“God tortures whoever tortures human beings”

“God tortures whoever tortures human beings” is a religious maxim Mohamedou Ould Slahi invokes while recounting his exposure to other detainees’ suffering at Guantánamo. Its force lies in the universality he gives it: the prohibition applies regardless of a person’s religion, making compassion and responsibility larger than the divisions imposed by detention.

The Saying in Context

Mohamedou recalls that an interrogator made him pass through a corridor where he could hear detainees and guards, while guards kept him blindfolded. He says he did not want to see anyone suffering. In that moment, he invokes the Prophet’s words, “God tortures whoever tortures human beings,” and adds that, as he understands it, the person’s religion does not matter. The saying answers a scene of imposed proximity with a principle that refuses to distinguish whose suffering counts.

Ethical Meaning

The maxim presents torture as a wrong with moral consequences for those who inflict it, rather than as a permissible instrument against a designated enemy. Mohamedou’s qualification about religion broadens the claim beyond his own community: human beings remain within its protection, and the duty not to torture is not conditional on identity. The sentence is therefore both an expression of faith and a compact ethical judgment about human treatment.

Relation to His Testimony

Elsewhere, Mohamedou describes his account as limited to what he experienced, saw, and learned firsthand, and asks readers to give him the benefit of the doubt. He also calls for a public investigation and says he would seek to prove his account through witnesses in a proper judicial proceeding. Read alongside those appeals, the maxim supplies a moral frame for testimony about abuse: the question is not only what happened, but whether institutions and the public will recognize the humanity of those who suffered and demand accountability.

Narrative Significance

The saying is brief, but it counters the dehumanizing logic of the torture corridor. Mohamedou is blindfolded and cannot see the people whose suffering he hears; the sentence nevertheless insists on their shared human standing. Its reach extends beyond the immediate scene, joining his appeal for fair hearing to a universal standard by which the treatment of detainees can be judged.