Preamble
This article is not new. It was first published in this column in 2008. Its repetition here is in response to demands made by many readers who heard of it but were never privileged to read it. The recurrence of its relevance must have influenced their demand.
The situation that warranted its publication in the first instance was bad enough for contemporary Muslims but not as bad as that of today. Modern Muslims’ understanding of Islam and their attitude to that divine religion is not only appalling but also disastrous.
Heresy has gradually crept into belief and the mode of worship of some of them and has thus badly coloured their conception of Islam. Readers should please note that the article is not exactly the same in contents as it was during its first publication. It had to be retouched to suit the current situation. Here we go:
Genesis
In its 70th year of operation in 1992, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) throbbed with gladdening but disturbing news to the Muslim world. It disclosed that the global Muslim population had risen to 19% of the entire world population. Quoting the Catholic world authorities, the media outfit added that with that figure, Islam had overtaken Catholicism as a single religious denomination in the world. The population of the Muslims before then was 17% of that of the entire world. However, Muslims were still outnumbered by the combined Christian denominations even as Islam remained the fastest growing religion in the West.
Reaction
With the news quoted above, the first reaction of any serious Muslim should be a question: which Muslims are we talking about, the qualitative or the quantitative? Of what benefit is an ineffective Muslim population in a religion that is known for quality in all its ramifications? These questions become relevant when one remembers the great efforts made by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) in laying the foundation of Islam as compared to the structure standing on that foundation today.
It is better to imagine the sight of a snail without its shell than to actually perceive it. No normal person will prefer to live permanently in the night without an experience of the day. Water is said to be drinkable only if it comes from a flowing stream. Any water from a stagnant source will only be water in name and not as much in use.
The similitude of Islam and Muslims is like that of a snail and its shell. They share a common destiny and remain as inseparable as the sun and its beaming light. None can afford to part with the other without dire consequences. If, like a snail, Islam is left to wander about without a cover where are the Muslims?
Islam without Muslims
Islam totally personifies the divine legal theory that sustains the magnificent grandeur of the universe. That theory is fully embodied in the divine Book called the Qur’an. Muslims, on the other hand, stand as the practical showcase of that theory. Without Islam, there would have been no Muslims. And without Muslims, Islam would have remained a permanent abstraction randomly tapping the imagination of mankind.
Ironically, the world of Islam has turned a new phase at the instance of its adherents called ‘Muslims’. And with that new phase, the falconer seems to have been estranged by the falcons. Muslims, like the shell of snail, are found everywhere but without Islam. And the latter, as long prophesied by the Messenger of Allah (SAW), is rapidly becoming an orphan.
Now, Islam is like a snail without its shell. If that great religion is vividly present in any part of the world today, it is in the West. And that confirms the fact that effective quality rather than idle quantity is what Islam needs to thrive. But where are such Muslims?
Arabs’ Disunity
Today, there are about 23 Muslim/Arab countries in the world. Most of them are in the Middle East. Others are in North Africa. The combination of these countries controls one fifth of the entire wealth in the world because of the enormous natural resources with which they are endowed. But in their quest for security other than that of Allah, they entrust all the wealth at their disposal to those who are waging war against Islam. More than 75% of the Muslim Arab wealth is invested in the West or kept in Western bank accounts in the name of foreign reserves. Part of that money is not only used to fight Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Palestine, it is also given out as loan to poor African countries at throat-cutting interest rate in the name of London and Paris Clubs.
Where are the Muslims?
Today Muslim Arabs are so disunited, disorganised and islamically disoriented that they cannot even cooperate with one another in the face of common challenges let alone form a united, formidable Ummah as prescribed by Allah. Rather than coming together to solve common problem, some of them prefer to team up with their known antagonists to fight their fellow Muslim brothers.
That is what happened during the Iranian revolution of 1979 when that country was fighting for emancipation from the shackles of Western imperialism which had been condoned for a long time by the Shah Pahlavi to impress the United States as his godfather. Rather than cooperating with Iran to rid the region of imperialism, what Iraq did was to take advantage of the then prevailing situation to attack Iran on behalf of America using the weapon freely supplied to her by the latter. The devastating war which ensued from that attack lasted for eight sorrowful years before the aggressor eventually called for armistice having realised the impossibility of winning the war. In all these, here are the Muslims?
