Qur’an

Muhammad was not only a Muslim, he was also the first son of the Sugu village chief; an apparent heir to the throne, a Yerima (successor) in waiting. Interestingly, he was also a committed, objective and unbiased young Muslim, representative of all that should be if religion (Islam in particular) is divorced of all extremist and terrorist tendencies. He had a first degree in engineering; a graduate of the Adamawa State University (ADSU) and the only one at that from my village. More than friends, we were brothers, constantly discussing ideas and the need for tolerance and co-existence within the human family. I was shaken out of my skin when I got a phone call in March that Muhammad had been gunned down by the Boko Haram extremists. I got this call while in my London University Library examining the history of textual misrepresentation of the Qur’an (the Holy Book of Muslims) by Islamic extremists. I could not fathom why this young man, a follower of the Prophet, a lover of peace and a father to a three month old daughter was cut down in the prime of his life. He was just 27 years of age! Sugu, one of the districts of Ganye Local Government Area in Adamawa State is a peaceful farming village, unused to violence, worse still religious violence. However, the invasion of Sugu-Ganye by these extremists and the killings and carnage from which Muhammad lost his life, will remain a sad day in the history of this village.

One of the reasons I came back to Sugu from London University in the month May 2013 was to visit and interview some of the victims of this attack. My first port of call was the family of my late friend Muhammad. On my arrival, I was made to wait outside the door of the living room, whose wall has been covered in chalk and charcoal drawings, seemingly by the children. One of such paintings depicted Muhammad smiling with his new born daughter. Next to this particular painting were the words “you shall never walk alone, Allah is with you”. I smiled the smile of pain because Muhammad was a fanatical Arsenal football fan while I remain a committed Liverpool football fan. I was happy that the Liverpool Football Club slogan “you shall never walk alone” was there to accompany Muhammad, an ardent rival fan. Was this fantasy taken too far? I was startled from my thoughts as the mother of Muhammad, Madam Helen walked out to meet me. Her eyes were red shot, sweat mingled with tears dripping effortlessly around the valleys of her neck. I have not seen such face invaded by fear, pain and uncertainty. The facial veins were lined with indelible sadness and sorrow. When the late Muhammad’s mother learnt I have come around to pay my respects, she ran off into the room to hide her tears. Seeing me, she said, “your friend Muhammad has been killed by Boko Haram Islamists.

A picture of Late Muhammad and his wife, three months before he was killed by the Boko Haramists

Does God kill? She asked. In the sea of emotions I discovered I had lost my voice. Suddenly I realised that even my father, the revered Catholic catechist of Sugu village has never given me any religious lessons, suggesting that God kills, certainly not young people like Muhammad. The killing of Muhammad and others in Ganye/Sugu by the Boko Haram Islamists is just one amongst the many scores of violent activities carried out by this sect. There is no doubt that Boko Haram poses an existential threat to the Nigerian state. Its activities have caused chaos in the north-east, spread fear of counter attacks and left Nigerian authorities scrambling for security. Why will peaceful places like Sugu and Ganye; villages that have not felt the impact of good governance over the years be consumed by the negative influence of the structural failure of government? Why will militia groups rise up to kill in the name of God? Does God really kill? Does God order his prophets to kill on his behalf? Is that the mission of creation?

How did Nigeria arrive at this point? To clearly explain this, it is necessary to put it within a historical context. Bishop Hassan Kukah argues that although the group has come to be popularly known as Boko Haram, it is not clear whether the group actually called itself by this name. However, in Islamic theology, every act is either Halal, permissible or Haram, impermissible. As such, while Ilimin Islamiyya (Islamic education) was considered Halal, permissible, Ilimin Boko (western education) was Haram, impermissible. Consequently, amongst some Islamic sects in northern Nigeria anyone getting western education was therefore a sinner, carrying out an impermissible act. Historically therefore, the word Boko crept into the vocabulary right from the beginning of the incursions of the colonial state and its western educational system. Boko was often used in relation to a second noun, Ilimi, meaning Education. Thus, the full expression, Ilimin Boko, was used to derogatorily refer to western education as distinct from what the Muslim community understood as the only form of education, namely, Ilimin Islamiyya, that is, Islamic education. While Ilimin Islamiyya was a form of catechesis focusing on teachings of the Holy Quran, its recitation and memory, it was the entry point for children into the faith of Islam. Its language of instruction was Arabic. Ilimin Boko on the other hand was considered inferior and suspect because it did not teach about the Quran or Islam. Its teacher, alphabets and language of instruction (English) were all very strange (white people) and their language seemingly incomprehensible. In any case, the white man and his incomprehensible ways were often associated with witchcraft, boka. Thus, when the colonial state through the missionaries started a programme of education, the Muslim ruling classes still remained restrained and suspicious of their intentions. They decided to experiment by sending the children of the slaves and lower classes within their communities. It took a while before the ruling classes sensed the value of education as a tool of modernization and gradually began to send their own children to school. When the first generation of Muslim elites decided to send their children to school, these children were often the subject of derision among their own mates and friends. Thus, those children who believed they had remained faithful to Islam by holding on to Ilimin Islamiyya, derided their friends who sought Ilimin Boko by singing derogatory songs against them whenever the latter set out to school.

