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Category: Femi Abbas

  • Communiqué of 4th IIIT Conference

    “Knowledge is a missing substance for Muslims. Therefore pick it up wherever you can find it”.                                          Hadith    

    Preamble

    It as promised in this column last Friday, The Message hereby brings forth the  Contents of the Communique issued at  the end of the Academic Conference held by the Ineternational  Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT).  Renaissance is a special phenomenon in human development. It is like the rays of sun which photosynthesizes the plants to fruition. Wherever it occurs, renaissance rejuvenates the men and women in its immediate environment.

    Now is the time for Muslim renaissance  all over the world. And no environment is more suitable for it than Universities that is why Muslim Universities in various parts of the world are now flocking together with a view to gathering a common intellectual momentum that can rekindle their past glory.

    The Communique

    For a couple of days in the penultimate week, some Muslim Universities held an intellectual conference that accentuated the renaissance objective of this era in Osogbo the capital of Osun State, Nigeria. The conference was held between the 6th and 9th October, 2017 (17th -19th Muharram, 1439 A. H) with the theme, Islamic Universities: Integration of Knowledge and Sustainability. The conference is an annual assembly of Muslim academics around the globe. It serves as a platform for appraising the state of Muslim Universities with a view to identifying their challenges and proffering credible solutions. The International Conference on Islamic Universities is hosted by both East and West African sub-regions on a rotational basis. The conference was declared open by the Governor, State of Osun, Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola on October 6, 2017 at the Amina Namadi Sambo Auditorium, Fountain University, Osogbo.

    Goodwill Messages

    Goodwill messages were delivered by the President General of the Nigerian  Supreme Council for Islamic  affairs (NSCIA) and Sultan of Sokoto,  His Eminence   Alhaji Muhammad Sa`ad Abubakar CFR, mni; Prof. Hassan Omar Kasule (Executive Secretary, IIIT) and Engr. Kamil Bolarinwa, President of the Nasrullahil-Al-Fathi Society, (NASFAT).

    Attendance

    The conference was attended by participants from Nigeria (the hosting country), Jordan, Malaysia, Sudan, Niger and Uganda.

    Participants’ Opinion

    Participants believed that :

    • Islamic Universities should be committed to the promotion of quality learning and knowledge integration while the pursuit of Excellence should permeate the spectrum of activities of the Islamic universities.
    • Islamic universities should be interdependent by connecting to one another in order to promote the needed ideals in the society regarding knowledge ingrained in Islamic prescriptions.
    • That Islamic Universities should pursue excellence as an Islamic virtue.

    Presentations and Discussions

    The keynote address was presented by Professor Is’haq Olanrewaju Oloyede, The Registrar of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Nigeria and Pro-Chancellor/Chairman of Council, Fountain University, Osogbo.

    Keynote Address and Lead Papers

    A Keynote Address was delivered by Professor Is-haq Olanrewaju Oloyede The topic of which was: Islamic Universities and Integration of Knowledge for Sustainability.

    Lead Papers:

    Three lead papers were presented as follows:

    • The Muslim Universities and the Challenge of Integration Model: A Case Study of Nigeria by Professor M. A. Bidmos
    • Rooting in Higher Education: Reality and Challenges by Dr Rehab Abdul Rahman Al-Shareef
    • The Concept of Epistemological Integration: Its Relevance to Reform of Higher Education by Professor Hassan Malkawi

    Observations

    The conference observed that:

    • The Islamicity of Islamic universities is not necessarily in name but in Islamic principles and tenets they offer as frontiers of knowledge.
    • The fact that universities are called Islamic does not mean that they should deprive people from having the worldly benefits as permitted by the Qur’an
    • Islamic universities should prepare the students to lead a useful life with a view to improving wellbeing of the society. This was considered as knowledge integration.
    • The current number of Muslim universities across the globe is grossly insufficient to cater for the learning needs of approximately two billion Muslims all over the world as well as the expected pedagogical and spiritual needs of the global community.
    • Research work and publications on the current integration of knowledge have largely focused on the principles and methodologies which amount to duplication of efforts of the earlier scholars in this field.
    • Muslim Universities, in terms of input and output, must be distinct from other universities that are not Islamic.

    Recommendations

    At the end the conference, the following recommendations were made based on the theme of this fourth conference.

    Integration

    • Islamic universities all over the world were established primarily to solve societal problems through the provision of quality learning in addition to the provision of spiritual training for the students.

    Therefore, these universities should hold on to these principles.

    • Islamic perspective of the contents of every course is integrated into teaching-learning process.
    • The integration of knowledge should be pragmatic by integrating the theoretical approach to teaching-learning into a tool for conducting developmental research capable of transforming human societies.
    • Islamic universities should accord both Arabic and Islamic Studies a priority and make possible to encourage the study of these two courses.
    • The Islamic Universities should serve as vanguards of promoting the concept of integration of knowledge in the universities with the society with a view to bridging the gap between the gown and town.

    Some veritable means to achieving this include organisation of workshops, seminars and civic engagement with stakeholders outside the universities.

    • With the spate of societal challenges, the intervention of Islamic universities is non-negotiable and therefore required in solving the problem of the dearth of teachers and students in public schools.
    • Islamic Universities should come together and establish partnership with other universities with the objective of knowledge sharing.
    • The proprietors of Islamic universities should see the development of universities as a continuous exercise. Continuous financial support of the proprietor of the universities is essential for the survival, growth and development of Islamic universities.
    • In line with the policies of their respective countries, Islamic Universities should design a curriculum that will include the integration of Islamic teachings into the modern knowledge.
    • Islamic Universities and the Muslim Ummah in general should not only bother about the dwindling education of the Muslims, they should also be concerned with the ways to ameliorate the challenges.
    • Muslims should not shy away from holding public offices as a way of making the society a better place.
    • Muslim Universities should justify the giant strides of the early predecessors in science and technology by rising to the task of expanding their faculties to include colleges of health sciences and faculty of technology.
    • Muslim Universities should make use of the vast knowledge and impressive credentials of retired Muslim professors to attract grants and enhance collaboration and linkages with international institutions.
    • Participants, having expressed concern over the spate of corruption, insurgency, militancy and other vices, recommended that all these instances of menace facing the country could be ameliorated with knowledge integration which Islamic universities are set to promote.

    Sustainability

    In order to achieve the sustainability of the roles and objectives of the Islamic universities in knowledge integration, the following measures are recommended:

    • Islamic Universities should intensify efforts at ensuring promotion of quality education that combines theory with practice.
    • Islamic universities should continue to charge affordable fees to address the problem of many poor Muslims who are unable to afford high and exorbitant fees to acquire university education.
    • Founders of Islamic Universities should not rely solely on the charitable donations, they should rather explore other creative means of generating revenue for the university.
    • About 28th other papers were presented at the Conference some of which will serve as reference points in the future. With this the Muslims Intellectuals around the World can rekindle, in this Century the marvelous renaissance that once propelled the World into a Phenomenal Technology.

  • Tipple IT’s 4th International Conference

     “Seek knowledge even if it will take you to China.”              Hadith    

    Preamble

    It was a unique gathering of who is who intellectual at Fountain University, Osogbo, Osun State where intellectualism was heightened to a pinnacle last weekend. The participants were from various parts of Africa where Islamic Universities are vibrantly available. And their presentations vividly accentuated the fact that Islam is the foundation upon which human knowledge is built.

    Whether in primordial or contemporary time, no historian  of note has succeeded in documenting the history of intellectualism  without a fundamental reference to Islam and Muslims. As a matter of fact, what is called intellectualism today is the principal invention of the early Muslims based on their access to the template of the Qur’an and Sunnah. It is an axiomatic fact that the first citadel of learning called university was established by Muslims in the tenth century. That citadel is called the University of Cordoba which was established in Spain by the second Umayyad Dynasty. It was from that citadel that the Europeans first had the idea of University which they copied and spread to some other parts of the world including America. And today, the three oldest Universities in the world which are offshoots of the University of Cordova were established by Muslims. They are Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, Qairawiyyi University in Fez, Morocco and Zaytuniyyah University in Tunis, Tunisia. Each of these Universities is by far older than 1000 years. No other university in the entire world today can claim that age. It was through those Universities that Muslim scholars were able to introduce scientific subjects like Biology (‘Ilmul Ihyau), Chemistry (Kaymiyau), Physics (Fisiyau), Astronomy (‘Ilmul Ifalaq), Astrology (‘Ilmul Tanjeem), Mathematics (Riyadiyat), Algebra (‘Ilmul Jabr) and others.

    It was those Scholars who also invented zero, a meaningless numeral that gave meaning to decimals and technological development of the contemporary world. Without the invention of zero, the world would have continued to crawl behind Roman numerals of the yore. Today, the world is advancing in Technology at the instance of Islamic intellectualism.

     

    The tripple I&T conference.

    At Fountain University, Osogbo last weekend the 4th conference of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) was held. At the conference the welcome Address was delivered by Prof. Abdullateef Usman, the Vice Chancellor, Fountain University, who was the Chief Host while the Keynote Address was delivered by Prof. Ishaq Olanrewaju Oloyede, OFR, FNAL the Registrar of Joint Admissions & Matriculation Board (JAMB), Pro-Chancellor & Chairman, Governing Council, Fountain University & Secretary-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA). The Goodwill Messages were delivered by the President General of Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs and Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence Alhaj Muh. Sa’ad Abubakar, CFR, mni; Dr. Ahmad Totonji of IIIT Headquarters and Engr. Yomi Bolarinwa, President of Nasrullahi Alfatih Organisation (NASFAT). And Inaugural Address was delivered by the Governor of the state of Osun Ogbeni Rauf Adesoji Aregbesola who was a special guest of Honour.

     

    Profile of Tripple I&T

    The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) is a private, non-profit, academic, cultural and educational institution, concerned with general issues of Islamic thought and education. The Institute was established in the United States of America in 1981. It is independent of local politics, party orientations and ideological bias.

    The headquarters of the Institute are situated in Herndon, Virginia, in the suburbs of Washington DC. IIIT has established cooperation with a number of institutions and organizations in a number of capitals world-wide in order to carry out the Institute’s activities and programs. The Institute is governed by a Board of Trustees that meets regularly and periodically to elects one of its members to serve as President.

    The Institute is an intellectual forum working on educational, academic and societal issues from an Islamic perspective to promote and support research projects, organize intellectual and cultural meetings, publish scholarly works, and engage in teaching and training. It has established a distinct intellectual trend in Islamic thought which relates to the vivid legacy of the Ummah (Muslim nation) and its continuous efforts of intellectual and methodological reform, principally in the field of education, classical knowledge and social science. This involves a large number of researchers and scholars from various parts of the world.

    The Institute conducts its educational and training activities and courses through its institutional division, The Fairfax Institute.

     

    Mission of IIIT

    According to the contents of its website, The International Institute of Islamic Thought is dedicated to the revival and reform of Islamic thought and its methodology in order to enable the Ummah to deal effectively with present challenges, and contribute to the progress of human civilization in ways that will give it a meaning and a direction derived from divine guidance. The realization of such a position will help the Ummah regain its intellectual and cultural identity and re-affirm its presence as a dynamic civilisation.

    The Institute promotes academic research on the methodology and philosophy of various disciplines, and gives special emphasis to the development of Islamic scholarship in contemporary social sciences. The program endeavors to elucidate Islamic concepts that integrate Islamic revealed knowledge with human knowledge and revives Islamic ethical and moral knowledge, through education, teaching and support of scholarly research.

     

    Objectives of IIIT

    As its Objectives, IIIT aspires to conduct courses in order to promote its objectives to reform Islamic thought, to bridge the intellectual divide between the Islamic tradition and Western civilization. In its teaching and selection of teachers and courses, IIIT endeavors to promote moderation, inter-faith dialog and good citizenship.

