MY ENCOUNTER WITH LATE SHEIKH JAFAR MAHMUD ADAM

 

Wednesday March 29, 2006 is a day full of portent long awaited by millions of people around the world, as weeks prior to that date the media is awash with the stories of the predicted total solar eclipse. The predicted path of the eclipse will be visible from within a narrow corridor which traverses half the Earth. The path of the Moon's umbral shadow, where total eclipse will appear, begins in Brazil and extends across the Atlantic, northern Africa, and central Asia where it ends at sunset in western Mongolia. A partial eclipse will be seen within the much broader path of the Moon's penumbral shadow, which includes the northern two thirds of Africa (including Nigeria), Europe, and central Asia. Soon after my breakfast I took paper and pen and started writing the script of my next weekly program coming up on the newly and popular Freedom Radio Kano. I had been a host of the program “TSOKACI” (where I expound the relationship between Science and Quran) for two years then. My radio, tuned to the Freedom Radio frequency, distracted my attention as I heard the melodious voice of Sheikh Jafar participating on a live program. Sheikh Jafar, may his soul rest in peace, is one of the greatest scholars to have come out of Northern Nigeria because of his fluent command of Arabic and grasp of the Quran but unfortunately he is too conservative. I listened attentively as he was talking about the eclipse as it unfolds that very hour. After listening to the program for about an hour, I took note of some items that doesn’t sit well with me. I sat there contemplating in dilemma about what my next line of action would be. In the end, considering I have a moral responsibility decided to respond to Sheikh Jafar misguided beliefs about the eclipse phenomenon.

The following day I went to Freedom Radio to record my program. Sheik Jafar had first accused the western media of spreading a misconception that the eclipse phenomenon was a result of the moon coming between the earth and the sun. To dispel that, he put forward the following verse

Q36:40 “It is not permitted to the sun to catch up the moon, nor (can) the night outstrip the day. Each (just) swims along on its own orbit (according to law)”

In his interpretation of this verse he went on to say there is no way the moon can interfere with the Sun, thus it is very fallacious for scientist to be claiming such. He also quote a hadith where the prophet commands Muslims to go out enmasse to pray whenever there was an eclipse as it is a fever that is afflicting the heavenly body. My first rebuttal is that Jafar had misunderstood the verse simply because he doesn’t have scientific knowledge. To prove my point I employed a simple demonstration that any lay man could understand. If we supposed our solar system, the space that contains our earth, moon and sun is like a wall clock plate, the plate represents the whole space and the hands of the clock, second, minute and hour represents earth, moon and sun. The solar eclipse phenomenon happens whenever the moon comes between the sun’s light and earth and in the lunar eclipse happens when the earth comes between the sun and the moon.

The hands on the wall clock (seconds, minutes and hour) all floats in the plate as the heavenly bodies floats in space, but none of them touches or interfere with the path of the other. They are programmed with mathematical precision to stick to their orbits (that was why we can predict its occurrence for the next hundred years). But if you look at the wall clock when it is 12 noon I am sure you will find all the three hands of the clock aligned in the same angle at 12 noon. The hands representing hour at the bottom and on top of it the minute hand, followed by the hand of seconds on top. The topmost hand will represent sun which shone its light down on the minute hand (which could either be the earth in lunar eclipse or the moon in a solar eclipse) and it will definitely block the light from reaching the bottom hour hand which represent either the earth in a solar eclipse (thus the sky on earth in daylight turns dark) or the moon in lunar eclipse which is blotted dark in the night sky. Thus there is no contradiction whatsoever between the Quranic description in 36:40 and the scientific explanation. The counter was well received by the audience for its simplification though it eventually cost me the program by the powers that be. Jafar’s lack of even kindergarten scientific knowledge, made him create a problem where there is none, as I also heard his claim that if the world rotates as the scientist claim, his mosque at Gadon Kaya (in west metropolitan Kano) could have move towards Tarauni (eastern part of the city). Both beliefs were copy cat of Albani’s claim who once gave a similar example with the prophet mosque. But the earth rotation is confirmed beyond reasonable doubt by the mere fact that you pray in the prophet mosque in Medina two hours ahead of those in Sultan Bello mosque in Kaduna. The twelve time zones across the globe are born out of the fact that the earth rotates on its own axis, because if it didn’t then time would be uniform across the globe.

