aper presented at the Symposium on Mutual Perceptions Between Africans and Arabs in School Curricula held at Arewa House, Ahmadu Bello University, Kaduna, from 21- 23 May 2007, and sponsored by Institute Culturel Afro-Arabe (Afro-Arab Cultural Institute), Bamako, Mali.
Arab Images in African School Curricula – A Study of the History of Learning and Contemporary Schooling Systems in Northern Nigeria
Prof. Abdalla Uba Adamu
Department of Mass Communications
Bayero University, Kano – Nigeria
(Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria)
auadamu@yahoo.com
Abstract
Discussing Afro-Arab
“mutual perceptions” in the school curricula is essentially an historiographic
excavation of the nature of the Afro-Arab relationship over the last millennia. The nature of this relationship must
therefore divided into segments that correspond the to the establishment of the nation-states south
of the Sahara as they came under imperial colonial control. Indeed such control, which disrupted hundreds
of years of mutuality and racial formation, created a new wedge that
seeks to reinforce, rather an consolidate, racial and religious divides between Africans and Arabs in the school
curricula. Prior to the colonial interregnum,
the flow of scholarship was smooth and based on high mutual respect. After colonialism, school textbooks on History, Social Studies and Islamic Studies
started to reflect
a more “Africanist”
perception of history of the influence of Arabs on African populations. This paper looks at the two broad strands of
historical scholarship – pre-colonial and post-colonial as it affects
the development of scholarship and mutuality between
Arabs and northern
Nigeria, with particular reference to Kano Hausa societies.
Introduction
This conference has set itself a very
laudable and significant focus of Afro-Arab mutuality
in school curricula. At the same time, it becomes challenging to determine the extent of the perceptions of Arabs
in Nigerian curricular materials. The main reason
is the long history of mutuality between Arab North Africa and the old political and commercial empires of
northern Nigeria, particularly Kanem, Katsina
and Kano. Centuries
of mutuality and interactivity has created a singular mindset
that sees little difference
between Arab and Hausa particularly in areas of food and clothing (Adamu 1968, 2003), language
(Abubakar 1972) and religion (Smith 1997).(I
will restrict myself to Hausa mutuality in this presentation). Historically, therefore, the northern Nigerian Hausa
Muslims had always seen the Arab world, particularly north Africa, as a source of spiritual
and intellectual inspiration. As noted by O’Brien (1999:12):
Saudi
Arabia has become a potent source of cultural influence and the center of
political and economic power
to which many Hausa look for a model of development.
The picture is not always
rosy, however, for as Dunstan M. Wai (1983:187) also noted,
The twelve centuries of
contacts between sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab Middle East have been asymmetrical. Arabs have penetrated
Africa, enslaved some of its inhabitants, and
imported their religion
(Islam) and language
(Arabic). They have felt superior
as the conveyors of a ‘civilised ‘culture, and have generally tended to be condescending
towards those regarded as ‘inferior’.
In their turn, many Africans today still view Arabs as cunning, crafty, dishonest, and untrustworthy, not
least because their racial and cultural arrogance continues to revive
‘memories’ of the rampages of slave traders
in their region.
Despite these mutual hostilities that
lie underneath the surface, the relationships
between Arabs and northern Nigeria were not based on slavery but
scholarship and trade in commodities.
In the eighth century of the Christian Era, two currents of Kharijism flourished, namely, Ibadism (which survives today in the Maghrib: at Mzab in Algeria, at Djerba in Tunisia and at Djebel
Nafusa in Libya,
as well as in Oman and in Zanzibar), and Sufrism. These
currents, which had remained highly democratic
since their establishment in Arabia, came into contact
with, and subsequently merged with, the
tradition of clan-based democracy of the Imazighen (as the Berbers call themselves) of North Africa.1
Thus,
by the eighth century of the Christian
era, the scientific and technical achievements of Greece and Persia had been
reformulated and developed by this current of Islam established in the Maghrib,
as well as in Oman at the same time.
But whereas access to knowledge
in the highly hierarchical society
of ancient Persia,
and even in the limited
democracy of Greece,
was reserved for an elite, the Ibadites
made knowledge available to
all, with a concern to provide widespread education that would not occur again in human history until after
the French Revolution. A transition may thus be said to have occurred from
an initiatory conception of knowledge to a universalist
conception. Indeed, the Ibadites would soon abandon the offensive Holy War as a means of disseminating their doctrine, opting instead for education as a way of spreading knowledge.2
By the end of the eighth century,
the doctrine was crossing the Sahara and would lead to the development in Black Africa
of the only version of Islam that would be known there
for centuries and that would accompany the expansion of the Soninke,
and later the Malinke, diasporas, which Arabic speakers refer
to as Wangara and which is today
known as Dyula. Dyula Islam, codified in the fifteenth century by
al-Hajj Salim Suware, may be regarded
in its main lines as a legacy of Ibadism and indeed, one of the main Islamizing Wangara-Dyula groups, the Saghanogha, was Ibadite in the mid-
fourteenth century, according to Ibn Battuta.3 The emergence
of this universalist, rationalist current
of Islam south of the Sahara was so close in time to its establishment
in North Africa that we cannot but conclude that the starting-point of the road of universalist rationality is the North Africa-Muslim West Africa nexus,
and that this movement began in the eighth century
of the Christian era.4
Afro-Arab Influences in Northern Nigerian
Islam in Medieval
Era
Thus the Islamic reforms of Mansa Musa in Mali (1312-1337, most memorable for his Hajj in 1326) created a large pool of
Muslim Mandingo (Wangarawa) missionaries who
became labeled the Dyula. Merchants to the core, these Muslim missionaries traveled
from place to place spreading Islam. They arrived
Kano in about 1380 during
the reign of Yaji (A.D. 1349-1385) who readily accepted Islam from them
and ordered it to be the State
religion. Kano became officially an Islamic State since that year.
