By Ibraheem A. Waziri
In the Hausa Islamic civilisation, or what one might call the moral order and cultural refinement that grew from Islam’s deep roots in Hausaland, the word mutuwa (death) is a curious thing. It is harmless, ordinary, and adaptable. One can say mutum ya mutu – “the man has died” – regardless of who the man is. The same word can apply to an animal, a tree, or even an inanimate thing whose usefulness has come to an end. It can carry tones of mockery, pity, or finality. We say ya mutu mushe when some living thing has worthlessly ended, ya mutu murus when silence or defeat takes over.
Yet, our language is not without tenderness. When someone beloved passes away, whether out of affection or courtesy, we soften the word. We say ya rasu. Rasuwa is a form of loss tinged with grief and respect. It refuses the bluntness of mutuwa. It gives the heart its due.
When it comes to the Prophet Muhammad (SAW), the most noble of all creation whose departure shook the heavens and all generations after, our forebears chose words such as wafati (a peaceful return to Allah), fakuwa (withdrawal or disappearance), and rasuwa (loss imbued with yearning). These were not accidental choices; they were marks of reverence. The Prophet’s message, after all, did not die with him. His presence lingers, like fragrance after rain. Thus, Hausa Muslims avoided the word mutuwa not because it was wrong, but because it was too plain for such a sacred absence. Language itself became a form of prayer and praise, salati towards the Prophet of Islam, as the Qur’an commands the faithful to always offer.
This sensibility reflects a civilisation shaped by Islam yet polished by Hausa thought. It has endured for over a millennium, blending revelation and reason, piety and poetry, into a coherent moral fabric. Scholars such as Professor Mahdi Adamu have rightly argued that Islam is now part of the defining essence of being Hausa. Indeed, no serious student of culture can separate the two.
When Professor Samuel Huntington, in his 1993 popular thesis The Clash of Civilisations, classified the great Islamic civilisations as Arab, Turkic, and Malay, I once protested, mildly but firmly, in my column of 22 July 2013 in LEADERSHIP Newspaper, “Egypt: Western World, Egypt, Political Islam and Lessons.” For he omitted the fourth: the African, which includes the Hausa Muslim civilisation. Perhaps he did so because we in West Africa have not been diligent in documenting our own intellectual heritage. Our scholars mostly built souls rather than libraries. Their wisdom lived largely in hearts, not in manuscripts. Yet civilisation is not measured by ink alone.
By the eleventh century, Islam had already entered Hausaland through kings, scholars, and merchants. It mingled with the social elite, who naturally became custodians of what was right and proper. Over centuries, Islamic principles and Hausa customs intermarried. Law, governance, poetry, and etiquette became fused with faith. The result was not confusion but coherence. Nothing central to Hausa civilisation contradicted Islam at its core, unless one judged too quickly or too superficially.
That is why scholars such as Murray Last, in his work The Book in the Sokoto Caliphate, observed that even the nineteenth-century jihad led by Shehu Usman Ɗanfodio did not reinvent Hausa Islamic learning; it merely revived and restructured it. The civilisation was already mature, only in need of renewal and discipline.
After colonial rule and the birth of Nigeria, this historical balance was tested. Contact with global Islamic thought from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and beyond brought new currents of theology and reform. Many who studied abroad returned believing they had discovered a purer Islam, one untainted by “local innovation.” Movements such as Jama’atu Izalatul Bid’ah Wa Iqamatissunnah (founded in 1978) sought to purify faith and democratise knowledge. Their zeal achieved much good, spreading Islamic learning to wider circles.
The unintended cost, however, was subtle: a growing suspicion towards the inherited Hausa sense of decorum, the gentle courtesies and expressions through which Islam had long been lived here. Many young preachers, both from Izala and other traditions, began to attack words, proverbs, and customs without studying their origins or meanings. They mistook refinement for deviation. They forgot that ladabi—good manners—is itself part of faith.
In the curricula of the Arab world, where some of them studied, there was no course on “Islam and Hausa civilisation.” Thus, they returned unaware that many Hausa forms of reverence, formal linguistic expressions, and proverbs had already been filtered through the sieve of Islamic thought over centuries. They saw impurity where there was actually depth. And when a people are cut off from the noble patterns that dignify their past, they begin to doubt themselves. This self-doubt, or inferiority complex, becomes more dangerous than ignorance itself.
Still, there is light in the dusk. From the 1990s onwards, a new generation of researchers began delving into precolonial manuscripts and oral traditions, recovering the intellectual dignity of old Hausaland. They showed how Islamic education, Sufi scholarship, and Hausa ethical thought intertwined long before the arrival of Europeans or the rise of the Sokoto Caliphate. Yet this work has mostly been carried out by Western-trained scholars, the so-called yan boko. Our purely religious scholars have been slower to engage, preferring imported frameworks to indigenous memory.
The road ahead, however, must bring both together. The Hausa Muslim future—steady, confident, and intelligent—will depend on producing scholars grounded in both the Islamic sciences and the lived wisdom of Hausa culture. Not a nostalgic culture, but one aware of its thousand-year conversation with faith.
If the Turks, Arabs, and Malays take pride in their civilisational imprint upon Islam, why should the Hausa not do the same? Our civilisation too has carried the Prophet’s light for centuries, shaping it into our language, our etiquette, and even our choice of words.
So, when we say Rasuwar Manzon Tsira or Wafatin Manzon Tsira, it is not mere politeness. It is theology—lived, spoken, and refined in our own tongue. To call it otherwise is to forget who we are.
Ibraheem A. Waziri wrote from Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria.
