast, which is a rank that is above that of Mufti. He said, "Awliya took his old title back (Imam of Imams) and gave him a new station instead."
Mawlana also gave a short talk about his encounter with the Senegalese saint Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (also known as Baye Niasse) in Beirut in 1973. The Shaykh told Mawlana, who was 12 years back then, that a day would come when he would go to his area in Africa and meet a lot of Africans. He said Shaykh Niasse saw him and called him by his name even though they had never met before. Then he came close to him and whispered something in his ear which he never told anyone before until today. Shaykh Niasse said: "O my son, I am from Africa and in the future I am seeing that you will go to Africa you will find lot of saints there. You will see them and you will know them. Some of them they know they are saints, others do not. Africa is the land of saints.""Imagine," says Mawlana, "I am coming here after all these years and seeing these beautiful faces (of saints) here that Allah put them as mountains to balance this earth."
Day 4: Meeting with the President of Ivory Coast
Day 2: Visit to Qadiri Mosque | Interfaith Event
Day 1: Arrival and first events
Videos:
See Billboards Posted all around Abidjan
See Preparatory Media Coverage of this Historic Visit