    In its endeavour to teach and prepare teachers for the modern world and produce intellectuals who can relate their Islam to modern day challenges the Institute aims to:

    • Serve as a think tank in the field of Islamic education, culture and knowledge.
    • Formulate a comprehensive Islamic vision and methodology that will help Muslim scholars in their critical analysis of contemporary knowledge.
    • Develop an appropriate methodology for understanding the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet.
    • Develop an appropriate methodology for dealing with Islamic legacy and contemporary knowledge, in order to draw on the experiences of both past and present, to build a better future for the Ummah and humanity at large.
    • Develop an appropriate methodology for understanding and dealing with the present situation of both the Ummah and the world in general, and the field of education in particular, in view of contemporary challenges and opportunities.

    The Institute seeks to achieve its objectives by: Teaching, training of teachers, publication of text books.

    Supporting researchers and scholars in universities and research centers, and publishing selected scholarly, cultural and intellectual works, in English, Arabic and several other languages.

    Directing research and studies to develop Islamic thought.

    Holding specialized scholarly, intellectual and cultural conferences, seminars and study circles.

    The lead papers delivered at the conference.

    The Muslim Universities and the Challenges of Integration Model: A Case study of Nigeria by Professor M.A. Bidmos of the University of Lagos.

    Rooting in Higher Education: Reality and Challenges by Dr Rehab Abdul Rahman Al Shareef of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Sudan.

    The Concept of Epistemological Integration: It’s Relevance to Reform of Higher Education by Prof. Fathi Hasan Malkawi International Institute of Islamic Thought, Jordan.

    Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences in IIUM: A Successful Story of Integration of Islamic and Human Sciences by Prof. Rahman Ahmad H. Osman, Deputy Rector (Research and Innovation), International Islamic University, Malaysia.

     

    Closing program

    At the end of the conference, the Coordinator, IIIT Southwest Nigeria Dr Abdullah Jibril Oyekan gave a vote of thanks with appreciation and this was followed by the issuance of a Communiqué which contents may be published in this column very soon.

     

  • Restructuring: The cry of Owl

     “And fear a calamity that may afflict not only those who engineered it but also the innocent ones who had no hands in its engineering, and be assured that Allah’s punishment can be very severe.”                                  Q8 v 25              

    Preamble

    In the aquatic world, when a dragon dances ceaselessly on the surface of a brook, the wise sees it as a bad omen.

    The similitude of the dancing dragon in this case is like that of an owl. Anybody who is familiar with the lifestyle of the owl will know why that bird lives in isolation and depends on propaganda for survival. The current brouhaha on a dubious issue called restructuring is not in any way different from the meaningless and ineffective cry of the Owl. By implication, therefore, the callers for restructuring are most likely to end up in the ineffective lifestyle of the Owl.

    The Owl becomes an isolated entity in the world of Birds because of its hypocrisy and indefinable antics. Today, Nigeria’s callers for restructuring are like the Owl, in a confused state. They can neither define the meaning of restructuring nor specify its practical contents. To them, the unwarranted propaganda on restructuring is a means of getting their hidden agenda executed.

     

    Hidden agenda

    “Abstain completely from guessing, some of the guessings you are engaged in are iniquitous and do not be indulged in poke nosing…” Q49 v12

    For 18 years of Nigeria’s dispensation since 1999 till date, these same callers have been alive and available in the country. They were aware of the contents of Nigeria’s constitution with its positive and negative aspects. Yet, they were silent because it suited the purpose of their hidden agenda. They knew that the 1999 constitution which is in use in Nigeria today was imposed on the country by the military.

    They knew that that constitution which started with such a deceptive cliché as “We the people of Nigeria….” was fraudulent and undemocratic. Yet, they did not see any need for its amendment. They had known all along how the military changed the destiny of Nigeria from federal to unitary system and how the concurrent aspects of our 1963 republican constitution were decimated by the ruling  junta to the disadvantage of democracy. Yet, they remained silent because they enjoyed the benefits of that political absurdity.

     

    National Confab

    The callers for restructuring were also in the country in 2014 when a political demagogue in the name of President decided to constitute a National confab which was meant to accentuate his political agenda.

    They were aware that the process of that exercise was dictatorial and insensitive to democracy. They knew that the demagogue resorted to selection of participants in that confab directly or indirectly to the exclusion of people who mattered but did not belong to his camp. For instance, less than one-third of those participants throughout the country were Muslims in a multi-religious country like Nigeria where Muslims are in the Majority. That tragic antique was an obvious confirmation of a hidden agenda on the part of the initiator. To correct that obvious, bias and sectarian anomaly, The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) set up a powerful committee headed by its President-General and Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar. But after presenting its case with facts and figures the then president further exhibited his own restrained bias by trivializing the matter with another Religious bias. He queried the NSCIA which is a non-political body on why the Northern governors did not grant the Christians Land authority for building churches. Though, this same president knew that Land authorities were not granted to non-igbos in Eastern Nigeria for private or corporate business to build economic, political or religious outfits, yet he never asked the Easterners any question on that.

    It can be assumed that the so called National Confab was part of the then ruling party’s agenda for self-perpetuation in Governance. Now to rise up with Owls propaganda for restructuring on the platform of illegitimate National Confab and expect a new ruling political party that abhorred that confab is a parochial oddity on the part of the propagandist.

     

    Clarification

    As a matter of reality based on sincerity, this Columnist does not and has never agreed with the unitary system imposed on Nigerian people by the military junta. And I have written severally in the past calling for either a re-writing of the Nigerian Constitution by the people of Nigeria, or a fundamental amendment to the existing imposed constitution. It is therefore a deliberate accentuation of confusion by a political clique in the land to want to impose another subjective hidden agenda on the nation in the name of restructuring. The word restructuring cannot be found in the current Nigerian constitution and it cannot be smuggled into it through the back door by some human owls who are trying to overwhelm the populace with unpalatable media propaganda.

     

    Federal System

    Ordinarily, a Federal system in any democratic dispensation must have two wings which are technically called Exclusive and Concurrent lists.

    The Federal system used in Nigeria today is fundamentally different from the one adopted at the time of Independence in 1960 which was confirmed in the republican constitution of 1963. In that federal system, the Exclusive list which was to be maintained by the Federal Government contained only four items. These are The Central Bank, National Defense, The Foreign Affairs, and Immigration. Other issues such as education, prison, Police, and even constitution were concurrent. In other words, each region was entitled to having its own constitution, its own police, its own educational methodology and a substantial control on its human and material resources. Even the adoption of the American Federal System in 1979 was not supposed to make any serious difference from what had obtained in Nigeria. But like any other thing in Nigeria, the newly adopted Federal system became grossly abused through usurpation of power engendered by incessant military coups. Thus, the so called Federal Government based in the Federal capital allots much more percentage of the national budget to itself than to the states and the local governments. This is the main cause of the endemic corruption that we experience in the country today. The unwarranted enormous resources apportioned to the Federal Government are perceived as a fictitious booty by those at the helm of affairs at the federal level. And this has hindered any economic growth and infrastructural development at the state level where Governors and Civil Servants also want to live in affluence as much as those at the federal level. It was this scenario that created a platform for stealing competition and turned Nigeria into a nation of official thieves which could not be trusted with business transaction in the committee of Nations. The result is the pervading poverty and economic hopelessness which Nigerians are now passing through.

     

    Alternative to restructuring

    Calling for undefined restructuring at this time of Nigeria’s life is an obvious mischief indicating a hidden agenda. Rather than calling for unidentifiable restructuring, what reasonable people should advocate is amendment to the constitution. While the latter is straight-forward and constitutional the former is dubious and mischievous. Constitutional amendment has a legal procedure which can easily be followed on the basis of law; restructuring on the other hand is a confusion which cannot be authenticated by any sane law because of its tendency for misinterpretation and accommodation of hidden agenda. Calling for it therefore, is a glaring evidence of ignorance.

     

    The role of southern media

    The most disheartening and ridiculous aspect of the ongoing mischievous propaganda on restructuring is the role of Southern Nigerian media. In what looks like a professional bastardisation, the southern Nigeria media has thrown away the toga of professionalism and decorum while championing the propaganda on restructuring with shamelessness. The private radio stations and some state owned ones are the worst in this sphere. What they do on a daily basis is to constitute themselves into a court of law and invite sympathizers to their cause as prosecuting lawyers to discuss the matter.

    Incidentally, virtually all the invited discussants and the moderators are from the same tribe and the same religion. If you tune to 20 stations especially in Ibadan, the heart of Yoruba Land, you cannot hear a divergent opinion. They all sing the same tune and dance to the same music of their call for senseless restructuring. That trend only changed briefly when President Muhammadu Buhari went on a medical trip to UK and Vice-president Yemi Osinbajo acted as president. The trend of discussion in the Southwest media at that time clearly showed the Hidden Agenda of the mischief makers. And as soon as the President arrived in the country, the hatred for his person in this part of the country became manifest once again as evidence of the hidden agenda.

    The South-west media is therefore the prosecutor and the Judge on the issue of restructuring. If this kind of trend were to be followed in the Northern media according to the wish and desire of the people of that region, nobody would have been in a position to talk of peace in

    Nigeria. The southwest media is the main platform for promoting hate speech in Nigeria today and that is a misfortune of immeasurable stance. In any sane society, the media stands as a moderator of issues and an arbiter of conflicts rather than a promoter of hatred.

    “Surely Allah will not change the situation of a community until the people of such a community moderate their lifestyle” Q13 v11.

    If Nigeria must remain a country for all, the obnoxious stance of southwest media in Nigeria must stop henceforth. Criticism must be constructive and not destructive. A word is enough for the wise.

    Nothing makes America the obvious leader of the contemporary world than the great thought of some great American intellectuals and statesmen who from time to time encourage Goodness, Unity and Love among Americans irrespective of races, colours and religions. One of such men is Williams Webster who said as follows in one of his poems “If we work marble it will perish; if we rear temples they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and instil in them just principles: we are then engraving that upon tablets which no time can efface but will brighten to all eternity”.

    That should be the principle with which to propel Nigeria from a country into a Nation that can raise its head in the committee of Nations. It is not enough to copy America’s constitution and its style of governance. To be great as a Nation, we must also copy the great principles that make America a great Nation. GOD Bless Nigeria and Nigerians.

  • To where from Here?

     ”…And beware of a calamity that may afflict not only the transgressors amongst you to the exclusion of others and know that Allah’s retribution can be severe”.                 Q. 8:25  

    Preamble

    Writing a drama is like conceiving a pregnancy. For the drama to be practically actable, the writer must take into consideration not only the theme, the setting, the characters and the complications that may build up spirally to the climax in such a drama. He must also think of the anti-climax of the drama as well as its possible denouement.

    A playright’s ingenuity

    Nothing shows the ingenuousness of a playwright as vividly as the crew of actors who put into action the script that gives birth to the drama in question. It is like delivering a pregnant woman of her pregnancy. If the delivery process is not carefully handled, the deliverer may end up becoming an undertaker. And that is when a drama is said to be tragic.

    The world as a paradox

    The entire world today is a paradoxical theatre in which over seven billion human beings including Nigerians are watching a drama. Whether for ecstasy or dismay the viewers may randomly roar into controversies as the drama progresses. But the main concern of each viewer is what may become of his favourite character.

    In the current global drama against which we had been admonished in the Qur’an as quoted above, the concern of this columnist is the ‘colony’ called Nigeria. This is not just because the colony is my immediate constituency, it is also because Nigeria is the heart of Africa. And if anything negative happens to her the whole of Africa will cease to be at rest.

    Hidden agenda

    A clandestine script was unveiled in respect of Nigeria in 1995. Its contents revealed that this heart of Africa called Nigeria was heading for a break up by year 2015. The designers of this devilish agenda had set a timeframe of 20 years for its execution without suggesting any solution. And to portray their dream as a realisable one they kept hammering the probability of the success of that obnoxious project using some hazardous occurrences in the land as evidence.

