Nigerian Muslims in Focus
--If anybody doubts the preponderancy of Islam in Nigeria, he/she has to visit most of the country's 19 northern states. Whenever Adhan (call to prayer) is called, all economic activities stop as everybody heads for the mosque.
"Islam is our religion and way of life here in the North,” Sheikh Qorib-Allah Nasr al-Deen, head of the Qadiriyah in Africa and an inhabitant of Kano State, once told IslamOnline.net (IOL).
That does not mean there are no Muslims in the South. The Southwest, made up largely of the Yoruba people, the stronghold of the nation's economy, is roughly divided between Muslims and Christians.
A recent research by the Izhar Ul-Haq, an Islamic missionary founded in the early 1990s, found that Islam is also taking roots in the mainly Christian oil-rich South and Southeast.
Nigeria is also a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC); in accordance with a decision taken by former military President Ibrahim Babangida, a Muslim from the northern state of Niger.
Nigeria's Ethnoreligious Map
A recent study by an American group, the Pew Research Center, claims that Muslims make up 50 per cent of Nigeria’s population, though the most recent National Population Census in 2006 was silent on the questions of religion and race.
That is because authorities felt that this might endanger the run up to the 2007 general elections as well as the prevalent counter-claims over population and deep mutual suspicion between the North and the South.
Basically, most of the Hausa-Fulanis ethnics in the North are Muslims and the Ibos in the southeast are predominantly Christians, according to Encarta 2006 Edition.
“However, Yorubas in the South-west are both Muslims and Christians with Muslims slightly in the majority and there is a fair amount of inter-marriage. Many people in Nigeria only follow African traditional religion. Much of the Muslims and Christians mix African traditional religion with their own,” the Encarta said.
How Did Islam Reach Nigeria?
Islam first entered Nigeria through trans-Saharan trade in the 12th century. It spread among the rulers and the urban population and then gradually moved into the rural areas.
Scholars established Quranic schools and for many centuries up to the colonial period starting in the very late 1800s Islamic schooling was the formal educational system in Northern Nigeria.
The North was solidly Muslim, apart from pockets of African traditional religion in the remote or mountainous areas. Islam also spread faster in the South, particularly into Yoruba lands, down to what is now the city and state of Lagos and the sea.
This is credited to the early 19th century jihad of the great scholar Sheikh Uthman Dan Fodio, founder of the Sokoto Caliphate, which was one of Africa’s biggest empires of the time.
He was succeeded by his equally learned son, Muhammad Bello, who historians say took Islam southward and consolidated Shari'ah across The Caliphate after the demise of his father.
Systematic Educational Discrimination
Though populous Muslims are, they have - as a unit - wielded little influence on many fronts since Independence in 1960. Analysts blame this on many factors, including the educational policy of the British colonialists who established missionary schools where enrolment was based on religion.
“They discriminated Muslims by ensuring that only Christian children [were] admitted into the school. Any Muslim child wishing for western education must first be converted to Christianity. Many Muslim children had to convert in the early 1950s up to late 1960s,” said Salman Ajakaye, a 57-year-old Muslim who was a victim of the British discriminatory policy.
“My father insisted that I cannot go to church because I want to be educated, and so was it. This is why the Muslim community is backward in terms of education. By the time Ahmadiyyah and other Islamic organizations started establishing private schools, it was almost late to catch up,” added Ajakaye.
Still, Muslims are very backward in terms of education. UNESCO reckoned that most children in the Muslim North are still trapped in the Al-majiri system, due to the high level of poverty and, in some cases, outright ignorance.
Under the Al-Majiri system, prevalent in the North, thousands of children are sent to learn under Islamic teachers who in turn leave them to fend for themselves.
“Most of these kids are the ones disturbing peace in the North. They are the Yandaba boys who terrorize people. They end up not getting the Islamic education and yet are denied access to western education. With them ending up as stack ignorant, they are easily manipulated by politicians to their selfish end,” stated Shehu Sani, a Muslim civil rights activist based in the North.
The Fight for Shari`ah
The return to democracy in 1999 witnessed 10 northern states opting for full implementation of the Islamic Shariah legal code, prompting heated debate in a country governed by a secular constitution.
What had existed in the north for the past 100 years was a limited application of Shari'ah on civil and marital matters. However, many non-Muslims in the region believe such application is a violation of the constitution which forbids state religion.
Despite the debates, which resulted in court cases, the northern states are still implementing Shariah but with extreme caution.
All the northern states have Shariah courts, and a non-governmental Shariah panel also operates in the highly liberal Lagos state in the Southwest.
