The Learner

By Muhsin Ibrahim Inna lillaahi wa innaa ilaihi raaji’un! There is a particular cruelty in the timing of some deaths, a cruelty that refuses to be explained away. Muslim Abdurrazak Ibrahim, 31, died on a Friday. Every Friday without fail, he would send a Jumu’at Mubarak message, a small ritual of love and faith that connected him to family and friends across the distance between a soldier’s post and the world back home. On this Friday, he sent nothing. He could not. He had already gone. Muslim was the firstborn son of Abdurrazak, who named him after his uncle — a tribute to my older brother, Muslim. Abdurrazak, a retired soldier, had fought in battles inside and outside Nigeria and had returned home carrying the weight of friends lost in the trenches of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and beyond. His children, Muslim and his brother Bilal, would both join the Nigerian Army. The week of his death was, without either of us knowing it, a week of farewells. On Wednesday, my busiest day, Muslim aske...

  Nollywood Movie Review: VOICELESS   Director: Robert O. Peters Producer: Rogers Ofime Company: Native Media Writer: Jennifer Agunloye Year: November 18, 2020 Cast: Asabe Madaki, Yakubu Muhammad, Sani Muazu, Uzee Usman, Abba Zaki, Rakiya Atta, introducing Adam Garba, others.    Indisputable, only a few Kannywood productions attract the attention of the audience these days. Although the dialogue track and the actors in Voiceless are Hausa, the film does not belong to Kannywood. The movie, on the one hand, mounts a frigging assault, on the other hand, a serious challenge, to Kannywood. Though it’s unfair to match the glory of Nollywood and that of Kannywood, I can feel it in my bones that they must envy Nollywood for punching them and knocking their teeth out by producing the first wholly Hausa film that is now sold to Netflix. Here’s my review of the film.   Voiceless is an insurgency-inspired romantic-thriller motivated by the infamous ...

By Muhsin Ibrahim   muhsin2008@gmail.com The abducted Dapchi schoolgirls were released and brought back to the beleaguered village of Yobe state, Nigeria in the early hours of Wednesday, 21 st March 2018. As reports indicate, the Nigeria Army paused operation in and around the village to allow a peaceful passage for Boko Haram fighters in charge of returning the girls. They came, preached for about 20 minutes to the would-be freed girls, embarked their trucks and left. The village soon erupted in celebration with women ululating, men smiling, girls dancing, youth shouting and so on. It’s Eid. In the midst of all this, however, an unsettling picture and later a video clip emerged wherein some townspeople hailed the militants as they departed. It is not all hanky-dowry after all. Five of the girls died. They gave up the ghost, according to one of the freed girls, as a result of a stampede when they were whisked away by their abductors in overcrowded trucks. The girl ...

