IT’S TIME TO TEAR DOWN THESE WALLS OF DISUNITY
BY KAMORU SODIQ
Fellow Brethren, I have surfaced again. I hope I could spare you this ordeal but something in me retorted. I have not been in perpetual silence for nothing. I have been brushing aside the temptation to write these days for many reasons. On top of it is the advice I received from elders and colleagues whom I respect so much that I should tarry a while. Trial it may, I overtly obliged and retired permanently to observations. At least they say, time is healing.
Often time, critics contend that we only write to attack without proffering solution. It is not true. Contrary to what some are circulating that if you don’t speak for brothers then, you are speaking for the other side. It is baseless. It doesn’t take special training to know our brothers are going nowhere. Let me assuredly tell them that everyone I know, including me, loves and wants them to succeed. The reason is simple. They are youths. The society is looking up to them. They represent the time to come.
On campus (Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife), our salafi brothers are exceedingly meek and cordial to relate with. Trouble is, when it comes to salafiyyah or religious matters, they are both cunning and cocky. They have refused to bow to superior logic. It is a fact that real men don’t fight to prove their strength. Like a vulture, a patient bird, they must learn retreat in other to fight another day. Nobody will tell a deaf man that the market is over. The blind will definitely see through the hearing. The collapse of reasoning is what we are seeing on campus everyday.
What most people especially elders want from them at this material time is straightforward enough; show remorse and turn a new leaf. The hallmark of their travail lies in one thing. Bad approach and manners. It is a total show of ignorance to intend to practice and win people to the side of sunnah but end up fighting them. The prophet never fight to get people to sunnah. Connect people with good relations and noble characters. If they resist your sunnah, they can never deny your emulative qualities. Religion without moral is a big scam. Nobody out there will celebrate a demagogue unless he is also impaired about facts.
In case you can no longer flow with happenings on MSSNOAU crisis since the MUSWEN intervention. The aftermath has been both revealing and shocking. Many water has passed across the bridge. The new hall Imams were appointed by the chief Imam of the university; Professor Abefe Abubakar Sanusi, to utter dismay, the appointees were resisted and molested. The various hall mosques were shutdown by the university authority in good faith; to restore sanity and normalcy. Some brothers for whatever reasons have broken into the closed mosques and caught. Bellicosity is in motion. Religious dogma is at play. The activities of MSSN branch has been as well dozing and starting.
So far, the experience is both confusing and conflicting to average student. But it seems the cast is die and the end is nigh. I cautioned in one of my piece when the bubble has not burst that this is not the time to fight but care. Hardly did our brothers take that advice. I told them to listen to voices of reason. It fell on deaf ear. Had it been they listened, the story would have been smelling good now. It was as if all the fates in the galaxy had mischievously conspired to find a way to totally destroy the glory of the past.
As it is now, we must never say never. The door of restitution is wide open. The ugly fact is that; are we ready to move away from the old ways? That is the problem question defying answers. It is an ancient wisdom that for OAU Da’wah activities to blow, we must all agree to terms in principle or in practice. It only requires humanity for me to establish a relationship with you. All other things are collateral and secondary. Every Muslim students on campus now must see him/her self as a change agent. They should withdraw from the hypocrisy and evil of fighting for Salafi, Mssn or no man’s cause. They should embrace the comprehensiveness of Islam.
The duty to work for Allah is individualistic obligation. We will all carry our cross alone during death and before Allah. Let no one play to neutral ground. Isolation is extinction. As student on campus, it is either you are making Islam or you are breaking Islam. Nothing baffles me more than the cacophonic claim of truth in all parties. That is it. Nobody agrees on falsehood. But how dearly I wish. I only wish that the truth has a tongue!
Sodiq can be reached via kamorusideeq@gmail.com