Evidence within and around northern Nigeria suggests that this prejudice has persisted and this is why western education was categorized as Haram. Till date, the suspicion of western education is shown by the miserably low and embarrassing statistics of school enrolment all over the Northern states of Nigeria. Today, well over 80 percent of muslim parents in the rural and even urban Northern states still refuse to send their children to school to acquire western education. The situation of the girls is worse, perhaps, registering less than 10 per cent of children of school age. Hordes of Muslim children who today roam the streets are graduates of the Islamiyya schools who often graduate after four to five years under the tutelage of an itinerant teacher, Mallam. The Mallam instructs them, earns no salary and has to rely solely on the proceeds of his students’ daily rounds of begging on the streets or in private homes. In the course of their training, both they and their teacher have no other forms of support except the proceeds of their begging. These hordes of young children are unleashed on the streets of almost all the Northern cities and towns with no means of self-support. Their population runs into millions across all the major cities and towns in the Northern states. They are the cannon fodder that feed sects like Boko Haram and other similar millenarian movements that sprout occasionally in the North. The training they were receiving in their Koranic education was for a world that was fast vanishing while the new one could not accommodate them.

In addition to this is the general frustration of citizens with the Nigerian state. The evil effects of bad governance, corruption, total lack of security and welfare have all become part of our daily lives. It is safe to suggest that in the eyes of the Boko Haram members, the rampant corruption in Nigeria, in addition to the collapse of public morality, injustice and so on could only be attributed to those who govern using certificates, stolen or acquired, from western oriented institutions. In their reasoning, those who govern Nigeria do so because they have acquired their tools by gaining western education. These same people, in their eyes, call themselves Muslims but they persist in things that are Haram, impermissible in Islam. Therefore, as their arguments go, it is their acquisition of western education and its application to governance in Nigeria that has polluted public morality, deepened the poverty of ordinary people and allowed injustice to walk the land. This may not be accepted by the elites and cream of the Nigerian society, but this line of thinking had resonance among the poor and those on the fringe of the society. Logically, they argue, western education is considered to be fake, a source and cause of corruption. They are angry over the fact that our religious leaders have come under the control of the state and are unable to give voice to their pain and suffering. Thus, their revolt was internal to their community and not against their non-Muslim brethren. As such, their rebellion is both against the state and leaders of their own faiths.

Today, ordinary Muslims feel overwhelmed by the tornado of changes around them. Unable to access the tools of modernization, they have remained largely outside the loop of power. Even in the inner recesses of their own major cities in the entire region, almost all forms of businesses are conducted by people they consider foreigners. These are almost all Southern traders and they are almost all Christians too. Their habits of alcohol intake, partying and the adoption of a lifestyle that they have come to consider as being dysfunctional has made ordinary Muslims nervous about the future of their families and faith. Sensing that they have become too weak to fight, people like Mallam Mohammed Yusuf, the leader of Boko Haram took advantage of this situation by arguing that turning inwards, away from contamination, was a greater source of strength than looking outwards by means of acquiring western education and other tools of modernization. Naturally, for over 90 of his followers with no western education and graduates of the Islamic education system, this would have made a lot of sense. In an environment where even the few educated Muslims have no jobs, this message exposing the underbelly of the state had great appeal. Their new communities became their new family, offering security and welfare. They community becomes an alternative state and their leader an alternative to the failed political class. This transfer of allegiance and search for succour is not new.

Consequently, the leaders of Boko Haram used Islamic religious theology to justify their arguments in carrying out this massacre. For example in his recent research, Muhammad Y. Jar Adam analyses how the late leader of Boko Haram, Yusuf, provided in a recorded lecture on 30th May, 2008, a Hausa translation of the book  Global, Foreign and Colonialist Schools: Their History and Dangers, written by Bakr b. Abdullah Abu Zayd (d. 2008). Abu Zayd was a prominent Islamic theologian of the Wahhabi tradition. According to Abu Zayd’s book, European colonialists introduced modern secular education into Islamic societies as an elaborately planned and camouflaged conspiracy to maintain colonialist control and domination over Muslim societies. Their aim was to corrupt the pure Islamic morals with Western liberal norms, especially to replace proper gender roles with permissive sexual mores, and to undermine solid Islamic individual and communal identities built on Salafi notions of piety and righteousness. Abu Zayd also claims that the colonialist conspiracy embedded in modern secular education is more dangerous in perpetuating Western control than physical military conquest and political domination. This is because while the military domination may conquer territories, education and intellectual domination conquers the mind. Providing a commentary on this book, the first late leader of Boko Haram applies the Islamic principle of interpretation which says that; 1) knowledge that conforms to the Qur’an and Sunna (the holy book and tradition of Islam) should be accepted without hesitation. 2) Knowledge that contradicts the Qur’an and Sunna should be rejected with immediate effect and 3) Knowledge that neither supports nor contradicts the Qur’an and Hadith could be accepted or rejected on its own merits alone or as circumstances dictate. Consequently, western education in all its ramifications contradicts the Qur’an and the Sunna and so must be rejected.

