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Friday Sermon: Say The Truth Any How Bitter It Is!

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By Imam Murtadha Gusau

In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Bestower of Mercy

All praise is for Allah, we praise Him, we seek His help, we ask for His forgiveness, and we seek refuge with Allah from the evils of our own souls and the wickedness of our actions, whoever Allah guides, there is none that can lead him astray, and whoever Allah allows to go astray, there is none that can lead him to the right path.

I testify and bear witness that there is no deity worthy of worship in truth but Allah, alone, without any partners. And I testify and bare witness that Muhammad (Peace be upon him) is His Servant and Messenger. As for what’s after:

Dear brothers and sisters! Know that, to acquire divine knowledge is to inherit a Prophetic legacy of action and propagation. The learned are like radiant beacons of light moving between sheathes of darkness. They are the glowing effects of the Prophets of Allah, through whom He conveyed His covenant to man. Their presence illuminates the paths of those who come near them. On the authority of Abu Darda (RA), the Prophet (Peace be upon him) says:

“The learned are the heirs of the Prophets who bequeath neither dinar nor dirham but only knowledge; and he who acquires it, has in fact acquired an abundant portion.” [Abu Dawud and At-Tirmidhi].

Central to every messenger’s duty was his conveyance and transmission of the message of truth. The heirs of that legacy protract that learning, conveying and proactively blotting out the murk of ignorance and misguidance whenever they encounter it. Allah Almighty says:

“O Messenger! transmit what has been sent down to you from your Lord. If you do not do it you will not have transmitted His Message.” [Qur’an, 5:67]

The Prophet (Peace be upon him) further informs:

“Convey from me even a verse…” [Bukhari].

The right of truth is for it to be imparted, not hidden or obscured. In Arabic, the word for ‘worthy‘ (ahaq) derives from the word for ‘truth’ (haq). This implies that the truth is the worthiest pursuit and objective. Both appear in the following verse:

“Ask (them, O Prophet), “Can any of your associate-gods guide to the truth (al-Haq)?” Say, “(Only) Allah guides to the truth.” Who then is more worthy (ahaq) to be followed: the One Who guides to the truth or those who cannot find the way unless guided? What is the matter with you? How do you judge?” [Qur’an, 10:35]].

Respected servants of Allah! For one to refrain from imparting what is true, or worthiest for that moment, despite being able to, when such can rectify another person’s misguidance, resolve a schism or stand in the face of an injustice becomes tantamount to consent. One can only see their refraining a worthier (ahaq) endeavour if they first undermine (falsify) that truth (haq) being concealed. And as the nature of truth is to be imparted (both clear and clarifying), like intense light which burns away the dusk, forcing it to stay concealed within oneself will bridle its holder with its unbearable heat. On the authority of Abdullah Bin Amr Ibn Al-As (RA), the Prophet (Peace be upon him) says:

“Whoever conceals knowledge Allah will bridle him with reins of fire on the Day of Resurrection.” [Ibn Hibban]

Dear brothers and sisters! Such deplorable behaviour was rampant among the followers of Judaism and their clergymen. Seeing themselves as Allah’s ‘Chosen People’, they absolved themselves from the need to salvage ‘other’ gentiles from misguidance. In effect, they saw themselves exclusively worthy of Allah’s mercy and absolution. This cultish demeanour with the truth and their failing to share their knowledge with others, to guide them or speak truth to people brought about their corresponding removal from His Mercy, culminating in Allah’s curse (La’anah). Allah Almighty says:

“Those who hide the Clear Signs and Guidance We have sent down, after We have made it clear to people in the Book, Allah curses them, and the cursers curse them.” [Qur’an, 2: 159]

Some of them even earned by way of their consensual silence:

“They are people who listen to lies and consume ill-gotten gains…” [Qur’an, 5:42].

They listened to lies silently, ‘Samma’un’, failing to denounce the falsehoods they heard which forms the crux of why they were cursed. And though they were not heard, or necessarily known to be proponents of that falsehood, their silence spoke just as loud.

