Freedom, Interfaith Relations, and Civil Society in Nigeria: A Memorandum March 14-15

Freedom, Interfaith Relations & Civil Society in Nigeria Poster
March 8, 2018

Freedom, Interfaith Relations, and Civil Society in Nigeria

A  Memorandum

Lamin Sanneh

The politics of nationalism and nation building in Africa have been complicated by cross-cutting loyalties of religion and ethnic advantage, and the uneven distribution of these loyalties across geographical boundaries and societies challenges any generalization about religion and ethnicity as fixed, unchanging realities. It should, however, bring clarity to the subject to think of both religion and ethnicity as fundamental aspects of civil society: our religion and ethnicity are matters of identity and self-understanding, and we have that in common with others.

Religion and ethnicity do not come to be by political edict; they are not functions of political jurisdiction. The language we speak and the God we worship are not political or economic concessions. The politicization of religion and ethnicity has brought great harm to interfaith harmony and neighborliness, with destabilizing consequences for society as a whole. Tribalism and religious fundamentalism are a sop for politicization: they accentuate the divisions that hinder our capacity for mutual charity and forbearance. Reflection on how civil society may help counteract the tendency of politicization and be a source of moderation and civic engagement is necessary to help move the discussion forward.

Religious and other community leaders in Africa have spoken of how the modern secular heritage has unleashed forces that have not spared traditional institutions and values, with young people caught in the swirl of rapid social change with no moorings in the cultures affected. In his reflections on the subject, Bishop Matthew Kukah of Sokoto gives illustrations from Nigerian politics of the ambiguous use and misuse of religion. He cited a friend who said that it is “impossible for anyone to try to rule Nigeria without pretending to be religious,”1 a statement intended to acknowledge the pervasive influence of religion with the double understanding that religion is too important to ignore, but also too important to subsume as a political appendix.

The religious situation as such is extremely volatile. Religious leaders have not resisted the temptation to use religious appeal for personal advantage, leading in particular cases to a one-sided capture of public resources. It led Kukah to speculate in the cases in question whether the Catholic Church has not been marginalized by events.2 The role churches play in politics must be distinguished from their nature as institutions of civil society whose make up is defined by their voluntary, self-supporting character, and independent of government.3 It is the principle of free association organized as a social institution for civic participation in the life of society. Kukah contends that Nigeria possesses the conditions for the emergence of a strong civil society, and that improvements in education, standard of living, ethical conduct, and model political leadership, will promote that end.4

Looking at the growing crisis of society, Kukah says the moral and ethical examples leaders set are critical for maintaining trust and credibility among the people. Political leadership must also be moral leadership.5 The fate of democracy is at stake in the kind of political leaders we have, specifically, in their capacity to transcend the merely utilitarian view of politics as power and of religion as political convenience. Christianity has long been in tension with power considered as is its own justification, and that fact must be a cautionary tale about not surrendering the moral ground to government.6

As the aggregate of our unequal gifts and uneven physical endowments, civil society is the better for fostering a humane environment of mutual aid and succor, with caring for one another the safeguard against individualism and exclusion. In that cause, religion calls to mind the Creator’s gifts of life, liberty, and justice on which hang the peace and tranquility of our collective endeavor. As Pope Nicholas I (d. 867) put it with respect to the care of orphans and the destitute, for an act to be virtuous it must be voluntary.7 Goodness cannot be compelled, and, in cultivating it, we approach in closeness what God intends us to be. Our likeness with respect to the image of God commits us to work that will achieve our closeness to God and to our neighbor. Our political freedom is empty in the absence of that moral freedom.