The panel is specialized in marriage and inheritance matters, but its decisions are not binding. It was established by the MICA, a group of committed Muslim brothers and sisters.
Political Participation
Muslims are no doubt a strong part of the Nigerian ruling elite, but whether they represent Islam is a subject of debate among Muslim scholars who have criticized the running of the country like a fiefdom without regards to the welfare of the citizens - something that Islam decries.
Of the 13th Nigerian leaders since independence, eight were Muslims, including the incumbent President Yar’Adua.
Close to two-thirds of members of the Nigerian Parliament are Muslims, and all members of the President Umaru Yar’Adua’s kitchen cabinets are Muslims from the core northern states of Katsina, Kano, and Sokoto, which once had “born to rule” as its emblem in national politics.
“Yes, Muslims are there leading. But do they represent Muslims and Islam. The answer is no,” Sheikh Abeebullah Adam, director of the Markaz Agege, Nigeria’s most influential Islamic school, told IOL.
“They were elected on the platform of their political parties and not on the platform of Islam. Most of them do not even know much about Islam. We have not seen them show good examples for others to follow; an action that would have showcased them as good Muslims,” said Adam.
Lai Mohammed (Muslim), spokesman of the country’s largest opposition party, the Action Congress (AC), told IOL that politicians do not flaunt their religion because Nigeria is a secular state.
“Don’t forget this religious tag was once used against a very qualified presidential candidate. Many see him as an extremist who may turn Nigeria to an Islamic state,” Mohammed said.
He is referring to former military president and top opposition leader, Muhammadu Buhari, a devout Muslim from Katsina, who had once been a part of the Sokoto caliphate.
Major Challenges
Most Muslim scholars believe the first challenge facing the Ummah in Nigeria is lack of the leadership and unity.
Some argue that the community is also ravaged by poverty and ignorance, all of which must be addressed by the Muslims to truly convert their size into influence.
The establishment of the Muslim Students Society of Nigeria (MSSN) in 1955 was to achieve unity among the Ummah, but the organization itself does not have visible national leadership.
Fifty years after its establishment, its founding members (some of them are now strong politicians) and affiliates gathered in 2005 to raise funds for its national secretariat.
Although millions of naira (Nigeria's currency) were collected at the event in Abuja, the secretariat is sitll a mirage today.
North vs. South: Mutual Suspicions
There is also a deep suspicion between Muslims in the North and their brothers in the South.
The former block often derogatorily refers to the latter as arna, a Hausa word for pagans, and the two sides had been known to toe different paths until the ascendance of the incumbent president-general of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) and Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Abubakar Sa’ad.
The two sides started and ended fatsing until the coming of Sa’ad who established a committee comprising scholars and elders from the two regions with a view to resolving their differences and forging a common front.
Abdullahi Shuaib, Conference of Islamic Organization (CIO) coordinator, told IOL that the Muslim community is plagued with these and other challenges which also include limited education and poverty.
“The challenges facing Muslims in Nigeria are many, but the most glaring one is the problem of leadership. We don’t have leadership around whom people bind, and this in turn has led to the problem of unity. Although the president-general of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) and Sultan of Sokoto, Abubakar Muhammad Sa’ad, has tried to bring us under one umbrella as Muslims, there is still a long way to go," said Shuaib.
“There is also the problem of poverty; our people are very poor and are educationally backward. Most Muslims are not educated and this has put them at a serious disadvantage," Shuaib added.
"We are not also visible in the economic sector, and this has a lot of implications for the Muslims. In the financial sector, especially in the banking sector, you can hardly count 10 Muslims who are in top positions in this area, apart from the Central Bank governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi," added Shuaib.
"Despite this large population, Muslim sisters are not allowed to wear hijab, or headscarf in banks or nursing schools or hospitals, and Muslim female children cannot wear [the] same to school. Observers argue that this would underscore the powerlessness of the Muslim community," stated Shuaib.
Shuaib added, “We also do not have a serious political culture. Our political culture is at low ebb and this affected our participation [at] the grassroots level and this in turn has given rise to a corrupt party system which breeds corruption and underdevelopment. The kind of political situation we find ourselves in Nigeria is largely because Muslims have not been able to evolve a serious political culture.”
There have been scores of ethno-religious crises since the country’s independence from Britain in 1960. But keen observers have accused politicians of hiding under religion to perpetrate violence.
