A Week with South African Muslims
Some Souvenirs

From a book launch, or presentation, as the author of the book would prefer, I made my way to the Abuja airport to catch a flight to Lagos. I have learnt not to take chances with Nigerian flights or anything Nigerian for that matter. I was not alone, a friend who was on the same British Airways flight to London, was also there in good time. We flew into Lagos and made straight for the international airport and checked in. We then went through immigration and security formalities and found ample time for tea inside the airport terminal. It was time for prayers. Expectedly, there was no place designated in our international airports for Muslims to pray. We had to make do with the improvisation of some Hausa people selling leatherworks in the terminal building. That was not quite the problem. As we left our hand luggage with the leather‑vendors to go into the nearby toilets to make ablution for payers, the nearby shopkeepers (who happen to be Hausa speaking people) alerted us that we cannot perform ablution in the toilets ‑ not anymore. It was at the heat of that scandal called Nigeria 99, where billions in Naira of public funds was squandered to host a sports fiesta. The toilets have been renovated to impress expected visitors and whoever was in charge had given orders that Muslims must not be allowed to make ablution and wash their feet in the wash‑hand basins. A strong young man was employed at the entrance to ensure that no one was allowed to wash his feet, which boiled down to ensuring that no Muslim was allowed to make ablution. We thought these shopkeepers must be joking, because we thought no one in his right senses, not even the devil, could do this. Unfortunately they were right.(1) The young man realized that we were going in to make ablution and promptly tried to stop us. I first attempted an explanation, but it did not work. Then I told him to go and call his boss so that he can tell me the devil who gave him the orders. It seemed to have occurred to him that the two of us could be some 'big men'. He started begging us to save his job by keeping out of the area. We had to literally force our way. And this is a country where the Muslims claim to be a majority. What a country! Or what a majority! Or indeed what a tragedy! Ironically, on arrival at the Johannesburg International airport, the Muslim prayer room was being advertised at every level of the terminal building and Muslims in South Africa are hardly up to 3% of the population. I later learnt that Schippol International Airport, Amsterdam, has two such prayer rooms, for their teeming Muslim Passengers. From the airport we were received and taken to our hotel for a brief rest and later to a Mosque in Sandton, J'burg. The sermon, khutba in Arabic was very short but the pre-khutba talk in English was longer and more comprehensive. After the prayers, we had an opportunity to drive around parts of the city and after the conference we had an opportunity to go to Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town. It is difficult to believe that Muslims in South Africa are just about 3% for, with about four Muslims in Mandela's cabinet, their impact and visibility appear to be more than 30%. In every major city, specifically, Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, they have one or more Muslim FM radio stations; their beautiful mosques grace the skyline of their cities, they have a growing number of Muslims private schools from nursery to tertiary in all the cities; 60% of restaurants in Cape Town are said to serve Muslim (Halal) meals, which may be more a measure of Muslim purchasing power than population. Their intellectuals are vibrant, and being online, are up to date and busy publishing articles in journals and books, Above all, they have the good sense to see the need, with their second elections only weeks away, to organise a conference on the Muslims and Political Developments in Southern Africa. The conference brought scholars, activists and indeed politicians, both parliamentarians as well as ministers from South Africa, Mozambique and a few neigbouring states like Malawi and Namibia. A minister from Mozambique was there throughout all the sessions of the conference and the South African Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Abdullah Umar also participated actively. The conference rounded up with a dinner in which Thabo Mbeki, South Africa's Vice President and a candidate for the forthcoming elections, was the guest of honour. Mbeki, who was busy campaigning, found time to come to the dinner and spent time with us and addressed the gathering. This itself was a measure of Muslim clout in South Africa. It was at the dinner I discovered that quite a number of his key staff are Muslims. He was very relaxed in the gathering because a lot of his Muslim colleagues in the struggle against Apartheid, like Ahmed Kathrada, who spent 25 years in Robin Island with Mandela were there. My presence reminded him of his memories of Nigeria, especially Lagos where he spent some time during exile. The dinner more than anything revealed to me that at ANC level, Islam was not a problem it was a cherished ally in the struggle against apartheid. During the conference itself, very interesting and momentous issues were raised and discussed by some of the top Muslim scholars, politicians and professionals in South Africa. The conference started, rightly, with a session on Covering Islam: Muslims and the Media where Muslims media veterans like the London based lqbal Asaria, John Battersby, a leading South African journalist who had covered the Middle East, Adil Bradlow and Abba Omar spoke. While lqbal raised the issue of international media perception of Muslims and Islam, Abba raised the issue of media diversity in a transforming democracy. For once, Muslim's discussion on the media went beyond lamentation and took on the issue, fully cognisant of the challenges of globalisation in the 21st  century. The following day was the formal opening, which was delayed to allow the keynote speaker to fly in from the US. The opening was performed by Ahmed Kathrada, standing tall in South Africa with his anti‑apartheid credentials only second to that of Mandela, he gave a moving speech which set the tone of the conference and set the pace of the discussion. Prof. Sulayman Nyang, in his keynote address traced the role of Islam in political and socio‑economic developments in sub‑Saharan Africa since the colonial time to date. He proceeded to project