    For students of International Relations, such a prediction could not have been strange. It was part of the strategies often used by the imperialists either to re-colonise some old colonies psychologically or to scoop on and dominate their economies in a typical capitalist manner. They had done it successfully in some other countries none of which is now firmly on her feet. Vietnam, Korea, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Sudan, Palestine and lately the entire Arab nations all of which have had their bitter tests.  It is a modern day equivalence of the 1884/1885 partition of Africa carried out in Berlin, Germany, by the European imperialists, which led to the colonisation of African continent. If any of the above countries had resisted the evil project and stood their ground, perhaps the world would have been spared of the throat-cutting threat posed today by the United States and her allies against what they perceive as lesser nations.

    The cult of capitalism

    Incidentally, the US which now champions the imperialists’ cult had also been a victim of this same imperialists’ guillotine especially in the hands of Britain. Yet, the cult of capitalism which has become their common bound would not allow the duo of US and Britain which had been mutually antagonistic to dwell differently today because it is only in such connivance that the gains of their common interest can be accomplished. Unfortunately, Nigeria doesn’t seem to have learned any lesson from countries that had toed the imperialists’ path .

    Rather than looking inwards for solution to our domestic problems as the US did before the two World Wars, our governments do not only look up to ‘Uncle Sam’ for solution even to a minor problem but also cry out to the President of America for help in minor hitches. It is just like the situation of a baby who has so much adapted to being spoon-fed that he would hold the ladle in his mouth even while asleep.

    Today’s Nigerians

    Today, Nigerians can hardly think on anything without reference to America. Whereas some progressive countries like Japan, China, India, Brazil and even the United States in their days of search for growth and development shut their doors to the world and made do with whatever they could produce internally which was why their sudden zoom into the limelight came to the world as a surprise. This has never taught Nigeria any lesson. Rather, all that matters here is empty and monotonous noise about becoming one of the biggest economies in year 2020 even when there is no concret plan for such. No truly progressive country has ever indulged in such a senseless propaganda with success. What would have ordinarily justified such propaganda is a surprising zooming into the global economic stage as the listed countries had done. But Nigeria’s endemic corruption that has become a culture would not allow such a progressive leap.

    Propaganda

    It can only take a shameless country like Nigeria  with so much wealth but lacking to embark on such a hopeless propaganda. Now, how our previous  government spent about $16 billion allegedly budgeted for revamping our electricity remains a question which many generations of Nigerians may not be able to answer. Yet, the focus of some evil agitatus is to ensure the continuity of corruption for personal and ephemeral benefits. Even as of today, patriotic Nigerians have not been shown any blueprint that could qualify them for such empty slogan being echoed about year 2020 without our input or mandate.

     In retrospect

    In the 1980s, under the self-styled military President Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, the slogan was ‘Housing for all or education for all or jobs for all in year 2000’. And the foremost megaphone at that time was  Prof Jerry Gana of MAMSA fame. That propaganda ended up in sheer deception. And in the 1990s, under the maximum despot called General Sani Abacha, the slogan was changed to ‘VISION 2010’. It also ended up in sheer fiasco after spending billions of naira.

    Then came a former military Head of State, Chief Mathew Aremu Okikiola Olusegun Obasanjo who claimed to have become a democrat without any tutelage. He started his democracy with a slot of the presidency and fooled Nigerians for eight years that became a wasted period in the history of Nigeria. It was on this man that Nigeria’s premium was hopefully placed albeit aimlessly because of his military antecedent and prison experience. His own invented slogan was that of hitting the top echelon of global economy in 2020. And the slogan was continually re-echoed until his exit from government in 2007 a few years away from the target mark. As at the time of his exit, Nigeria, like now, was without electricity, drinkable water, pliable roads, national airline, functional refineries and standard education programme that could propel any possible hope in the deceptive slogan. The pilots of that hopeless odyssey included northerners and southerners as well as Muslims and Christians. But the result, as usual, was an absolute failure. Thus, today, as an OPEC member nation, Nigeria remains the only country that exports crude oil and imports refined fuel for domestic consumption. Where are we going from here? In all OPEC countries, Petrochemical industries are a major point of hope for the citizenry. In petrochemical  industries, thousands of trained youths are employed and economic growth is vivid. But this has no place in the economic dream of Nigeria even as the noisy slogan for hopeless dream sounds louder.

    Rather, what our successive governments often  perceived as the problem was the backlash of their ineptitude which paved way for misrule. But none has ever thought of a possible solution.

    Implications           

    By relying on imperialist countries such as the US and Israel to help resolve the problem of insecurity  Nigerian government headed by former Goodluck Jonathan did not only admit its incompetence to protect the citizenry, it  also surrendered its authority to those countries and thereby compound the existing problems. After all, those invited countries were the manufacturers of the instruments of insecurity in our land. Security of a country is like the heart in human body. Handing it over to someone else is like paving way for one’s own death. No serious government will ever trivialise the existence of its nation to that extent. We all know that whoever pays the piper must surely dictate the tune. And in diplomacy, there is neither permanent friend nor permanent enemy.

    A government is said to be of essence and in control of affairs only if it is believed to be capable of protecting its citizenry and defending the territorial integrity of its nation. Any government that is incapable of doing this and would rather decide to throw the gates of its nation open to foreigners for whatever reason is unfit to be called a government. That was the prevailing situation for many years before the current government came on board. But despite all efforts by the current well intentioned regime to rectify the situation, the forces of evil are bent on the continuity of their evil machinations facilitated by indemnified corruption. Where are going from here?

    Partners in crime

    Globally, the tripod of the US, Britain and Israel are known for their unprovoked belligerence and implacable transgression against nations that refuse to comply with their imperialist policies. And it is probably in reference to such imperialist powers that Allah had warned mankind over a millennium and a half ago that: “…When imperialists encroach on a territory they audaciously pillage and brutally destroy it even as they subjugate the juggernauts therein to the level of servitude”. Q. 12: 22.

    Nigeria’s vintage position

    The real problem that Nigeria constitutes in Africa is that of serving as a regional incubator of corruption and yet connives with the engineers of Africa’s problems for unrealizable solution. In a logical poetic stanza many centuries ago, an Arab poet once opined thus:

    “We all blame our time for our misdemeanour; when the misdemeanour blamed on our time is actually in us; We smear time with all types of iniquities and yet expect time to cleans us of any blame; Were time endowed with mouth to comment on us, it would have blamed us for generating all crimes; Certainly no hyena eats a fellow hyena; as some of us humans openly eat our fellow human beings”.

     The truth of the matter

    The truth of the matter is that the roots of the multi-dimensional problems staring Nigeria on the face today are traceable mostly to the corridors of our government. Of all the vices that constitute seemingly insuperable problems for Nigeria today particularly corruption, none originated from a source other than that of the government. Even where such corruption happens in the private sector, it will be discovered to be a derivative of the public sector either through obnoxious policies or deliberate nepotism or religious irredentism. How, on earth, can we classify the case of a notorious so-called frontline cleric who was contracted by the government to smuggle arms and ammunition into the country from South Africa in the name of political patronage in a multi ethnic and multi religious society like Nigeria? Yet, the government wanted Nigerians to accept that fraudulent act as a normal business.

    Immunity clause

    The absurdity of immunity clause in Nigerian constitution is obviously an  authorisation of corruption for  some  rogues who are claiming to be political or religious leaders in the country. What justification will such rogues have in prosecuting or preaching the known thieves thereafter? Those who injected immunity clause in our constitution as well as those who are in position to remove it but rather chose to retain it are together accomplices in the entrenchment and spread of corruption in the land. Such people will have no logical reason to talk of fighting corruption because they are its creator and sustainers.

    Another evidence of audacious governmental corruption in Nigeria is manifest in the position of the so-called FIRST LADY. Here is a position which has no provision in the country’s constitution but which is given such prominence that classifies the occupier over and above the elected Vice-President at the federal level and Deputy Governor at the State level. This illegal position has no official budget but it is flamboyantly provided with such paraphernalia of office that compete almost favourably with that of the President or the Governor at the expense of the public. With this kind of illegal operation how can any Nigerian President or Governor morally question any corruption in which any public officer is involved? This is one of several areas in which President Muhammadu Buari deserves commendation even if evil politicians are blind to it. And now, the judiciary which is generally acknowledged as the last bastion of ordinary people’s hope has joined the bandwagon of monumental corruption in Nigeria. Where are we going from here?

     We are our own problem

    We are our own problem. We know the sources of what we call problems. But we inadvertently incubate such problems. And we know how to proffer solution to them. But, like ‘lotus eaters’ in ‘Odipuxs Rex’, we are so much drunk with illegality that it has become so difficult if not impossible for us to part with it. Thus, like the pot that calls the kettle black we continue to deceive ourselves by mischievously passing the bulk anytime the die is cast.

    Admonition

    Allah’s words will never look for relevance. They are foever the reference points for those who are rightly guided. Through such words, Allah warns in Qur’an 13:11 thus: “Surely, Allah does not change the situation of a nation or community until they themselves have resolved to change it through their attitude”. Acting the imperialists’ evil script as often done will do no one any good in Nigeria.

  • When tomorrow comes

    Preamble

    This is not just an article. It is rather a letter of appeal coming to Nigerian politicians from the pulpit of ‘The Message’ column. Similar letters were written in this column some years ago to the same group of people. Letters of this type seldom come to the arena of politics where conscience is banished and everything in life is based on whim even as self aggrandizement is considered to be the ultimate goal. Coming up at this precarious period of political labyrinth in Nigeria, this letter is necessitated by the current frightening political tension that is fast becoming a bubble which may bust anytime from now unless the Almighty Allah decides to save our country by His special Grace. If you politicians think that you can escape any calamitous as a consequence of your ongoing political machination which you are tendentiously weaving around Nigeria you may be day-dreaming. Those who engaged in similar machinations before yours in the 1960s, 1980s and 1990s had ended up in a forlorn.

    Functions of Conscience

    Conscience”, according to Sheikh Uthman Dan Fodio, “is an open wound which only the truth can heal”. But one can talk of healing a wounded conscience only where and when it has not become cancerous.

    Prophet Muhammad (SAW) once gave a vivid description of the signs by which hypocrites can be identified.

    He said “hypocrites are known by three signs: When they talk they lie; when they promise they renege and when they are trusted they betray”. In other words, conscience is not an costume in which hypocrites can clad.

    Most of you (Nigerian politicians) so much typify this situation that one wonders if the Prophet had Nigerians in mind when he was expressing that axiomatic Hadith.

    Deceptive Motive

    It will be recalled that when most of you started agitating for a return to democracy in the late 1990s while a despotic military demagogue held sway, your seeming focus was on liberation of the Nigerian citizenry from the crushing claw of military despotism. And you did that in the name of freedom fighters or human rights advocates. But hardly had you succeeded in leading the masses to drive away the military boys than some of you began to agitate for your selfish interest by claiming to want ‘to serve your people’.

    Thus, based on that claim, your godfathers or godmothers warmly embraced you not minding your hidden agenda especially when such agenda did not contradict theirs. That claim, which was the bait with which you deceptively lured ordinary Nigerians into the struggle that ended up in raising your own political pedestal to the height upon which you stand today was a covenant. And that covenant was not just between you and the people you claimed to want to serve but also between you and the Almighty Allah who knows every manifest and hidden agenda. And He will surely hold you accountable for it.

    To you, it does not matter whether you were genuinely elected or surreptitiously smuggled through the back door by depriving others, who were more qualified than you, of their legitimate rights.

    Your original claim before you were smuggled into whatever position you occupy today will be weighed against your action or inaction in that position or after you might have left the stage. And you will be judged accordingly.

    Just as you will call on God for justice if you were in the shoes of the deprived ones so they will take your case to God’s court in quest of justice. And the prayer of a cheated person, according to Prophet Muhammad (SAW), never suffers a divine denial.

    Remember

    As some of you once shamelessly graded figure 16 higher than figure 19 sometime ago and audaciously classified theft as a lesser crime than corruption all in the name of politics, you must remember that God’s justice can neither be manipulated nor subverted. And no matter how long it may take, Allah’s justice will take its courae perhaps when you least expect in life. When some of your colleagues were made to face the music of their criminal acts recently, you were expected to learn a lesson from their disgraceful plights. But since a dog that will die in perdition can never heed the warning whistle of a hunter it is not surprising that you are still arrogating the nation’s leadership to yourselves without thinking of the lessons that the younger ones can learn from your conduct on their way to the top. You have evidently demonstrated that you are not on antway qualified to bequeath any sensible legacy to the future generations.

