Yoruba Muslims

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari

The Muslim Rights Concern, MURIC, commends the North for shifting the presidency to the Southern region of the country

MURIC disclosed this in a press statement signed by its Executive Director, Professor Ishaq Akintola, on Friday.  

This is coming after a Yoruba Muslim and southerner, Bola Ahmad Tinubu, was declared winner of the February presidential election. 

According to the group, they are justified in their confidence and the trust they have in the North. He stated that they were particularly happy because the victory put the naysayers to shame.

 “MURIC, in particular, was derided by non-Muslims in the South. We were called slaves of the North. But we stood our ground. We insisted that we trusted the North, particularly on the basis of understandings reached and pledges made at various Islamic fora on MURIC’s avowed project for the emergence of a Yoruba Muslim president.” He said 

He further added that it is the effort and votes of Northern electorates that win the election for the southern Muslim.

He said, ” The outcome of the presidential election showed that Northern votes won the election for Tinubu. The Northern figure almost doubled what he scored in the South. It showed that Northerners stood by their words. They walked their talks. They took the path of honour and nobility. They abandoned a Northern Fulani candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and voted for a Southern Yoruba Muslim candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. We doff our hats for the North. We salute integrity. The North is a reliable friend by all standards. The region stood behind Tinubu, a Southern Muslim, like the Rock of Gibraltar.”  

Professor Akintola added that the outcome of the election had shattered many stereotypes of Southern Christians and the lies they peddle against the North.

By Olorunkemi Barokah

The conflict between the southwest Islamic clerics has become something anomaly that needs to be addressed before it goes out of hand. I am on the ball on the clash of interest between those clerics that could be classified under ideological differences. 

The fact that one is practising Sufism or belongs to other Islamic religious denominations does not make them deserve being open to ridicule and other forms of abuse.

I’ve seen people ridiculing themselves on social media through verbal abuse and other forms of defamation. Well! I could assume that it’s not normal because it’s causing more harm to society than expected. 

From the logical point of view, I could assume that there is no saint among the religious folks causing confusion and distractions to the Islamic community in the Yoruba land. Instead, they are birds of a feather that flock together. They are not practising the so-called religious precepts they are preaching to society.

Islamic clerics are the ones who have brought misconceptions, confusion, and division into our midst by regressing the progress of Islam in the entire Yoruba territory. Their disagreement, ideological difference, lack of unity lack of maturity have brought nothing good to the progress of the Muslim community in the Western region. That threatens the future of the Muslim generations in the entire Yoruba race.

Typically, everyone has sects since diverse ideological views dominate the world.  Everyone cannot go in the same direction. Since our beliefs, aspirations, philosophies, and perceptions cannot be equal, we are all enhanced with different uniqueness. That’s why it is likely to have different schools of thought on the same course of studies. And the fact that there are different views does not make the notions of others irrelevant. Everyone will select their preferred theories based on their preference and the evidence that each theory assumes.

However, I guess morality should be the primary element of any sectarian credo since morality is the standard by which individuals are justified. That morality is based on kindness and the state of being responsible. 

It would have been better to promote Islamic consciousness to earn unity. Promoting moral duties would be better than promoting hate, superiority complex, and ideological difference, which will never help grow the progress of the so-called religious values and precepts preached.

Furthermore, in logic, there’s likely to have an argument raised to have a logical conclusion or fact about the subject involved. But, one sure thing is that there must be fact, an affirmative fact to conclude on, and if the truth is not within the premises, the conclusion would be probable. So, in this case, one cannot force the fact. Instead, the evidence on the hypotheses will make people accept the truth.

Nevertheless, I consider many of these religious sects and their self-acclaimed scholars irresponsible. They are only forcing their ideologies on people without setting a legacy, a pace, and values that will make people accept their claimed religious righteousness. Many scholars mentioned above and sects lack logical thinking, justice, beneficence, equity, finality, tolerance veracity, and even respect for persons. In their hands is where humanity is dying.

Nonetheless, in my opinion, it is a navel-gazing and anomaly act to terrorize others to accept one perception or belief. But on the contrary, those sects have seen crucifying and denouncing those who could not concur with their views as a diabolical enemy who should be subjected to verbal abuse and ridicule.

There are many ways of convincing others to believe or accept one’s standpoint without nagging on them. And it can be done without force or verbal abuse or exposing one another to ridicule. Dialogue remains the most veritable weapon in achieving that. Even if dialogue fails, visual/physical values would never fail. Since seeing is said to be believing.

Some of the notable scholars among the most populous ones doing better in promoting Islamic values are Imam Offa, the new Grand Mufti of Yoruba Land, Sheik Muheeden Bello, Mallam Yusuff Adepoju and others. I have never seen them abusing anyone or criticizing others.