into the 21st century, emphasizing the need for the Muslims to work through NGO's which are the dominant agents of change and to be proactive and utilise opportunities that exist today in Africa. Subsequent speakers included Prof Fatima Meer, a Durban based leading sociologist and a prominent anti‑Apartheid campaigner, Ebrahim Rasool, an ANC gubernatorial candidate for Cape Town, Fatima Seedat, a leading Muslim Woman activist, Naledi Pondor, a prominent educationist, Azhar Cachalia and indeed Abdullah Umar, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice. Fatima Seedat raised the issue of the marginalisation of women in the Muslim community and the implications of this on the future of Islam in South Africa. It was a message that came across clear, that leaving women behind is neither Islamic nor is it beneficial to the Muslim community. The latter has to give room for women to develop and face the challenges of their time or lose them as they might try to do that outside Islam. In his paper titled, Beyond the Curriculum: Education between Specificity and a Multi­cultural society, Naledi Pondor took the issue of the education debate: precisely how can a Muslim society bring up its young in a secular society? Is the trend of exclusivity the answer or should they integrate with certain concessions? These were hard choices for a minority but raising the issues brought all the implications both on the short and long run. Similarly Azhar Cachalia, presenting a paper on Securing an Open Society, raised the issue of the extent the Muslim community can secure its values in a society which is now open more than ever before and where abortion has been legalised and gay and lesbians may soon gain more rights to live and practice openly. In a democratic and open setting the issue cannot be settled through outbursts of emotions or condemnations in Mosques and the rest of Muslim short cuts. It is a hard and exacting campaign operating by the laws of democracy and the tenets of open society. This paper woke up many sleeping Muslims to the realities of their day and the hard work that remains to be done if Muslims are to secure their values in an open society. Abdullah Umar, the Minister of Justice, took the community through a very long but exciting analysis of the choices available to the Muslim community. In his paper, Legalising Minority Rights, ‑ Fiqh of fiction, he addressed the dream of the Muslim community to secure a Muslim Family law in the constitution. While this is not impossible and had to be taken up according to the rules of the game, but the immediate implications also had to be looked at, like the incompetence of and the schism within the traditional ulama. At the end the choice is for the community but it has to get its acts together and do its home work very well. The essence of the discussion is best captured in 1qbal Asaria's second presentation, which emphasised the need for the minority community to engage the majority and seek to share with it common values, or work with it to influence it rather than develop separately which may in the short run appear satisfying but in the long run disastrous. The problem, he feels is that Muslims have over the years lacked confidence and have tended to shy away from bold decisions and hard work. Unfortunately there is no escaping hard decisions or substitute to hard work. Muslims have been relaying on chances and they must realise that the 21st century is not a century for chance and even those who still wish to rely on chance ought to know that chance favours only the prepared man. In this conference there is a lot for Muslims in Nigeria to learn and share. For constraints of space let us limit ourselves to only five. First is the disproportional influence of Muslims in contemporary South Africa. The secret lies in their involvement with and contribution to the struggle against apartheid from its inception. The Cape Muslims in particular, who originated from Malaysia and Indonesia, where their grand parents gave the Dutch colonialist a tough time, and hence exiled to South Africa, who therefore had a history of struggle against oppression, played a leading role in the struggle against Apartheid. Many of them suffered a variety of torments and torture and some like Imam Musa Haroon, a good comrade of Mandela, died in prison early in the struggle. Some of the surviving veterans include Prof Fatima.Meer whose house was bombed a few times but never gave up and of course Ahmed Kathrada who spent 25 years with Mandela in the infamous Robin Island. So in the post- apartheid era Muslims, though a small fraction of the population, could walk tall in the streets of South Africa and rightly share in the benefits of the struggle. In Nigeria, we may not have gone through apartheid, but the last 15 years of military rule is hardly distinguishable from apartheid in the scale of devastation decimation and dislocation of society. The period is undoubtedly the worst in our contemporary history. It is made further worse by the fact that the military leaders during this period and therefore perpetrators were mostly Muslims. Admittedly not the best, but Muslims none‑the‑less and the Muslim community treated them as such. Muslims as Muslims did not actively oppose their oppression and inequity. If anything those who have come to symbolise the Muslim community, the traditional rulers, the Ulama and some prominent Muslim elite, were all over the place, falling head over heels, ingratiating themselves, defending them and even openly praying for them. Others, the not so pious, the not so cultured ‑ whatever name Muslims may wish call them ‑ were the ones who undertook the struggle with all the perils associated with it, and it is to their credit that we are now enjoying the peace and tranquility this struggle has given birth to. One is not discounting the prayers of the pious but one cannot but wonder if that is how it should be, for the Prophet of Islam and those who took after him, like Shehu Usman Danfodio, said their prayers on the battle fields not in the comfort and privacy of their houses. It is those who have put in much in this struggle that today deserve the benefits. They deserve the leadership and that which accrues with it. This is the Law of Allah, the Most High, and He left us in no doubt about it. (Q. 39:53‑4) As Muslims we can't complain, we don't deserve the largess of the struggle, what we deserve is a rethink. Secondly, democracy may have a Western face, but Muslims who read their books well will have no