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Opinion

Please, Stop The Confrontation, Dialogue Instead!

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By Imam Murtadha Gusau

In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Bestower of Mercy.

All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of all creation—may He extol the Messenger in the highest company of Angels and send His peace and blessings upon him—likewise upon his family, Companions, and true followers.

Dear brothers and sisters! Please what do you know about the words “Confrontation” and “Dialogue”? Confrontation is a situation in which there is anger between people or groups who disagree because they have different opinions. And a “Dialogue” can be briefly define as a written composition in which two or more characters are represented as conversing; or a conversation between two or more persons; or an exchange of ideas and opinions; or a discussion between representatives of parties to a conflict that is aimed at resolution.

Respected brothers and sisters! In today’s article, we shall have a look at how we, as Muslims, should act between ourselves and towards people of other faiths and what our relationship with them should be. We will see that the Qur’an teaches us to accept and respect diversity. Accordingly, as faithful Muslims we should be concerned to engage in dialogue. By “engaging in dialogue” I mean making an effort to get to know people of other faiths and cultures and to interact, speak and work with them in a respectful and friendly manner.

We are reminded in the Qur’an that Allah Almighty has created us in different nations and groups on purpose. Allah Almighty says:

“O mankind! We have created you from a single (pair) of male and female, and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may know one another (not so that you may despise each other). Surely the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is the one best in piety, righteousness, and reverence for Allah. Verily, Allah is All-Knowing, All-Aware.” [Qur’an, 49:13]

From the above verse we can see that Allah the Almighty with infinite wisdom has created different nations and groups with a purpose for them to learn and know about each other. It is us humans who create disorder and divide different nations and communities with our ideologies and our perception of right or wrong. However, to us Muslims, it should be clear that plurality was intended and that a difference of belief, opinion or race is not and must not be a destructive divider of people.

Nowadays people are divided even on the most trivial of things; therefore we need dialogue between these people to help them unite around values that bind them together rather than concentrating on their differences.

It is we human beings who insist on people having the same views and the same opinions; it is not the will of Allah Almighty. It is stated in the Qur’an that:

“If your Lord had so willed (and withheld from humankind free will), He would have made all humankind one single community (with the same faith, world view, and life-pattern), But (having free choice) they never cease to differ.” [Qur’an, 11: 118]

We should, therefore, reflect on and understand this verse in order to apply it in our everyday life.

We all have free will, and Allah Almighty has allowed us to choose our own paths and to make our own decisions.

These might be right or wrong, and we as Muslims have an obligation to try and help our fellow humans and try to explain things to them. However, we should not interfere in their lives nor think ourselves better than others.

Allah Almighty has created us with differences, with different beliefs and opinions; we should live out our faith to the best of our ability in piety but not force others to do the same. Faith comes from Allah Almighty and Him alone. Another verse in the Qur’an says:

“If your Lord had so willed, He could have made mankind one People: but they will not cease to differ. Except those on whom your Lord bestowed His Mercy: and for this did He create them.” [Qur’an, 11:118-119]

Another verse expresses the same idea that:

“For every one of you did We appoint a law and a way, and if Allah had pleased He would have made you (all) a single people, but that He might try you in what He gave you, therefore strive with one another to hasten to virtuous deeds.” [Qur’an, 5:48]

People belong to different social and ethnic groups, and this should not be used as a means to establish a sense of superiority over one another. Superiority can be measured not according to Allah-given characteristics such as race, colour, tribe, region, language or descent, but only according to the values that people gain through their own will, which the Noble Qur’an terms “at-Taqwah (fear and respect of Allah).” The Prophet (Peace be upon him) clearly underlines this fact in his Hadith:

“O people! Remember that your Lord is one, your father is one. An Arab is not superior over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab is superior over an Arab; also a white is not superior over a black nor a black is superior over a white except by at-Taqwah (fear and respect of Allah).” [Ahmad in Musnad]

Beloved servants of Allah! What we learn from these verses and Hadith is that Allah Almighty intended diversity and that it is not possible for everyone in the world to believe in the same religion.

Dear brothers and sisters! That is why dialogue is absolutely essential in our lives if we are to live in peace and harmony with others. We should learn to interact and work with each other as one human race, to have respect for all regardless of differences. Islam is a faith that accepts and embraces plurality. We can live out this aspect of our faith through dialogue with people of different faiths and cultures.

This Friday article was prepared and sent to you from my admission bed here in the National Hospital Abuja, Nigeria. Once again, I’m very grateful for your words of encouragements, your supports, concerns, prayers and Du’as. And please still your kind supports, Du’as and prayers for quick recovery, cure and Shifa are needed.

Thank you so much all, Wa Jazakumullah Khairan, ameen.

O Allah, guide us with those whom You have guided, grant us well-being among those You have granted well-being, be an ally to us along with those whom You are an ally to, and bless what You have bestowed upon us, and save us from the evil of what You have decreed. For verily You decree and none can decree over You. He whom You support can never be humiliated. Glory is to You, our Lord, You are Blessed and Exalted.

O Allah, we ask You for all that is good, in this world and in the Hereafter, what we know and what we do not know.

O Allah, we seek refuge with You from all evil, in this world and in the Hereafter, what we know and what we do not know.

O Allah, we ask You for the good that Your servant and Prophet has asked You for, and we seek refuge with You from the evil from which Your servant and Prophet sought refuge.

O Allah, we ask You for Paradise and for that which brings one closer to it, in word and deed, and we seek refuge in You from Hell and from that which brings one closer to it, in word and deed. And we ask You to make every decree that You decree concerning us good.

All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of all creation; may Allah extol the mention of our noble Prophet Muhammad in the highest company of Angels, bless him and give him peace and security―and his family, his Companions and all those who follow him correctly and sincerely until the establishment of the Hour.

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.

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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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