There is little doubt that they knew their silence, as people of scripture and knowledge, would deliver that effect without needing to openly profess falsehood. Had they spoken in support of falsehood, Allah would have instead called them ‘mutakalimun bil-batil’ or ‘speakers of falsehood’, but their silence was enough to make them culpable for the lies peddled by others.

Correspondingly, their consuming “ill-gotten gains” was to their earning by way of that silence or in today’s terms, they were ‘Scholars for Dollars.’ Those who had reason to pay them off knew of their reformatory impact, as learned men, should they have spoken out. It also speaks volumes about what the peddlers of lies are prepared to offer those who know the truth in extortions, or in new terms, ‘hush money’ in exchange for staying quiet. Today, this presents as one of the most abominable phenomena among learned men under many absolutist regimes.

A group of them once approached the Prophet (Peace be upon him) seeking his judgement for two who had committed adultery. On the authority of Abdullahi Bin Umar (RA), he said:

“The Torah was brought, and then one of the followers of Judaism put his hand over the Divine Verse of the stoning to death and started reading what preceded and what followed it. On that, (the companion) Ibn Salam (RA) said to him: ‘Lift up your hand.’ The Divine Verse of the stoning was under his hand.” [Bukhari and Muslim].

Beloved servants of Allah! Notice how the man in question was cautious not to openly deny that the verse existed. Instead, putting his hand over it, his actions were synonymous to promoting the falsehood in question. Allah Almighty says:

“People of the Book! why do you mix truth with falsehood and knowingly conceal the truth?” [Qur’an, 3: 71]

Some will argue that silence is more palatable to the masses. Countering a falsehood may compromise one’s popularity or charisma, being likely to stir up mass objection or loss of ‘followers’ or loss of worldly gain. These may focus their activism around palatable messages and affectionate, more acceptable narratives (the ‘known’ or the ‘ma’ruf’). They may even have little wealth, drive cheap cars or wear simple clothes but their words are cleverly crafted so as not to stir up the tastes of their crowds. Sufyan al-Thawri (rahimahullah) is reported to have said:

“Many are ascetic with respect to their food and drink but compete for fame or leadership like two mules butting heads.” [Jami’ul Masa’il].

Imam al-Thawri’s words tell that being an ascetic is not by one’s mere abstinence from taking corporate gifts or large pay cheques or by wearing rugged clothes. Instead, one can also choose to be austere with respect to their presence, platforms and audiences, seeing no reason to compete for these ultimately material returns. Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Tarifi says:

“Whoever witnesses the inviolability and status of Islam being defied, or people’s right being violated, but fails to speak in order to maintain his own status, Allah will take away from his own status as much as that appropriated from Islam because you reap what you sow.”

It becomes not only incumbent on those who recognise evil to contest it, but follows that it is better and undeniably ‘safer’ to be ignorant of an unfolding evil than to recognise it and choose silence over speaking.

All praises and thanks are due to Allah alone, Lord of the worlds. May the peace, blessings and salutations of Allah be upon our noble Messenger, Muhammad, and upon his family, his Companions and his true and sincere followers.

Murtadha Muhammad Gusau is the Chief Imam of Nagazi-Uvete Jumu’ah and the late Alhaji Abdur-Rahman Okene’s Mosques, Okene, Kogi State, Nigeria. He can be reached via: gusauimam@gmail.com or +2348038289761.

This Jumu’ah Khutbah (Friday sermon) was prepared for delivery today Friday, Safar 5, 1444 AH (September 02, 2022).

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Opinion

The need to restore the prestige of Kano Pillars FC

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Kano Pillars FC

Isyaku Ibrahim

 

There is no doubt whenever you talk about Enyimba of Aba in Nigeria’s top flight who won the competition nine time, the next team that will come to your mind is Kano Pillars that lifted the trophy on four good occasions. But nowadays,it seems the Kano darling is losing its prestige, recognition and above all popularity in the local league. 

 

This was as a result of lack of total commitment, determination, tenacity, patriotism,diligence and seriousness which the side was known for in the past.