    If anything, your thoughtless public utterances, your shameless public actions and counter actions as well as your devilish body language are more destructive to Nigeria’s future than ever imagined. In fact, you can be called anything but patriotic gentlemen of honour which you call yourselves and as such you are unprecedentedly a disgrace not only to Nigeria as a country. But since you seem to have permanently enlisted immorality as a vital instrument of politics without thinking of its consequences and thus behaving like intoxicated horses gallivanting around without reins.

    Life without Justice

    In Islam, two issues are fundamentally sacrosanct both of which Allah does not take lightly. These are sacredness of life and dispensation of justice. It is a great iniquity for any human being, especially Muslims, to engage in murder and injustice under any guise. Thus, anybody who kills fellow human beings extra-judicially in the name of religion or politics is nothing but an unbeliever of a sadistic nature. In Islam, killing a fellow human being deliberately under whatever guise, without passing through a due process of law, is such a grievous sacrilege that cannot and should not be perpetrated without commensurate penalty, if not here on earth, definitely in the hereafter.

    Allah’s Wrawth

    Besides paganism, nothing draws the wrath of Allah as fast as these two crimes which Satan may continue to ask you to ignore at your own peril. Murder is physical termination of the life of a fellow human being. Injustice is killing a person mentally, psychologically, politically or spiritually by denying him his legitimate right. Now, which of these has not occurred officially and severally in the course of your political sojourn? How will you explain it to Allah?

    Legislative Duty

    In Islam, rule of law is the foundation of justice but legislation is the material with which that foundation is built. Those of you who voluntarily chose to legislate for the rest of us hardly see yourselves as the foundation layers of justice who should not betray the course of justice. As legislators, you are looked upon by most Nigerians as honourable leaders neither because you are more qualified intellectually than those for whom you are legislating nor because you are wiser and more experienced than them. What makes most of you legislators in the lower or upper chambers of the legislative arm of government is sheer expediency arising from queer inadequacies sadly fostered by our so-called political system which gives room for gerrymandering and manipulation. If such opportunity comes your way illegally, let it not be mistaken for good luck. It may rather be a calamity waiting to strike in future.

    And when it strikes, no one except Allah can tell the extent of its effect. At least you can see how the consequences of the heartless annulment of June 12, 1993 Presidential election have become a draconian spectre chasing the ghost of every Nigerian even after almost two decades of licking our political wound.

    Subversion

    Due to lack of conscience, most of you may have forgotten, but you need to be reminded that shortly after you took oath of office either in 1999 or 2003 or 2007 or 2011 or 2015, you started subverting the covenant into which you voluntarily entered with the people who elected or nominated you directly or indirectly. That covenant is to serve them (the people). And those who serve are nothing but servants. But no sooner had you been sworn into office than you started calling yourselves leaders and not servants again. By implication, you have so dangerously promoted desperation and impunity to the front burner of Nigerian politics that whoever thinks of serving the country, today, through any public office is seen as a devil that must be kept at an arm’s length. From your public conduct, any right-thinking person can vividly see the types of families you are breeding for the nation.

    Executive Duty 

    As members of the Executive arm, when you travel abroad officially, at people’s expense, you are never alarmed by the way the systems work in those countries. You never bother to ask questions about the effective functions of electricity, the smoothness of roads, the flow of portable water and the excellent of educational system that promotes probity and decorum in those countries. Rather, your primary concerns are the personal ephemeral gains accruable to you at the expense of the present and the future. For the past 16 years of Nigeria’s fourth republic you have been at the saddle of government without being able to show in concrete terms what value has that length of time added to the lives of ordinary Nigerians. Your emphasis is power rather than governance and you often go about it in such a manner that gives the impression that government is much more about destruction than construction.

     Nigeria as OPEC Member

    As so-called political leaders, you do not even feel ashamed that Nigeria is the only OPEC country that imports refined petroleum products for domestic consumption simply because you are beneficiaries of the corrupt device which you deliberately put in place in the name of subsidy. Even if Nigeria never had electricity before now and wanted to start one to boost her economy, is a period of 18 years not enough to provide a functional one especially given the enormous amount of wealth with which she is endowed? In modern time, no technological device provides as much opportunity for jobs and economic growth as electricity. Yet, it is that major device that you deliberately hold down to deprive the populace of the wherewithal to rise mentally and intellectually so that you can turn them into perpetual slaves to be ruled forever. In such a situation, why wouldn’t corruption be unconscientiously legislated into legitimacy? And now, Nigeria is held to a standstill because every one of you must personally have a chip of any juicy future now without caring about what may become of your own children in future.

    As fathers and mothers, most of you will want your children to grow up as responsible men and women, yet, you have nothing in you that can serve as good examples for those children. You tell lies with relish. Yet you want your children to be truthful. From where do you expect them to inherit truthfulness? You steal public funds with unbridled audacity. Yet you do not want your children to be called thieves. What other names should the children of thieves bear other than thieves?

    Sermon

    The Message hereby implores you Nigerian politicians to search your conscience and fear God. Remember that some people had governed this country in the past. Among them were those who tried to combine the roles of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary together, in the name of military rule, made possible by coup d’état. Where are they today?

    Governance has its tenure. Four years may look endless, but for the wise, it is not more than a flash of lightening  which only a fool will rely upon to walk his way through the darkness of the night. You are in government today. But remember that you will soon become former this or former that just like those before you.

    Duties of public Servants

    Ordinarily, the duty of Civil Servants as government officials, whether in the executive, legislative or judicial wing, is to serve your country in such a way that you can create a historical window for yourselves through which the future generations can retrospectively peep into your lives with reverence. But since everything in Nigeria has been peculiarly monetized (courtesy of Obasanjo regime), it has become a rule that those who hold sway in government, in whatever capacity, must take the lion’s share of our national cake through our lean annual budget. That is why you randomly but embarrassingly throw some damaging pebbles into our political brook to cause unnecessary ripples in the serenity of that brook to the total disadvantage of today and tomorrow.

    Observation

    Some of you think or talk of impeachment only when your salaries, allowances or extra budgetary largess suffers a reduction or delay. It does not matter to you whether or not the entire workforce in Nigeria remains unpaid for years. Once you are able to amass whatever comes your way legally or illegally the rest of the populace can go on hunger strike forever. It is rather shameful and disappointing that even some of you who claim to be Muslims are participating in such an evil charade despite your proclamation of Islam.

    Conscience, though invisible, has a mirror which only a few people know of. That mirror is shame. A person without shame is a person without conscience. And that is the main distinction between a genuine Muslim and a nominal one.

    Prophet Muhammad (SAW) admonished the Muslims thus in respect of shame: “once you are bereft of shame, you can go ahead to do whatever you like”. This means that without shame you are a nonentity who can even strip naked in the market place in readiness for a brawl. We can all see the example of this in a former President of this country who is now menstruating through his mouth at any public place.

    Admonition

    Dear Nigerian politicians, let it be kept permanently in your brain that the only thing which keeps people alive in history even long after their demise is service to humanity. Prophets Isa (Jesus), and Muhammad (SAW), had neither bank accounts nor estates to bequeath to anybody. Their heritage is more than any material wealth for the entire world today. That heritage is service to humanity. What is your own planned heritage if only for posterity? That is a big question which only people with conscience can answer. And, as Muslims or Christians, you should be able to answer it if you truly follow the right guidance of those noble men of impeccable character.

    Remember that you are in a ship already voyaging on the high sea towards the shore. And at that shore are fierce customs officers waiting to check the contents of your cargo. Be always at alert. Remember that if you cultivate friendship with Satan he will favour your wish. But if he grants you one favour, he will take ten from you in return. Be Muslims by name, conduct and mannerism. Whatever you do as Muslims will affect the image of Islam in one way or the other. I hope you will return home as Muslims that you claim to be and not as renegades. Remember all this and adjust now that you may be able to raise your head aloft when tomorrow comes.

  • Nigeria: Islamisation or Christianisation?

    Preamble

    Two monotous and meaningless words are frequently used mischievously in Nigeria. One is Islamization. The other is maginalization. The one is used religiously while the other is used politically.  None of the two words can be found in any English dictionary because they are  coinages of some Nigerian mischievr makers who find religion and politics as tools for their game of mischieve. Thus, the two words are sometimes interchangeably used as missiles either as a way of disarming their perceived opponents or as a form of psychological intimidatton against them. Invariably, the two ridiculously monotonous words often used as hate speech are from the same source. Were the users of those words well informed, they would have known that such monotony is like an old song with a sour taste  that is unfitting to a civilized society and its continuity is clear evidence of blatant ignorance on the part of those who still cling to it.

     

    MUSWEN’s Reaction

    In a reaction to the use of the word Islamization by the Chritian Association of Nigeria (CAN), in reference to Nigerian secondary school curriculum recently,   the Muslim Ummah of Southwest Nigeria (MUSWEN) issued a press statement to put the record sreaight. Excerpts from the statement are as followa:

     

    Blackmail

    “The allegation of Islamis zation of the country is not a novelty. Whenever the Christian leaders find it difficult to constructively engage with an issue that relates to Muslims in the country, they readily resort to the false allegation of Islamization as blackmail. Unfounded claims of Islamization have now assumed such a ridiculous that it is now a laughing matter in the comity of nations.

     

    CAN’s belligerence

    We have watched with calmness how the leaderships of both the CAN and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) have, in recent times, taken such a combative posture in their seeming hatred for Islam and the Muslims that the once pwaceful coexistence between the adherents of Islam and Christianity in Nigeria have become mutually suspicious on any issue. Most worrisome is the recent pronouncement by the National Christian Elders’ Forum (NCEF) which paraded a number of retired Christian Generals including the hitherto  respected elder statesman, General Theophilus Danjuma.

    In a communiqué issued at the end of its meeting held in Abuja on Thursday, 13th July, 2017, which was reported in several newspapers (eg The Punch, July 14, 2017; Page 14), NCEF referred to what it regarded as “stealth/civilization Jihad” (whatever that was supposed to mean) and “violent Jihad”. The body accused those it called “Islamists” of plotting to impose what it described as “Sharia ideology” on the country. Furthermore, their understanding of the term “taqiyyah” to which they made reference was, to say the least, misinformed and an indication of their wrong perception of    Islam as a religion and a way of life.

    It was obviously mischievous for Nigerian Christian elders to ignore the fact that Boko Haram group chose a predominantly Muslim region as its theatre of war and devastated  its economy as much as it killed its people. At least, an overwhelming majority of those attacked were Muslims, and most of the places bombed were Mosques. What further evidence does anyone need to be convinced that the agenda of the Boko Haram group is largely targeted at mainstream Islam?

     

    Christian Generals

    MUSWEN is very disappointed that most of the news reports on the meeting of the NCEF highlighted the presence of retired Christian Generals at the meeting. Was this a deliberate act of intimidation? And what signals were those retired Christian Generals sending to the entire world?

     

    The Curriculum Issue

    The allegation, reportedly made by the National Christian Elders’ Forum (NCEF) at the same meeting, that the introduction of Religion and National Values as part of the revised curriculum for Basic Education “denigrates Christianity and promotes Islam” cannot be credited with evidence.

    In the same vein, the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria’s (PFN) claim made at its meeting held in Benin City on 29th June, 2017, that the Nigerian Education Research and Development Council (NERDC) was used as an instrument of religious indoctrination in favour of Islam (See: The Punch, Friday, July 14, 2017; Page 9) is false and highly misplaced.

