A person you should know

[Talo alle udaa]

Asalamu Caleykum

I have made this thread to briefly gather and post stories that have been written about the lives of great people who through their effort brought about a change in their society. The main purpose of course would be to get to know about them, but also to serve as a reminder of what we are all capable of as individuals. Any input is welcome, I sincerely hope members would give due diligence to my request to avoid bringing into the topic sectarian or tribal talk. In short time that I have been here, I have to come to know this place as a venue for many people to crack jokes, ridicule others, all in the name of entertainment. Although I am not necessarily against such form of entertainment, let’s keep the tone of our post at a professional level, free of insults and derogatory comments.


To start soon, inshallah



"Oh send on my behalf to my tribe a letter,
To which men or honest women may pay attention,
To their scholar, or seeker after knowledge, desiring
To make manifest the religion of God, giving good advice therein.
I say to him: Rise up, and call to religion with a call
Which the common people shall answer, or the great lords;
And do not fear, in making manifest the religion of Muhammad
The words of one who hates, whom fools imitate.
And do not fear to be accused of lying; nor the disavowal of the apostate;
Nor the mockery of the ignorant man gone astray
While the truth is as the morning;
Nor the backbiting of a slanderer; nor the rancour of one who bears a grudge,
Who is helped by one who relies upon (evil) customs.
None can destroy what the hands of God has built.
None can overthrow the order of God if it comes."

Shaykh Abdullahi, the younger Brother of Usman Dan Fodio

[Talo alle udaa]

The following

"A Paper to be read at a Symposium in Honour of Shaykh
Usman Dan Fodio at International University of Africa,
Khartoum, Sudan, from 19-21 November 1995"

borrowed from

Usman Bogage Homepage

http://www.webstar.co.uk/~ubugaje/beyond.html

Part 1 (edited by me into smaller chunks)

Shaykh Abdullahi, the younger Brother of Usman Dan Fodio, and the conscience of the Sokoto Jihad, may not have meant it, but the verses he composed above, succinctly summarise their endeavour from start to finish. It all started with a group of young scholars who were rightly worried about the level of ignorance as well as injustices in their society. Their immediate objective was to disseminate the knowledge of the religion clearly and widely. They were motivated by the consciousness of their responsibility and sustained by their strong belief that God was on their side. They faced an array of obstacles, starting from their peers who thought that they were crazy to contemplate a change in the rotten society they were born into, then their contemporary scholars who were eager to find faults in what they did and called them all sorts of names, and ultimately the rulers of Hausaland who realised that the success of this movement was going to be at the expense of their cherished thrones. These obstacles, formidable as some of them were, did not, however, dissuade them from their path. Those movements that were to follow, invariably took similar path. It was a well trodden path, the path of the prophets of old.

This Jihad in Hausaland was what pulled the Hausaland from out of the abyss of corruption, decadence and insecurity, into which the Hausa states had sunk. It gave these states the security and stability which had eluded it for the best part of two centuries and restored to Islam its position of honour and respect. The Jihad also triggered series of similar Jihad Movements in the 19th century Bilad al- Sudan and beyond. These Jihad Movements were to salvage the societies of the region from decay and collapse and radically transformed their polities putting them once again on the path of Islam. This paper is not about the Sokoto Jihad as such, for this has been adequately addressed by other papers of the conference, rather, the paper is about its impact beyond the Sokoto Caliphate. It may still be necessary, however, to begin with some broad outline of the Sokoto Jihad, highlighting those aspects especially significant to its impact beyond the immediate theatre of the Jihad.

It was the good fortune of Hausaland and ultimately of the people Bilad al-Sudan (the land of the Blacks) that Allah raised among their ranks a scholar who was not prepared to accept the decadent status-quo with the usual fatalism, as the will of God, but saw it as his primary responsibility to change it. To be sure, Shehu Usman did not, and could not have, set out early in his life to organise a jihad and to establish an Islamic state and society. In fact little did he realise that his modest effort will lead to any event beyond his little state of Gobir. Even when he ventured out of Gobir to the neighbouring states, partly to source scholars and pursue his higher learning and partly to expand his enlightenment of the wider society, he clearly did not envisage much coming out of his efforts. But from 1774, at the young age of twenty, Shaykh Usman spent about two decades as an itinerant scholar, constantly moving from one place to the other teaching, writing and gathering an increasing following as his fame spread well beyond Hausaland. By the time he settled down at Degel, in the Hausa state of Gobir, about 1793, he found himself at the head of an expanding network of scholars and students, many of whom never met him in person, covering such areas as Masina and Segu in the West and Borno and Chad in the East, sharing his ideas of reform and yearning for change. This then is the movement, the Jama’a, as Shehu called his following, which in course of some three decades slowly but perceptibly eroded the old and corrupt order in Hausaland and having fought and won the Jihad, reordered their society and polities along Islamic lines.

~~~to be continued

[Navy9]

Nice read, thanks.


I wonder if I can find his book online: "Bayan Wujub al-Hijra ala al-Ibad, a work of 63 short chapters that expounds on, not only the necessity of hijra and jihad, but the rules that govern them and how to set up and Islamic administration in the event of victory."

[Talo alle udaa]