The question that should be on our lips is why a learned cleric in Islam like Jafar couldn’t understand this simple scientific fact? Didn’t Quran and hadith exhort believers to seek knowledge which is broadly defined as sacred and secular, physical and metaphysical, theoretical and practical? Is not knowledge and research the first commandment of the Quran? Are there not over 134 hadiths in Kitab-al-Ilm of Imam Bukhari of the prophet and his companions all emphasizing the special and high status of knowledge in Islam? Didn’t Al-Ghazzali placed high premium on knowledge in his Ihya-al-ulum, with its 40 different collections by choosing to open it with the book of knowledge? Did not the story of Moses and Khidir in the Quran shows the sphere of esoteric knowledge in demarcating between mystic and prophetic knowledge? Wasn’t scientific knowledge the impetus that propels Islam to its Golden Age? Then why are our scholars only concerned and concentrated in knowledge of rituals and legal obligations, knowledge of identity instead of an all-encompassing one? Islam had bequeathed us an intellectual legacy in which scholarly vacuum as exhibited by contemporary scholars like Jafar should have been an anathema. What is it that we really lost about that legacy? Could our scholars today ever be remembered like the Ibn Sina’s, Ibn Khaldun’s, Ibn Rushud’s, the Al Haitham’s and Ghazzali’s that mastered jurisprudence, science, philosophy mathematics and medicines?

One should not be surprise if you look into the mental attitude, ingrained, shaped and control through centuries of subliminal indoctrination woven within the fabric of the religion, which sadly is not necessarily Islamism but Arabism. Salafism started with Ibn Hanbal (d. 825) (As-Salaf al-salih meaning the pious ancestors) and developed by Ibn Taimiyya (d. 1328) and revived by Ibn Abdulwahab (d. 1792). The concept is about securing doctrinal and ritual purity by guarding the monotheistic principle of Tawheed against bid’a. It is a beautiful concept but marred in methodology for two reasons; Insistence on literalist interpretation of Quran and Sunna and the idea of declaring anyone that doesn’t agree as heathen (The Takfir). Ibn Hanbal was considered by many as the precursor of salafism, but as a school of thought it emerges in the 14 Century. Ibn Taimiyya develops the theology of salafism from mere idea into a complete philosophy. The merger of socio-political movement of Ibn Abdulwahab (d. 1792) and Ibn Saud (d. 1765) using military force, carved out a state and imposed salafi ideas in Saudi Arabia. The Hanafi School, the first and the most progressive of the madhabs advocated legal reasoning by analogy (qiyas) and the founder said “Ours is no more than an opinion. We do not oblige or coerce anyone into accepting it. Whoever has a better judgment, let him advance it”. The Malikis and Hanbalis rise against the idea of personal reasoning while Shafi’i struck a moderate course between the two ideologies.

The prophet is the last of the prophets and islam the last of the religions, yet no interpreter (Mufassir) or jurisprudent (Faqih) would ever be the last interpreter or jurisprudent, yet by the beginning of the 10th century it is widely accepted among Muslims that any attempt to deviate from the teachings of the four schools of Islamic law was considered as an innovation and should be denounced. From then on the echo of Taqlid (the unquestioning acceptance of legal decisions) became the dominant norm as the door of ijtihad was shut. The closure of this important door in the 10th century though, might not be unconnected with the Mihna (inquisition) by the Caliphs (Mamun, Mu’tasim, Wathiq and under Mutawakkil for 2 years before he reverse it) under the guidance of Mutazilites especially as it regards to the theological dispute of the createdness or otherwise of the Quran. Ibn Hanbal was one of the most prominent victims of the Mihna as he was imprisoned and flogged for declaring the Quran was uncreated. Perhaps this event was one of the reasons the Hanbali school developed and championed the sidelining of ra’ay with regard to ijtihad, opposed it and eventually led to its closure. But the closure of ijtihad goes against the fundamental command of God in the Quran “Then ask those who have knowledge, if you yourselves do not know” and the Prophetic exemplification as well as that of the Sahaba’s.