This marked the beginning of Islamic ascendancy in Kano, and the diminishing of pagan religious practices. The community of Hausa who
refused to accept Islam and
maintained their religious identity subsequently became Maguzawa (those who ran away). Subsequent rulers in Kano
strengthened the Islamic stand and this made
Kano more attractive to other Muslim
immigrants. According to the Kano Chronicle, the main source
of the history of Kano,
In
Yakubu’s (1452-1463), the Fulani came to Hausa land from Mele ( Mali) bringing
with them books on divinity and
etymology. Formerly our doctors had, in addition to the Koran, only the books of the Law and the Traditions.
The Fulani passed by and went to Bornu, leaving
few men in Hausa land…At this time too the Asbenawa came to Gobir and salt became common in Hausaland. In the
following year merchants from Gwanja began coming to Katsina; Beriberi came in large numbers and a colony of Arabs
arrived. Some of the Arabs settled in
Kano and some in Katsina. There was no war in Hausaland in Yakubu’s time. He sent ten horses to the Sarkin Nupe in
order to buy ten eunuchs. The Sarkin Nupe gave him twelve eunuchs (Palmer 1908, p. 77).
It is significant that the arrival of
the Fulani to Kano coincided with the arrival of Arab merchants from north Africa within the same time period.
Both the two groups of migrants
brought with them new ideas of scholarship, statecraft and mercantile capitalism. Their foreign – and clearly
superior status in terms of wealth, knowledge
and skills – made them an elite class within a community that was
thirsty for knowledge and commerce.
Using their elite status, the two groups remained more or less
exclusive. As Smith
(1997:32-33) noted,
Like
Fulani, the local Arabs willingly accepted native women as wives or concubines
while reserving their daughters for
their kinsmen and fellow Arabs; but while Fulani exclusiveness helped to reinforce their specializations
as pastoralists or as a closed intelligentsia in which Islamic learning and ideals were preserved and transmitted
within lineages linked by kinship and
marriage, among the Arabs ethnic closure enabled them to preserve their
delicate and extensive commercial
arrangements as a corporate ethnic monopoly. However they may have disapproved the local practice of Islam,
as a protected group of alien merchants, these Arabs apparently withheld their comment and confined their public
interests to the market and the caravan
trade. Some adopted the local practice of slave farming in internally
autonomous settlements under resident slave
headmen. Occasionally, they served the chief or his treasurer, the Ma’aji, as scribes, creditors, commission agents or simply as translators and computers. As we
have seen, they were also probably responsible for compiling and maintaining
the local chronicle, whether with the
ruler’s support we do not know. Otherwise, they kept away from the court, and administered their community affairs
after their own customs, as their descendants still do.
By the time of Muhammad Rumfa
(1463-1499) Islamic scholarship was massively
boosted by more immigrant influx
of clerics and scholars. Most notable were another group of Wangarawa clerics from Mali
(Al-Hajj 1968, Lovejoy 1978), and the noted
Islamic scholar Al-Maghili from north Africa.
Kano therefore became
a second home
for many north African Arabs.
As Paul Staudinger reported in 1885 (during the reign of Muhammad Bello,
1882-1893):
Kano
is the capital of the richest and most flourishing province of present-day
Hausaland. A tremendous quantity of
treasures, that is according to the standards of the natives, lies stored within its walls…The reason for the
prosperity of this metropolis is to be found…in the fact that Kano is the trade emporium for the whole of Hausaland and
moreover the southern-most market of
the Arabs. Perhaps sixty to eighty North Africans are permanent residents, but during the dry season several hundreds of
them live here. It is also then that huge caravans from different Tuareg tribes arrive with one of the most
indispensable items of trade amongst all people —
salt…So here is a confluence — all the articles of trade from the English
and the French, from the Niger and the Benue,
together with all the European and local articles which the Arabs bring…A good many of the skilled Semitic traders own
permanent houses and live here married
to natives (from Moody 1967,
pp. 35-53).