~~~ Part Two

By the end of the first decade, while a young man of about thirty years of age, Shehu’s name had become household in Hausaland. He had emerged at the head of a group of young scholars, yearning for change and sharing some revolutionary ideas. This naturally attracted for the Shaykh, the envy and wrath of the more established scholars. Some of these scholars took him up on a number of issues, especially some of the shaykh’s liberal ideas about women education and role in society and Shehu’s departure from the hair-splitting issues of ilm al-kalam and the dry as dust fiqh to the more relevant issues of understanding the basics of Islam and the elimination of Bid’ah (superstitions), corruption and injustices rampant in the society. The attack on the Shaykh was sometimes done in letters, poems and often in the form of insinuations. In most cases the Shaykh responded by writing, composing a poem or writing whole works. In this process alone the Shaykh wrote more than fifty works, as reported by his son and helper Muhammad Bello.

By the half of the second decade, Shehu Usman had emerged victorious in this intellectual debate that raged for nearly a decade. The intellectual leadership of Hausaland was gradually, if grudgingly, conceded to him. This leadership was in a way formalised in 1789 when Bawa Jan Gwarzo, the powerful king of Gobir, invited all scholars at the celebration of Eid al-Kabir, and showered them with gifts. Shehu was reported to have been given the lions share, in clear recognition of his leadership position. Not surprisingly, however, Shehu declined to accept the wealth showered on him and instead requested the king to grant him five wishes: the reduction of taxes, release of prisoners, freedom to preach, suspension of harassment by state officials especially in respect of women who wear proper Islamic outfit and same in respect of men who adore the turban as a mark of the new consciousness. By this singular act, unprecedented in his time, Shehu Usman earned himself a higher station yet. For the rejection of the gift earned him respect of the king, independence from the establishment and more profoundly endeared him not only to his followers but the ordinary people at large whose interest he identified with and stuck out his neck to protect.

By 1793, when Shehu saw the need to and eventually settled down at Degel, he saw how this small village swelled with scholars and students from all over the Bilad al-Sudan, and transform into a university town. By this time and in the course of nearly two decades of itinerant life, Shehu found it necessary to write a number of books delineating the basics of Islam, such as Kitab Usul al-Din, Kitab Ulum al-Muamalat, Ihya’ al-Sunnah, etc. Many of these books spread far and wide and became the standard texts of study in the growing number of schools and the expanding circles of students all over Hausaland and beyond. Thus while in Degel, Shehu had cause to concentrate on higher studies and found time specifically to attend to and groom women scholars. It was also here in Degel that he found the time to focus on the spiritual training of both his person and the community, often taking time off to go into khalwa. It was significant that Shehu found time for spiritual training only after he thought he had taken care of the basic and more fundamental aspects of Islam. And that even when he started he made sure he did not overemphasise it nor did he regiment the whole community to the Qadiriyya order, which he chose. In Degel Shehu found himself at the head of a large and ever expanding movement of scholars and students which required co-ordination.

