By Ibraheem Dooba
Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah’s interventions are becoming insufferably dangerous. He appears to have an over-the-counter salve for assuaging the phantom marginalisation of his Christian community. However, in doing that, he crowds out the Muslims favourably disposed to peace making.At issue is the interview he granted the Christian Science Monitor (published on 27 April) when he visited the United States of America. I’m not one to call a bishop a liar, but many of Bishop Kukah’s claims want for accuracy and are laden with illogic.Ironically, the population he attacks so, still has enormous respect for him. But Kukah doesn’t see it that way (as you shall see presently how he interpreted the Sultan’s kind gesture). The summary of the man’s attitude is that whenever Muslims do something good to him, he carries the feeling that the Muslims are responding to his “goodness” and due to his standing in the society. But whenever they commit any infraction, real or imagined, it’s because they are bad people and because that’s what Islam teaches. Yes, in that interview, he found time to squeeze in an attack on Islam itself.But Muslims’ respect for the bishop was demonstrated when someone posted excerpts from the interview to our online group (comprising mostly young northern Muslims). Members said that quote couldn’t have been from Kukah. But I knew it was from him, because even though another online medium retitled the interview for purposes of klick-bait, I recognised a sentiment that he has been sharing for years (that we’re merely tolerating one another).I’ve chosen to comment on three claims he made in that interview that are hugely misleading. You will also learn how Bishop Kukah contradicted himself and falsified all his own claims. This often happens to those who elect to allow their causes to be driven by hatred. Let’s start with how many of us, according to Kukah, are educated.Less than 10 percent of Muslims in the north are educated:
“The truth of the matter is that Christians have a great advantage because you can say that 60 to 70 percent of the literate people in Nigeria are Christian. Now the percentage of Muslims in northern Nigeria who are educated: You are probably looking at 10 percent or less.” Northern leaders don’t allocate land for churches:“But if you look at Boko Haram, it is also based on the fact that the way the state has treated Christianity predisposed Boko Haram to exploit that narrative. If you are refusing to give Christians land to build churches; if you are refusing to give Christians land to build schools; if you are refusing to allow Christian religious education to be taught in schools; if you are denying Christians access to the media commensurate to what you are giving Muslims, what you’re really saying is that these people are second-class citizens and that their religion is merely being tolerated.”We could engage in precision questioning to unpack the bishop’s meaning, as good teachers since Socrates have done. What do you mean by “refusing?” Which states are refusing these allocations? Over what time frame are we talking about? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Here is his third claim:Northerners don’t want Western education because they fear that their children would be converted to Christianity:“You have the suspicion within the Muslim community that has always tried to equate Western education with Christianity, which is what Boko Haram has capitalised on.”
Then he undid his own argument:
“Sokoto Diocese [includes the states of] Katzena [Katsina], Kebi [Kebbi], Zamfara, and Sokoto. We have 22 nursery, primary and secondary schools ... Part of the problem is that they’re all on church premises because the government has almost blatantly refused to allocate land to Christians...They’re Christian schools to the extent that they are built by Christians, but if you go to any of my schools ... that has 100 children, it’s likely that 60 percent of those are going to be Muslims.”Now let’s start with the third claim. Were northern Muslims suspicious of sending children to Western-styled schools? Yes. Why? Because as far as the Muslims in the north were concerned, the colonist didn’t bring anything new - other than a new language, the intention to plunder and yes, Christianity. You want to teach me how to read and write? I can already read and write in Arabic and Ajami. You want to teach me how to calculate? Muslims invented almost the entire pillars upon which modern mathematics is based - including the number system. How did you think Muslims dealt with inheritance long before Europeans came to their land? Through algebra, that’s how. What about administration? There were books, including in northern Nigeria of that time, on such subjects and there were scholars who studied and taught them. What about physics, chemistry and medicine? The Muslims knew even at that time that their forebears such as Ibn Sina, Jabir, Abu Musa Khawrithmi, etc. wrote books which Europeans used as Bibles on those subjects for more than 500 years. In fact, Europeans learned basic hygiene from Muslims during during the Crusades when they took Jerusalem in the year 1099. However, I concede that at this point a question merits an answer: At the time of colonialism, had Europeans developed and extended these Muslim legacies as to have owned them and had Muslims started losing their way? That’s debatable.However, we should not lose sight of the fact that there was empirical evidence that some of those who went to such schools, especially in the Southwest, did change their religion. But most importantly, Bishop Kukah ignored the fact that even among his contemporaries, there were many Muslims who attended Christian missionary schools. This was because the colonial masters learned not to interfere too much with the system in the Muslim north, and over time, the people started warming up to them to the extent of sending their children to their schools.Actually, Bishop Kukah unwittingly mentioned this in the interview which harmed his own argument that Muslims avoid Western education due to fear of conversion. If each of your class is 60 percent filled with Muslims, it means that they love education so much that they don’t mind going to Christian schools to get it.Avoiding school enrolment because of the fear of conversion has run its course. Bishop Kukah should focus on the real dangers: poverty, corruption, incompetent leadership and quality of instruction. And these factors are shared across Christian and Muslim states - such that Niger, a Muslim majority state, is not very different from Benue, a Christian majority state.The second part, God willing, will delve into the remaining two claims and why Bishop Kukah’s hubris is better replaced with the Archbishop of Abuja Catholic Diocese John (Cardinal) Onaiyekan and Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearson’s humility and maturity for a sustainable peace in the north. Inventing elaborate fiction to accommodate one’s theories helps no one.
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