National Mosque, Federal Capital Abuja

In fact, so ruthless was this Malam B that just before embarking on his Brazil trip, he told the world that the group will be crushed by that evening. He succeeded in crushing them but at the expense of justice, earning the country another medal of shame as an uncivilized nation, and attracting sympathy for the sect. Well, we are hardly visited by justice anyway. That is why the same President who ordered the immediate massacre of boko haram members readily offered amnesty and money to Niger Delta rebels who are a thousand times more armed, who have killed, maimed, kidnapped lives, destroyed property and  crippled the economy.


The boko haram group of late Malam Muhammed Yusuf was therefore a natural offshoot of our culture. We are Boko Haram.  We must admit this much because we have actively done very little to prove otherwise. And to be candid, Muhammed Yusuf was never the first to propagate such ideas and be accepted by our elites. The anti-western books of Abdulkadir as-Sufi, an English convert to Islam, were popular among many Muslims on our campuses in the early 1980s. That too led to many students dropping from universities and abandoning public appointments, though not on a large scale or in a confrontational way like boko haram. What is more interesting here is the concord against modernity between two opposing sects of Islam: Sufism, as represented by as-Sufi, and Salafiyya, as represented by Mohammed Yusuf. This is no coincidence, though, but a fact that displays how a lot of Muslims across the world conceive the role of Islam in this modern age.


 I wish we Muslims in this part of the country will adopt the attitudes of the first generation of Muslims who had lived with the prophet of Islam, i.e. the Sahaba  and those that followed them  in righteousness (may God be pleased with them all) who, in pursuit of the teaching of the Holy Prophet (SAW) opened their hearts to various forms of knowledge and technology and from all sources: Chinese, Indian, Persian, Roman, European, African, etc.


The early Muslims revived the writings of Aristotle and bequeathed them to medieval Europe. They partook in technological development just as any other society, leaving behind a legacy of discoveries that were ironically the foundations of the very boko we ignorantly reject. They freely associated with everyone and were so liberal that their domains served as sanctuaries even to Jews when they were twice expelled from Europe. Many of the early Muslims partnered with people from other religions in trade and fought alongside them, in addition to marrying Christian wives. I wish we will liberate our minds and give scholarship its due regard because with ignorance as our anchor we will have little to achieve and everything to lose.


In conclusion I must say that Yar’adua would need more guns to silence the anti-modern boko haram attitude in us. If he cannot, the burden then rests with us. We must shoulder the task of giving our society a new inspiration that will integrate it into the world of knowledge, society and culture. We must come out of our boko haram enclave to embrace civilization in all its ramifications and make meaningful contributions to the future of this country and the world at large. This is my opinion on boko haram hoping  my reader will excuse my bold assertions.

Tilde

(c) The Optimist Voice. Al rights reserved

 

NIGERIA NEWS

We are Boko Haram
Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
August 11, 2009

 The cultural origins of boko haram movement in Nigeria
 
It is futile to speak on the halal or haram of boko. I rather intend to discuss the cultural roots of the movement. But first let us settle the issue of nomenclature which some writers got wrong. On the authority of Professor Mahdi Adamu Ngaski, a celebrated historian, author of The Hausa Factor in the History of West Africa, and former Vice Chancellor, Usman Danfodio University, in Hausa, ‘boko’ simply means ‘fake.’ Before it was largely consigned to western education, boko was often used to connote the “fake bride’, amaryar boko, who rode the horse in place of the real bride as the convoy of celebrants escorted her to her new home. The real bride would secretly be carried earlier by two or three women to her home.


So when western education came to Hausaland, the learned rejected it and gave it a derogatory connotation, ilimin boko, ‘fake education.’ Sadly, this name has remained the standard translation of ‘western education’ among all Hausa speaking people of West Africa and I have never heard of any effort to change it, except the ilimin zamani that is sparsely applied. To date, there is no alternative nomenclature for makarantar boko, 'fake school' that connotes modern schools for western education. My discussion with the Professor on boko took place in December 1984 in Sokoto.


Mainstream Muslims in this country view western education as useful, but they still hold the West with a lot of suspicion due to the existing hostile relations between the Muslim World and the West. Though this group recognizes western education as a body of knowledge to which Islamic culture has significantly contributed for centuries in the past, the lingering suspicion has continuously hampered the domestication of the knowledge and its internalization in the region. So we go to school only obtain a certificate that will earn us a job without imbibing the principles and fundamentals that enabled the West to excel in such knowledge and technology; those principles and fundamentals are seen as alien, never to be imbibed.


Here in Hausaland, the concept of a European  is not applied in the literal sense only, but to anyone who adopts western practice like keeping to time, monogamy, family planning, games, leisure, tourism, reading, western dress, etc, though only few of such practices contravene Islamic injunctions. Though Islam is still revered as the reference point of culture and the ultimate arbiter of cultural conflicts, we readily mock anyone who attempts to practice it to the letter. For example, we reject the honest incorruptible public servant by suggesting that he relocates to Saudi Arabia where Islam is practiced: When one recites the Qur’an as it should be recited, following the rules of recitation (tajweed), we deride him as one trying to mimic theArab: It took centuries and regular national competition on Qur’anic recitation that started as recent as mid 1980s before northerners finally accepted the proper recitation.


Our general contempt for knowledge is outstanding, making us to prefer ignorance as a companion. The more knowledgeable you are or try to use that knowledge, the lesser are your chances of survival. The overwhelming majority of our political representatives and appointees are not the best from their constituencies, some cannot even write their names properly; that is why they hardly contribute to debates in the National Assembly. Our entire political ethos is built on ignorance such that hardly would anyone succeed except if he is ready to put aside the correct thing he knows and behave as, or obey, the ordinary or ignorant who has never been to the four walls of high school.

An illustration of our contempt for knowledge also lies in the way we tackle problems when they arise. How else can we explain the cold blooded massacre of boko haram members in Bauchi and Maiduguri, much of which is now correctly loaded on President Yar’adua, the foremost proponent of the rule of law? Where is the rule of law when the President ordered the Police and the army to crush them or deal with them ‘siquayale’?