The Learner

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 Why did you come to study in India if it is not better than your country, Nigeria? Three keen followers of my blog, one Indian and two Nigerians, and whom I respect, impliedly asked me the above after reading one of my non-romantic articles  on India. Yes, India is ahead of Nigeria in terms of many developmental indexes like the economy, military establishment and infrastructure. It is however ahead of it also on various other unmentionable indexes such as racism, communal clashes, maternal mortality, female foeticide and infanticide; child labour and slavery, etc. Though, mosaic as India is, you can’t, or rather shouldn’t, generalise. No hyperbole in the above comparison: each country has its good and bad sides. My coming to India, as I said before, was deliberate and purposed. I dug deeper and had a lengthy back-and-forth over email with the university I was joining. My area of specialisation is film-related (not English as many,...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com @muhsin234 Islam and its about 2 billions 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 (cigarette and alcohol deserve particular mention), pork meat, interest and usury, any sexual immodesty (adultery, fornication, incest, phonograph, etc.); gay marriage, among others. Religion is religion. It must not always seem reasona...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 Astrologists would want me to believe that June 1 is my lucky day. I will however not take them serious, as I don’t believe in that pseudoscience. But no doubt, the day stands unique in my life. At least two life-shaping incidents happened to me. First, I assumed duty as a Graduate Assistant at the prestigious Bayero University , Kano in 2012. Second, exactly a year later, I got married to the lady I have always appreciated being with. For anything, the day cannot go by like other days. I think it deserves a particular remembrance and commemoration, though not in any ritualistic manner. This year was unlike the previous one. I had then wanted to give a tantalizing treat to my wife, which was subsequently marred by some chilling and killing incidents in both Nigeria and India that do not bear repeating here.  I had not planned to do anything special for this year, nor write a single word until about an hour or so ago. I had had, t...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 I wrote this rejoinder to counter insults of Nana A'isha (R. A) by a coterie of apparently sponsored-Shiite members on Nairaland Forum  on 12th Dec., 2010. The recent spate of blasphemy against the virtues of the Prophet behoved me to reproduce the article here with a few changes. Based on numerous accounts of authentic hadeeths and undistorted historical scores, Sayyidat A’isha bint Abubakar (R.A) was the favourite wife of the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W). Some Muslim sects do, nonetheless, attack and accuse her with enthusiasm, backing their untoward actions on some free-emptied arguments and fabricated histories of what transpired after the death of her husband, the Prophet, between her and Sayyid Ali (RA). Besides, other Muslims – I am one of them – regard, revere and respect her in their best possible way; and she remains a role model for their women. The greatness of A’isha, to us, is nothing contestable and hence one needs everythin...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim muhsin2008@gmail.com @muhsin234 Let me be categorically clear from the onset that I am not here to legitimize the president-elect, Muhammadu Buhari’s handshake with any non-maharam woman. The often cited instances of other Muslim leaders of, among others, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia doing the same is, at best, extraneous and at worst, clumsy. No amount of words, logic, wisdom, etc can make what’s already haram (forbidden) such as an unconditional body contact with a non-maharam woman by another man halal (legit). That is my understanding, firm belief and sturdy stand. Buhari’s action is, however, purely personal between him and his Creator, Allah. I am very sure that Buhari, being a Hausa-Fulani and Muslim, knows that. He would, if he at all allows it, definitely frown at anybody shaking the hands of his wife, his daughter or his female wards. He did not grow up seeing the same being done in their house nor in his immediate environment. And yes, we...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 Wait, the pidgin I know? That’s for the uneducated folks only. Did you just say that? Then you are wrong. The importance of this debased language is far beyond what you think. This is not a new discovery. It’s a fact. That’s why many people campaigned for the pidgin (or, better, the c reole ) spoken in their countries to be formalised, standardised and even officialised. But that was  barely   achieved in a few nations like Papua New Guinea , the Philippines and Sierra Leon . Although India is far more diverse than Nigeria, many Indians are often amazed that we speak English among ourselves, and not ‘Nigerian’. They think there is a popular language used in the country by that name the same way Hindi is in India. We only have Nigerian Pidgin English (NPE) spoken by a healthy minority, I would say, and scores of other languages. A detour: India’s other names are Hindustan (the root word of Hindi, a popular language, and Hinduism,...

Muhammad Muhsin Ibrahim @muhsin234 The elections were over. The winners (and losers, too) are known, and Nigerians await their inaugurations on May 29 th . However, the repercussion of the elections is far from over. Igbos, whose undaunted, though paranoiac, doubt of Hausa-Fulani leadership forbade them to vote for Gen. Buhari, are still being brazenly abused, esp. on cyberspace. And they respond in crudest kind by calling their attackers with unprintable names. This is but one case out of many that are raping Nigeria along ethnic lines. It’s sadder that the indigene-settler dichotomy is still existent even within our constitution; mobility freedom of citizens seldom crippled by arrests of northerners in the south; and the so-called quarter system truncating chances of getting job. I don’t forget the far more horrible, countless ethno-religious crises in many cities and villages like Jos, Zankuwa, etc that claimed lives of thousands. It tears me up inside. I am often left ...