Every Northerner; irrespective of tribe or religion should read this. Is the North a lip? [II] Friday column Published on Friday, 26 July 2013 06:00 Written by Adamu Adamu But how does the North ensure that this power is useably harnessed out of the current planned chaos into which it has been absorbed and made effete, and turned into an electoral victory? The only way that the North could begin to heal itself is by telling itself the truth. The disunity of the North was not simply the result of the exploits of parochial politicians, which from their personal, even if selfish, standpoint could well be justified. There are many uncomfortable reasons. Perhaps the first dagger thrown at Christian-Muslim relations in a way that would come to haunt the region was not the event at the College of Education in Kafanchan in 1987: it was the utterance of Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi following the assassination of General Murtala Mohammed in 1976. At that time, the Sheikh said that Murtala was killed because he was a Muslim. He never explained what he meant nor adduced evidence for it, but the conclusion that Murtala was killed by Christians, not just by coup makers who happened to be Christians, in some Christian conspiracy was inescapable. But nothing in the circumstances could have been furtherer from the truth. It was a very unfortunate statement that pained many of us; and despite our support for him then, we demonstrated against it on campus. And we are Muslim, so it is better left to the imagination what it must have meant to Christians. To mention just two, the words of the Sheikh must have irritatingly grated on the Christian pillars of the government, people like General TY Danjuma and General Martin Adamu. In the absence of General Olusegun Obasanjo, the second in command to General Murtala, who had wisely-and some say cowardly-gone into hiding, General Danjuma, bearing the pain of that statement by Gumi, sold his life the second time and came out to crush that coup almost single-handedly. And unknown to Sheikh Abubakar Gumi-or, even if known to him, it was to him of no consequence-it was General Martin Adamu, a Christian, who on one dark and dangerous night in the fateful month of July 1966, undertook a precarious drive from Kano to Lagos, a drive with a consignment in which the very salvation of the North lay, and on which, if caught, Martin Adamu’s certain death would have been a foregone conclusion; and it was an event without which Sheikh Abubakar Gumi himself wouldn’t have had the peace and quiet or the chance to conduct his Tafsir in Kaduna from 1966 until he died in September 1992. But no one in the North had the courage to oppose what was clearly a very unfortunate expression of a personal opinion that was consequently, because of the general silence of Northerners, subsequently taken to be the Northern Muslim, and even, Islamic position. Contrary to what he said, these two, among many others, had stood by Murtala in life and in death and made their sacrifices for the North as its own contribution for the survival of the country. And perhaps time would have healed that damage, but again in 1988, Sheikh Gumi called on Muslims not to vote for Christians in the local government elections in Kaduna that year. Again, no Northern leader saw it fit to either disagree publicly with Gumi or advise him to withdraw or stop making such calls. Faced with this general silence, Christians would be right to conclude that this was the Northern Muslim position and to begin to chart their own future separate from, or even antagonistic to, that of Muslims, for which, in any case, even the one who made the call was not planning anything. In spite of Gumi’s unfortunate call, a Christian, indeed a Reverend Father, went on to win the election, which was either a reflection of the numerical superiority of Christians in Northern Kaduna or, more likely, the result of disunity among the ranks of Muslims which Gumi had helped to create. What the Muslims not just in Kaduna but in the entire North lost in that encounter was more than an election; what they lost was communal trust between them and their Christian neighbours as a basis for peaceful coexistence. Meanwhile, his teachings had given rise to a doctrine that spawned an organisation the cumulative effect of whose activities has been to break Muslim unity and to frighten Christians. For almost three decades the threat of a Jihad, which even those who made it didn’t understand, couldn’t launch but wouldn’t stop preaching, filled the Northern air. It is not for nothing that religious tension is higher in Kaduna and Jos than in other places in the North. Even in retrospect and with the benefit of hindsight, it is difficult to accurately gauge culpability for fomenting religious crises that have been going on for a long time in an atmosphere that has been, and remains, charged. While both sides are to blame and must be condemned, in a climate of crass ignorance on the Islamic scene and the absence of a competent authority to regulate what is going on, and with preachers susceptible to manipulation, and on their own spitting a fire of their own making that is not lit by the religion, perhaps a greater part of that culpability must be borne by them. And if people had descended heavily on the case in Plateau, it was only because it was different: there the nation saw a government taking sides; but even here, if the truth must be told, why should the passing by of a scantily-clad lady in front of a Friday congregation lead to a riot and a crisis? This was one attitude that needed to change, but no Muslim could tell Muslims they were wrong; and no Christian dared dream it. And that is why if there is any good fallout of the Boko Haram phenomenon, it is perhaps only this: that its appearance forced a group preaching Jihad to promptly stop and even begin courting and embracing Christians. From them, doing this is something new; and for us, what a beautiful bid’ah it is; but, certainly, it is not enough to just embrace someone you have been threatening all along. They must put visible effort to undo all this interfaith damage that they have needlessly caused in a way that will reassure non-Muslims that as citizens of Nigeria, they are equal to everyone else. First, Nigeria is not an Islamic state; but even if it were to become a real one-not the hand-chopping variety-the issue of Dhimmitude wouldn’t become a question of citizenship. It would remain an issue of liability for, or exemption from, a particular form of state obligation, not unlike the payment of corporation tax. If you register a corporation and commence business, you must pay, because by definition you can’t avoid it; but if you don’t form, you don’t pay. In fact, the Jizya payable under Dhimmitude is a defence tax which non-Muslim People of the Book pay in cash what Muslims pay with their lives; and it can be avoided by the former if they elect to participate in the physical defence of the realm. The true Islamic position therefore is that, with other Muslims, Muslims are brethren-in-faith; and with Christians, they are brethren-in-creation-with identical feelings and needs, and with equal rights from, and equal obligations to, society. In obedience to the Holy Qur’an and the example of the Holy Prophet [SAW] in his Sunnah, Muslims respect Christians and are under obligation to love Jesus Christ [AS] and his holy, virgin mother; and they must condemn and dissociate themselves from the utterances of any Muslim leader or preacher who insults Christianity, threatens Christians and pretends that he is doing this on behalf of Muslims. Only this will ensure a foundation of justice on which to erect a future of mutual respect. But that will not be all. There is the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, display of arrogance and a brass neck by the Hausa-Fulani, who are mostly Muslim, towards not only Christians, who are mostly non-Hausa-Fulani, but also even other Muslims who are not Hausa-Fulani. Excepts perhaps for the Kanuri, who, even as a community, have been Muslim for more than 1,000 years, long before either the Hausa or the Fulani, no one escapes this hauteur. Thus, others can only be Sababbin Tuba, or Musulmin Bayerabe, for instance, or Kabila or such other derogatory term as the Hausa language is capable of conjuring. It is high time these stopped. And in the face of such hubris, sometimes you would begin to think that this religion was revealed in Kano. Obviously, this religion was not revealed in Kano or Sokoto; and what is needed is someone to wake Hausa-Fulani up to the new reality facing it before the short-sighted lead it to its destruction. As Yariman Zazzau said in his latest Friday Sermon, does the prosperous community formerly at peace with itself feel secure against the coming of a divinely-ordained withdrawal of its security and the flood of poverty in which it is currently drowning? Will it begin to plan or will it continue with the talk as one half of it kills the other half? So, in the circumstance is the North really only a lip? No, despite all the loose talk by lords spiritual and temporal, it is not a lip: it is really a leaf, a fig leaf-one that is not able to cover its nakedness
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 15:16:30 +0000
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