It’s so pathetically funny that some supposedly educated and enlightened minds find it difficult to understand that, there is a difference between religion and language.Some Nigerian “educated elites” do not know – or fraudulently and mischievously choose not to know – that there exists a difference between the Islamic Religious Knowledge (IRK) and the Arabic language!
The phrase; College of Arabic and Islamic Studies, clearly shows that the two are not the same, as it is an attempt at combining two distinct fields of knowledge. You learn Arabic while studying. It’s like saying that; learning Yoruba language or Igbo language amounts to becoming an Ifa priest or Dibia.
The time has come to note that learning Arabic as a language is not the same as Islamic evangelism, just as learning Yoruba does not translate to “Ifangelism”, and learning Igbo is not the same as “Dibializing”. Again, it is ludicrous for anybody to say learning English is the same as Christianising Nigeria simply because the Bible is written in English.
Such unfounded worry, borne out of sheer ignorance, is the reason Boko Haram (Western Education is evil) happens to Nigeria. The sect leader, Abubakar Shekau and his group of social malcontents erroneously believe that embedded in Western education is, all the social ills that are peculiar to the western societies, spreading like harmattan fire across every society that has made contact with the West through their education.
So, if you are one of those heating up the polity through half-baked education, spreading the falsehood that the introduction of Arabic language as one of the two foreign languages from which a student must choose (the other being French), is an attempt to “Islamise” Nigeria, just know that Shekau cannot claim any seniority over you, in the business of ignorance-induced violent insurgency. You are breeding another version of Boko Haram, and you are most likely, going to be the “Shekau”.
In case you do not know, there are Christians whose mother tongue is Arabic, just as there are copies of the Bible written in Arabic language; or do you think Syrian, Iraqi, Lebanese and Jordanian Christians speak Latin in church? Come on…, you can do better than that! Habba!
It is on this note that I implore everybody that lays a claim to being educated and enlightened, to endeavour to set a limit to this democratisation of ignorance and stupidity on Facebook, Twitter and the likes.
Adebayo Abubakar, aka Marx Bayour writes.
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