 

To say the fact, the pyramid City lad was previously rated among the traditional teams in the top flight as they have established and tested players that would not disappoint their teeming fans no matter where they are playing.

 

It was based on this late Rashidi Yekini while watching the team at Adamasingba Stadium now Lekan Salami Stadium in Ibadan said if he was to play for a local team he would prefer to lace his boot for Kano Pillars ahead of others.

 

The reason he Said was simply due to excellent free flow football of the team but now it seems that has gone for bad.

When the club was established as early as 1990 among the objectives behind was to boost the name of the state through football and beside that win trophies with a view to competing favourably with others.

 

While those behind the idea should be commended to a large extent for their foresight in that respect in view of how the team is now a household name in the round leather game countrywide but there is the need for a collaborative effort with a view to normalising things in the ancient city side as the club has now stepped down from its aforementioned aims and objectives.

It is painful that the team’s main priority nowadays was not to lift the league as the case was previously but to survive relegation which was baseless,laughable and nothing to write home about considering their past experience particularly when they were based at Sabongari Stadium.

 

Definitely,this season is almost over as Remo Stars are as good as being crowned the winners of the event

The best option for Sai Masu Gida is to start early preparation for the upcoming season through putting their house in order aimed at restoring their winning culture as the teeming fans are tired of flimsy excuses on the reason behind their lack lustre performance year in year out.

 

Honestly, what they are basically hoping for is to see the club matches theory with practice through grabbing the trophy or at least earning one of the three continental tickets in the country.

optimistically this is achievable with the full support of Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf coupled with that of his laborious and submissive Deputy Comrade Aminu Abdulsalam, good management, superb technical crew and the support of ardent fans who are always with the side in either thick or thin.

 

 

Ibrahim is a Director Public Enlightenment at Kano State Ministry of Special Duties. 

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Opinion

In defence of Prof Abdalla Uba Adamu’s beautiful quip on Kano – IBK

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Prof. Ibrahim Bello-Kano (IBK)

 

Double Professor Uba Abdallah Adamu has angered many non-Kano people resident in Kano by his famous, widely circulated quip, an aphoristic description of Kano in which says the anyone tired of (living in) Kano is tired of life. Prof Adamu’s appraisal of Kano is based on a sound premise and a powerful emotional logic. Prof. Adamu’s comment has a powerful pedigree. On the arguments of the highly acclaimed French sociologist and space theorist, Henri Lefebre in “The Production of Space” (1974), it can be shown that Kano, especially the city and the metropolitan area, has three characteristics, typical of the greatest cities in the world since Antiquity: 

 

1. It is a conceived space (an urban area, complete with a series of interlacing and interloping and interlocking urban designs since the 9th century). Kano was already a city and an urban space well before 1903. It’s one of the oldest urban areas in the Sudan.

 

2. It is a lived space, complete with the everyday experiences of its inhabitants and their emotional identification with it. Hence the many “quarters of the city”— from Alkantara, Alfindiki, Ayagi, to Mubi and Gwangwazo and beyond those.

 

3. Kano is also a practiced/practised space, with its inhabitants, visitors, and emigré population working to “practice up” the city in their daily lived experiences and within its urban and emotional spaces. That’s the truth of Prof. Abdallah Uba Adamu’s hyperbolic reference to Kano as a barometer of happiness or depression.

 