“It is well known that Nigeria has periodic religious riots, but these are not usually prompted by religious differences as such, but more by ethnic, historical and political rivalries or grievances that colonialism caused in which religious difference is a secondary issue,” Imam Sulaiman Muhammadu-Awwal, an Islamic scholar from the Southwest, told IOL.
Source: IslamOnline.net
That does not mean there are no Muslims in the South. The Southwest, made up largely of the Yoruba people, the stronghold of the nation's economy, is roughly divided between Muslims and Christians.
A recent research by the Izhar Ul-Haq, an Islamic missionary founded in the early 1990s, found that Islam is also taking roots in the mainly Christian oil-rich South and Southeast.
Nigeria is also a member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC); in accordance with a decision taken by former military President Ibrahim Babangida, a Muslim from the northern state of Niger.
Nigeria's Ethnoreligious Map
A recent study by an American group, the Pew Research Center, claims that Muslims make up 50 per cent of Nigeria’s population, though the most recent National Population Census in 2006 was silent on the questions of religion and race.
That is because authorities felt that this might endanger the run up to the 2007 general elections as well as the prevalent counter-claims over population and deep mutual suspicion between the North and the South.
Basically, most of the Hausa-Fulanis ethnics in the North are Muslims and the Ibos in the southeast are predominantly Christians, according to Encarta 2006 Edition.
“However, Yorubas in the South-west are both Muslims and Christians with Muslims slightly in the majority and there is a fair amount of inter-marriage. Many people in Nigeria only follow African traditional religion. Much of the Muslims and Christians mix African traditional religion with their own,” the Encarta said.
How Did Islam Reach Nigeria?
Islam first entered Nigeria through trans-Saharan trade in the 12th century. It spread among the rulers and the urban population and then gradually moved into the rural areas.
Scholars established Quranic schools and for many centuries up to the colonial period starting in the very late 1800s Islamic schooling was the formal educational system in Northern Nigeria.
The North was solidly Muslim, apart from pockets of African traditional religion in the remote or mountainous areas. Islam also spread faster in the South, particularly into Yoruba lands, down to what is now the city and state of Lagos and the sea.
This is credited to the early 19th century jihad of the great scholar Sheikh Uthman Dan Fodio, founder of the Sokoto Caliphate, which was one of Africa’s biggest empires of the time.
He was succeeded by his equally learned son, Muhammad Bello, who historians say took Islam southward and consolidated Shari'ah across The Caliphate after the demise of his father.
Systematic Educational Discrimination
Though populous Muslims are, they have - as a unit - wielded little influence on many fronts since Independence in 1960. Analysts blame this on many factors, including the educational policy of the British colonialists who established missionary schools where enrolment was based on religion.
“They discriminated Muslims by ensuring that only Christian children [were] admitted into the school. Any Muslim child wishing for western education must first be converted to Christianity. Many Muslim children had to convert in the early 1950s up to late 1960s,” said Salman Ajakaye, a 57-year-old Muslim who was a victim of the British discriminatory policy.
“My father insisted that I cannot go to church because I want to be educated, and so was it. This is why the Muslim community is backward in terms of education. By the time Ahmadiyyah and other Islamic organizations started establishing private schools, it was almost late to catch up,” added Ajakaye.
Still, Muslims are very backward in terms of education. UNESCO reckoned that most children in the Muslim North are still trapped in the Al-majiri system, due to the high level of poverty and, in some cases, outright ignorance.
Under the Al-Majiri system, prevalent in the North, thousands of children are sent to learn under Islamic teachers who in turn leave them to fend for themselves.
“Most of these kids are the ones disturbing peace in the North. They are the Yandaba boys who terrorize people. They end up not getting the Islamic education and yet are denied access to western education. With them ending up as stack ignorant, they are easily manipulated by politicians to their selfish end,” stated Shehu Sani, a Muslim civil rights activist based in the North.
The Fight for Shari`ah
The return to democracy in 1999 witnessed 10 northern states opting for full implementation of the Islamic Shariah legal code, prompting heated debate in a country governed by a secular constitution.
What had existed in the north for the past 100 years was a limited application of Shari'ah on civil and marital matters. However, many non-Muslims in the region believe such application is a violation of the constitution which forbids state religion.
Despite the debates, which resulted in court cases, the northern states are still implementing Shariah but with extreme caution.
All the northern states have Shariah courts, and a non-governmental Shariah panel also operates in the highly liberal Lagos state in the Southwest.
The panel is specialized in marriage and inheritance matters, but its decisions are not binding. It was established by the MICA, a group of committed Muslim brothers and sisters.