If Shehu was oblivious of the potentials of his growing Jama’a, the Hausa rulers were certainly not. For Shehu, the growth of the Jama’a may only mean an end to the ignorance that propelled him into action in the first place and a hope for a more enlightened and therefore peaceful Muslim community. But for the Hausa rulers, every growth of the Jama’a represent a shrink of their power base and more seriously it represents a threat to the tyrannical and corrupt status-quo, where the rulers did as they pleased. Not surprisingly, the first salvo was therefore fired by the increasingly insecure ruling class whose constituency was shrinking and coming to extinction. This was precisely what started the jihad, a clash which was ultimately inevitable.

~~~ to be continued

[Talo alle udaa]

----

As early as 1797 or so, following the rise to power of a new king in Gobir, Napata, in 1796, the Jama’a started to face organised state persecution, in the form of physical attack, arrests and imprisonment. Having sensed danger, Shehu started to prepare the community for a confrontation that turned out to be inevitable. He composed a poem which was auspiciously in praise of Shaykh Abdulqadir al-Jaylani, in which he urged the community to acquire arms as it was Sunnah to do so. The tension continued to heighten and Yunfa who took over from Napata as the king of Gobir in 1803 only made matters worse. This prompted the Shehu to compose another work aptly titled Masa’il al-Muhimma in which he argued the necessity for hijra and the need to rise against a tyrannical ruler, but only when the community has the strength to do so. The mood of the community had changed and the Jama’a grew restive. Following a few skirmishes and a threat for an all-out attack on the community from Yunfa, Shehu called for a hijra to Gudu, a place on the boarders of Gobir. He wrote and circulated in the same year yet another document, this time titled, Wathiqat Ahl al-Sudan wa man Sha’ Allah min al-Ikhwan, arguing for the necessity for jihad and urging the Jama’a to come out for hijra and jihad.

The hijra itself started in February of 1804, and before the Jama’a could finish assembling at Gudu, they came under attack, first by Yunfa and consequently by other kings of other Hausa states, and the jihad began. Until April of 1806 when the Jama’a captured Kebbi, they had no base and had to be constantly on the move, carrying their families as well as their libraries, often pursued by their enemies. Yet in the thick of this no doubt tormenting confusion and daunting obstacles, Shehu and his brother Abdullahi still found time to write. In fact, it was in November 1806, at Kebbi, Shehu Completed one of the most voluminous of his works, the Bayan Wujub al-Hijra ala al-Ibad, a work of 63 short chapters that expounds on, not only the necessity of hijra and jihad, but the rules that govern them and how to set up and Islamic administration in the event of victory. Many battles were fought and by 1810, the jihad was in the main over. The Jama’a emerged victorious and found themselves at the head of an extensive area made up of several Hausa states and soon set about the task of reordering this vast polity, the Sokoto Caliphate.

-----

[Talo alle udaa]

The following are a salvo of communiques that were traded between scholars defending the Hausa kings and Gobir, and students and scholars allied with Shaykh Usman Dan Fodio. Pay attention to the arguments made by both sides, who is accusing who, and what they are being accused off. Kufr? Shirk? Jihad? and this is being done by a Shaykh from the Qadariyya order which was confirmed in the earlier posts of this story.



(In these remarksr, the words pagan =mushrik=kaafir)

The writer continues
----
The details of the rise of this unassuming movement to power and the way it went about restructuring the society and running an Islamic state can be seen in a number of published works. The concern of this paper is essentially the impact of this movement outside its immediate constituency, Hausaland. Naturally, this impact was first on the immediate neighbours, Borno to the East, Adar to the North, and Yorubaland to the South. Later this impact spread into Masina, Senegambia and the Nile Valley. Rather inadvertently, some of the ideas of the jihad found their way to the slave plantations of the West Indies, where they caused more than a stir, thus echoing the jihad. There could have been more, considering the network of scholars and scholarship in the Muslim world and beyond, but this has to be left to further research. In this paper we shall limit ourselves to five such areas: Borno, Masina, Senegambia, Nile Valley and the West Indies or the Caribbean Islands as they are better known today.

BORNO

Borno, a Caliphate with much deeper roots and richer Islamic history, was neighbouring Hausaland in the east. But 18th/19th century Borno, very much like the contemporary Hausaland, was immersed in decadence. A lot of the Shehu’s criticisms of Hausaland applied equally to Borno, and Shehu drew a lot of following from among Borno citizens. So when the jihad began in Hausaland, many of Shehu’s students sought and obtained permission to begin jihad in Borno and went ahead to do so. This provoked a very hot debate between the Muslim leadership in Borno, who saw no justification for the jihad in their territory and the Sokoto jihad leaders who argued and pressed their claim that for as long as Borno harbours the same aberrations which provoked the jihad in Hausaland, Borno will have to suffer same.