Prof Adamu is also correct in that most immigrants to the city never leave it, even if their last name may indicate other towns or cities. Already, Kano is one of the most truly cosmopolitan cities in Nigeria, surpassed only by New York, London, and Abidjan. In 1958, almost a decade before Lefebre’s book, the philosopher of science and urban studies, Gaston Bachelard published “The Poetics of Space” in which he argues that to live, or to choose to live, in a place, say the Kano metropolis, is already to enact an emotional act, and an existential event, in and for which Kano is already a resonant space of intimacy, or an intimate place of lived subjectivity. This is the case because one cannot live in Kano, even for a brief period, without (seeking to) creating a home, a nest, and an intimate space of “Kano beingness” or a Kano-based “being- in-the world”. That’s why Kano evokes and resonates with a strong emotional identification with it. When I was about 8 years old, I was told, on visiting the Dala Hill, that God had planned to create a holy city in Kano, but a dog urinated on the hallowed ground, and that’s how the divine plan was moved elsewhere. Of course, that story is clearly apocryphal, yet it shows how the Kano people are intensely proud of their places and spaces. So, Prof. Abdullah Uba Adamu’s hyperbolic and surreal description of Kano is essentially correct and pleasingly poignant. Many emigré groups are unhappy with his remarks, but if you live in a place, earn a living in it, or draw opportunities of all kinds from it, then you have got to love Kano, the most romantic of cities, a city full of dreams, aspirations, emotional highs and lows, and learn to identify with its fortunes. Kano, the city of gold and piety, recalcitrance and hope, modern politics and ideological contestations; the city of majestic royalty; the city of women and cars, as Shata once described it. Kano… the great Entreport. Kano, your name will endure through the ages. Cheers.

 

Ibrahim Bello-Kano (IBK) is a Professor of English at Bayero University, Kano. 

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Opinion

Kano: My City, My State

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By Huzaifa Dokaji

 

Kano is not a place you reduce to a headline or dismiss with a stereotype. It is a city with too many layers for that- too much memory, too many voices. This is the Kano of Muhammadu Rumfa, the ruler who gave it form and vision, and of Ibrahim Dabo, the scholar-king. The Kano of Kundila and Dangote, where wealth meets ingenuity.

 

It is the Kano the British once described as the ‘London of Africa,’ the Tripolitans praised as ‘a city like a thousand others’, each one magnificent—and its own people, knowing its complex social and ideological chemistry, named tumbin giwa, the intestine of an elephant: vast, winding, and full of hidden depths.

 

Kano has always carried many lives at once. It is the home of Shehu Tijjani Na Yan Mota and the sanctuary of Abdullahi dan Fodio when he felt the revolution had been betrayed. It is Madinar Mamman Shata and the home of Aminu Ala, the author of the philosophical Shahara and masterfully composed Bara a Kufai. This is the same Kano that made Dauda Kahutu Rara, the master of invective lyrics, and Rabiu Usman Baba, the Jagaban of Sha’irai.

 

Here, contradictions do not cancel each other, they coexist. It is the city of yan hakika and yan shari’a, of Izala and Tariqa, of Shaykh Rijiyar Lemo and of Shaykh Turi. It is the Kano where people will argue passionately about doctrine, then share tea afterward. Where silence and speech, mysticism and reform, are all part of the same long interesting yet boring conversation.

 

This is the Kano of the diplomatic Emir Ado Bayero and combatant Muhammad Sanusi II. Of Rabiu Kwankwaso, the red-cap-wearing jagora, and of the agreeable Ibrahim Shekarau. It is that same Kano of the incorruptible Malam Aminu Kano and Dollar-stuffing Ganduje. The cosmopolitan city of Sabo Wakilin Tauri and of the saintly Malam Ibrahim Natsugune.

 

If not Kano, then what other city could birth Barau Kwallon Shege, the bard of the profane, and welcome Shaykh Ibrahim Nyass, the towering saint of the mystics? Where else but Kano would you find Shaykh Nasiru Kabara- scholar and Sufi master- sharing the same cityscape with Rashida dan Daudu and all the remembered and forgotten Magajiyoyin Karuwai? This is the Kano of yan jagaliya and attajirai, of the sacred and the profane, the pulpit and the street. The Salga and of Sanya Olu and Ibedi streets. Kano has never pretended to be a city of one truth, its greatness lies in the multitude it carries.

 

So when people speak carelessly about Kano, they miss the point. Kano is not a relic. It is alive. It debates itself. It holds its tensions with pride. And like Adamu Adamu said, “the story of this enigmatic city is simple and straight backward – and , in the end one can only say Kano is Kano because Kano is Kano – and that’s all; for; it is its own reason for being.”

 

You don’t explain Kano. You respect it.

 

 

This was first published on Huzaifa Dokaji’s Facebook account. 

 

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