Dapchi Schoolgirls’ Abduction: The Big Picture by Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com As it is with anything and everything in Nigeria, the Dapchi schoolgirls’ abduction has been politicised. Only a few people now care to, honestly, empathise and sympathise with the victims’ families. The governments of Yobe, the state where the school is, and of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the security operatives care more to give alternative narratives surrounding the case and deflect blame than pragmatic efforts to rescue the poor, innocent girls. The girls’ whereabouts and fate are yet unknown and unpredictable. The previous government of Goodluck Jonathan denied the abduction of the Chibok girls in 2014, in the same way the current one initially reacted to the Dapchi girls. One wonders how possible this is. This is a manifestation that Nigeria’s problem goes beyond leadership. I no longer quickly accuse our leaders of our plights than I do ourselves. It’s first and foremost ...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com @muhsin234 Islam and its about 2 billion adherents suffer an acute ad hominem criticism in various places in the world today. The condemnations are wide and wild. While the notorious one centres on terrorism carried out by some Muslims, dubbed extremists, a salient other one is on the many prohibitions embedded in the religion. A non-Muslim friend of mine once told me, “I can’t practice Islam. There are more ‘Noes’ than there are ‘Yeses’ in it”. I didn’t quickly affirm or snub her allegation. I instead felt the need to study the whole thing thoroughly, and so I did. There are, of course, many “noes”, which are, nonetheless, for the wellness of humankind. For instance, Islam bans all intoxicants (cigarettes and alcohol deserve particular mention), pork meat, interest and usury, any sexual immodesty (adultery, fornication, incest, pornography, etc.), gay marriage, among others. Religion is religion. It must not always seem reaso...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 It’s a familiar saying that common sense is not so common. Many people regard this saying as silly, or worse. However, evidently enough, many events around the world are corroborating it today. Common sense is indeed getting scarcer by the tick of a clock. Humans’ faculty is becoming faulty and faultier. Bad is considered good, and good is considered harmful. Right as wrong, wrong as right. Demarcation line between almost anything hitherto thought as positive and/or negative is being thinned, blurred and shall soon vanish. A weird law was given a nod in South Korea in the past week.  Adultery is now legalised , and soon thereafter,  condom makers’ shares surge.   Fornication has since been permissible in many countries, though, provided the persons involved have reached puberty, and there’s no compulsion. Wonder; this new, lewd law was virtually nothing sensational, even on social media, as other, perhaps more pressing, news...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com @muhsin234 In a concluding remark of our long phone call, a Nigerian friend studying in Delhi told me about the Kano Grand Mosque bombs during the Jumu’at prayers. How come? I had recently called the city and, as tradition, asked about Jumu’at prayers. None said a word on the blast. My mind was instantly boggled. A voice from within tried to calm me; it said that that was a rumour . It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be there. Not now; never. After all, the Grand Mosque was the safest niche the good people of Kano would escape to when the Ya’juj and Ma’juj (Gog and Magog) came at the end of the world. I used to think that way in my childhood, but not without reason. The aura of belonging and the serenity one feels inside the mosque are beyond description. Many, if not all, who grew up in the Kano metro some 20 years ago or more know what I am talking about.         My mind kept denying th...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com muhsin234 (Twitter) On many occasions, Nigerians stand out among their fellow Africans. “Giant of Africa” is the enviable, controversial title often applied to Nigeria, owing to its largest population and economy on the continent. It also once had the mightiest military, having undertaken numerous successful peacekeeping missions in other African countries such as  Liberia , Sudan , and Serra Leon . The Nigerian army is no longer, however, regarded as such, as they have yet to combat and contain the insurgency of the Islamists called Boko Haram within the country since 2009 and for the violation of civilian rights in other instances. Nigeria is arguably roughly divided along religious lines. The North is predominantly Muslim, while the South is mainly Christian. There are over 200 distinct languages, but only three (Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo) are considered major. So, Nigeria is a country of plurality and complexity, s...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com @muhsin234 (Twitter) “What is your name?” Muhammad. And all eyes would turn around. It often starts just like that, for them, every Muslim is a potential threat, a terrorist. It is incredibly awkward, if not annoying, to someone like me who was born and reared in an almost 99% Muslim community. Hitherto, I didn’t know that being Muslim means that much and weighs that much; some feel even reluctant to disclose their belief. Muslims living in multi-religious and non-Muslim majority societies today have a lot of stories to tell. The story is sometimes nasty in conservative, religiously touchy and volatile places like India , where I presently reside. Although home to about 200 million Muslims, it was discovered in a recent survey that some  Muslims have to masquerade as Hindus for Indian jobs.  This happens due to the schism and sometimes animosity between them and other faithful, particularly the majority of Hindus. ...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 (Twitter) Sunday, 01 st June 2014, marks my maiden wedding anniversary. Unlike today, I was filled with happiness beyond expressing this day, last year. I was all the more excited that we were, pragmatically speaking, honeymooning outside Nigeria, starting in Cairo, where we would have an eighteen-hour transit, and India, where we still are, essentially, though for studies. My euphoria was, nonetheless, shattered by two fears since we were airborne:  first, India was often described in the news as religiously a volatile country; and second, as being ‘infested’ with lusty rapists. I am Muslim, and I am coming with a newlywed wife! Though after spending almost a year now, I discovered that although the religious schism of course exists and the rapists rather ravage, some stories are untrue, or just being exaggerated.  Yet, I was spirited in another way, for I was ‘escaping’ from the wrath of the infamous, dreaded Boko Haram (BH) ...