When I translated one of Shekau’s sermons (the current leader of Boko Haram) from Arabic/Hausa to English, it is very clear that the group’s ideology is strongly against western civilization which they seem to equate with atheism. Shekau suggests that the edifice of western civilization is constructed on three fundamental pillars; western education, Judaeo-Christian tradition and democracy. The collaboration between the three has led to what he calls globalization and modern world order. First, he argues that the western world uses western education to infiltrate Muslim minds and destroy Islam. Education for him is the foundation of immorality and all that is evil in the world. Such system of education must not only be rejected but must be replaced by religious education where Allah is the means and the goal. Second, he accuses Judeo-Christian tradition for ascribing to God what God has not ascribed or attributed to himself. Such theology has encouraged liberal interpretation which has taken hold of many modern religions. The influence of liberal interpretation has also affected Islam, allowing institutions, secular systems including governments to attribute to God what God has not instructed. As a result he completely rejects the use of Judeo-Christian calendar and holiday systems that has been recognised and adopted by secular governments all over the world. He calls Christians associationists (those who associate other gods with God, e.g. God the father, God the son and God the Holy Spirit) and infidels. A true Muslim should have nothing to with infidels.

Indeed, Abu Shekau describes democracy as the rejection of Allah’s supreme leadership over his creation. In Nigeria, this rejection is reflected in the country’s return to multiparty democracy and the constitutional affirmation of its secular identity. He further argues that the rejection of Allah’s law is further cemented by the use of national symbols like the national anthem, the national pledge and the national flag. The concepts of honour, unity and glory which accompany these symbols should only be ascribed to Allah and no one else. Thus the concept of the nation state is a human construct that denigrates the place of Allah and completely excludes Allah from the public domain. In his mind, there is no distinction between western education, Judeo-Christian tradition and Democracy. These three elements constitute western civilization, meant to destroy Islam and Muslims must stand up to fight it anywhere, anytime and with whatever means.

Perhaps, more interesting is the issue of the annual Hajj and the external sponsorships of Da’wah groups in Nigeria by such countries as Iran, Libya, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and so on. At a time when the European Union and the traditional allies of the Christian Community are saying they are living in a post Christian era, the annual Hajj continues to offer an opportunity for ordinary Muslims to seek business and sponsors for the propagation of Islam in Nigeria. A lot of funds are readily available for the building of mosques, madrasa and Islamiyya schools, and propagation of the faith and so on. But perhaps more significant is the fact that through these pilgrimages, Nigerian Muslims are coming into contact with other Muslims from elsewhere. Many wealthy Arab states and individuals continue to sponsor men and women with different ideological convictions. This is why at times, Nigeria tends to become a battle ground for proxy inter and intra sect wars within Islam. This is why these preachers have come to pose a serious threat to internal harmony even within Islam. These sponsoring countries, especially Iran, Libya and Saudi Arabia therefore import their ideological bitterness through their countries into Nigeria. This is the basis for a lot of the inter and intra sect or disagreements within the Muslim community which finally spill into the public space.

In summary, the issues that Boko Haram has thrown up are closely related to the issues of identity politics, the struggle to claim and assert both individual and community identity in a shifting world. It is also a symptom of the crisis of modernization. But, over and above, it is a clarion call for Nigeria and Nigerians to begin to assert clearly the supremacy of citizenship over and above other sectional claims. This is the challenge for our young and struggling democracy. We may stumble and fall, but we must renew our commitment to the fine principles and challenges of building a democratic society on the foundations of a secular, free and just society. We need to establish a society where God does not order people to kill on his behalf. God does not kill in this manner otherwise my father would have told me. Muhammad Rest in Peace!

Fr. Atta Barkindo
SOAS, University of London

About the Author

Fr. Atta Barkindo is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Yola, North-Eastern Nigeria. He is a Visiting Research Assistant at the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR), Singapore and a current Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of Politics and International Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His research areas involve political Islam, terrorism and conflict resolution. His current PhD research is on Impunity, Memory and the Politics of Terrorism in the transformation of Boko Haram.

Northern Province