The increasing influx of the Fulani clerics and herdsmen into the Kano basin, attracted
by Kano being a center
of scholarship as well as a fertile
land ensured that a
significantly large number of Fulani settled
in the territory. Thus gradually the Fulani and the Arabs
merely became blended
in the multi-ethnic mix of medieval Kano. And Kano did have that unique property: the
ability to swallow up individuals and submerge their individual identities while
providing them with a new one. The scholastic
tradition the Fulani brought with them complement the efforts of the Wangarawa clerics and their
descendents into further enriching the scholastic status of medieval Kano.
Afro-Arab Influence in Islamic Curricula
The end products of such scholastic flows were a structured educational system that is based
on North African models of scholarship. This was because as Islam expanded to other regions
and came into contact with other indigenous traditions and languages, it became necessary
to create a cadre of Muslim experts
who would develop
sophisticated writings and textbooks on Fiqh - Islamic jurisprudence, Sunna – Prophet’s traditions, Hadith – Prophet’s sayings, and Tafsir - the interpretation of the Qur’an, to cater to the needs of
non-Arab Muslim populations. Thus began the tradition of Madrassa, the center for higher learning
the initial purpose
of which was to preserve
religious conformity through
uniform teachings of Islam for all.
The first known Madrassa is said to
have been established in 1005 by the Fatimid
caliphs in Egypt. This Madrassa taught the minority Shi’ite version of
Islam. It had all the ingredients of an educational institution. It had a library, teachers
for different subjects were appointed and students who
were admitted were provided with ink, pens
and papers free of charge. An interesting fact about this Madrassa is that a catalogue of inventory of this Madrassa
prepared in 1045 revealed that it had 6500 volumes
on different subjects, including astronomy, architecture and philosophy (Anzar 2003).
When the Sunni Muslims conquered Egypt,
they revamped the Shi’ite version of Islam
in this Madrassa and replaced it with the Sunni version, destroyed the books and manuscripts that seemed contrary to
their version of Islam and preserved the volumes that related to the earthly
knowledge. A huge number of books were taken to Baghdad where a Seljuk Vizier called
Nizam-ul-Mulk Hassan Bin Al-Tusi, established the first organized
Madrassa in 1067 (Anzar 2003).
In the new Madrassa established by
Nizam-ul-Mulk two types of education were provided:
scholastic theology to produce spiritual leaders, and earthly knowledge to produce government servants who would be
appointed in various countries and the regions
of the Islamic empire. Later, Nizam-ul-Mulk established numerous Madrassas
all over the empire that in addition to providing Islamic knowledge
imparted secular education in the fields of sciences,
philosophy and public administration and governance.
Nizam-ul-Mulk is considered to be the father of the Islamic public education
system. He himself
is the author of a renowned book (among early
Muslims) on public administration called
Siyasat Nama (the way to govern)(Haqqani 2002).
Subsequent development of education in
northern Nigeria followed this pattern, and
the textbooks used were almost exclusively from North African scholars.
A detailed analysis of the curricula
provisions of the higher Islamic
education system shows this. There are three
broad “faculties” in the Ilimi
school, defined by the list of books each
“faculty” has as recommended reading.
Readings of these books are done in most cases concurrently.
The first cluster of books (at least
10) is based on Fiqh (Jurisprudence).
Some of the recommended books in
this “faculty” include a virtual encyclopedia of rules and regulations of Tauheed (oneness of Allah)
called Qawa’idi, of unknown
authorship but allegedly written by one of Yan Doto scholars based around Zamfara/Katsina axis before
the 1804 jihad of Dan Fodiyo, Al Akhdari (Sheikh Allama ‘Abdu’r-Rahman al- Akhdari), Qurdabi (Yahaya Al-Qurtubi), Ishmawi (AbdulBari Al-Ashmawiyyu Al- Rufaiyyu), Nathmu Muqadimaati ibn Rushd (Ibn Rushd), Iziyya (Abil Hasni Aliyu Malikiyyi
Al Shazaliy), Risala (Muhammad
‘Abdullah ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani), Askari, Mukhtasar Allamatul Khalil (Sheikh Dhiya’ul Deen Khaleel bn Ishaaq
Al Maliki). A sample of these books as sold in Kano markets is shown in Plate 1.
Plate 1: Jurisprudential Beginnings of Ilimi Schools, Northern
Nigeria
The next faculty is that of Hadith
studies. Books in this faculty (also at least 10) included Arba’un Hadith (forty
Hadith collection of Imam Al-Nawawi focusing on general guidance for pious living).
Books read in conjunction or earlier than Arba’un
Hadith include Majmu’ul
Baharain (Kamal Deen Adamu Na Ma’aji, about 1980s, Kano region). Others include Lubabul
Hadith (Abdul Rahman bn Kamal Al Suyuti),
Mukhtarul Ahadis (Hashimi), Bulugul Maram (Ibn Hajr al-Asqalani), Riyad As-
Salihin (Abi Zakariya Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi), Muwatta (Malik). The next stage is that of pure specialization in
which there are at three different routes and
Hadith scholars. These included Sahih
Buhari, Jami’us Sageer (Suyuti),
and Tajj. Plate 2 shows some of these recommended texts.