Turkey and the Caliphate
In her own bid to imbibe the so-called Western civilisation, Turkey, the then Caliphate seat, decided to voluntarily fettered herself to stake of secularism, a notion imposed on her in the early 1920s by Mustapha Kamal Ataturk who fortuitously weaned the country from the ladle of Islam. That unfortunate notion which obliterated virtually all traces of Islam in Turkey was later entrenched in the country’s new constitution. It must be recalled that Turkey, with her 89% Muslim population was the last seat of Islamic Caliphate which Ataturk forcefully brought to an end in 1924. In all these, where are the Muslims?
Nigerian Situation
Here in Nigeria, the situation is by far worse. Mosques, which Prophet Muhammad (SAW) established as the permanent axis around which all Muslim activities must rotate, have been totally reduced to the level of meeting for Salat alone. Unlike their non-Muslim counterparts, most of the people we call Imams are not trained for the office they occupy. They only claim to be Imams a few years after their graduation from local Madrasas. Very few of the Mosques they lead have bank accounts. The Imam and members of the Mission Boards of most Mosques act as unofficial treasurers as the bulk of the money collected is instantly shared among them.
Against the Prophet’s prescription, most of our Mosques are without libraries or study rooms where the young ones can take advantage of computer and internet to be thoroughly educated through researches. It does not bother our Imams whether or not those youths come to the Mosque. What bothers them is the absence of rich people who can donate pocket-able money to the Mosques. Where are the Muslims?
The world’s oldest Universities
The three oldest Universities in the world today are situated in Arab countries. They are Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt; Qarawiyyin University in Fez, Morocco and Zaytuniyyah University in Tunis, Tunisia.
All of them were established well over one thousand years ago and they started in the Mosques. Yet they were all preceded by the University of Cordoba which was the very first University ever established in the world. It was established by a second Umayyad Caliph, Abdur-Rahman III who ruled Spain from 912 to 961 CE.
This further confirms that the idea of University education got to the West from the Muslims. Thus, while Islam is built on a solid foundation of knowledge, Muslims now choose to live in a ramshackle abode of ignorance. Today, only a few Muslim schools are good enough to compete with schools established by non-Muslims. But more embarrassing is the fact that overwhelming majority of about 10 million Nigerian children said to be out of school are Muslims. It can now be seen why most of the Western oriented Muslims in the South West of Nigeria see Islam as an anachronistic religion unbefitting to their social statuses as they cross over to other religions in droves. Yet, it is the minority in the class of such Muslims (especially those who are not privy to the knowledge of Arabic and Islamic studies) that lifted Islam in Nigeria to its present level. If this is the case and there is no improvement, where are the Muslims?
The functions of the Mosque
In Islam, Mosque is not for Salat alone neither is it to be headed by half-educated elements in the name of Imams. It is rather an all-encompassing centre for all aspects of Muslim lives. Thus, a Mosque should ordinarily, make provision for a school, a library, a hospital, a trade centre, a bank/treasury, a Parliament as well as a court of law.
To limit the function of Mosque to prayer alone therefore, is to subject it to a great disservice to Islam. Mosque is more of a congregation than an ordinary building. Muslims who worship regularly in the Mosque must have something to gain economically, socially, politically or perhaps medically besides the rewards accruing to them from the observance of Salat. Coming for congregational prayers five times every day without any temporal gain does not help the course of Islam. This divine religion is about temporal and spiritual lives and not the latter alone. The Mosque ought to have endowments for widows and scholarship programmes for orphans and indigent pupils. It also ought to have empowerment programmes for the jobless. And those who are employed as Imams and other officials in the Mosque ought to be well treated in terms of training, remunerations and social welfare if only to encourage them in shunning corruption and redundancy. If these are not in place, where are the Muslims?
