The Folly of Our Moslem Elite
By
Okezie Chukwumerije
In
times of instability there is nothing as comforting as the idea of returning to
old certainties. If these certainties are illusory: no problem; they nonetheless
protect us from having to confront our real problems. The urge to seek refuge in
a world of certainties is usually indicative of reluctance to face facts. In a
world of perplexing technological advancements, intellectual achievements, and
economic progress; in a world in which we see abundant evidence of the
inventiveness, imagination and ingenuity of the human spirit; in a world in
which we are unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to excel and to compete
– why not just give up, blame our problems on the corrupting influence of
modernity, and quarantine ourselves in a make-belief recreation of a medieval
religious era.
The
Talibanisation of Nigeria is unfortunate because it gives us a reason not to
face our real and pressing problems. The problems that confront us –
deteriorating educational system, dilapidated infrastructure, bourgeoning
unemployment, collapsing industrial sector, etc. – have no easy solutions. So
why struggle with them? Why expend the intellectual energy necessary to find
meaningful solutions? Why not take the easy path and announce that all our
problems are a result of having strayed from religious morality? Enact laws to
impose religious law. And voila, all our problems are solved. And the elites can
return to emptying the national treasury, while cruelly punishing cow thieves.
They can remain as licentious as they want inside their gated mansions, as they
advocate the lapidation of poor and uneducated adulterers.
Religion
is an intimately private matter. A pact with God is usually made in the privacy
of one’s heart and soul. A relationship with God is a personal affair; the
state ought not to be concerned with it. While the state may regulate individual
actions that impinge on vital societal interests, it should not be in the
business of superintending the relationship between individuals and their God.
This is especially so in a multi-religious and liberal society, where
practitioners of different faiths are expected to live peacefully together.
Moreover, state imposition of religious law would not make people more religious
than they previously were, assuming that being religious is an inherently moral
value. See what happened in Afghanistan after the Talibans were removed from
power: the pretense was washed away and Afghans began, to a large extent, to
behave publicly in the way they had always behaved privately. They publicly
played their traditional music, which the Talibans had banned. Many of their men
cut their beards, which the Talibans had forced them to wear. This is not to say
that their society became less moral. There was a loosening of the knot that the
Talibans had tied between religion and the state, and Afghans felt able to
breathe a bit easier.
The
Nigerian Talibans can intimidate people into behaving in particular ways in
public, but the question remains: From a religious perspective, what is achieved
if this public pretense is at odds with private, non-public, behavior? The
enactment of hypocrisy is hardly a virtue. A society in which people drink
alcohol in private but in public advocate the criminalization of alcohol
drinking is hardly one worthy of emulation. Why create a society honey-combed
with hypocrisy? Our country is already riddled with hypocrisy – of our
political leaders, our church leaders, our military personnel – and we don’t
need to add to our overflowing vessel of hypocritical attitudes.
The
folly of our Nigerian Talibans is heightened by the fact that the harshest
aspects of their beloved sharia laws would in practice apply only to the poor
and the oppressed. This is why a large part of the educated Moslem elite, who
should be keen to the anti-modernist tendencies of religious law (all religious
law, not just sharia law), is vocally supporting sharia criminal law. Members of
this elite group know that neither themselves nor their pampered children will
be adversely affected by the sharia regime. In this regard, they are as
shamefacedly hypocritical as U.S. republicans who publicly oppose abortion but
would privately assist their own children in obtaining abortion instead of
having them carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Imposed religious values are
good for the poor and uneducated, not for the powerful and their children.
How
many of our esteemed advocates of the sharia have called for the lapidation of
those who have emptied our national treasury? I can hear them say that the naira
and the dollar are relatively new means of exchange; they were not in use at the
time the sharia was conceived. Consequently, it is okay to steal money
denominated in these new currencies; but steal a cow and your arm will be
amputated in accordance with the sharia. This is one of the problems with
literal, as opposed to contextual, reading of texts. In placing a literal
reading on ancient texts, the spirit and purport of the writings are often lost
as the interpreter goes down the wrong path of carrying, untranslated and
unmodulated, into the present time words that were carefully targeted at a
generation that has long departed.
Do
you wonder why the members of the national assembly who are clamoring for the
release of Mohammed Abacha are not advocating his trial under sharia law? After
all, it is clear to everyone that Sani Abacha and his family looted our national
treasury. [By the way, I believe that Mohammed Abacha should be either put on
trial or released, but this is not the focus of this article.] Some of these
parliamentarians have spoken strongly in support of the sharia but none of them
would, of course, countenance Abacha facing the harsh penalty that the sharia
suggests for stealing. Don’t forget that the sharia, as conceived by our
Moslem elites, is not for the rich and powerful. Like their Saudi brethren, our
Nigerian elites can loot and screw as indiscriminately as they want, without
fear of being punished under sharia law.