Bulugh Al-Maram of Al Haafidh
Ibn Hajr Al- ’Asqalani
Riyad As-Salihin of Abi Zakariya Yahya ibn
Sharaf al-Nawawi
Majmu’ul
Baharain of Kamal Deen Adamu Na Ma’aji
Plate 2: Delving
further into the Islamic curriculum
The third learning faculty is devoted
to Arabic grammar, lexicon, poetry and fiction. Grammar and Lexicology includes books such as Ajuruma (Hashim bn Muhammad Al Shaqawi), Matnil Qadri, Mulha, Ibn
Duraid, Lamiyya, Alfiyya (Muhammad bn Abdulbaqi bn Malik Al’andalusi) Hisnul Rasin of Abdullahi Fodio), poetic
works such as Hamziyya and Al-Burda
(Sharaf al-Din Muhammad al-Busiri), Ishriniyat (Abi
Bakarim Muhammad bn Malikiyyi bin Al Fazazi),) Badamasi, Tantarani (Anon), al- Maksura (Abu
Bakr Muhammad b. al-Husain Ibn Duraid) Daliya
(Abi Abdullahi Muhammad bn Nasiril Dar’i),
Shu’ara and a fiction
work, Muqamat Al-Hariri (Badi’ al-Zamdn al-Hamadhdni). Some of the textbooks
are shown in Plate 3.
Ajuruma (Hashim bn Muhammad Al Shaqawi)
Al-Burda (Sharaf al-Din Muhammad al-Busiri)
Al-Fiyya
(Muhammad bn
Abdulbaqi bn Malik Al’andalusi)
Plate 3: Linguistic and poetic elegance
in Makarantun ilimi textbooks
Tafsir is the final stage of the
scholastic learning. Tafsir al-Jalalyn of al-Mahalli (d.1459) and al-Suyuti (d.1505) was used.
The most distinguishing characteristic of this stage of learning is that it need not occur in the same place. A student can move
from school to another, attaching himself to a
scholar who specializes in one aspect or other of the broad curricular offerings of this
stage of life long learning.
Further, although the learning has a
specific structure, nevertheless it also uses the liberal “course unit” system in that a student can combine
studies of books from across the faculties, as shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Curricular Concurrency in Ilmi School
Madrasa Specializations |
|
|
Fiqh |
Hadith |
Grammar and Syntax |
Qawa’idi |
Arba’un Hadith (40) |
|
Ahlari |
Arba’un Hadith (40) |
|
Ishmawi |
Lubabul Hadith (400) |
|
Qurdabi |
Lubabul Hadith (400) |
Ajuruma/ Al-Burda |
Ibn Rushd and Ibn Ashir |
Mukhtarul
Ahadis (2000) |
Matnil Qadri/ Ishriniyat |
Iziyya |
Mukhtarul
Ahadis (2000) |
Mulha/ Badamasi/Tantarani, Daliya |
Risala |
Bulugul Maram |
Mulha/ |
Askari |
Riyadal Salihina/Muwatta |
Alfiyya/Shu’ara |
Mukhtasar, etc |
Buhari or Jami’us
Sageer or Tajj |
Hisnul Rasin/Muqamat |
This system of learning is the same
across the Muslim world, perhaps with slight
modifications as to the types of books studied. For instance, an account of the system
in Central Asia reveals that most of the children
who entered the maktab were able to at least read. There, in the maktab schools, in addition to reading and writing, children
were taught elementary arithmetic, history, and geography. These maktab schools were held mostly in mosques, though often private homes were
also used. Maktab schools could be considered to be much more secular and were
usually taught or rather supervised
by a well-established scholar who employed several assistants. Some maktab,
usually in large urban centers, even offered courses in grammar, poetry, physical education, manners,
and famous proverbs.
In some maktab more
than one thousand
students were enrolled
(Nakosteen 1963 p. 38).
Thus
the influence of Arabs on northern Nigerian
educational system is immeasurable.
At the same time, the curricular materials are religious and deal with the reinforcement of the Islamic religious
doctrine. As sociology texts, they merely provide a template for a universalized Muslim, rather
than Arab behavior, and consequently contain
only imageries of Arab societies
as imageries of Muslim societies. This was to change with the arrival
of Christian colonialism.
The Colonial Interregnum
The northern Nigerian
Emirates were subjugated by the British
Colonial administration in 1903 under Fredrick Lugard.
Without great resources
at his control, and facing
an often hostile population, Lugard began to build an administrative staff of Africans and Europeans. He devised
the system of indirect rule in order to take
advantage of the existing Caliphate
system of government and its legitimacy. However, he still faced the problem of choosing a language of administration, and of training clerks who could use that
language. Lugard’s decision to use Hausa as the language of his administration was to help spread Hausa even
more widely within Northern Nigeria
than it had previously been, but most importantly, to provide the colonial machinery with a communication
system with the natives. As noted by Nikolai Dobronravine (2002),
Arabic
remained the major written language of Islamic West Africa until the early 20th century. For political and other reasons,
the colonial government of Northern Nigeria tried to get rid of Arabic supplanting it with Hausa (boko). Hausa
written in Arabic script soon became
the major medium of communication between local Muslim rulers and the British officers who did not understand Arabic.
