{"id":61701,"date":"2023-01-15T17:17:16","date_gmt":"2023-01-15T17:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=61701"},"modified":"2023-01-15T17:17:16","modified_gmt":"2023-01-15T17:17:16","slug":"from-muslim-muslim-to-is-he-really-a-muslim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=61701","title":{"rendered":"From \u201cMuslim-Muslim\u201d to \u201cIs He Really a Muslim?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Farooq A. Kperogi<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not since 1993 when MKO Abiola chose Babagana Kingibe as his running mate has the religious complexion of a presidential ticket excited the passions of Nigerians as much as Bola Tinubu\u2019s choice of Kashim Shettima as his running mate. It at once got some Christians enraged and some Muslims engaged.<\/p>\n

For a long time, Muslim clerical investment in the Tinubu-Shettima ticket, at least in the Northwest, was proportional to the amount of Christian opposition to it. For instance, in late 2022, an audio recording of a northern Christian, which went viral on WhatsApp, said the victory or defeat of the Tinubu-Shettima ticket in 2023 would be a referendum on the numerical strength of Christians and Muslims in Nigeria.<\/p>\n

Of course, that was a supremely shallow and simplistic, not to mention reductionist, religionization of voting behavior. Many people vote for reasons other than religion. Peter Obi, whom the audio touted as the \u201cChristian\u201d candidate, will get many Muslim votes, and both Tinubu and Atiku will get many Christian votes.<\/p>\n

But that audio\u2014and several others like it\u2014inspired a backlash of reciprocal religious particularism from previously politically aloof Salafist Muslim clerics in the Hausaphone North who now preach that the success of the Tinubu-Shettima ticket\u2014or, as they call it, Musilim-Musilim ticket\u2014is a religious imperative and that Muslims should support it to signal the supremacy of Islam in Nigeria. That\u2019s also silly, superficial drivel that ignores the complexity of voting behavior and the multiplicity of impulses that propel people to vote.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the conversation about the same-faith character of the Tinubu-Shettima ticket appears to be shifting to questions about whether, in fact, Tinubu is a Muslim. This discursive shift is instigated by Tinubu\u2019s multiple stumbles with reciting S\u016brat al-F\u0101ti\u1e25ah, the first chapter of the Qur\u2019an. In one instance, he said \u201cbismillahir rahmanir rahim\u201d before saying \u201cauzubillah minashaitan ni rajeem\u201d instead of the other way around.<\/p>\n

In another instance, he said \u201cauzubillah minashaitan ni rajeem, bismillahir rahmanir rahim\u201d and couldn\u2019t proceed to the next verse. In confusion, he attempted to translate the verse from Arabic into English but bungled it and even ended up saying \u201cGod, the father of all,\u201d which is both an incorrect translation of \u201cAlhamdu lillahi Rabbil \u2018Alamin\u201d (which actually translates as \u201cPraise be to Allah, the Lord of the Universe\u201d) and a doctrinal outrage in Islam.<\/p>\n

Surat Al-Ikhl\u0101\u1e63, the four-verse 112th chapter of the Quran considered by many Muslim traditions to be worth up to 33 percent of the Qur\u2019an because of its theological centrality to Islam, specifically says Allah has not begotten (i.e., is not a father) nor was he begotten. It\u2019s one of the major doctrinal differences between Christianity and Islam. That Tinubu called Allah \u201cfather\u201d during an address to Muslims in Kaduna has caused many Muslims to question his Muslim faith.<\/p>\n

The latest trending video shows him straining excessively hard\u2014and failing\u2014 to recite \u201cAlhamdu lillahi Rabbil \u2018Alamin,\u201d the second verse of S\u016brat al-F\u0101ti\u1e25ah, which he had erroneously translated as \u201cGod, the father of all\u201d in a previous mishap. As they say, once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, but three times is a pattern.<\/p>\n

As I pointed out in my February 7, 2015, column titled,\u00a0\u201cSambo: A Muslim Bigot Who Can\u2019t Recite Qur\u2019an\u2019s First Chapter,\u201d\u00a0Muslims recite the Fatihah during prayers at least 17 times every single day, making it the most recited chapter in the Qur\u2019an. That\u2019s why it\u2019s second nature to most Muslims. That\u2019s also why people tend to question the faith of Muslims who can\u2019t recite it.<\/p>\n

But even Christians who had previously expressed righteous rage over what they said was Tinubu\u2019s insensitivity in choosing a fellow Muslim as his running mate in our religiously plural country are having a pause. They are asking if Tinubu is indeed a Muslim\u2014or if his choice of a Muslim running mate was, in retrospect, informed by the fact that he is actually not a Muslim.<\/p>\n