The one I will ever respect is Imaam Offa for his contributions to the progress of Islam in the region. He’s the first acclaimed scholar to build a public library that will be available for anyone irrespective of their denominations and ideology. In addition, he’s currently building a top-notch Islamic hospital for Muslim benefit. This is what should always be promoted rather than fighting on General Islamic ethics obligations and particularistic obligations.

Moreover, if all these religious sects could demonstrate unity, I believe the various issues facing Islam today in western Nigeria will be reduced and deciphered! Issues like poverty, inequality in participation, and others.

These sects have all it takes to establish free Islamic schools, hospitals, libraries, a fort that could shelter the homeless Muslims. They could also set up law firms that will help get justice for vulnerable Muslims and even provide empowerment to the Young Muslims. 

Islam in this region needs more than fighting Sufists, Hamadiyyist, Salafiyyist, etc. Islam requires the collective efforts of all those scholars to help in all the areas above. So be united and stop your terroristic approach.  Enough of this quasi-intellectualism in a self-centred manner.

Olorunkemi Barokah wrote this article via olorunkemibarokah20@gmail.com.

Perhaps, it was the Mathew Effect that made Professor Kpareogi’s recent article on the plight of the Yoruba Muslims in their own lands so famous that it generated so much response as if, until the piece was made public, nobody was aware that Yoruba Muslims, who were in the majority in the Southwest, have been under powerful religious subjugation by the Yoruba Christians.

But even a casual observer will not fail to notice the recurring crisis across the Yoruba land over the use of Hijab by Muslim female children in the schools. Some of these sartorial choice crises trended long enough to attract the attention of everyone while some have to be settled at the courts. The infamous ruling by an Ikeja high court that because Christians would feel less righteous in the presence of Hijab wearing children, Muslim children should not wear Hijab to their schools, is still fresh in our memories. Delivering the judgement on 17th October 2014, Justice Modupe Onyearbor declared that “The non-Hijab wearing students will feel inferior to those who are putting on Hijab.” The judge, therefore, banned the use of Hijab for Muslim girls till an Appeal Court put aside that judgement.

The sartorial choice struggle is, perhaps, the most glaring among the many struggles being fought by the embattled Muslim majority in the region, this is mainly due to publicity it is generating and the will to resist the subjugation by the new generation of Muslims who firmly believed in self-determination. The case of Barrister Firdaus Amata who refused to jettison her constitutional right on December 12, 2017, an action for which she was denied entry into the International Conference Centre by the Body of Benchers, highlighted one of such struggles.

Apart from the Hijab struggle, the most glaring inequality the Muslims are struggling with is the fact that despite being the majority in the region, not a single Islamic court exists in the whole region. They are forced to either take their cases to the imposed Christian common law courts or Customary courts. This is more worrisome given that Islamic courts existed in Yorubaland long before the arrival of the colonial armies who abolished them and imposed their own courts. Islamic courts existed since 1842 in that region, according to MURIC.

Even the Yoruba Muslim’s peaceful move to introduce sharia courts in Yorubaland through constitutional means was fiercely tamed by the Christians in that region. On May 27 this year, the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) was eloquent in its submission that the introduction of Shariah Law in the South West should be ignored by the Senate.

Nothing highlighted how the Muslims in Yorubaland are struggling to free themselves from Christian subjugation than the declaration by some Muslim groups that they are not in support of the Oduduwa Republic as they will face persecution if actualized. This belied the widely believed notion that the Yorubas are homogenous and that religion plays a second or third role in their lives. It proves that for a long time, the Muslim majority were silenced into submission out of fear of “social ostracism”. Their passiveness was fully exploited by Christians and misunderstood by northerners.

Now that the passiveness is giving way to the rising tide of Islamic awareness in the region, things are getting clearer that the hyped religious tolerance in that region was indeed the domination of Christians over Muslims.
Ironically, this is coming just as some voices are maintaining a hyperbolic but erroneous assumption that the North is the den of religious intolerance even as facts are contradicting them.

Sheikh Nuru Khalid is among those who seemed to have fallen for this fallacy recently. In his clamour for Interfaith Dialogue, he recently claimed, among other things, that Interfaith Dialogue was necessary now given the bad light in which the terrorist organizations, like Boko Haram, are painting Islam and the high level of religious intolerance in the North.

If the Sheikh is right on Interfaith Dialogue’s effect on religious intolerance, he is very wrong on the Boko Haram claim. He is also very wrong in his charge that Muslims are to be blamed for religious intolerance in the region. Because of all the religious crises in this part of the nation, over ninety per cent were NOT caused by Muslims; they were just defending themselves.

Therefore, to insinuate that Muslims are to blame for religious intolerance in the country is insidious even if said in good faith, because it is a BIG lie.