F.W.H. Migeod, a colonial officer interested in Arabic-script Hausa writings, described the situation
as follows: “As to correspondence in
these Mohammedan countries, if a native is writing to a European, and knows that the latter
is acquainted with the local language but not with Arabic, the local language
will in all probability be
used. Many of the letters addressed to political officers in Northern Nigeria
are of this nature. One Hausa chief
will not, however, correspond with another in his own language, but will invariably use Arabic.”
When Hanns Vischer took over as the
Director of Education and established the first western school, he ensure further that ajami was not to be
taught in any government school. His main arguments
against using ajami were articulated in his position
paper written in March 1910 where he stated, inter alia,
1.
I take it that there can be no doubt
at all that there is no idea of keeping
the native permanently in a state of tutelage and that the objectives of the
Government must be that outlined in B. Granted
this I have no hesitation at all in recommending that the Government should
confine its efforts entirely to
spreading the knowledge of writing in the Roman character for the following
reasons:
2. By
encouraging the study of the Arabic Alphabet the government would be actually
assisting in the propagation of the Mohammadan religion.
b) The Arabic
alphabet is suited to the Arabic language but is essentially unsuited to represent graphically the sounds of any
other language. An English or Hausa word can
nearly always be spelt in two or three different ways in Arabic
character and it is hard to say which
of these ways is right. (In point of fact when they write “Ajami” (i.e. Hausa
in Arabic character) the Mallamai
do frequently spell the same word in different ways in the same page.)
c) The Roman
alphabet can be acquired by a Mallam in about a month, and by a boy who does not know Arabic in about two months.
It takes the later more like two years to learn the Arabic character. (The rapidity with which small boys at
Sokoto have learned to read Hausa in Roman character has astonished me).
d)
It is very expensive to print the Arabic character
(especially if the vowel points have to be added as is necessary when Hausa is
written in Arabic character). The publishing of text books in Arabic
character would be difficult and expensive.
e)
Comparatively few Political officers have mastered the Arabic character
(the running hand).11
Thus with the coming of the British
colonial interregnum from 1903, the scriptural
ownership of the Muslim Hausa was eroded. Those who acquired education
through the Islamic education
medium became relegated to the background and in Nigeria’s development literature became labeled
“illiterate”. Those who acquired the new Roman-based literacy
gained ascendancy and became leaders
of thought and development.
Romanization became the new panacea for development, while the development needs of millions
of Muslim Hausa who became
educated daily through
the maktab and madrassa systems
were ignored.
The creation of a national directorate
for education by the colonial administration in 1910 in Kano and the subsequent merger of northern
and southern Nigerian
protectorates and the creation of the Nigerian state in 1914 provided a
secular curriculum to Nigerian
education, although based on Christian ethos and substrata.
Curriculum and Textbook Development in Nigeria
In August 1969 the Comparative Education Study and Adaptation Center (CESAC)
of the University of Lagos,
with funding from the Ford Foundation and the Nigerian Government, convened a National Curriculum Conference in Ibadan
that provided a road-map on the future
of Nigerian education. One of the more concrete
outcomes of the conference was the blueprint
of what eventually became the National Policy on
Education (NPE), which was presented to
the public in 1973. Subsequent editions of
the National Policy on Education
merely reinforce the original broad policy guidelines of the policy concerning the
structure of education in Nigeria which radically
departed from the inherited British
pattern to a more American
structure.
Prior to the NPE the curriculum, as it
were, in Nigerian schools was controlled by West
African Examinations Council (WAEC) – it was basically syllabus outlines of the topics that will be examined at the
end of secondary education. Textbook writers
faithfully adhere to these syllabus
topics, such that the best textbook in any subject
is the one that
comprehensively covered the WAEC syllabus for that subject. The NPE facilitated a more structured mechanism for creating
what can be called a curriculum
– rather than topic guidelines. To
facilitate the proper development of curricular guidelines, the CESAC soon merged into National
Educational Research and Development
Council (NERDC) in 1988 with the mandate, amongst others, of overseeing the issues of curriculum development in the country.
The first curricular outlines
were issued in 1983 for primary and junior secondary schools, while those for senior
secondary schools were issued in 1988.
Textbook writers sustained the earlier strategies of studying the curricular guidelines and producing textbooks that are reflect the topics in the
guides. Surprisingly, and contrary
to curriculum development practices all over the world, the developers of the guidelines did not develop corresponding
curricular materials in the form of teacher guides,
student workbooks and other reference materials. The curriculum guidelines do contain sections
that guide the teacher on the statement of each topic,
its treatment and its evaluation; but this departed
from the usual
curriculum development strategies all over the world. In any event, independent authors
emerged that took the process
of writing textual
materials to accompany
the curriculum. The entire process
is controlled by book publishers who often rely on high recognition factor
of the author to commission a textbook.