This distinction was developed centuries earlier in the explicit formula of Pope Gelasius I (492-496) who first promulgated the idea of dyarchy, by which he meant the two ends of the divine and the temporal held in equilibrium. It makes church and state “each equal to the other when acting in its own sphere.” Thus was sown the seed of separation, and although for long periods clerical entanglement with worldly affairs was quite extensive, ecclesiastical discipline preserved the teaching. Cardinal Basil Hume of Westminster in 1997 asserted the right of the church to protect the sanctuary of the confessional against the Police Powers Bill that was being introduced in Parliament by the Conservative government. The Bill gave police powers for the unchecked use of bugging devices in the church.8 Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, granted the religious exemption, and, in so doing, conceded the limits of power in a society defined by a Christian heritage.9 Catholic teaching filled out the classical idea that the human being is a political animal with the teaching that the human being is created in the image of God, an idea adapted in the language of revolutionary America as people endowed with God-given inalienable, indispensable rights. The dual identity, which the political and the moral view of the person warrants, is critical for a free democratic culture. Extremist ideologies on both ends of the political spectrum, however, have continued to grind against this heritage.

These important considerations evoke the call of leaders of Muslim societies for a fresh reassessment of the spiritual legacy of the religion in order to respond to the demands of relevance with faithfulness. Muslim African leaders have joined in this search for a moral answer to the growing crisis facing them. A descendant of ‘Uthman dan Fodio (d.1817) who was the founder of the Sokoto caliphate, Wazirin Junaidu addressed in a commencement speech at the University of Zaria the new crop of graduates by drawing on the heritage of learning in Timbuktu. Holding up the University as a pillar of civil society, the wazír argued that knowledge is not parochial, that although it is universal and timeless, knowledge bears a social and cultural stamp. It has a purpose and is committed to a particular worldview.

At the heart of Timbuktu’s intellectual world was the murábit, a religious scholar who resided in a ribát, a community of learning and devotion, whence the French marabout, cleric. Ibn Marzuq says that for Sufis a ribát means “the place in which a man shuts himself up for the purpose of worship.”10 Ribáts appear to have evolved from fortified bastions that served a military purpose to become centers of militant proselytization (ribát fí sabíl li-lláhi) and, later, centers of Sufi teaching. Writing in the fourteenth century, al-‘Umari refers to this religious, as opposed to the military, sense of ribát when he speaks of “the pious men who are called murábits.”

Wazirin Junaidu describes the murábit as “a man who by his profound knowledge of the holy writ, his learning and the dignity of his personal life set an example to society.” With his family the murábit lived within the precincts of the mosque that served as a seat of learning. With their respect for values that have passed test of time and experience and have been tempered by practice and endurance, the products of this system of higher education became leaders of society in all its spheres of activity. When it works well, education should makes us useful members of society, and that goal will be enhanced if education also makes us attentive to goodness.

The relationship of the world of learning to society, therefore, is more than a crudely utilitarian one. The Islamic university in question was independent of the state; it embodied the spirit of civil society; acted as guardian of its moral and ethical values; and was an impulse of its hopes and aspirations. “All communities have an inner life, a spiritual dimension which makes them what they are, gives them autonomy and helps them to rise above their present to greater achievement. I am speaking here of the values which they have about their place in the world, about the correct relationship between men, about the proper ways to behave in conducting the affairs of men and their own views of what constitutes their identity.”11

This tradition of learning produced men and women who were competent in worldly affairs, but who were prominent also for self-discipline, piety and the love of learning, justice and truth.12 They used their gifts to impart nobility of spirit. While exposed to active, productive contact with the wider world of trade and politics, with an outward looking disposition to engage new and different ideas, the Timbuktu intellectual tradition was proud of its roots in African society and acted to honor it.13 It did not create deraciné Africans. That tradition, the wazír emphasized, is much closer to the ethos of Sokoto than Sokoto is to the seaborne trends of Lagos.

The wazír urged the modern University in Africa to be more than a mouthpiece of the state, and more than the paid incubator of clichés and slogans. The University should act to overcome its image as a cultural transplant whose roots lie in another place and live up to its roots in civil society. It is important, he stressed, for education and educators not to be bamboozled by mere novelty, not to become a hotbed of ideologies and populist agendas. Viability and success cannot replace principle; the search for knowledge is not a contest for popularity. To embrace change because it is fashionable is to make adulation an end in itself.

