keed JT

Mallam Yahaya Ibrahim Masussuka: The Truth We Owe the Dead For a people or a region plagued by insecurity and extremism, it is understandable that peace-loving people would embrace or support anyone who presents themselves as a peace advocate or ambassador. These ambassadors could be atheists, Muslims, Christians, or agnostics. However, there is a fundamental difference between advocating peace and being hell-bent on striking at the very pedestal upon which Islam has stood for centuries. The latter will inevitably come with its own blowback. The search for peace, rightly so, can be likened to a drowning man holding on to anything that looks like a stick, even if it is a snake. Many found what appeared to be a stick in Masussuka. Hadith, the second source of Shari’ah, which comprises accounts of the sayings and actions of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), came under dismissal, mockery, misinterpretation, and abuse by Masussuka. His treatment of Hadith was not guided by any established scholarly procedures, and this is where Masussuka fell short of intellectual rigour. He became the authority who made or marred a Hadith according to his own whims and caprices. For the record, he is not the first to subject Hadiths to scholarly scrutiny. Many others have done so, but they followed established procedures. This is what makes Masussuka appear more like a sophist than a scholar. With cheerleaders, both innocent and dishonest, hailing him in their search for peace and their fight against extremism, Masussuka basks even more in his whimsical delusions. Attempts to get him to participate in open intellectual debates have proved abortive. When the heat in the kitchen became unbearable over his rejection of ALL Hadiths, Masussuka created novel criteria for accepting Hadiths: “It should not contradict the Qur’an, it should not impugn the reputation of the Prophet (SAW), and it should not call for terrorism.” I don’t know of any Islamic cleric or scholar in history who has proposed these criteria. This was entirely his own invention. Even non-Muslims are well aware of the five pillars of Islam. Yet Masussuka reduced them to three. How the Hadith that explicitly outlines the five pillars of Islam failed to meet the criteria he set for himself is a conundrum he failed to address or reconcile before his unfortunate murder. Hadiths concerning voluntary fasting on Mondays and Thursdays, as well as many well-known rituals of Hajj, also fell short of his criteria. He dismissed Islamic jurisprudence with a wave of his hand. The historic martyrdom of Hussain (RA), the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), was thrown into the gutter by him. He denied history. That denial alone could strike at one of the most important historical foundations of Shi’ism. Under the umbrella of peace advocacy, Masussuka enjoyed the protection and intellectual endorsement of people who would ordinarily be quick to criticise anyone resorting to unscholarly procedures in other fields of knowledge. He was blessed with sound Qur’anic memorisation, a sharp tongue, coherent and incoherent logic, and the ability to explain and translate Arabic words in a didactic manner. He also didn’t spare his interlocutors from name-calling: karuwar kundila, bunsuru da babban riga, jaba mai bakin sharri, etc. Even the foremost compilers of Hadith, Imam Bukhari and Imam Muslim, were not spared his invectives. Shehu Inyass and Ahmad Tijjani also got their fair share of name-calling. That’s the peace ambassador. 1/2