difficulty in recognising that, in its essence, democracy is Islamic. In our contemporary setting there is hardly any better alternative for Muslims. If only Muslims can overcome their paranoia, democracy offers them the best opportunity for da'wah, for it offers them a chance to sell their ideas to all and sundry. More than that, because democracy, in its western shape, is essentially a game of numbers, the Muslims in Nigeria have an advantage over all other communities. Those who think that Politics is a dirty game, may well be right, but they ought to know that it is dirty precisely because the clean have kept away, leaving the scum to have a field day. It is the height of folly to sit and watch someone take your future and make a mess of it and then you go round mosques giving sermons when no one stops you from taking your own future into your own hands. The other area is the media. True the portrayal of Muslims in the media has been for the most part negative. First we have to make room for genuine ignorance. We have to also avoid blaming others for faults that are really ours. Some of the criticisms are justified. How do you justify, in our communities this culture of begging where very young and vulnerable children are thrown in the streets and left literally to their devices? So if we are criticised we should be able to accept our faults and make amends. How do you justify what the so called traditional rulers do in the name of Islam? But who really stops us, in Nigeria at least, from having our own papers, FM radio stations, etc. The laws have allowed every body and if others have better senses to seize the opportunity and make the best of it, we should have only ourselves to blame. Muslims should stop complaining about the media, they should simply start their own. If they don't have the determination and staying power to start and sustain a media outfit, they should simply keep quite and take the rubbish howled at them, for this is what we deserve. Education has remained throughout out human history the greatest source of power and social change. Muslims in South Africa don't appear to have any doubts about that. They put in substantial amount of their resources in developing private education which competes favourably with the main stream schools in national curriculum, while exposing their students to Islamic knowledge and values. It was particularly pleasing to see a Muslim nursery school in Cape Town, stuffed with adequate educational aids and run by professionally trained and well motivated staff. It was moving to listen to some of them recite the Qur'an. You don't find Muslim children roaming the streets in the name of the search for education. Education is certainly not the priority of the Muslims in Nigeria, despite claims to the contrary. One only needs to look at the amount of wealth spent at weddings, turbaning ceremonies or such other jamborees, to see where our priorities lie. A few brave ones who dared to start a private school, have enormous difficulties in getting teachers in such important subjects as Mathematics, science and the English Language. In our universities, Muslim undergraduates avoid education courses like a plague and if by any 'misfortune' they ended up there, on graduation, they use all manners of connections to work in a bank, to make money and enjoy life while some unfortunate fool stays in the schools to teach their children. Muslims seem to want to eat their cake and have it. One can only wish them luck. Finally, at a private launch in Durban, our host, businessman and industrialist, asked me what percentage of Nigerian land mass was arable. I admitted I don't have the exact figure but I suggested it must be close to 90% or thereabouts. He further asked how much does the country make from agriculture annually. I again admitted my ignorance, but quickly added, that Nigeria has an oil based economy, and what it makes from agriculture could not be more that a miserable 10%. Surprise was written on his face. He cleared his throat and said that looks like a joke. How can it be so? He said South Africa with all its size has less than 20% arable land yet it makes about $40billion annually from its agriculture, which comes to about 50% of their GNP. Their gold, Diamond and platinum along with other things are what put together produce the other 50% of the GNP. I thought we should like to hear this. While we may with justification, blame the military regimes for killing our agriculture and making us dependent on oil, the proceeds of which we embezzle and squander, we have, in our over dependence on government for fertiliser and the rest of it, also a share of the blame. We must find ways of developing what Allah Has blessed us with and save ourselves the embarrassment and abuses we have been receiving for the doom of Nigerian oil. I am not sure these are the kind of things Muslims in Nigeria want to hear. They may prefer to hear stories about how some Jews somewhere are plotting against Islam by manufacturing some wax print with what looks like God's name, or that some imaginary enemies of Islam are lurking at some corner planning to subvert the Muslim community. Or waiting for some raving evangelist to make some unguarded statements before venting their fury, which hardly comes to anything. These are the kinds of things that seem to make the community tick and this precisely is the tragedy. When shall the Muslim community ever grow? Should we continue to hope for God to be on our side? Isn't it time we started thinking of being on His side? Usman Bugaje Footnotes 1. People not familiar with European social life might be interested to know that most Europeans take their bath only once in a week and during the week some hardly take off their shoes with the result that their feet tend to smell. So in public toilets there are often instructions not to wash feet in the wash‑hand basin. It makes sense. But even there this rule is not fair to Muslims who wash their feet five times a day at least. Luckily the convention has gradually been changing to accommodate Muslims. A story is told of a Nigerian Muslim postgraduate student at the SOAS, University of London, who in the late 60's walked in to a toilet and went to the wash‑hand basin to perform his ablution, as he was about to wash his feet, a British shouted, "you certainly can't wash your feet there!" He was said to have retorted, I certainly will, these feet are cleaner than your mouth, I wash them five times a day at least, tell me how many times you wash your mouth in a day?"