Education must engage the imagination and cultivate appreciation for nuance and subtlety, with inquiry inspired by curiosity and awareness above and beyond calculations of temporary advantage or personal profit. Education should ignite the desire for the moral quest by taking to heart its grounding purpose. The loss of nuance and curiosity, the wazír challenged, will sap society of its capacity to imagine a worthwhile future for its children. The crisis of the modern University in Africa is nowhere more evident than in the fact that the new élites it produces find no difficulty or hesitation in violating the laws and regulations they create. Legislation is at the whim of law-makers with little sense of accountability or of the consequences of their actions. They have lost their roots in society, and “when your own world has been put aside, you feel no respect for any other.”14 Our moral destiny deserves a better outcome.

The wazír was at pains to emphasize that true learning should be community-directed so that those born and raised in the community recognize, affirm, and perpetuate the moral “codes of conduct on which the sacred community depends for its peace and harmony.”15 The best scholars are those close to the world they influence. The religious basis of learning is inscribed in Scripture thus: “God shall raise in His favor those who believe and those who have been given knowledge.”16 A hadith of the Prophet of Islam is invoked for support, viz: “The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr.”17 17 Knowledge is a precious thing; it should be among our highest responsibilities.

Matthew Hassan Kukah, The Church and the Politics of Social Responsibility, Lagos: Sovereign Prints Nig Ltd., 2007, 128.

2  Kukah, Church and Politics, 117. Kukah ponders the deeper issue of marginalization as a condition of the growing number of lapsed Catholics. Their conduct bears little relationship to the teachings of the church. They act as functional agnostics. Kukah, Church and Politics, 120.

3  Kukah, Church and Politics, 84-85.

4  Kukah, Church and Politics, 98.

5  Kukah, Church and Politics, 132-134.

6  Kukah, Church and Politics, 148.

7   For a discussion of Pope Nicholas on this subject see John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance, New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.

House of Commons Hansard, 6 February, 1997 Column 1154.

Episcopal News Service March 7, 1997. The New York Times editorial omits any mention of the religious objection, saying somewhat faintheartedly that the House of Commons should at least require the courts to intervene to authorize the planting of bugging devices. February 5, 1997.

10Ibn Mazruq, Musnad, ed. & tr. E. Lévi-Provençal, Hespéris, v, 1925; J. Spencer Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, London: Oxford University Press, 1962, 23n.

11  Alhaji Junaidu, “The Relevance of the University to our Society,” 1975, 468.

12Relevant to this discussion is Matthew Hassan Kukah, Witness to Justice: An Insider’s Account of Nigeria’s Truth Commission, Ibadan, Nigeria: Bookcraft, 2011.

13See Ousmane Kane, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.

14Alhaji Junaidu, “The Relevance of the University to our Society,” 1975, 469.

15Alhaji Junaidu, “The Relevance of the University to our Society,” Speech of Acceptance, Abdullahi Bayero University, Zaria, Nigeria, 1972. Published in Nigerian Journal of Islam, vol. 2, no. 2, June, 1972-June, 1974, 55-58. Reprinted in Godfrey N. Brown and Mervyn Hiskett, editors, Conflict and Harmony in Education in Tropical Africa, London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1975, 467-471. For more details see L. Sanneh, Beyond Jihad: The Pacifist Tradition in West African Islam, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 259-270.

16Qur’an lviii: 11.

17This hadith is considered weak (dayf) by Muslim scholars. In his Al-Jámi al-Saghír, Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (1445-1505), the Egyptian scholar-jurist, questions its authenticity. But the saying is widely disseminated in the Muslim world, indicating its high receptivity. In the mouth of the wazír the hadith is a strong repudiation of chauvinism and extremism. The “ink of the scholar” here is a metaphor for learning and scholarship in the cause of character formation and moral persuasion.