It is flabbergasting to assume that had there been an Interfaith Dialogue, Boko Haram wouldn’t have happened, because among the reasons the terrorists have for fighting is what they called the systematic downplaying of religious teachings in order to please non-Muslims.

It is evident that both the terrorists and the Sheikh have agreed on the same erroneous definition of Interfaith Dialogue. Both seemed to give Interfaith Dialogue the definition of Syncretism. Many people speak about syncretism while they think they are discussing Interfaith Dialogue.

To differentiate between the two terms, just take the stands of late Nnamdi Azikiwe who said “We must forget our differences”, and that of late Sir Ahmadu Bello (Sardaunan Sokoto) who replied, “No, let’s understand our differences…” What Azikiwe said is syncretism while the stand of Sardauna connotes Interfaith Dialogue.

I don’t think anyone who knows that Muslims are the majority of the victims of Boko Haram or understood their mission will honestly insist that an Interfaith Dialogue would have been an antidote to their aggression.

Finally, while I am not saying (the Muslim) North is totally devoid of religious intolerance (this depends on your definition of the term), it is not true that we are the purveyors of intolerance, rather, we are at the receiving end of religious intolerance. This could be discussed in another piece.

Muhammad Mahmood writes from Kano.

By Alhaja Adeola Agoro

I read Kperogi’s article with a smile playing around my lips. It brought back the contents of the second chapter of the first part of my (yet to be published) book, ‘Journey to Islam: The Journey So Far’.

While I wouldn’t say Kperogi was totally right in his submissions, I’ll say that I agree with a lot of what he said.
I was born a Christian. I converted to Islam in 2009. I have spent enough time in the Islamic religion to form an opinion about it. I can say what is right or wrong about the religion and those who practise it.

I started writing the book, ‘Journey to Islam in 2017. Then I paused. Life is a journey and you can never really capture it all until the last day, so I said, ‘Let’s see if something will change and I may have to change some things in the book’.

As Jon.Bellion said in one of his songs that I love so much, “Nothing has changed, he’s the same…” From the point of writing that book till now, let me say nothing has changed. So, let me share the second chapter of the first part of that book below:

2’Yerima and Other Influences

Long before my innocent mind began to get conscious of the fire religious strife and crisis caused by displacing people and rendering many homeless, fatherless and sending several to their early graves in Nigeria, I knew about religious marginalisation. I grew up to know about religious sentiments, influences and stigmas.

I grew up amongst a certain class of Christians who considered themselves holy. Going to church on Sunday, coming back to eat jollof rice and chicken and watching good family films like the ‘Sounds of Music’ was a way of life. In those days, we were made to believe that the Christian kids were the ones who wore crisply ironed clothes on Sunday. They were the ones who wore ‘ready-made’ clothes with socks and nice shoes to match. Looking back now, I must admit that it was the highpoint of Christianity to wear the kinds of beautiful dresses with hats to match that I wore on Sundays.

Looking that good meant I was a Christian. Or so I was made to believe. We were the sheltered ones who were not allowed to mix with just any other children in the neighbourhood. We were only heard from the confines of our homes and hardly seen. On the other hand, those who wore clothes sewed with ankara materials, who played outside, who went to Arabic schools or who chanted Arabic language as dictated by their teachers were regarded as considered to be a little lower than us.

The explanation was not really made; we just knew. I knew how the opinions of certain people about you became coloured the moment they found out your name was Mojeed or Shakirat or whatever Muslim name it was. Oh no! It just meant that you must be ill-bred. It meant that your upbringing was not all together complete. In cases where they couldn’t fault you for being half-baked because you were a Muslim, they assumed that you were aggressive and stubborn. In Ibadan where I spent my first sixteen years, Muslims were referred to as ‘Imale’ (followers of the hard religion).

To this day, there is an area in Ibadan known as ‘Imalefalafia’ literarily meaning the ‘followers of the hard religion want peace’.In the Christian family where I grew up, a Christian was more likely to be trusted for anything than an imale. By a stroke of fate, I discovered that most of the people hired for house chores and such other things in my family were Muslims. It went to show that the Muslims around us then were not educated and so had to take the lowest of jobs. I could remember that the woman who did our laundry till I grew up was called Iya Seki (Sekinat). It was just assumed that Muslim families didn’t care about educating their children beyond a certain level.

I can’t remember if anything was ever done to assist them in that regards. In a funny way, it didn’t matter if you were a Baptist or Anglican, if you came for a domestic work and it was discovered that you were a Christian, it used to elicit a level of surprise that you were not educated or that you chose to do some menial jobs. It was certain that your employer would ensure that you either went to school or learnt a vocation. All you to had to do worm your way into the minds of your employers or to get favours was to say you were a Christian. (It might matter though if you were a Celestian or aladura.