Political Participation
Muslims are no doubt a strong part of the Nigerian ruling elite, but whether they represent Islam is a subject of debate among Muslim scholars who have criticized the running of the country like a fiefdom without regards to the welfare of the citizens - something that Islam decries.
Of the 13th Nigerian leaders since independence, eight were Muslims, including the incumbent President Yar’Adua.
Close to two-thirds of members of the Nigerian Parliament are Muslims, and all members of the President Umaru Yar’Adua’s kitchen cabinets are Muslims from the core northern states of Katsina, Kano, and Sokoto, which once had “born to rule” as its emblem in national politics.
“Yes, Muslims are there leading. But do they represent Muslims and Islam. The answer is no,” Sheikh Abeebullah Adam, director of the Markaz Agege, Nigeria’s most influential Islamic school, told IOL.
“They were elected on the platform of their political parties and not on the platform of Islam. Most of them do not even know much about Islam. We have not seen them show good examples for others to follow; an action that would have showcased them as good Muslims,” said Adam.
Lai Mohammed (Muslim), spokesman of the country’s largest opposition party, the Action Congress (AC), told IOL that politicians do not flaunt their religion because Nigeria is a secular state.
“Don’t forget this religious tag was once used against a very qualified presidential candidate. Many see him as an extremist who may turn Nigeria to an Islamic state,” Mohammed said.
He is referring to former military president and top opposition leader, Muhammadu Buhari, a devout Muslim from Katsina, who had once been a part of the Sokoto caliphate.
Major Challenges
Most Muslim scholars believe the first challenge facing the Ummah in Nigeria is lack of the leadership and unity.
Some argue that the community is also ravaged by poverty and ignorance, all of which must be addressed by the Muslims to truly convert their size into influence.
The establishment of the Muslim Students Society of Nigeria (MSSN) in 1955 was to achieve unity among the Ummah, but the organization itself does not have visible national leadership.
Fifty years after its establishment, its founding members (some of them are now strong politicians) and affiliates gathered in 2005 to raise funds for its national secretariat.
Although millions of naira (Nigeria's currency) were collected at the event in Abuja, the secretariat is sitll a mirage today.
North vs. South: Mutual Suspicions
There is also a deep suspicion between Muslims in the North and their brothers in the South.
The former block often derogatorily refers to the latter as arna, a Hausa word for pagans, and the two sides had been known to toe different paths until the ascendance of the incumbent president-general of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) and Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Abubakar Sa’ad.
The two sides started and ended fatsing until the coming of Sa’ad who established a committee comprising scholars and elders from the two regions with a view to resolving their differences and forging a common front.
Abdullahi Shuaib, Conference of Islamic Organization (CIO) coordinator, told IOL that the Muslim community is plagued with these and other challenges which also include limited education and poverty.
“The challenges facing Muslims in Nigeria are many, but the most glaring one is the problem of leadership. We don’t have leadership around whom people bind, and this in turn has led to the problem of unity. Although the president-general of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) and Sultan of Sokoto, Abubakar Muhammad Sa’ad, has tried to bring us under one umbrella as Muslims, there is still a long way to go," said Shuaib.
“There is also the problem of poverty; our people are very poor and are educationally backward. Most Muslims are not educated and this has put them at a serious disadvantage," Shuaib added.
"We are not also visible in the economic sector, and this has a lot of implications for the Muslims. In the financial sector, especially in the banking sector, you can hardly count 10 Muslims who are in top positions in this area, apart from the Central Bank governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi," added Shuaib.
"Despite this large population, Muslim sisters are not allowed to wear hijab, or headscarf in banks or nursing schools or hospitals, and Muslim female children cannot wear [the] same to school. Observers argue that this would underscore the powerlessness of the Muslim community," stated Shuaib.
Shuaib added, “We also do not have a serious political culture. Our political culture is at low ebb and this affected our participation [at] the grassroots level and this in turn has given rise to a corrupt party system which breeds corruption and underdevelopment. The kind of political situation we find ourselves in Nigeria is largely because Muslims have not been able to evolve a serious political culture.”
There have been scores of ethno-religious crises since the country’s independence from Britain in 1960. But keen observers have accused politicians of hiding under religion to perpetrate violence.
“It is well known that Nigeria has periodic religious riots, but these are not usually prompted by religious differences as such, but more by ethnic, historical and political rivalries or grievances that colonialism caused in which religious difference is a secondary issue,” Imam Sulaiman Muhammadu-Awwal, an Islamic scholar from the Southwest, told IOL.
Source: IslamOnline.net