The textbooks in Nigerian education are
basically written by southern Nigerian and predominantly Christian
authors who approached the process from a secular
perspective. The securilarity of the Nigerian
curriculum is a carry-over of the institutional security of the nation
itself. Ironically, however, despite this avowed secularity, there is a sustained sheer animosity towards things Islamic, and Arabic was the first port of call for anti-Islamicist and anti-Arab forces
in Nigeria.
Bigotry and Textbook
Imageries – Arabs in Other Curricula
Representations of Arabs in the school
curricula is most common in countries with either direct
contact with Arabs (e.g. Israel)
or where the media creates
a direct focus
on Arabs and Arab affairs. There are three main sources of concern by
textbook developers of about Arabs
in societies outside
Arab culture.
First
was the snare of global education – where curriculum reformers try to incorporate
the current events concerning the mostly negative impact of Arabs on world affairs. Such focus is more an educational tool to provide
a basis for understanding
“them” to either deal with “them” or at least avoid “them”. Secondly this global view is accelerated by media in developed countries that perversely portray
turmoil and violence in Arab societies – providing all the more reason
to study “them”. Finally,
societies with fluid demographic structures
that absorb rapid
immigration pose a new challenges of constructing new identities for immigrants, and therefore
this calls for a review of school curricula to alter previously held images – especially as “they” are now trying to
become part of a multicultural “us”. This is
more so in countries with a large Muslim immigrant population, such as
the United Kingdom.
Despite this cultural accommodation,
societies that allude to liberal democracy and
secularism are not immune from bigotry and racism in textbook
production. For instance, Ruth Zinar
(1975:34), quoting the American textbook, How
Music Grew from Prehistoric Time to
the Present Day by Marion Bauer and Ethel Peyser (1939) shows how racism and bigotry become
embedded in curricular messages to children
in the United. States. For instance, in noting the relation between race
and music, Bauer and Peyser wrote
that
…All savage music has similar traits…The African show[s] us the steps from the primitive…to…music as an art…these
people are a bridge between
prehistoric music and
…the
civilized world. [p. 81]. This love of the beat is strong in the savage…These
savages [i.e. “Africans”] sang groups
of tones which we call chords…It is
curious that these primitive people should
have used methods
more like our own than many of the races that had reached a much
higher degree of civilization. [p. 181]. Like other savages, the African Negro
loved rhythm better than melody…They
had no stringed instruments [p 191]. It is only a little more than a hundred years ago since we stopped bringing these primitive
people into America. [p. 181].
Arabs did not fare much better either,
for according to the same authors,
…The Arabs,
on whom we look today
as almost barbarians…[p. 551. The Arab’s
fondness for strings is proof that they were
…sensitive and fine, while most of their neighbors liked the drums and brasses
much more, showing
a lower grade of civilization. [p. 601].
A recurrent theme was of course linking
Arabs and Islam (ignoring the millions of Arab Christians). In studying the interpretation of Islam in American schools,
Douglass and Dunn (2003:60) noted
that
Explanations
of Islam as the religion of the Arabs typically began by describing an arid,
harsh physical environment inhabited
by nomadic camel herders, traders and townspeople. The Arabian Peninsula is depicted as a remote, bounded locality, and
nomadic culture is made the root of
Islam…All of the books emphasize nomadism as a primary lifestyle of the Arabs, some older texts barely mentioning towns.
Text illustrations offer images of modem Bedouin survivals and camels projected backward fourteen hundred years.
The dry Arabian steppe is featured over arable
or rain watered terrain, and little
reference is made to interactions between Arabs and peoples of Syria Persia,
East Africa or India before Islam. Only three of the books mention Roman or Sassanid relations with Arabia or
with the cities of Petra and Palmyra.
Some books describe the symbiotic relationship between sedentary and nomadic Arab groups, and four mention, or
illustrate on maps, the long-distance trade routes that crossed Arabia.
Nowhere are Arab images portrayed more
than in Israel, not surprising considering the years of hostilities between not only Palestinians, but entire Arab Middle East, and Israel. The battlefront was not only in
the trenches, but also in the textbooks. For
instance, in studying the Arab image in Hebrew textbooks, Daniel Bar-Tal
(2001:7) noted that
until 1930, Arabs were rarely mentioned in the history
textbooks and, when the books referred to them, they were viewed
a part of the “natural
disasters” with which
the
immigrants had to cope in building their new life. Only
after 1930, as the violent conflict escalated,
did there appear detailed references to Arabs, describing them uniformly as “robbers, vandals, primitives and easily
incited” (p. 128). The Arabs were also portrayed as being ungrateful, since the Jews carne to contribute to the
development of the country, and the Arab leaders
nevertheless incited them against Jewish
settlement.