Western imperialism and the fall of Ottoman Empire gave modern scholars like Muhammad Abduh, Sayyid Qutb and Rashid Rida an opportunity to reinvigorate conservatism as a means of checkmating European influence in Muslim nations, and all of them wrote extensively to that end. The establishment of Salafiyya Press and Bookstore (Al-Maktaba al Salafiyya) in Egypt in 1909 under Muhibb Al-Khatib, saw a flood of such literature emerging therefrom. During the First World War, Al-Khatib, at the invitation of Amir of Mecca went to Mecca and establishes the al-Matba’a Al Amiriyya. By 1924 the Saudis commissioned the publication of medieval Hanbali text and among the first book printed by Salafiyya press in Saudi Arabia was the theological treatise of Ibn Qayyim paid by King Saud. This gave birth to a floodgate of Neo-Hanbalite Puritanism literature that were printed in hundreds of thousands and distributed freely to pilgrims in an effort to spread Salafism. By 1921 a salafiyya bookstore exists in Pakistan, in Damascus by 1922 and then comes the scholarships for students attending the Ummul Qura University in Mecca and that of Medina where they are trained in strict salafi ideology to return to their native countries for furthering the campaign.

Wahabism is exported around the Muslim world through publications offered to pilgrims from different parts of the world and the petro dollar through the Muslim World League and establishment of University of medina that offer scholarship to train clerics from different parts of the world to later return to their communities and continue the work of propagating its ideology. The salafiyya movement in Nigeria is a direct import by the duo of Sardauna and Abubakar Gumi after they returned from pilgrimage in 1955. Gumi, who had translated some of the Islamic works in Saudi had became the father of Izala in the country. The Sardauna created the Jama’atu Nasril Islam having contributed to the formation of the Muslim world league (Rabita) earlier the same year in Saudi Arabia. Salafism gain traction within the educated elite and civil servants but not much significant in-road in the local almajiri population.

Contemporary fundamentalism, whether we realize it or not, owes its origin to Takfirism, and by his acts of either omission or commission the late Sheik Jafar Adam had single-handedly contributed immensely to the rise of Boko Haram. His firebrand preaching for over a decade in Maiduguri sowed the seed of Boko Haram. His teachings (like my example above) where he sees any knowledge coming from the west as infidel and not worthy of knowing but to challenge, is the root cause of Boko Haram. Though Jafar lived in Kano all his life but Boko Haram arose in Maiduguri, why? The level of poverty and illiteracy in Maiduguri is far beyond Kano and radicals like Muhammad Yusuf easily assimilate negative teachings of Jafar in seeing western education as something to be challenged to an extent that even glaring scientific realities were debunked (watch a video of Pantami Vs Muhammad Yusuf debate on evolution). Muhammad Yusuf took the salafi ultra-conservatism not only with regard to science but also Takfirism to another level in declaring anyone not with them as against them. Ironically, Jafar Adam, was the first prominent victim of the hydra headed evil he is instrumental in creating, the Boko Haram. From Afghanistan to Pakistan, Syria to Baghdad, in Nigeria, Mali and Somalia the Al’qaeda, Taliban, Isis, Al-Shabab and Boko Haram, had all sprung up as a military wing of salafist ideology. Even the Saudi Monarchy, the sponsors and propagators of salafism across the world, have realized this fact and are recently curbing the power of the ultra-conservative Wahhabi clergy.

Islam is at crossroad today and has never faced so much challenge, from the orchestrated western Islamaphobia down to the self-destruct fundamentalism within. In order to salvage the soul of Islam we must rise now and discard nominal sectionalism and go back to an older source of Islam as practiced and preached by the prophet in medina. We must recognize freedom of religion from that era where the prophet created a community of citizens comprising Muslim, Jews and Christian living in harmony under one umbrella of justice. The world today as a global village with increasing diversity and injustices, Muslims need to look back at that era critically in order to learn the commonality that binds us together as humans and faithful, not as Sunni, Shi’a, Sufi etc because none of those labels exists when the prophet and custodian of the religion was alive.