Well, my own sense is that Tinubu is a cultural Muslim. His hometown of Iragbiji in Osun State is predominantly Muslim, particularly when he grew up there in the 1960s. Like most kids in the town, he attended\u00a0ile kewu\u00a0(which Hausa speakers call\u00a0makarantar allo), that is, an informal school for Islamic learning. The way he says \u201cauzubillah minasha<\/p>\n

itan ni rajeem, bismillahir rahmanir rahim\u201d clearly shows that he was born into Islam and learned to say it from an impressionable age.<\/p>\n

I suspect that after leaving Iragbiji for Lagos (and later for the United States), he ceased to be an observant Muslim, but hasn\u2019t given up his Muslim identity. His trip-ups with reciting the Qur\u2019an first chapter, in my opinion, don\u2019t indicate that he isn\u2019t a Muslim; they only indicate that he hasn\u2019t been praying for most of his post-Iragbiji life.<\/p>\n

My father, who formally taught Arabic and Islamic Studies in primary school and informally at home, used to warn me that if I stopped reciting the Qur\u2019an for a day, the Qur\u2019an would desert me for four days. Without realizing it, he was introducing me to Jean Lamarck\u2019s law of use and disuse. What we use the most develops and endures. What we don\u2019t use fades and atrophies over time.<\/p>\n

Daily Nigerian publisher Jaafar Jaafar advised Tinubu\u2019s handlers to dissuade him from trying to perform his Muslim bona fides in northern Nigeria by reciting Qur\u2019anic verses he obviously can\u2019t remember. In the Hausaphone Muslim north, it is better to be thought a Muslim, even an \u201cinauthentic\u201d Muslim, than to speak and remove all doubt.<\/p>\n

The dominant chatter in northern Nigerian Muslim discursive spheres now, at least from my informal observation, revolves around the suspicion that Tinubu isn\u2019t a Muslim. Or that if he\u2019s one he doesn\u2019t pray which, to many, is the same difference. Some are even saying he is probably a closet Christian because he said God is \u201cfather\u201d and because his wife and children are Christians.<\/p>\n

But identity, including religious identity, is complex and isn\u2019t easily reducible to one measure. If Tinubu had wanted to be a Christian, he would have professed it publicly. In Yoruba land (including in Osun State, by far the most Muslim state in Yoruba land) change or ambiguity of faith isn\u2019t a political death sentence. After all, Ademola Jackson Nurudeen Adeleke, Osun\u2019s governor, is both a Christian and a Muslim. I once called him a Chrislim.<\/p>\n

Tinubu, as I pointed out in a\u00a0previous article in 2022, is an effectively non-religious but nominal Muslim. He chose a northern Muslim running mate for precisely that reason. Until recently, Tinubu didn\u2019t identify with Islam publicly, is married to a pastor, and all his children are Christians. He sees himself first as a Yoruba man before he is a nominal Muslim.<\/p>\n

But Tinubu is not alone. Most political elites in both the North and the South profess religion only for public consumption and to live up to the tyranny of societal expectations. Nor is this exclusive to Nigeria. Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, for example, are non-religious people, but they were compelled to subordinate their free thought and embrace open displays of religiosity to get elected.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s mother was an atheist and his maternal grandparents\u00a0who raised him were non-religious. (Even his Harvard-educated Kenyan father, who didn\u2019t raise him, was an atheist even though he was born a Muslim). He didn\u2019t encounter religion until he started dating Michele Obama in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n

Trump, too,\u00a0isn\u2019t a Christian, has ice-cold disdain for Christians, doesn\u2019t go to church, and has not even the most basic familiarity with the doctrines of Christianity. But American evangelicals loved him because he told them what they wanted to hear.<\/p>\n

Tinubu\u2019s problem is that Islam\u2019s performances and rituals have to be learned and internalized. They can\u2019t be faked.<\/p>\n

\u25aa\ufe0e Professor Kperogi, a US-based Nigerian, first posted this on his blog, Notes from Atlanta<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Farooq A. Kperogi Not since 1993 when MKO Abiola chose Babagana Kingibe as his running mate has the religious complexion of a presidential ticket excited the passions of Nigerians as much as Bola Tinubu\u2019s choice of Kashim Shettima as his running mate. It at once got some Christians enraged and some Muslims engaged. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":61704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5782],"tags":[635,5171,56],"class_list":["post-61701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-opinion","tag-635","tag-muslim","tag-tinubu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/61704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}