You were not quite different from a Muslim in the estimation of the holier-than-thou Christians). But things did not have that kind of colouration the moment I stepped out into the real world. From the moment I left home for my higher education till the moment I embraced Islam, it never mattered to the Muslims I met whether I was a Christian or Muslim or traditionalist before help came my way. All that mattered was the fact that I was a human being. And very much unlike what I grew up to know with somebody preaching to you that you must accept Christ to enter heaven and bearing heavily on your whether you wanted to talk religion or not, the Muslims I met NEVER tried to talk to me about their faith in a you-must-accept-it-by-force manner.

To this day, no Muslim that I met in those days condemned my religion.I would sit and dine with Muslims and we would be talking but the moment it was time for prayer, they would excuse themselves, do their ablution and quietly withdraw to pray without as much as invite you. If you visited them on Fridays, they would leave you in their house, go to mosque to pray and come back to meet you. Not only were they respectful of your religion, they trusted you with their possessions.

I wonder if there are Christians who would leave you in their house on a Sunday when going to church without pressurizing you to go to church with them – whatever your religion or sect.This was my unprejudiced observation until I met Yerima. Sen. Ahmed Sani popularly known as Yerima was the Governor of Zamfara State then.Yerima came into national prominence for the introduction of Sharia Law to Zamfara State. Under him, the Penal Code became more effective and whoever erred or contravened the law faced summary actions.

The name Yerima meant fear to non-Muslims outside his state. It was the general opinion that if you were not a Muslim, you couldn’t be safe near a fanatic like Yerima and in fact, you had no business being in Zamfara. I had started making a mark in journalism when one day, a friend I went to school with called to say she met Yerima’s ADC and discussed the prospects of me coming down to Zamfara to interview the governor. Without thinking about it for a moment, I turned down the opportunity.

Me, Yerima? No way!! As hungry as I was for good stories, I didn’t think Yerima was an area I could approach and I thought I was not the kind of journalist he would want near him for an interview. After all, I was a jean-wearing journalist with braids and totally un-Islamic in all ways.Little did I know that fate was bringing me in contact with Yerima and that was going to be an opportunity to see all Muslims in the same light – accommodating and not condemning of your religion. I met Yerima in the Summer of 2006. I was one of the panellists on a live broadcast of the breakfast show of Ben TV where Yerima was a guest. I had gone there dressed in jeans with my braids pulled up and complete with trainers and clanging bangles.

I looked a complete I-don’t-care type – a yuppy woman. After the television program, along with some other journalists, I went for more exclusive interview for my newspaper and despite Yerima’s stance on Sharia, he didn’t as much as look at me as a sinner for once.

The biggest part of it is that when I returned to Nigeria and applied to be one of his media consultants, he gave me the chance without delay. There I was, a Christian and a woman for that matter!I was treated with much respect and dignity and everybody around him respected me for what I had to offer – my brain.

Whenever I had a job to discuss with him or show him, he would attend to me but he never allowed us to be alone together. And when it was time for prayer, they would all go for prayers and come back to resume whatever I had to show him.

It was around that time that I began to feel naked by not covering my head and body. Something in me told me it wasn’t right. Yerima and those around him preached to me through their behaviours without saying a word. They accepted me the way I was. They worked with me without discrimination and they made me see what beauty there was in Islam.

In those days of surrendering to the silent and beautiful pull of Islam, I couldn’t stop asking myself if any of those I grew up with in my Christian background would be so accommodating. Would they give a Muslim woman a chance to work with them, dine with them, make money and not go to church with them?

Would they have a very attractive Muslim woman around them and not as much as make a pass at her?I doubt. Seriously, I doubt.

From Justice Babatunde Adejumo, President of the National Industrial Court to my mentor and father, Sen. Umaru Dahiru through whom I finally embraced Islam, through whom I went for Hadj, through whom I grew in faith and through whom I have learnt a lot, to Arch. Halima Tayo Alao, to Dr. Mahmuda Aliyu Shinkafi and so many others, I have been given opportunities by a lot of Muslims without any asking for anything in return.

These are all people of deep faith who never asked me to compromise my former religion till I was personally convinced. I am indeed lucky to have seen the light of Islam myself through the conducts of these Muslim people.

These people showed the way to Islam more through deep love and acceptance of everybody whatever your religion than through talks. May Allah continue to guide them in their faith and make them lead more to Him through their conducts, ameen.’

That’s that about the second chapter of the book.

I’ve not come here to say I agree or disagree with Kperogi, but I know that a Muslim will most likely accept you for a job or marriage or anything sooner than a Christian will.

Well…. I stand to be corrected after so many years of holding that belief.

Alhaja Adeola Agoro JP writes from Abuja