The then Mai, ruler of Borno, commissioned an erudite Borno scholar, Shaykh Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi to address the challenge. That the Mai was not able to do it himself suggests that the rulers of Borno had fallen to the level of the rulers in Hausaland. Shaykh Al-Kanemi engaged the Sokoto jihad leaders first through correspondence and later on the battle field. In one of these correspondence, al-Kanemi challenged the Sokoto jihad leaders:

"Tell us therefore why you are fighting us and enslaving our free people. If you say that you have done this to us because of our paganism, then I say that we are innocent of paganism, and it is far from our compound. If praying and the giving of alms, knowledge of God, fasting in Ramadan and the building of mosques is paganism, what is Islam? These buildings in which you have performed the Friday prayer, are they churches or synagogues or fire temples? If they were other than Muslim places of worship, then why did you pray in them when you captured them? Is it not a contradiction?

Among the biggest of your arguments of the paganism of the believers generally is the practice of the Amirs of riding to certain places for the purpose of making alms-giving sacrifices there; the uncovering of the heads of free women; the taking of bribes; embezzlements of the properties of the orphans; injustice in the courts. But these five charges do not require you to do the things you are doing. As for this practice of the Amirs, it is a disgraceful heresy and certainly blameworthy. It must be forbidden and disapproval of its perpetrators must be shown. But those who are guilty of it do not thereby become pagans; since no one of them claims it is particularly efficacious, or intends by it to associate anything with God. ...
The taking of bribes, embezzlement of the property of the orphans and injustice in the courts are all major sins which God has forbidden. But sin does not make one a pagan when he has confessed his faith. ...

Acts of immorality and disobedience without number have long been committed in all countries. Egypt is like Bornu, or even worse. So also is Syria and all the cities of Islam. There has been corruption, embezzlement of the property of orphans, oppression and heresy in these places form the time of Bani Umayya right down to our own day. No age and no country is free from its share of its heresy and sin. If, thereby, they all become pagan, then surely their books are useless."

Having argued his case, al-Kanemi concluded his letter with a rather sarcastic praise of Shaykh Usman:

"Indeed we thought well of him. But now, as the saying goes, we love the Shaykh and the truth when they agree. But if they disagree it is the truth which comes first."

Muhammad Bello replying on behalf of the jama`a, wrote, inter alia:

"It is indeed seemly for me not to reply, but I am constrained to do so through solicitude for the ignorance of the talaba, so that they may not follow you... This is so that you will learn in the first place that what made it proper for us to permit our people neighbouring on you to fight Bornu was the continual receipt of news from those who mixed with the people of Bornu and knew their condition, to the following effect. It was that they make sacrifices to rocks and trees, and regard the river as the Copts did the Nile in the days of the jahiliya. It was also that they have shrines with their idols in them and with priests. We have seen the proof of this in your first letter where you say: ‘Among the biggest of your arguments for the paganism... the Amirs riding to certain places... Then you explained that they do not wish by this to associate anything with God... But it is not hidden to meanest intelligence that this claim warrants no consideration. the verdict depends on what is seen. ...
For what caused the Amir of Bornu (according to what has reached us) to inflict harm on the believers among the Shaykh's people near to you until they were obliged to flee? What caused him to begin to fight them, unless he were in alliance with the Hausa Kings to assist them? It is manifest that he would not have risen to assist the Hausa kings had he not approved of their religion. And certainly the approval of paganism is paganism itself. To fight them is permitted, since the jihad against paganism is incumbent on all who are able. ...

The statements in your premises and the contentions you have used to elucidate them amount only to refutable arguments. How can it be said that it is not legal, for him who is able, to reform immorality or put an end to corruption? It is not right for an able man to point to learned men who in the past have not bothered to change it or speak of it. By my faith, that is of no avail. ... "