Given the limited gains made in
peace-making efforts in the Middle East, one would have expected the images of Arabs in Israel textbooks to
soften over the years. However, according
to Fouzi El-Asmar
(1986:82),
…a
study prepared by Dr. Adir Cohen and Dr. Miriam Roth, both of the University of
Haifa, indicated that the perception
of Arabs in the minds of youngsters had not changed. The study was based on a survey of 260 boys and
girls in fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. A report on the study, published in Ha’Aretz on 30
January 1985, revealed that in it the Arab emerged as a “kidnapper of children,
murderer, criminal, and terrorist. “
While school textbooks might be clouded by outdated anthropological
approaches and perceptions of their writers, thus reflecting some
form of bigotry, fiction tended to offer
a more alternative perspective. Again looking at Israel-Arab imageries, Gilead Morahg (1986:151) noted that in any analysis
of new Israeli fiction,
All
of these novels aspire tot his bilateral mode by creating a fictional context
that enables significant interactions
between equally realized Jewish and Arab characters. These new Arab characters are no longer static and
stereotypical points of moral reference for a central Jewish protagonist; rather they are sharply differentiated individuals whose development in the course
of the narrative is integral
to its thematic signification…p. 151.
Arabic in Nigerian
Civil Society
The first critical commentary on the
links between Arabic and Nigeria in Nigerian
civil society was made by Wilson Uwujaren, a journalist, who writing in The Tempo
magazine of 8th October 1998 argued that:
There
are (six) historical evidence that could help illuminate the state of the
Nigerian military today. It is
called the Nigerian Army but very few Nigerians know that the motto of the country’s
army, ‘Victory is from God alone’ is adaptation from the flag of Shehu
Uthman Dan Fodio,
the first Sultan of Sokoto.
Source: http://www.angelfire.com/az/4cain/discussion.html.
Uwujaren’s observations were picked up by Nigeria’s Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, in a blistering tirade against
Islam, Arabs and northern Nigerians
in a public lecture he gave on Friday 16th October, 1998 in Lagos
where he asked:
Insignificant? A purely accidental choice that carries
no symbolism, no overtones from history, and no indices of future intent? Or was this choice deliberate? Certainly the fact that the inscription is in Arabic is not an accident
of choice - English, to the best of my knowledge, is the official
language of the nation and must therefore be the official
language on so potent a symbol as the motto of a national army. We are speaking, after all, of the military,
a political constituency that has dominated the affairs of this nation
for nearly three
decades since independence. I am, indeed,
one of the Nigerians who did not know of the composition of this motto, but, as I started earlier, it was not for nothing that, amidst the welter of details of the lop-sided structure of a nation
that claims to be one, this was the one that struck me most forcibly. http://www.nigerianmuse.com/opessays/?u=Soyinka_redesigns_Nigeria_October_1998.htm
It is significant, of course, that such
deconstruction of the Arabic heritage of Nigeria came a few months after
the death of General Sani Abacha (in June 1998),
a Muslim military ruler from northern Nigeria.
His death opened the doors to demands for the
restructuring of the country through the “convocation of a National
Conference” of which Soyinka was a
leading advocate. It is instructive that Soyinka’s tirade blinded him to the exact quotation on the
Nigerian Army crest. This quotation, from Surat Saff (61), ayat 13, is reproduced below:
Saff (61) 13
13. Waokhra tuhibboonaha nasrun mina Allahi wafathun qarreebun
wabashshiri almu mineena
13. And another (favour will He bestow,)
which ye do love,- help from Allah and a speedy victory. So give the Glad Tidings
to the Believers.
In the Nigerian Army crest, this was
translated as “Victory is From God Alone” – surely
a fairly presentation of the spirit, if not the grammatical accuracy of the ayat.
And in the coveted English
language too. Yet this was not enough
for the secularists – who were willing to accept a
Christian-inspired language, over a Muslim-inspired one, despite the fact that more than 50% of the Nigerian
population is Muslim.
This is was, however, to be the
beginning of the conspiracy theory that sees the Arabization of Nigeria in is public institutions. Wole Soyinka,
in the same lecture, continued the
tirade against the “Arabic inscription” on the Nigerian currently, the Naira,
where he stated:
Is it incidental that the other language on our national
currency is Arabic? If any part of the nation
feels that our official language
must be Arabic, then let us debate
the issue at a National
Conference, rather than sneaking it onto the various currency
denominations of our nation. And, if all the national
conference, a part of the country feels that these monetary exchange
pledges that are part and parcel of our commercial existence must be articulated in Kiswahilli, Esperanto or Amharic, then let us debate the issue - but it is intolerable that one section with its cultural leaning,
should impose these designs on the rest. Such a conspiracy succeeds
only as long as it remains uncovered. Once exposed, the next question is - what do we do about it. And if we do nothing, what are the
consequences? http://www.nigerianmuse.com/opessays/?u=Soyinka_redesigns_Nigeria_October_1998.htm
The historical and literary
significance of the “Arabic inscription” on the Nigerian currency, merely the announcement of the denomination in Hausa
language using Arabic alphabet
familiar to more than 50% of Nigerians were again glossed over in the vitriol against anything Arabic. The
anti-Arabic inspiration on the currency vanguard
was taken up in 2000 by a lawyer, Mr. Hya’Osahon Ihenyen, was granted leave to “challenge the Federal Government
over the use of Arabic words on the country’s
currency” (Vanguard newspaper, 5th
October, 2000). According to the news report,
In
a 13 paragraph affidavit in support of the exparte application, Mr. Ihenyen
averred that “I know as a fact that the continued use of Arabic language on our currency
note is an unnecessary
discriminatory and an avoidable violation of my fundamental human rights as a free born of Nigeria, which has the
tendency of making me a second class citizen in my own very dear and beloved country
Nigeria.”
