For a couple of Sabbaths now, two fine minds of northern stock, namely, Mallam Mohammed Haruna, a Former Presidential spokesman, and Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah- the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, have been in the news for an on-going debate on issues relating to the manipulation of religion by Political power mongers and entrepreneurs who have used religion to extend their economic and political goals.
The setting is the Bishop’s key note Address delivered at Fountain University, Osogbo, to a Muslim Organization under the theme: Challenges for Development and Good Governance on 22nd November, 2015. The Bishop as a lover of controversy, and as it is usual with keynote Addresses, blazed the trail by dropping a brick clanger which was to become the subject of a thrilling debate especially between him and Mallam Haruna.
Mallam Haruna who in turn used his Wednesday 30th December, 2015 column to criticize the Bishop over what he called “Kukah’s attack on Islam,” said, the Bishop, in his Address, chose to “ride on his hobbyhorse of what he says is the use of Islam by the Northern Muslim elite to impose their hegemony not only on the North but also on the rest of the Country.” Haruna went further to consolidate his point that the Bishop has been in a campaign of running tirades against Islam by extensively quoting from the Bishop’s sermon at the Funeral of the late Sir Patrick Yakowa-an erstwhile governor of Kaduna State.
This triggered a rejoinder by the Bishop in the Daily Trust of Tuesday, January 5th and a further rejoinder by Mallam Haruna in both the Daily Trust and Nation of January 13th, 2016. While the Bishop in his rejoinder says Mallam Haruna misrepresented him, the later, in his, insists that the Bishop’s Address was simply “an attack on Islam”.
We need to thank the duo for opening a debate which if properly invested in, will at the end serve us with enough interest in crossing the creeks on the role of religion in society. I am strongly of the view that the “two giants” as Dr Chris Abashiya called them, have not listened to each other enough to realize that they only have simply been confronting a common enemy using different strategies and languages, which I shall show in due course.
In the heat of the Boko Haram insurgency, and when many stakeholders were afraid to speak against their brutal killings, Mallam Haruna, at several times, used his column to condemn the group while arguing that the group neither represents Islam nor are its members true Muslims. Indeed, Mallam Haruna has never failed to condemn any anomaly in the name of Islam or by alleged Muslims. A stellar example is his condemnation of the recent impunity in Zaria by the Shiites otherwise known as “Muslim Brothers.” The ace columnist said: “What the Shiites did last weekend in trying to stop an army convoy was not only foolish; it was illegal, even criminal.” As if that was not enough, he went further to withdraw their Citizenship saying: “…many a Sunni, who constitute the vast majority of the Muslim Umma in the country, as in the rest of the world, do not regard Shiism as Islam, mainly because of the higher esteem with which Shiites hold prophet Muhammad’s Family than they do his Sunna, that is, his words and deeds, which mainstream Islam regard as the second most important guide for behaviour after the Holy Quran”.
The Bishop on his part, has an antecedent of crossing sword even with leaders of his Faith constituency on the misuse of religion for selfish goals. Like Mallam Haruna, he is no stranger to controversy. Recently, a master-wordsmith, Dan Agbese, said of him: “I can think of no Public lectures or speeches delivered by him that left the accumulated dust of our placid sense of outrage undisturbed. Blame it on a) his courage to speak to power and b) the moral burden of his calling thrust upon him, daring him, I would imagine, to padlock his lips when our secular kingdom suffereth violence in the hands of venal men who serve the few more and the many much less.”
Five years ago, on the occasion of Nigeria’s 50th anniversary lecture in Calabar, the fierce cleric described the behaviour and activities of some Christian leaders as “criminality masquerading as religion.” He continued: “pentecostalists are preying on the people’s fear. A man sees ‘vision’ and promises you the ‘cure’. No wonder today we have so many ‘prayer warriors’. This condemnation attracted a rebuttal from certain Christian’s figures who thought the Bishop was being too hard on the faith. For instance, Festus Eriye, Sunday Editor of The Nation fired back immediately.
In recent times, the national leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) led by the militant Pastor Ayo Oritsenjafor, has had issues with the Bishop. He inter alia, vehemently refused to agree with CAN in an erroneous perception that Boko Haram insurgency is an attempt by the “Muslim North” to either capture power or Islamize the country.
When the then Gen. Buhari was “falsely” accused of making an anti-Christian statement, it was the Bishop who boldly put up a piece in his defence, arguing that the accusation was merely an adversarial fabricandum aimed at tarnishing the Gen’s integrity – something he re-emphasized in the Yakowa funeral homily. This of course did not go without insults from some highly placed Christian leaders who accused him of playing the Northern card rather than being in the camp of those he sings the same credo with.
Sincerely speaking and beyond the symptoms, I strongly believe that these two minds have been on the same course of fighting a common enemy, namely, the misuse of religion. I think the silver lining in this cloud is the need for an internal conversation in the form of aggiornamento amongst theologians of both Islam and Christianity on how they interpret and practice their religions as both the Bishop and Mallam Haruna attest to. This is where the Catholic Church has specifically done very well. The church has had about twenty one ecumenical councils aimed at looking into –from time to time- its beliefs and doctrines in the face of this changing world and its attendant realities. The council of trent (1545 – 1563) for instance stands out so far as the longest lasting council for eighteen years under five different popes.
The problem both Islam and Christianity are facing today is their lack of locus to regulate the activities of miscreants who parade themselves as ambassadors of their religions when they commit havoc or set out to achieve certain goals that are anti-thetical to the commonwealth of society. I sincerely see the debate as a whistleblower to the predicament of the two religions which the Late Dr. Bala Usman raised long ago, but which we have either refused to address or do not have the sophistication to do.
In this case, does the action of the Shiites represent the religion of Islam, for example? And can JNI or the sultan regulate their actions? Likewise, has CAN got the locus to regulate the activities of fly-by-night Pastors who preach prosperity gospel and run empires? Are the actions of the CAN president true representations of what Christianity stands for? True, in Nigeria today, while an average Christian believes that force and violence are essential ingredients of the Islamic religion, an average Muslim in turn is of the conviction that unbridled liberalism, indecency, and worship of the god of money via miracle and prosperity gospelling, are essential aspects of Christianity. The onus therefore is on all of us, welcome or unwelcomed, to continue to raise our voices against these miscreants who delude our religions with the viruses of their ego.
Finally, disagreement is an essential character of academic everywhere in the world. It is their responsibility to raise issues, disagree and disagree that they may agree for the good of society. It is like a diagnosis of the problems of society that has to pass via a process for a good prescription of an ailment to be made. This is what the dialetics of Hegel is all about. And when Aristotle disagreed with his master Plato telling him that “Truth comes before friendship”, this was exactly what he realised.
This means that for intellectuals to worth their name, they must develop the sophistication to divorce the fallacy of ‘argumentum ad hominem’ by which they attack each other while sweeping underneath the issues that would have been for the good of society.
The debate on the role of religion in society, or its manipulation and the need for honest conversation among its leaders and adherents is a welcome development. Let the debate go on for the good of our society knowing full well as Adamu said about the North, “we will never be able to solve our problems if all we think is that there are certain things that should not be said or mentioned.”
- Damina, a student of Religion and Philosophy, is of the Holy Family Catholic Church, Gidan, Bako, Kaduna State.