    We are, however, delighted by the statement credited to the Senate President, Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki, when a delegation of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) visited him on Wednesday, 12th July, 2017. Senator Saraki was reported to have said to the delegation:

    “You will remember that in 2010, the past administration came up with reforms on how to reduce the number of subjects at the basic education level… There were about 20 subjects at that time, and subsequently they were reduced to 12… In the process of implementing those reforms, we have this problem. Why I am saying this is so we don’t leave here and believe that it was done to favour one religion over the other… Now the reform is clearly not working. So our responsibility is to look into that reform and make it work.” (See:http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/top-news/236774- saraki-speakscrk-irk-curriculum-controversy.html)

    When religious leaders can no longer address issues dispassionately without resorting to blackmail, blatant lies and falsification of facts to promote hatred against others, then the very foundation of the moral values of such leaders is largely questionable. “If gold should rust, what will then become of iron?”

    In Retrospect

    It should be recalled for posterity sake that the revised curriculum in question was approved in 2014 during the time of the former President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian. It is also instructive to note that the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Education Research and Development Council (NERDC) at the time was Prof Godswill Obioma, a Christian. (See: http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/166030-nigeria-revises-basic-educationcurriculum.html). What more, the Minister of State for Education, who superintended over Basic Education matters at the time, was no other person than Barrister Nyesom Wike, the current Governor of Rivers State who is a Christian! The question then is: why are the Christian leaders making a mountain out of a mole hill now that we have a Muslim President? If there is a need for policy change why can’t they say so without resorting to name-calling?

     

    The Misinformed CAN President 

    The CAN President, Rev. Samson Ayotunde, during his visit to the Acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo was reported to have referred to the Arabic language in the curriculum as “Islamic Arabic Studies”. (See: http://staging.thenationonlineng.net/can-visitsosinbajo-demands-five-point-agenda/). For CAN President’s information and others like him, there is no such subject as “Islamic Arabic studies in Nigeria’s curriculum of education. Arabic is a language, like English, French or German, and not a religion as mischievously claimed by CAN’s President.

    Arabic is not only spoken by over 700 million native and non-native speakers across the world including many Christians and it is also one of the six major languages used for the conduct of official bussiness of many international organizations including the United Nations (UN).

     

    Sultan speaks

    In a recent pronouncement, the Sultan of Sokoto and President-General of  Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), His Eminence, Alhaji Muhammad Sa‘ad Abubakar, vehemently refuted the claim of ‘Islamization’ of Nigerian polity saying that Muslim leaders had been in the forefront of the demand that the study of religion should be made compulsory in public schools. In fact, Muslims have always insisted that every child should be taught the religion of his or her parents in line with the relevant provisions of the Constitution of Nigeria. (See Section 38 (1), (2) and (3) of the 1999 Constitution). We stand by this.

    It is, therefore, a welcome relief that the Federal Government has announced that both Islamic Studies and Christian Religious Studies should now be taught as stand-alone subjects throughout the country. We hope this will finally lay to rest all the avoidable insinuations, blackmails and falsehood being disseminated to Nigerians by CAN and its agents through the media.

     

    Christianisation Rather than not Islamization

    It is ironic that those who inherited and perpetrated the imposition of a colonial Euro-Christian educational system on Nigeria are the ones now mischievously alleging Islamization of education in Nigeria. It is a fact of history that for more than a century, particularly in Yorubaland, educational system was the potent instrument employed to “catch them (Muslim children) young” by Christian evangelical teachers who subject those Muslim school pupils to Christian indoctrination and force them to drop their Islamic identities for those of Christianity. Thus, ‘Christianization through education’ agenda was been consistently pursued with vigour for decades even though virtually all the schools were grant-aided by governments. Virtually every Muslim family in Yorubaland has a story to tell about the historical subjection of Muslim pupils and students to a crude but brutal Christianization agenda through education.

    Even today, many Christian teachers and school administrators still deny Muslim pupils  their religious rights as Ministries of Education in many States refuse to employ teachers of Islamic Studies apparently as a way of forcing those pupils to take Christian Religious Studies .

     

    CAN’s hypocrisy

    CAN’s bellicose objection to anything Muslim, such as the provision of access to interest-free financial services, is held with shock and amazement. Ironically, the governors of some predominantly Christian-populated states in the country have either secretly obtained or applied for interest-free loans from the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), an institution which they  often publicly condemn or derogate. It was a onetime Christian President, Chirf Olusegun Obasanjo who facilitated the country’s membership of the Islamic Development Bank to the immeasurable benefit of all Nigerians irrespective of their religions and most of the beneficiaries of that facility are Christians. Yet, the irritating noise of Islamization of Nigeria continues to sound loud.

     

    Conclusion

    The challenges facing our nation today call for a profound spiritual and moral overhauling of the polity. Giving a child education without the fear of God amounts to making him or her a clever devil. The immoral practice of subjecting a child to instruction or participation in a religion other than that of his or  her parent’s is criminal and should be stopped forthwith. This is the only way to have a truly pluralist society and a peaceful nation. God save Nigeria!?

  • The Prophet’s medicine

    Preamble

    This article is a follow up to that of last Friday in which the bee was described as ‘The Insect that Heals’. Both articles are a deliberate diversion of readers’ attention from the economic and political   madness of this moment in Nigeria.

    Such diversion becomes necessary as a relief from the current overwhelming tension in a country where every news item is sad and every hope turns forlorn. A worthy columnist must know when to bite and when to blow editorially if only to sustain the readership of his/her column. This is the time of mental, physical and psychological trauma in Nigeria for which there must be a soothing medicament.

     

    Appropriate medicament

    Incidentally, the most appropriate medicament for all ailments including trauma is the one prescribed by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) about 1,440 years ago which still remains as potent today as it was when it was prophetically prescribed. And it will keep remaining relevant for the rest period of human existence on earth.

    Prophet Muhammad’s prescription was a practical fine-tuning of the coded medicine primordially prescribed by the first human being who bore the name Adam.

    Prophet Adam, the primogenitor of mankind, was hardly one hour old when he started prescribing medicine against ailments. He was commanded by Allah to teach the Angels the names of all things which they (the Angels) had confessed not to know. By teaching the Angels, Adam thus became a teacher to the Angels and this made teaching the very first profession of man. But, those in the information sector could, as well, argue that what Adam did was more of information dissemination than teaching or prescription.

     

    First human profession

    There is tendency that a fierce debate might ensue between teachers and journalists on the one hand and both of them and the medical experts on the other over what can be called the first profession of man on earth. But the truth is that all the three professionals are right. By teaching, a teacher informs. By informing, a journalist teaches. And by medicating, a doctor helps to dispel ignorance. Thus, the three professions are mutually complimentary.

     

    Prophet Adam as a doctor

    By teaching the Angels, what Prophet Adam really did was to cure the worst disease in them as well as in man. That disease is ignorance. Shortly before the creation of Adam, Allah informed the Angels that He was going to create a new living being and put him in charge of the garden to be called the earth. But, feigning knowledge, the Angels kicked against the plan and advised their Lord not to do it. Allah then told them in a tone of finality that “I know what you do not know”. (Q.2:31). It eventually took Adam, by Allah’s command, to heal those Angels of the disease of ignorance in them.

    If Adam had not taught them the names of all things on earth, as revealed in the Qur’an, the Angels would have remained ignorant forever. And, Allah’s messages to mankind, as contained in the divinely Revealed Books, would not have come mankind through them.

     

    Categories of medicine

    In ordinary man’s view, medicine is the substance required to cure an ailment. Such substance may be natural or artificial. It may also be as crude as herbs or as sophisticated as surgery. However, it is generally believed that a person does not need medicine unless he is ill. That is why the Western conventional medicine is rather curative than preventive. Illness resides in the body just as ignorance makes the mind its abode. Today, in most cases, people neither go to the hospitals nor take medicine unless they are sick.

     

    Prophet Muhammad’s prescription

    Though unlettered, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had known the different types of medicine before he diagnosed two basic ailments and prescribed two fundamental medicines for them. The first of these ailments is ignorance. The second is poverty. And poverty in this case is not lack of material wealth alone as many people erroneously believe. It is also lack of many things including health and conscience. Thus, in Islam, ailment is basically of two classes: ignorance and poverty. Many people are victims of one. Many more are victims of both.

     

    Analysis

    A person is said to be poor-sighted when he cannot see well without artificial aid. He is deemed poor in memory when his remembering ability becomes weak. He is also pronounced poor in health when some of his body organs malfunction or when he loses some active enzymes or minerals or vitamins. Thus, man may be poor, not in terms of money or material needs but despite his possession of both.

    As an antidote for ignorance, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) prescribed the Qur’an. And for body ailment, he prescribed honey.

     

    The role of the Qur’an

    Qur’an is the encyclopedia of life which personifies knowledge in all its ramifications. There is nothing about knowledge, whether spiritual or mundane, in this world or the hereafter that is not fully explained in the Qur’an.

    By recommending the Qur’an as medicine for ignorance, therefore, the Prophet simply provided cure for the ailment of the mind. And by prescribing honey for body ailments he encouraged elongation of life expectancy through a boost to human immune system. It is not by accident that a whole chapter in the Qur’an (chapter 16) is named after the insect that produces honey. Verse 68 of that chapter reads thus:

    “And your Lord revealed to the bee (saying): Build your homes in the mountains, in the trees and in the hives which men shall make for you. Feed on every kind of fruit and follow the trodden path of your Lord’. From its belly comes forth a fluid of many hues as healing (drink) for mankind. Surely in this, there is a sign for those who can reason….”

     

    Products of the Bee

    Contrary to general belief, honey is not the only product of the bee. There are six others so far known to man. These are: propolis; pollen; royal jelly; bees wax; bee venom and bee bread. More can be discovered as research continues in line with the Qur’anic challenge. Each of these products has specific functions in maintaining and immunizing the human hormone system.

     

    Characteristics honey

    Honey is one of the products of the bee. It is the most popular of the bee products. It is a special fluid with various hues odours and flavours. For instance there are bitter, white and granulated honeys which most people do not know of. Honey is the foremost known natural product that serves as both food and medicine. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, once reportedly told his patients while prescribing honey for them thus: “let your food be your medicine and your medicine your food”. There is no known nutritional value in terms of vitamins, minerals and enzymes that is not proportionately present in honey.

     

    Composition of honey

    A raw, pure honey contains about 80 different substances that are most important for human nutrition. Besides glucose and fructose, honey contains all of the B-complex minerals like vitamins A, C, D, E and K as well as trace elements such as magnesium, sulphur, phosphorus, iron, calcium, chlorine, potassium, iodine, sodium, copper and manganese. The enzyme content of honey is one of the highest of all existing foods. Honey also contains and antimicrobial and antibacterial factors.

    The composition and nutritional value of honey differ in relation to the floral sources from which honeybees do pick their raw materials. For example, a recent research supports the claim that dark coloured honey has larger amount of antioxidants than brown. The inorganic contents of honey, minerals and other trace elements, play a significant role in human metabolism and nutrition. Owing to its chlorine content, honey is appreciated as an excellent tonic and helps people to overcome suffering from constipation and other enteric problems.

     

    Doses of honey

    Whereas no synthetic medicine can and should be taken by any ill person without doctor’s prescription, honey requires no such prescription for anybody who is not allergic to it because it has no side effect. The suggestion in certain quarters that honey can cause piles is based on ignorance. As a multipurpose natural food and medicine, honey can be taken alone or along with other foods albeit in moderation.

    And as an antiviral and antibiotic substance, honey is the best medicine for the eye and the ear diseases as well as tooth ache, insomnia, staphylococcus, constipation, whitlow, burns and wounds. After many centuries of disputing these facts ignorantly, conventional doctors finally came to realize that no medicine is as effective in sealing up surgical wounds and healing sores as honey. Today, honey is used for these purposes in most public hospitals in various parts of the world including Nigeria.

     

    Products of the Bees

    As mentioned above, the products of the bees are seven. These are: honey, propolis, pollen, royal jelly, beeswax, bee venom and bee bread. Each of these products has a potent value in the life of man. For instance, royal jelly is the secret of the longevity of the Queen of England and even that of her mother called the Queen mother just as pollen was the secret behind the strength of a onetime American President, Ronald Reagan at old age.