Were
Sani Abacha still alive I would not be surprised if he became one of the
strongest supporters of the sharia. He was widely reputed as a chronic drinker
and a womanizer. But like his kindred spirits among the Moslem elite, he would
have supported the sharia in the knowledge that the enactment of harsh penalties
for adultery, drinking of alcohol, etc, would not prevent any of his illicit
activities.
At
first blush, it seems odd that the poor and the uneducated, the group most
adversely affected by the harsh aspects of sharia law, are also the most vocal
advocates of the sharia. The rich do not steal cows. The rich can drink alcohol
in the privacy of their gated homes. The rich hide evidence of their adultery.
It is the poor and the disadvantaged, the talakawas, that are invariably caught
in the clutch of these dated laws. Yet most of them remain strident in their
support of the sharia.
Religion
has a way of colonizing the imagination of the poor and the dispossessed. Bereft
of any hope of a worldly alleviation of their plight, they look to God as the
source of their salvation; if not in this world then in the next. Most religious
people are socialized to believe that the sacred texts of their religion
represent the word of God. Follow the literal dictates of these texts and you
will find comfort and solace in God; disobey them, and you will suffer the wrath
of a sometimes-vengeful God.
With
education and intellectual maturity, some grow out of their religious
straight-jackets. Some still learn to see religious doctrines as metaphor. They
use these metaphors as creative compasses to navigate a dynamic world. No longer
bond to a literal interpretation of their religious texts, they are able to
reconceptualize their religion to provide a modernized moral outlook in a world
different from that in which the texts were written.
The
uneducated often do not have the same tools, of education and enlightened
cosmopolitan experience, to free themselves from a literal reading of their
religious texts. They see the rules and teachings of these texts as
crystallized, immutable and unamenable to reinterpretation. A mélange of this
blind faith in frozen doctrine and a firm believe that salvation from their
worldly problems lies in the practice of faith, leads to a fundamentalist
world-view. Salvation from their privations lies in their fighting the moral
battle on behalf of their God.
So
we have a situation where a population of thinly educated and oppressed class of
poor people sees the enactment of religious law as a solution to their problems.
Sadly, those who should know better – the educated elite, the worldly
politicians, and the cosmopolitan socialites – either remain silent or
actively support the Talibanisation of our society.
But
then the elites have a lot to gain from the distraction of religion. They know
that the harsh aspects of the regime will not affect them or theirs. They also
know that that the enactment of sharia would distract attention from their
lamentable failure to provide much-needed services to our poor. Instead of
having the poor talk about the alarming rate of unemployment, let’s get them
to talk about adultery. Instead of having them lament our ill-gotten wealth,
let’s get them to talk about chopping off the hands of cow thieves. Let’s
distract their frustration and anger and focus them on less serious matters.
What
about the damage to done to our country’s reputation? Increasingly, Nigeria is
seen as embracing the “palmary” intellectual and cultural standards set by
the Talibans in Afghanistan. In most western newspapers, articles on the
Talibanisation of Nigeria have displaced those on Nigerian fraudsters. On the
internet, there are several petitions on behalf of victims of the sharia. On the
streets, tell a foreigner that you are Nigerian and she would ask whether you
are also a Taliban. At a time when our peregrine president is traveling all over
the world ostensibly to dust our tarnished image and to plead for foreign
investments, our Talibans are busy advertising us as an anti-modern and
pre-industrial society.
Why
worry, our Moslem elites say. Provided we the elites have control of our oil
money and can send our children to the best schools overseas and can ourselves
travel overseas to enjoy stimulating cultural activities, what difference does
it make if foreigners think poorly of us? Are these critics not mostly Europeans
who, jealous of our faith, want to foist their modern educational system, their
cultural practices, and their technological advancements on us? We and our
children can travel to the West to enjoy these things. But here in our own
country, the middle ages are good for our poor. They have no need for a liberal
education. The
Koran contains all they need to function in our society. We don’t give a damn
what foreigners think about us. Do they not know that by getting our poor to
focus on religion, we make our country stable by distracting them from their
oppressive social conditions?
Tellingly,
Moslem countries such as Bosnia demonstrate a different approach. They show that
the Moslem faith, like all faiths, can be practiced in a way compatible with
modernism. Islam does not entail the subjugation of women, the rejection of
liberal education, or the resistance of modern culture. Countries such as Bosnia
show us that, similar to all religions, Islam has strands that reject a literal
and fundamentalist interpretation of religious doctrine. This modernist strand
ensures that the practice of faith does not inhibit other objectives of society:
social progress, economic development, and multiculturalism. This liberal
version of Islam is what should be emulated in a cosmopolitan and
multi-religious society such as Nigeria.
It
might be in the short-term interest of Moslem elites to support the
Talibanisation of parts of Nigeria. However, in the long run they would have
contributed to the retardation of progress in our society. The education of the
mind, the opening of the mind to new ideas and new ways of looking at the world,
is not inherently incompatible with the practice of faith. But the deliberate
closing of the mind is patently incompatible with human progress.
Okezie
Chukwumerije
San Francisco, California