After these kinds of exchanges and a few running battles, a truce was struck, but not before some parts of Borno were annexed to Sokoto Caliphate. More fundamentally, this jihad in Sokoto shook Borno establishment to its very roots. Shaykh al-Kanemi who began to defend Borno on behalf of the Mai ended up as the de facto ruler of Borno and after him his progeny continued to rule Borno to this day. This change of leadership, occasioned by the jihad of Shaykh Usman, was to bring very fundamental changes in its trail and Borno was never the same again.
----
To be continued.

[grandpakhalif]

Nice read. Can the same logic be applied to the modern day muslim states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia? They are assisting the kaafirs so therefore is it incumbent on muslims to declare jihad on them? Interesting indeed.

[grandpakhalif]

bump

[Talo alle udaa]

MASINA

Masina, in contemporary Mali, was located to the west of Hausaland and like many polities in the region, had its fair share of Shehu’s students as well as the decadence in Hausaland. Ahmad Labbo, one of these students of Shehu Usman, took up the challenge. Ahmad appear to have been profoundly influenced by the Shehu, even as they never met physically. For Ahmad’s major and perhaps only work, titled, al-Idtirar ila Allah fi Ikhmad ba’ad ma Tuqad min al-Bid’a wa Ihya’ ba’ad ma andarasa min al-Sunnah, was in both content and style similar to Shaykh Usman’s Bayan Bid’i Shaytaniyya. Ahmad was clearly impressed with Shaykh Usman’s arguments and liked quoting him at every opportunity. Ahmad had all along been in correspondence with the leadership of the movement in Sokoto, especially Shaykh Abdullahi b. Fodio, Shehu Usman’s younger brother. But between 1815 to 1816 this contact intensified as Ahmad Labbo sought and received legal as well as moral support from the leadership of the Jama’a in his struggle against the ulama’ and the ruling class in Masina.


Barely two years after writing al-Idtirar, in which he sought to establish a strong case against the ulama’ in Masina, Shaykh Ahmad run into conflict with the local rulers, the Ardoen, who under the instigation of the local ulama’, called in the neighbouring, more powerful, but, pagan Bambara rulers to deal with him. Having obtained Shehu Usman’s permission in 1817, Seku Ahmadu, as Ahmad Labbo came to be known, started his jihad. By the following year, Seku Ahmadu had overthrown the yoke of the Bambara state of Segu and their surrogates and went ahead to establish an Islamic state made up of five emirates administered centrally by a council of forty, from the capital, Hamdullahi. The influence of Shaykh Usman was naturally not restricted to Seku Ahmadu alone, for in the routine administration of the state, it was reported that Seku Ahamdu had difficulty in carrying his council with him until he could quote from the Ihya’ al-Sunnah of Shaykh Usman.


In fact Seku Ahmadu was considered so much part of Shaykh Usman’s enterprise that when Muhammad Bello took over the Caliphate following the demise of the Shaykh in 1817, Bello demanded bay’a from Seku Ahamdu. The Seku, however, drew Bello’s attention to Shaykh Abdullahi Fodio’s fatwah in Diya’ al-Hukkam, which justifies the existence of two imams in a territory which is so large as to render it ungovernable. Thus though Shehu never set his foot in Masina, yet his bidding was done, and Masina, very much like Shehu’s Hausaland turned a new Islamic leaf.

[Talo alle udaa]

Nice read. Can the same logic be applied to the modern day muslim states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia? They are assisting the kaafirs so therefore is it incumbent on muslims to declare jihad on them? Interesting indeed.

The solution to the problems facing the muslims today is not only a matter of "declaring" civil strife or insurrection against their leaders. Today things are not as clear cut as they have been in the past. Most scholars of today have burrowed their heads in the sand, and decided to go with the flow In an effort to please everyone including the inept feel good muslims that fill the mosques on fridays but do not show up for any other salaat, the corrupt rulers kept in power by the former European colonizers, the hypocrites who are only muslims by name etc.

[Warsan_Star_Muslimah]

JazakAllah khair!

[Talo alle udaa]

GP,

Concerning your question about rebelling against Islamic government, I have found this concerning the state of Rulers in the Islamic world, specifically the Arab world





and this



And Sh. Albaani on the Saudi govt during Operation Dessert Storm

[Basra-]

Tallo aka grandpa aka Coeus---would ever quit from reforming society and humanity? U cant change what has been ordained.

[samadoon-waaxid]

Nice read, thanks.


I wonder if I can find his book online: "Bayan Wujub al-Hijra ala al-Ibad, a work of 63 short chapters that expounds on, not only the necessity of hijra and jihad, but the rules that govern them and how to set up and Islamic administration in the event of victory."

that book is currently out of print,a makhtutah sitting in a rusty library shelf in the niger.let me know if you find it though

تحتوي على العديد من المخطوطات والوثائق والبلاغة و مناقب رجال الدين والسياسة وغيرها. ومن مقتنياته :-

- بيان وجوب الهجرة على العباد للشيخ عثمان بن محمد بن فودي

- تزين الورقات لعبد الله فودي

- موصوفة السودان لعبد القادر بن المصطفى

- عمدة العلماء للشيخ عثمان بن محمد فودي الخ ..