     

    Honey

    To produce honey alone, the bees make contact with about 250,000 plants picking and metabolizing their flower nectars. It is possible for them to contact more plants depending on the richness of the vegetation in which they dwell. (Nectar is the main raw material which the bees use to produce honey).

     

    Propolis

    Propolis is produced by the bees from the resin of certain specific trees identifiable only by the bees themselves. Through research, propolis has come to be known as the strongest anti-biotic ever discovered by man. This product is used not only to protect the living but also to preserve the remains of the dead as well. At least it is on record that the famous historic Egyptian mammies were embalmed with propolis several millennia ago. This same propolis is the product used by the bees, themselves, to sterilize their bodies against bacteria and secure their hives against viruses brought in by predators. Whenever they sting such predator to death, it is propolis they use to embalm it to prevent its decaying body from polluting the hive.

     

    Pollen

    Pollen is the secret of strength in old age.  It heals almost all the old age diseases like prostate, arthritis, pneumonia and bronchitis. It rejuvenates the nerves and reinvigorates the hormonal glands especially in the aged.

     

    Royal jelly

    Royal jelly is the bee product that prolongs life and solves the problem of infertility in men and women. It is the exclusive food of the queen bee which enables her to lay an average of 2000 eggs per day.

     

    Bee venom

    Bee venom is a natural antibiotic vaccine which strengthens human immunity against all diseases. It works like magic in the human system especially when applied through the natural acupunctural points in the body.

     

    Beeswax

    Bees wax, as distinct from other products, is used to produce non-chemical cosmetics and to coat pharmaceutical and capsules like multivites to protect the potency of the substances used to produce the.

     

    Bee bread

    Bee bread is the lava of the young bees. It is used by the apitherapists to prevent or heal children’s diseases.

    The use of each of these products to heal human ailments depends on the extent of knowledge of apitherapy possessed by the user. (Apitherapy is the use of bee products to prevent or heal human or animal ailments). A specialist in this field is called apitherapist.

    The uniqueness of using these products for healing or prevention of diseases is in the fact that they do not entail any negative side effect because of their natural potency. And that is a major sharp difference between them and the synthetic drugs manufactured chemically by the conventional pharmacists.

     

    Summary

    If most people were knowledgeable about the efficacy of the bee products in preventing and healing diseases, hospitals would have been less congested and substantial percentage of their incomes would have been saved to enhance the quality of their lives. The world of bees is a wonderful world. It takes only those who know it to appreciate it and benefit from its healing miracle.

    Through divine instinct, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had known this almost one and a half millennia ago and he had recommended it to mankind for their survival. The case of the bee and honey is like that of the hen and the egg. No one can tell with precision which of them first came into existence. The fact that honey is still a subject of scientific research today is a further confirmation that the prophecy of the unlettered Arabian man called Muhammad (SAW) is truly divine.

     

    Conclusion

    Without the bee there can be no honey. And without honey, the bees cannot exist since honey is the food upon which they depend for survival.

    The story of the insect called bee is inexhaustible despite centuries of research on it. It is therefore impossible to tell it all in a one page column of this type. That Prophet Muhammad (SAW) knew this much even as an unlettered person at a time when the world was assailed by blatant ignorance and primitivism is a further confirmation of Michael Hart’s classification of him as the greatest human being that ever lived.

     

    Information

    Four Muslim brothers across three Universities successfully delivered their inaugural lectures recently. They are Professor Lai Olurode of the Socology Department, University of Lagos; Professors Ishaq Lakin Akintola and Lateef Adetona of Religious Studies Department, Lagos State University, Lagos, Nigeria and Professor Fehintola of the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The Message Column joins many well wishers in congratulating them all and in wishing them further higher pedestals in their respective academic careers. Amin.

  • Pa Abbas: A father’s legacy

    “And your Lord has decreed that you should worship none except Him and be kind to your parents (especially) when one or both of them attain old age. Do not ever bully on them or shun them. Address them with gentle voice and humility. And always pray Allah to be compassionate with both of them as they were compassionate with you at childhood”. Q. 17: 22.

    Man after demise
    “Man surely becomes a subject of talk after his demise. Whoever is privileged to be alive should therefore endeavour to become a pleasant talk for those coming behind”. -By an Arab poet.

     

    Preamble
    Inna Lillah, wa inna ilayhi raji’un. We are all from God and to God we shall all return. Those whose fathers are still alive should conscientiously abide by the above quoted verse of the Qur’an. I just lost my own father. It is after such demise that one realizes that a father in the life of his children is like a sun beaming its rays to a farm and photosynthesizing the crops therein for nourishment and fruitfulness. At a stage, the scorch of such rays may become unbearable for the crops. But without the rays, those crops may lack the energy for growth and nourishment. Until the sun sets, the crops may not know its value in their lives.

     

    The Book of life

    Human life is like a book of many chapters. Each chapter often opens to another in what may constitute a smooth reading for those who are left behind to read it. Every human being is, consciously or unconsciously, a writer of a book and the readers are free to analyze or interpret the chapters of the book according to their understanding.

     

    Man’s Journey in life

    In the introduction to his autobiography, Nigeria’s first President, the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe wrote thus about human life:

    “Man comes into the world and while he lives, he embarks upon a series of activities absorbing experience which enables him to formulate a philosophy of life and to chart his causes of action. But then, he dies. Nevertheless, his biography remains a guide for those of the living who may need guidance, either as a warning on the vanity of human wishes or as encouragement or both”.

     

    Pa Abbas’ resume

    At a time when birth records were hardly available, Alhaji Muhammadul Awwal Oyelola Makajuola Abbas Abioye was born in Iwo, Osun state in about 1913. He was the second of his parents’ eight children, all of whom except one were males. Pa Abbas was one year older than the country called Nigeria. He was not just a contemporary of Nigeria’s first indigenous rulers; he was actually a friend of some of them. Despite his limited literacy, he was particularly close to Obafemi Awolowo and Samuel Ladoke Akintola but more to the latter than the former. There was no official record for his birth but we (his children) were able to determine his age when he told us that his friend, Chief S.L. Akintola was older than him by one year. And since the latter was born in 1912, we concluded that our father, Pa Abbas was born in 1913, a year before the amalgamation of what became Nigeria. Though, born in Iwo, he settled down for a living with his parents in Afaake, Ejigbo local government of Osun State.

    Through his peregrination in life, Pa Abbas came across many useful instances and met many people of substances. At a time, he was an apprentice in carpentry which became his first calling in life. It was he along with some of his artisan colleagues who carried out the carpentry work of our family house in 1954. He also led some other carpenters into fixing the carpentry works of our elementary school, Tajudeen primary school, Ilawo of which he was a board member.

     

    His travels

    Besides his brothers who sojourned in Abidjan and other cities and towns of Cote d’Ivoire, no villager from Afaake can claim to be more travelled than Pa Abbas whose journeys through apprenticeship and political traverses took him across regions in Nigeria including the North, the South-West, the then Mid-West and South-East. By the local standard of the 1950s and 1960s, he was a traveler par excellence. He climaxed those journeys with a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1975, the year in which a onetime Head of State, Murtala Muhammed performed Hajj.

     

    His artisanship years

    Apart from his engagement with carpentry, Pa Abbas was also involved in produce buying of cocoa and palm kernel which encouraged him to establish a big farm of cocoa plantation in Ondo state. That was in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

    Some years later, Pa Abbas discovered that the farmers in the village including his own father were not prosperous in cocoa farming because they depended fully on wild cocoa plantation that yielded few profitable products. He therefore invited some agriculturists to introduce cocoa nursery to his village, Afaake. With this, he gathered all the farmers in the village for tutorial on how to plant and nurse modern cocoa trees. From there, a cooperative emerged which was named ‘Egbejoda’ (short form: Egbeda), meaning ‘cooperative farming’. It was also Pa Abbas who introduced tobacco farming to Afaake farmers.

     

    Impact

    This adjusted the focus of those farmers against the mono-product cash crops that cocoa represented in the late 1950s. Tobacco farming turned out to be so profitable that most farmers in the village almost forgot about cocoa. Yet, in the early 1960s, it was also Pa Abbas that introduced commercial pineapple farming to Afaake village in which both men and women were assiduously engaged. The pineapple farming reigned for quite some time as merchants came from Moore plantation and other relevant companies in Ibadan to purchase the products in bulk. All these activities opened the eyes of the village farmers to the value of agricultural commerce.

     

    Contribution to manpower development

    Pa Abbas’ inquisitiveness in life was not limited to agricultural endeavour alone; it extended to the building of human intellect and manpower. For instance, when adult education was introduced by the Action Group government in 1954, Pa Abbas was the one who invited the mobile teachers to Afaake village to teach the male and female farmers how to read and write in what was called adult literacy classes. Through that skill, some farmers in the village were able to read and write. Foremost among them was Pa Abbas himself. And when the same Action Group government introduced free primary education in 1955, it was the same Pa Abbas that championed the sighting of one of those schools in Ilawo to serve the three adjacent villages of Ilawo, Afaake and Inisha-Edoro. That was the beginning of civilization in the area. The school was named Tajudeen primary school, Ilawo. After the establishment of that school, Pa Abbas took it upon himself to ensure the enforcement of attending the school by every child in Afaake. And he did not stop there, he also wrote to those who settled in Cote d’Ivoire to send their children and wards home for enrolment in the school.

     

    Effect of education

    Many children who attended that school including yours sincerely have risen in life to become men and women of positive identities. Through those invaluable efforts, the family of Abbas Abioye has become a towering citadel of knowledge that no tempest can wipe off the scene. At least, there is no notable profession today in which the children of Abbas are not found. Among his children, his grandchildren and his great grandchildren and their spouses are professionals like Lawyers, Accountants, Doctors, Engineers, Lecturers, Civil servants, Farmers, Businessmen and women, as well as communicators like yours sincerely. If any human tree of value can be regarded as a reference point in both Western and Islamic education in Osun state today, Abbas family will be foremost courtesy of Pa Abbas’ effort, despite his half-literacy. This confirms the verse of the Qur’an which goes thus;

    “Have you not seen how your Lord has planted a seed of words like a gargantuan tree standing gorgeously with its roots firmly planted in the belly of the earth and its foliages sprouting gorgeously into the firmaments of the sky…?”  Q. 14: 24.

     

    His contribution to religious development

    It was the same Pa Abbas who initiated the idea of building a mosque in Afaake and led a team of other carpenters to package the carpentry apparel of the mosque. He also introduced madrasa system of education into the mosque and championed the hiring of a mu’allim (malim) to teach the village children who were attending Tajudeen primary school. Pa Abbas’ contribution to human and material development of the village was quite legendary and the evidence is still vivid today. He did not only encourage children to attend school for Western education, he also geared them towards acquisition of Islamic education through attendance of Madrasah. Thus, most of the children who attended Tajudeen primary school also attended Madrasah as Pa Abbas believed that acquisition of Western education was incomplete without Islamic education.

     

    His philosophy of life

    In his philosophy of life, Pa Abbas believed that no matter how much was realized from farm products, it could not be as valuable and as lasting as education. He does advised all other farmers in the village to invest in the education of their children, pointing to them that the future of those children would depend on the education they were given. He therefore invited the then headmaster of Tajudeen primary school, Mr. Bisi Akande, who later became the governor of Osun state to enlighten those farmers on the importance of education. And the latter did that dedicatedly in style.

    Although Pa Abbas was not quite literate, his exposure through travels made his philosophy of life a pattern of that of an American statesman and intellectual, Williams Webster who stated thus inter alia:

    “If we work marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust. But if we work upon immortal minds and instil in them just principles, we are then engraving that upon tablets which no time can efface but will brighten to all eternity”.

    Were it possible for the demised to look back and evaluate his contribution to human growth and development, Pa Abbas would have heaved a sigh of relief even while approaching the gates of paradise with confidence.

    “Who shares his life’s pure pleasure and walks the honest road; who trades with heaping measure and lifts his brother’s load; who turns the wrong down bluntly and lends the right a hand; he dwells in God’s own country and tills the Holy Land”. We are living witnesses.

