PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

The Christian Clergy And Islamic Banking

In its edition of August 6, 1994, The Economist published what in local media parlance we call a supplement on “Islam and the West.” The 18-page pull-out by Brian Beedham was an anti-thesis of sorts to the famous thesis by the Harvard University professor of Politics, the late Samuel Huntington, that an apocalyptic clash was inevitable between Islam and the West.

“Are Muslims and the people of the West doomed to perpetual confrontation?” Beedham asked. “Not,” he answered himself, “if they both see that this is a moment for change.”

The two civilizations, he said, have their differences obviously. “Few westerners,” he said, “believe that God dictated the Koran, and no Muslim believes that Jesus was the son of God.”

However, in spite of these differences, he said, the two shared enough convictions to make Huntington’s prophesy possibly untenable. “A Muslim and a westerner both believe, more clearly than most other people, in the idea of individual responsibility. They can exchange opinions about the nature of good and evil, or property rights, or the preservation of the environment, in something like a spirit of brotherhood,” he said.

In the third section of the seven-part survey, subtitled “The cash-flow of God,” the author concluded that the West can learn a thing or two from Islamic banking. Islamic economics, he said, may not be as special as its adherents say it is, but it deserved more than the dismissal it often got from non-Muslims.

“The economics of Islam, in short,” he said, “is not as special as its enthusiasts claim; but neither does it deserve the usually ignorant sneer it gets from non-Muslims.”

In Nigeria since the recent announcement by the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, that Islamic banking is to start in the country soon, it has been getting worse than an ignorant sneer from non-Muslims. What it has been getting especially from the Christian clergy is total rejection. This rejection is clearly rooted more in sheer Islamophobia, the irrational or extreme fear of Islam, than in ignorance.

From the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, through the Prelate of the Methodist Church of Nigeria, Archbishop Sunday Ola Makinde, to the Catholic Archbishop Lagos, Cardinal Anthony Olubunmi Okogie, the clergy have been united almost to the last in speaking up against Islamic banking.

However, whereas the CAN president has been threatening brimstone and fire at every opportunity, and whereas another clergy, Reverend Joseph John Hayab, former Secretary of the Kaduna State chapter of CAN and presently the Special Adviser on Religious Affairs to the Kaduna State Governor, Sir Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa, has said the introduction of Islamic banking in the country will probably provoke a crisis worse than that which trailed the introduction of penal Shari’a in most states in the North, Cardinal Okogie has merely threatened to go to court should Islamic banking commence in the country.

The rejection of Islamic banking by the Christian clergy is clearly irrational, as we shall see presently. It also shows the clergy’s disconnect with its laity – that is if the CBN governor is to be believed when he said about 60% of the shareholders in the putative Islamic banking sector are non-Muslims. And there is no reason not to believe him; you may say anything of the man but no one can accuse him of getting his facts wrong since he became the CBN governor.

Reverend Hayab says in the interview with Sunday Sun (July 24) where he warned about the dire consequences of going ahead with Islamic banking that he has no quarrel with interest-free banking. “Non-interest banking is ok,” he said. “But when you attach it to faith, it is just like the manner Shari’a came up...If the sitting governor of the Central Bank is the one saying it must be, then people will start asking questions.”

Archbishop Makinde spoke in a similar, albeit more fear mongering, vein in an interview in the Sunday Vanguard of July 17. “The whole thing,” he said, “appears as though some people want to Islamize the country and drop the Holy Quran from the desert to the ocean; but we cannot sit and look at this. If they called it non-interest banking, of course, nobody will be afraid.”

I say fear-mongering because there is absolutely no scientific basis to his claim the Islamic banking is tantamount to Islamizing the country. Historically, as a recent study by the American Pew Research Centre’s Forum on Religion and Public Life has shown, religions have grown or shrunk more from the fertility rate of their adherents than from conversions.

History apart, the Prelate’s very choice of words betrays his prejudice; to talk about dropping “the Holy Quran from the desert into the ocean” betrays his rather shaky grasp of the country’s geography, a shaky grasp rooted in an unwillingness to see beyond stereotypes. Surely the highly respected Prelate knows that the mainly Muslim North he is referring to is not a barren desert. Surely he knows that except for its northern fringes it has a highly fertile Savannah vegetation that produces most of the country’s grains, root-crops and livestock.

Besides, he knows that for at least more than a century the South-West he comes from has had hundreds of thousands of indigenous Muslims just like the North has had indigenous Christians without any gunboat diplomacy in either direction. I believe it is rather contemptuous of these Muslims and Christians for anyone to talk as if they never existed.

The Christian clergy’s rejection of Islamic banking is, broadly speaking, based apparently on three reasons, the last two of which are related. First, there’s the claim, echoed by Archbishop Makinde, that introducing the bank amounts to Islamizing Nigeria. Then there is the argument that it is discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional. Lastly, there is the argument that Nigeria is a secular state.

All three are untenable. Worse, they amount to a very negative attitude of beggar-thy-neighbour.

To begin with the last, Nigeria is not a secular state. It is, as the Constitution says, a multi-religious state. Section 15 of our Constitution, for example, states categorically that the country’s motto is “Unity and FAITH, Peace and Progress.” (Emphasis mine). That is why, for example, we begin every official function with prayers to the Deity. It is also why we built a church and a mosque in our Presidential Villa and in Government Houses in most states. Again that is why our Armed Forces have departments of religion. And so on and so on.

The second argument about the bank being discriminatory looks tenable at first glance; in spite of the popular understanding of the rhetorical question, “What’s in a name?,” there is indeed a lot that is in a name. As that famous wordsmith, George Orwell, often stressed, words are weapons.

Even then words in the end only conjure images in our heads and in the language of politics words are often abused to conjure images that are at variance with the substance of what they describe. This seems to be especially the case with the word Islam in certain influential circles in Nigeria where it is regarded as taboo.

Everywhere in the world, including in officially Christian United Kingdom and the ostensibly secular America and France, Islamic banking is the word used to describe non-interest banking. Why we should not call this spade by its name in a country where at least 50% of its population is Muslim is really truly baffling.

If the phrase Islamic banking sounds discriminatory in name it is certainly not so in fact. That is why it is subscribed to by Muslims and non-Muslim’s alike, which has led to its being quoted in many of the leading stock exchanges all over the world and has grown over the decades into a global service worth about US$1 trillion in financial assets alone, according to most estimates.

Lastly, to think that merely establishing Islamic banking in the country amounts to Islamizing it truly beggars belief. The reason is simple. If in spite of the Jewish global control of interest banking all these millennia, and even more importantly, their near-total control of the global media, they have not succeeded in converting the rest of the world in to Judaism, it is incredible how anyone can believe Islamic banking can Islamize Nigeria.

Hello, Oceanic Bank

In the last several months Oceanic Bank has been texting me an alert on my Glo line 08054502909 on the account number 0007250966. I have never had any account with the bank, so obviously the alert is in error. I hope someone in the bank’s management will read this and get them to stop sending me someone else’s bank balances.

The whole thing could, of course, be a scam. Either way the bank should know and do something about it.