In the name of Allah, the beneficent, the mercifulAllah does not forbid you to be kind and equitable to those who had neither fought against your faith nor driven you out of your homes. In fact Allah loves the equitable. Allah only forbids you to make friendship with those who fought you on account of your faith and drove you out of your homes and backed up others in your expulsion. Those who will take them for friends are indeed the wrongdoers.- Quran 60:7-9WRITING this sermon every week demands that one is attentive to current events in the Muslim world. It also essays the necessity for us to listen to feedbacks from Muslims and non-Muslims alike particularly those who have genuine interest in the promotion of inter-religious harmony in this country. I am sufficiently aware that there are some compatriots of mine out there whose outlook to life is global; Nigerians whose orientation and exposure in life makes it incumbent on them to rise above parochial sectional, tribal and indeed religious interests in their search for truth and the meaning of life wherever such may be found. It is from this perspective I read a mail sent to me by my compatriot Ogechi Sammy from the throbbing city of Owerri. I found the issues, which he raised in the mail, though not novel and completely unknown, highly pertinent and germane to the current events in the Muslim world. But before I attempt to engage some of the issues he raised in his mail, I wish to thank all those who sent mails in reaction to last weeks sermon on the birthday of Prophet Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of Allah be on his soul). While some wrote to express their appreciation for the meaning they derived from the piece, others called attention to the error, which was inherent in the posting of a picture, which supposedly belonged to our leader, Prophet Muhammad. I have since replied individually to such mails and only wish to reiterate once again that The Guardians webmaster did not deliberately post that picture in order to rile the Muslim reader, generate controversy and replicate the acrimonious reaction which followed the caricature of the personality of our prophet by irredentist and bigoted men in the media in Denmark, Switzerland and Belgium in recent times. I wish to assure readers that much care and circumspection would be displayed in future on such issues. But Ogechi Sammys mail, which came to me last Friday, travelled a different path. He wrote as follows: Dear Afis Oladosu, Let me thank you for teaching me Islam through the pages of the Friday Guardian. I must admit that as a lover of knowledge, I have derived much pleasure reading your Friday worship columns. Most of your expositions appeal to me. I can mention a few things I have learnt about Islam through you like how and where Islam places Jesus Christ (PBH)Isa, the meanings of the respective prayer postures of a praying Moslem, how a practicing Moslem should view power and leadership and lots more. However, every time I read your beautiful pieces and ponder developments in Moslem dominated regions of the world like Jos, Bauchi, Kaduna, Kano (Nigeria); Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the rest of the places I cant mention now. I find it most difficult to reconcile teachings with practices. I am a Christian and not in haste to stop being. Christians do compromise Christianity in teachings and practice. This is incontestable! But life is sacred to Christians. To a greater extent, Christians will commit other sins but will stop when taking life seems imminent. Out of carelessness or greed though, one or two lives may be deliberately or inadvertently be wasted by a Christian but rarely on an alarming scale as is common today among Moslem dominated areas as mentioned above. Why Sunni and Shitte Moslems slug it out in the Middle East and Arab world while other sects snuff life out in the African world. Why, Afis, why It pains me! We both can live complimentarily on this plane. Northern Nigerians cannot consume all their tomatoes, peppers, cows, potatoes, yams, cucumbers, carrots, beans and onions if the Southern parts decide to relocate and cut off relations. Southern Nigerians cannot live without these staples from the North nor consume their palm oil, and other products without the collaboration of the North. I want to believe the Shiites and Sunnis must have one complementary role to play in each other lives. Allah or God, who we all worship, is a peaceful God. Why do we kill Am afraid that the hate-induced pogrom amongst religious practitioners will summarily bring this world to a premature end, but I am neither a prophet nor a son of the prophets!Ogechi Sammy (ogejehovah@yahoo.com) For a start, I wish to remind readers that answering questions which arise out of the violent interface between Muslims and Christian segments of the Nigerian population particularly in the North of our country demands caution and objectivity. Not to do this is to sacrifice scholarship and honesty on the altar of selfish, personal or group patronage. In fact, Islam demands honesty from its adherents even if it is against their kith and kin. Again, answering questions which the interface between Muslims and Christians in the northern parts of the country usually generate, demand attention to history and what it has deposited in knowledge and information. But just as knowledge runs the risk of being perverted, the Muslim-Christian encounter in the North of this country has become, and unfortunately too, a subject of unceasing review for pecuniary, institutional and imperial purposes. One of the first victims of this scenario is truth itself; Jos, Bauchi and Maiduguri have become the first and worst victims of the heinous crimes that those who have appropriated its space could ever inflict on it. Dear Ogechi, one of the earliest lessons we received in traditional Arabic schools is to avoid conflating truth with its bearers/carriers. In other words, we were told as follows: The truth cannot be known through its bearer; rather, bearers of the truth should be known through truth itself. In this instance, the religion of Islam represents the truth, while Muslims, despite the contrarieties in their location and the dis-junctures in their realities, could be referred to as the bearers of the truth. Once we fail to divest the truth from the bearer, once we are unable to avoid conflating the Sun with the illumination that issues from it, then our circumstance would be, to put it mildly, unfortunate.The need to separate between Islam and the Muslims was emphasized by the Sokoto scholar and revolutionary, Uthman b. Fodio. He is reported to have said: I thank Allah who has bestowed on me the knowledge of Islam before I began to know who the Muslims were.Separating between Islam and the Muslims, like our separation between Christians and Christ, has become a categorical imperative for the following reasons: one, not all actions that issue forth from Muslims and Christians could be validated either by the Quran or the Bible; two, whereas Islam and Christianity could be referred to as Divine scripts, Muslims and Christians interpretation or application of same cannot but be fallible and error-ridden; three, the actions of some Muslims and, indeed, Christians, when critically examined, could be deliberate infractions against the divine will and injunction.(guardianfridayworship@gmail.com)
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