    The old man (Pa Abbas) passed on quietly in his sleep at about 4 a.m. on Thursday, August 10, 2017 at the ripe age of 104 and he was interned at about 3 p.m. same day.

    God bless the souls of way-pavers. God bless the rightly-guided followers who handed over the baton to other rightly-guided men and women. God bless the soul of Pa Abbas and his likes.

     

     Conclusion

    That is the legacy of a father who had a vision not only for his own children but for the children of others as well as adults who aspired to make the world a pleasant place to live in. That vision was not just a dream, but also the realization of a dream. As a worthy son of this great father, if I did not write this article in commemoration of a man who left a footprint on the sands of time to show gratitude for good deed, who else should do it? If this is an ode to a gold mind who continues to live in glorious history, let those who value glory read it again and again. This legacy is indelible and we thank Allah for it.

     

     Appreciation

    The entire family of Abbas Abioye home and abroad seizes this opportunity to thank all relatives, friends and well-wishers who attended the Janazah or attempted to attend it despite the short notice. We also thank those who sent messages of condolence praying Allah to stand by them all in all circumstances of life. God bless you all.

  • 1979 in contemporary history

    Today, ‘The Message’ chooses to migrate psychologically from the insanity of Nigeria’s political/ religious rigmarole to the global political tempest if only for a change. After all, elasticity has its own limit. And by so migrating, if  temporarily, some relief may come to the readers of this column over the current suffocating economic heat in the country. That is a way of ventilating a peaceful atmosphere for peace-loving Nigerians.

     

    Genesis of Today’s Global Crisis

    Some years ago, Al-Jazeera Television throbbed with   breaking news, saying that a United States military aircraft strayed into the airspace of Iran and the latter promptly responded by shooting it down. Iran announced another incident of the like a few days later. This disturbing development has further aggravated the tension between both countries, which had started with the Iranian revolution since 1979. That revolution had uprooted the country’s imperial despotism which had despotism had caged the citizens of that country for decades.

     

    U.S.’ Reaction

    In reaction to the fotuitous incident, the US authorities explained that the destination of the shot aircraft was Afghanistan and not Iran. They explained that its pilots accidentally lost control and strayed into Iranian territory.

     

    Threat to British Embassy  

    Shortly before that incident, Some Iranian students had besieged the British Embassy in Tehran, protesting the meddling of David Cameron’s government in the internal affairs of Iran. And in retaliation, Britain quickly evacuated her diplomats in Tehran and sent the latter’s diplomats in London packing despite Iran’s regret over those students’ action.

     

    Genesis of faceoff

    The genesis of the faceoff between Iran and the West took roots in the latter’s unexpected revolution of 1979. The faceoff actually started in February 1979 when Iran jumped onto the world stage with a surprising revolution. February 11, 1979 was the precise climax of a struggle, in that country, which began in 1963 between the oppressed people who were seeking emancipation from the shackles of imperialism and the implacable oppressors who wanted to keep that country’s innocent peasants in perpetual subservience. The success of that revolution has since changed the grand design of the Western powers for the Muslim world.

     

    The Grand Design

    That grand design was first expressed in 1902 by a British Prime Minister, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman when he observed as follows:

    “There are people who control spacious territories teeming with manifest and hidden resources.  They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the cradles of human civilizations and religions. These people have one faith, one language and the same aspirations. No natural barriers can isolate them from one another….If, per chance, these people were to be unified into one state it would then take the fate of the world into its hands and separate Europe from the rest of the world. Taking these considerations seriously, a foreign body should be planted in the heart of this nation to prevent the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could exhaust its powers in never- ending wars. It could also serve as a spring board for the West to gain its coveted objects”.

     

    Follow Up

    Sir Bannerman’s observation was in further pursuit of an earlier demand by one Theodor Herzl, a leader of the Zionist movement founded in 1879. Herzl, an Austrian Jewish lawyer and journalist demanded thus:

    “Let sovereignty be granted us (Jews) over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest, we shall manage by ourselves…”

    In response to that clandestine demand, another British Prime Minister, James Arthur Balfour issued a devastating declaration that now bears his name, which conceded a major part of Palestine to the Zionists as a home. That (Balfour) declaration has since put the Middle East in an incessant turmoil. The declaration read thus in part: “His majesty’s Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this objective…. The rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country shall not be prejudiced by the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

     

    Implementation

    To facilitate that objective effectively, some other Middle East countries had to be decapacitated economically and politically by excising from them, a juicy chunk of their lands. Thus, Lebanon was excised from Syria and Kuwait from Iraq. The strategy was to cause a dissention among the citizens of those countries with the intention of breaking the yoke of the Muslim unity which Bannerman had targeted in his infamous observation of 1902 quoted above.

    Now, how does Iran come into this picture when she is not an Arab country?

    That is a logical question that anybody who is not quite familiar with the Middle East and the intricacies of its political and economic set up would ask. Naturally, Iran is affected by three major factors: Politics, economy and culture. And by culture here, we mean ISLAM. Iran is a foremost Islamic country even if her official language is farisi and not Arabic. And, as an Islamic Country, whatever affects other Muslim countries must affect her.

     

    Turkey for instance

    The case of Turkey is a good example of a Muslim country of no-Arabic origin. Turkey was though not an Arab country, she was nevertheless the seat of the Islamic Caliphate until 1924 when a diabolical agent of the West came on stage as Head of State. His name was Mustafa Kemal Ataturk; a man who wanted to prove to the West that it was possible for a non-Catholic to be “Holier than the Pope” especially when it came to adopting the so-called Western Civilization. On March 3, 1924, just one year after assuming office as the ruler of Turkey, Ataturk introduced a Bill to the Turkish Parliament seeking to secularize his country by abolishing the office of the caliph without any consideration for the feelings and sensibility of the people he ruled.

    Presenting the Bill, Ataturk said: “Ottoman Empire was built and existed on the principle of Islam. Islam is Arabic in character and in concept. It shapes from birth to death, the lives of its adherents; it stifles hope and initiative. The Republic (of Turkey) is threatened by the continued existence of Islam in its midst….”

    With the passage of that Bill, Turkey was recognized as a secular state. Politics was separated from religion and Islam was relegated to a personal matter rather than the state religion that it was before then. The caliphate was abolished and Islamic law was abrogated. Ataturk borrowed the new Turkish civil law from Switzerland, the criminal law from Italy and the international law of trade from Germany. The Muslim personal law was harmonized with the European civil law. Religious instruction in public schools was prohibited. Purdah system was abolished and declared illegal. Co-education was introduced to schools. The use of Arabic alphabets was prohibited and replaced by the Latin Script. Adhan (the call to prayer) was no longer to be made in Arabic but in Turkish language while the national costume was changed to that of the Europeans even as the wearing of hat was made compulsory. What Ataturk did not do was to abrogate the tenets of Islam completely.

    Thus, by one man’s whim, Turkey lost her values and heritage of centuries in a bid to adopt the so called ‘modernity’ brought by ‘Western civilization’. One can imagine what Islam would have become today if countries like Iran, Indonesia and Pakistan had adopted the same misfortune.

     

    The emergence of Ayatullah Khomeni

    It was this same situation that prompted the late Iranian spiritual leader, Ayatullah Ruhullah Mousavi Khomeini to embark on the liberation struggle in 1963 that culminated in a successful revolution in 1979. Unlike Ataturk, however, Imam Khomeini knew that the greatest virtue that could be lost in the life of man was culture. He knew that without a clear-cut culture man couldn’t be better than a beast. He knew that such values as law, education and religion, which guide man in his peregrinations on earth, are the attributes of culture. He knew that a nation, which surrenders its culture and adopts that of another nation, has enslaved herself permanently to the caprice of the latter nation. Thus, Khomeini saw Islam, (the culture of over one billion Muslims in the world at that time), as the target of the Western imperialists, which needed defence and protection.

     

    The Revolution

    No one believed in 1979 that a mass protest which started like a small political billow, engendered by the country’s unarmed Mullahs could eventually grow into such a great magnitude of political ‘earthquake’. By the time the foggy dust finally settled, a new Iran had emerged from the debris of the old. Against the wish and expectation of the capitalist West, the secular, monarchical Iran became an Islamic republic. The drama was quite electric.

    Characteristic of the West, all hands were put on deck, at that time, to ensure that an Islamic republic did not succeed the tyrannical monarchy headed by the Shah Pahlavi and heavily backed up by the oppressive West. America was most active in that ambitious but vain effort. She would not easily allow the massive benefit she had been enjoying for decades in that oil-rich country, under the Shah regime, to slip out of her hands just like that. Thus, under the pretext of wanting to rescue her citizens from the siege laid by Iranian students on that country’s embassy, in Tehran, the US attempted an invasion of the country.  The espionage activities by the American diplomats, inside that embassy, against the new Islamic government in Iran had warranted the siege.

     

    The American strategy

    While a number of US F15 bomber jets were approaching Iran, President Jimmy Carter engaged his country’s press in a chat without giving any hint of the impending military operation in Iran. The tactics was to divert the attention of the press and that of the country from the illegal Pentagon’s military expedition. But no sane person can ever fault the contents of the Qur’an. More than 1400 years before that incident, a verse of the Qur’an had been revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) thus: “They (the unbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemed. Allah is the supreme schemer”. Q. 3:54.

    Jimmy Carter’s thought was that by the time he would be finishing his press address, the news would have reached him that America had successfully invaded Iran. He had therefore intended to announce the news of his ‘great’ successful scheme to the press as the epilogue of his address. And that would have served as his impetus for wining that year’s election for a second term in office. But, as Allah would have it, instead of the expected news, what he got was a shocker of his life.

     

    The failure of the American strategy

    Two of the F15 fighters deployed for the operation miraculously collided in the air, crashing with their contents, just at the point of entering Iran and consuming the lives of 16 top air force officers while the other jet fighters had to turn back having run into confusion. When this devastating news reached Carter, it was too much to hide and it quickly became a public knowledge.

    Thus, the mighty America failed woefully, with her technology, in circumstances she has never been able to analyze and explain convincingly. With that scheme, it became obvious that Jimmy Carter of the Democrat Party had dug his own political grave. Of course, he lost the election to the cowboy turned Politician, (Ronald Reagan) of the Republican Party. For about 444 days (well over a year), the 52 American hostages remained under the siege of the Iranian students. It took high-level diplomacy, through third party countries, to get them released.

    Yet, America was not done. She went ahead to freeze Iran’s foreign reserve of $80 billion in addition to imposition of economic sanctions with the intention of running that country’s economy aground. The only Iran’s offence in this case was to chart an independent political course that could liberate her citizens from the manacles of the Western imperialism. Ever since, the relationship between America and Iran has remained icy.

    That relationship however, further deteriorated recently when Iran started a nuclear project with which to prop up her economy. America responded with a threat saying the United States would not tolerate any nuclear project in Iran because she could not trust that Islamic nation. And of course, America’s voice was re-echoed by the United Nations, through the mouth of the latter’s Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon.

     

     Greyhound

    Only a fool will not know that the UN, as presently constituted, is the greyhound of the US through which the latter barks randomly at the rest of the world.

    But for the recent Iraqi episode that became regrettable for the self-appointed policeman of the world, and of course, the North Korean case, which has become a cancerous sore on the head of the US, another Gulf war would have either ensued or been in plan by now. The secret of America’s military successes in various parts of the world is neither in technological advancement, nor military superiority per se. The failed rescue mission in Iran can confirm this. That secret is rather in her ability to cause schism among some other nations and races.

    Iran has never been a prey to America’s direct military aggression, even when the Shah Pahlavi was in power, because she has never played a fool dancing to the sour music of that predatory country in a seeming open market.