Islam and Christianity in Nigeria
Islam preceded Christianity in reaching the shores of Nigeria by about 500 years. The one came in the 11th century. The other came in the 16th century. Yet the gap, in terms of education and development between both, is as wide today as that between the rise and the set of the sun. If this is blamed on colonial rule and Western conspiracy, on what should failure of Islamic education be blamed? The Qur’an which embodies the language of Islamic worship is known to have been translated into only few Nigerian languages (Hausa, Yoruba and a few others). And this is the best that has been done so far, in about 1000 years, to make that sacred book understandable to millions of Nigerian Muslims. Now that can be compared to the translation of the Bible to dozens of Nigerian languages by Nigerian Christians. If majority of the adherents of a religion like Islam are tied to the apron of illiteracy and ignorance, how can such a religion be understood? The Bible which came to Nigeria 500 years after the arrival of Islam has been translated into at least about more than 40 Nigerian languages and further efforts are being made to do more. Where are the Muslims?
Tertiary Education
Now, with the liberalisation of University education in Nigeria which throws the door open for private Universities, compared to those of their counterparts, how many of those Universities have been established by the Muslims to cater for the growing population of their children in an environment where it may be very difficult for most of those children to get opportunity of University education without getting converted? And the few Universities established by committed and courageous Muslims are boycotted by fellow Muslims who hand over the nurturing of their children to non-Muslims. In such a situation, where then are the Muslims?
Islam and the Media
Islam is a corporate mission that requires a corporate means to propagate. The only means of propagating anything successfully in the world today is the media. If Islam must thrive effectively as a viable religion the means of propagating it must also be viable. Now, where are the Muslim media after the demise of Bashorun MKO Abiola and the dysfunction of his Concord as well as ‘The Monitor’ owned by the late Aare Abdul Azeez Arisekola Alao? Is any other newspaper available especially in the Southwest of Nigeria today owned by a Muslim individual or group?
If there is any hope for the future of Islam, the focus should be towards the West. And that is in confirmation of Prophet Muhammad’s prophecy of over 1400 years ago when he said that one of the signs of recognising the nearness of the ‘Last Day’ was for the sun to start rising from the West. The sun which the Prophet meant at that time was not the physical one. That sun is ISLAM. And we have started to see its rays coming from the West where the divine religion is growing geometrically and is seen as the fastest growing religion in that part of the world today. It could not have been otherwise. Islam is a religion of knowledge. It takes only the knowledgeable to recognise it as such. The West today is the home of knowledge and not mere literacy. That is why it takes a religion of knowledge to be fast spreading among the people of knowledge. If this is not the case in Nigeria, where are the Muslims?
An Arab Poem
Despite all their weaknesses, the Arabs are not lacking in language and intellectualism. Their oratory prowess is legendary. Today’s topic in this column reminds yours sincerely of the Arab proficiency in language as contained in the following couplet:
“We often blame our deficiency on the particularity of an era; when actually, there is no innate deficiency elsewhere other than in us;
We often condemn an era for our misdemeanour even when the era is not to blame; were the era endowed with mouth to talk, it would have condemned us too (in an irreversible manner); After all, no hyena eats the flesh of another hyena as some humans eat the flesh of their fellow humans”. We are our own enemies and that is food for thought.
Conclusion
For those of us who are so much concerned about the situation of Islam especially in Nigeria today, there is a reluctant consolation. That consolation is from Allah, the real author of that divine religion. He said in Qur’an 15 Verse 9 thus: “It was surely’We’ (Allah) who revealed the Message (Qur’an) and it is ‘We’ who will certainly preserve it”.
We pray the Almighty Allah to wake up the Nigerian Muslim Ummah from its slumber so that in the future, our great grand children will have no cause to repeat the question: “Where are the Muslims?”
Erratum
While tracing the emergence and history of some Muslim organisations in the South West of Nigeria in this column penultimate Friday, in an article entitled ‘Muswen’s Visit to MARKAZ’, yours sincerely inadvertently named Alhaji Ishaq Kunle Sanni as the first President of National Council of Muslim Youth Organisations (NACOMYO).
My attention has since been drawn to the fact that Brother Adamu Abdullah of Sokoto (now a lecturer at Usman Dan Fodio University) was actually the first President of that Council. Any embarrassment caused by that error is regretted.