     

    Sanction as weapon

    Now, with the threat of invasion of Iran by Israel on the one hand and economic and political sanctions against her by the Western NATO allies on the other, will history repeat itself? One fact has become clear about the US political trend ever since that country withdrew from her self-isolationism in 1945. Her internal politics has been regularly dictated by her foreign policy. Thus, many American Presidents have won or lost elections at home due to the foreign policy of the concerned President. Will this also repeat itself? The days ahead will answer this fundamental question as events continue to unfold even as the ongoing crisis between Israel and Palestine also remains a cog in the wheel of global peace. But with the objection by China and Russia to any economic sanctions against Iran, the US and her allies will have to watch their steps carefully especially with respect to any planned invasion of Iran before embarking on a military action. Iran is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan. The world cannot afford another World War now. No one should attempt to plunge it into one. A word is enough for the wise.

     

    Coup in Saudi Arabia

    In the same 1979, some disgruntled elements fortuitously staged a coup against the monarchical government of King Khalid. The aim of the coup was not to change the system of government but to hijack the monarchy in the name of a Mahdi (a promised messiah). That incident caused a stoppage of salat and Umrah for almost four months.

     

    Invasion of Afghanistan

    Also in 1979, the now defunct Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with the intention of annexing her and that incident led to an unprecedented jihad that paved way for the emergence of the Taliban government of that country.

    All these incidences of 1979 jointly formed the foundation for the global turmoil of the 21st century now pervading the world and threatening human existence. The details of the coup attempt in Saudi Arabia will be discussed in this column at another time soon. Watch out for it.

  • Details of Hajj

    Details of Hajj

    Preamble 

    This is the season of Hajj. It comes up in the month of Dhul Hijjah every year. Hajj means aspiration towards a higher pedestal in spirituality. It is, divinely, a pillar of Islam made obligatory by Allah for Muslims who can afford it once in a lifetime. Hajj is an ordained pilgrimage based on piety and not a manmade tourism. Thus, the visa issued to Muslims who perform Hajj annually is that of pilgrimage and not one of tourism. Whilst pilgrimage is a spiritual exercise, tourism is a mere pleasurable journey. A whole chapter in the Qur’an is is divinely named after Hajj. And that is where the Muslims derive their spiritual authority to perform Hajj drom.

     

    Similitude of Hajj

    The similitude of Hajj in the life of a Muslim is like that of pregnancy in the womb of an expectant mother. The experience may vary from woman to woman as the foetus in the womb undergoes various stages of development before it reaches the stage of delivery. By the time the child is finally delivered, the mother feels a relief of her life while the child assumes a tabula rasa (clean slate) that makes him absolutely innocent.

    Spiritually, a pilgrim is like a newly born baby if he strictly performs Hajj as prescribed by Allah. But if he returns into the world of iniquities after Hajj, he automatically becomes like a person in snow-white attire who finds himself in a palm oil market. Unless he spiritually guides his loins, he may immediately become a tainted person both in body and in soul.

     

    Rigours of Hajj

    Muslim pilgrims who are going on Hajj must be prepared to go through series of rigour both spiritually and physically. The rigour of getting the money with which to perform Hajj; the rigour of getting the travelling documents including visa; the rigour of taking care of the home front before embarking on the Holy journey; the rigour of boarding the plane with a sense of high risk; the rigour of going through the security checks at the embarkation point from home  and disembarkation point in Saudi Arabia;  the rigour of performing the Tawaf and Sa’y; the rigour of moving from Makkah to Muna on the 8th day of Dhul-Hijjah, then to Arafah on the 9th day of Dhul-Hijjah, and back to Mina via Muzdalifah on the 10th of Dhul-Hijjah; the rigour of locating the tents at Arafah; the rigour of throwing the pebbles at the Jamrat in Mina on the three or four days known as Ayamu-t-Tashrik; The rigour of performing Tawaful Ifadah at the Haram in Makkah after the first day of throwing the pebbles; the rigour of shaving the head (by men) and slaughtering the rams by all; the rigour of performing the farewell circumambulation otherwise known as Tawaful Wada’i,  all in the midst of millions of people can be too much to forget easily after Hajj.

    Whoever is not bothered by the money spent on Hajj should at least be bothered by the various stages of the rigour involved including that of visiting Madinah. To lose all these efforts to the forces of Satan after Hajj is like losing one’s travelling passport after obtaining visa. The prayer of every genuine pilgrim is to retain the validity of Hajj and its spiritual value forever.

     

    Prerequisites for Hajj Performance

    Performance of pilgrimage must be based on certain fundamental conditions. These include genuine intention and high spiritual standard. Attainment of puberty. The sincere practice of the first four pillars of Islam: (Salat, Zakah, and Sawm) all of which are fervently based on faith (Iman). Hajj without these pre-requisites is like a tree without roots. Money is a major pre-requisite for Hajj but it is not absolute.

    Hajj, the last pillar of Islam shows, very vividly, the similitude of what mankind will experience on the Day of Judgment. Looking at the unique way in which pilgrims dress for Hajj and how they assemble at Arafat leaving their luggage behind in Makkah, one will realize how ephemeral this world is. Some of them never return to their luggage.

     

    Purpose of Hajj

    The various stages of preparation through which pilgrims pass before arriving at Arafat are symbolic of our peregrinations in life as human beings. Like the Day of Judgment, Arafat is the climax of Hajj performance. Anybody who misses Arafat misses Hajj. But Arafat is not by physical appearance alone. It takes a combination of factors to participate effectively in that great assembly at Arafah which serves as the climax of Hajj.

     

    Steps to take

    For Hajj to serve its spiritual purpose in the life of a pilgrim, certain steps must be taken before leaving home. They are as follows:

    Fine-tuning the first four pillars of Islam very sincerely; Packaging one’s intention to perform Hajj; Ascertaining the security of the way; Providing adequately for the family and dependants

    at home; Paying all outstanding debts including promises; Ascertaining the condition of health; Perfecting immigration  procedures;  Undergoing all necessary medical services including inoculation; Assuming a mood of humility like that of a servant approaching his Master; readiness to endure hardship and to tolerate fellow pilgrims’ attitudes. All these are the necessary steps to take by any genuine pilgrim.

     

    Admonition

    While admonishing Muslims on spiritual journey including Hajj, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) once said: “Actions shall be judged according to intentions. Whoever embarks on a spiritual journey for the sake of Allah will be adjudged on that basis. And whoever intends pilgrimage or Hajj for the purpose of marriage or material gains should not expect any reward beyond that for which he intends”.

     

    Step by Step of Hajj

    The spiritual steps to follow in the performance of Hajj are as follows:

     

    The Miqat

    Miqat is the specified place for the wearing of Ihram dress. There are five of such places in all. But the one earmarked for pilgrims from Nigeria cannot be reached by those travelling by air. It is over-flown while crossing the Red Sea. What most Nigerians do therefore is to wear their Ihram dress in Jeddah which has now been adjudged right through a Fatwah issued by highest scholarly authority in Saudi Arabian. Thus, Nigerian pilgrims can now wear their Ihram dress on arrival at the pilgrims’ airport in Jeddah if they fly directly to Jeddah. However, pilgrims whose first destination in Saudi Arabia is Madinah have no problem with Miqat. Such pilgrims should just wear their Ihram dresses at the Miqat in Madinat.

     

    Tawaful-Qudum

    Tawaf means circumambulation of the Ka’bah. The very first Tawaf to be performed by any pilgrim on entering Makkah is called Tawaful Qudum (meaning welcoming circumambulation). It is performed before the pilgrims settle down in their residences. Tawaful Qudum is an obligatory Sunnah from which only pilgrims from Makkah are exempted.

     

    Residence in Makkah or Madinah

    Most Nigerian pilgrims often seek their accommodations in Makkah or Madinah close to the Haram. This is to enable them to walk to and from the Haram conveniently at the times of any Salat. To minimize pilgrims’ regular occurrence of missing their ways, they are provided with hand bands bearing the addresses of their residences. And this enables official Hajj guides to show them the way. Pilgrims are therefore advized to wear such bands at all times. It is also important for pilgrims to always be with their identity cards provided by Nigeria’s National Hajj Commission (NAHCON).This is to enable them to be identified in case of sickness, accident or even death.

     

    Movement to Muna

    Pilgrims’ statutory movement to Muna is on the 8th of Dhul Hijjah. Such pilgrims must spend the night of the 8th of Dhul-Hijjah in Muna where they must observe Salatus-Subhi of the 9th day of Dhul Hijjah, which is Arafah Day, before proceeding to the Plain of Arafah.. Such movement must commence from Makkah after Tawaful Qudum. There is no movement to Muna from Madinah since there is no Tawaf in Madinah.

     

    The Day of Arafah

    All pilgrims proceeding to the Plain of Arafat are advised to stay under their tents and concentrate on the spiritual activities that take them to the place. They must reach Arafat before the mid day when Salatu-d-Dhuhr and ‘Asr should be observed combined and in congregation. Any pilhrim who is not at Arafat by mid day is considered not to have taken part in the assembly and therefore missed Hajj.

    Immediately after observing the combined Salatu-d-Dhuhr and ‘Asr the Imam who led the two Salat is expected to give a sermon. Listening to such sermon is as compulsory as giving it by the Imam. The great assembly of Arafat terminates shortly before the sunset (Magrib) while the pilgrims return to Muna via Muzdalifah.

     

    Muzdalifah

    At Muzdalifah, pilgrims are expected to halt their journey to observe Magrib and ‘Ishai combined. They are also expected to pass the night there and observe the Salat-s-Subh of the following day before proceeding to Muna. Muzdalifah is adjacent to Muna and it is a walking distance to the Jamrat (the stonning place).

     

    Jamrat

    Stoning of the devils (Rajmu Jimar) begins a day after Arafat and continues for the next three or four days that the pilgrims are supposed to spend at Muna. This exercise is obligatory and without it Hajj is considered incomplete except when and where a pilgrim is hindered by certain inevitable conditions. There are three points at which stones are to be thrown. Seven pebbles are to be thrown at each point on every one of the three or four days to be spent in Muna. Only seven stones are to be thrown on the first day at Jamratul Kubrah.

    Picking such pebbles at the point of throwing them is forbidden. All pebbles must have been picked before leaving the tent for the ‘Jamrat’ or on the way to the ‘Jamrat’. For pilgrims who deside to spend three days in Muna, the total number of pebbles to be thrown is 49 (7 for the first day, 21 for the second day and 21 for the third day). For pilgrims who choose to spend four days, the total number of pebbles to be thrown is 70.

     

    Majzarah (Abattoir)

    Slaughtering of all sacrificial animals is done at the abattoir in Muna. Pilgrims do not need to bother themselves by going to the abattoir for the purpose of carrying out this compulsory obligation. They can simply buy the guaranteed ticket sold by designated Saudi agents. The receipt is the evidence that one has performed that duty. The slaughtering is done on behalves of the pilgrims by some authorized artisans who are paid by the Saudi Hajj authorities from the money paid for those animals. The animals to be slaughtered at Jamrat range from rams to camels. A pilgrim should slaughter one ram or more while seven pilgrims may combine to slaughter one camel or five of them may jointly slaughter on cow.

     

    Tawaful Ifadah

    Tawaful Ifadah is compulsory fpr all pilgrims. Without it, ahajj is invalid.

    Any pilgrim who chooses to go for Tawaful Ifadah on the fist day of Ayamut-Tashrik must return to Muna before the sundet. Such a pilrim must not break the camping rule at Muna by going to Makkah without performing Tawaf-ul- Ifadah. With the completion of the camping days in Muna which is climaxed by Tawaful-Ifadah and the arrival of all the pilgrims in Makkah, Hajj has come to an end except for Tawaf Wada’i  otherwise called farewell Tawaf. That Tawaf is also obligatory.

     

    Conclusion

    Throughout the Hajj exercise, what should be uppermost in the mind of a pilgrim is the spiritual benefit. Hajj is made compulsory only once in a life time for those who have the wherewithal to undergo it and can satisfy the conditions attached to its performance.

    On arriving home finally, pilgrims are not expected to start organizing parties in celebration of a successful Hajj performance as ignorantly done by some Nigerians. Maintaining Hajj is a necessity for those who know the value of doing that. Whoever is privileged to perform Hajj once should forever be grateful to Allah as no one is sure of getting another chance.