This became catalytic to continued
media campaign by Christian southern Nigerian
newspapers for the removal of what they consistently refer
to as “Arabic inscription” from the Nigerian
currency notes. Fairly
typical examples are:
…the
Arabic writing on our Naira notes in the denomination of N5, N10, N20, N50,
N100, N200 and N500 is inimical…It is
a humiliation, a gross disrespect to the sovereignty of this nation, when her official lingua franca
was not sufficient to render whatever message it intended on her currency notes, her most valued possession.
Augustine Osih, “This Country And Her Naira”, Vanguard, 6 September 2001
Those who find relevance in the use of Arabic
in their cultural
intercourses should
feel
free to continue with it. Those who wish to study it as one of their pet
foreign languages such as Chinese, French and what have you, are free to do so. But no further
attempt should be made
to impose it on all Nigerians as one of our national values. The truth is this:
it is not! Ochereome Nnanna,
“Naira without Arabic
symbols”, Vanguard (Lagos), 22 February 2007.
The Central Bank of Nigeria,
capitulating to these whims, and without broad-based consultation in a democratic setting, decided
to issue new currencies on 27th February
2007 that have the “Arabic
inscriptions” removed. This was in fact a reflection of the educational process in Nigerian
textbooks that correspondingly delegated over 500 years of scholarship, culture and learning
between Arabs and northern Nigeria,
when under a Federal national
policy on education, none of the centuries of mutuality were taken into consideration in any Nigerian
textbooks.
Nigerian Textbooks and Perception of Arabs
Educators have identified stereotypes
in textbooks and curricular materials that limit children’s dreams and visions. If new options and alternatives
are not provided, the limiting
stereotypes will become the only standards by which students will judge themselves and be judged by others. Daniel
Bar-Tal (1998) in his study of beliefs of conflicts
in Israeli textbooks quotes a myriad of studies that reflect the power of textbooks over impressionable minds. He
points to studies by Apple 1979, and Bourdieu,
1973 who argued that school textbooks have the power to create and sustain societal beliefs from one
generation to another. Consequently, textbooks
provide an official view of knowledge and culture of the learner, as
argued by Luke 1988. Further,
textbooks provide students with their first and firm conception of reality
– which is likely to carry them well into their adulthood, and orient the learners towards
a certain perspective, stereotypes and embedded
bigotry (Apple & Christian- Smith
1991; Meyer 1977; Paquette 1991; Rothstein, 1991).
What
makes further the connection to school is the perception of textbooks as factual, and the reliance of teachers on such textbooks
for their lesson
plans and examinations. Since textbooks are likely the sole most authoritative source
of information for many pupils and students, they have often
been the subject of critical analysis for the
dominant values they hold about a particular society (Anyon 1979;
DeCharms & Moeller 1962;
Ichilov 1993; McClelland 1961; Selden 1987, Wiberg & Bloom, 1970). For instance, according to Apple
and Christian-Smith (1991:4):
Texts
are really messages about the future. As part of a curriculum they participate
in no less than the organized
knowledge system of society. They participate in creating what a society has recognized as legitimate and truthful.
They help set the cannons of truthfulness and, as such, also help recreate a major reference point for what
knowledge, culture, belief, and morality really
are.
I will now look at the portrayal of
Arabs in selected Nigerian textbooks targeted at primary, secondary and college level students. The subjects are
those most likely to contain
sociological accounts of Arabs for Nigerian children, and these are Social Studies, History, Islamic Studies, Geography and
Literature. The methodology involved
analysing nine most commonly used textbooks in these subjects,
and studying them for any depiction of Arabs or Arab Muslim
societies. No specific
codes or categories of depiction were created for this because
of the restricted area of focus
– depiction of Arabs. The specific
topics where such depiction might occur are extremely
narrow – dealing basically
with historical, rather than contemporary issues. It is in
fact likely that if the textbooks were to be revised, some of these impressions would no longer be tenable – not because
the textbook authors had become more objective, but because the original scenario
created about Arabs in certain
contexts is no longer tenable.
As I pointed out earlier, the religious divide in Nigeria
created a perfect
atmosphere of hostility towards not only Islam but any symbolic
attachment to Islam in Nigeria;
and Arabs are the central
core of such attachment. Yet the Arab presence in Nigeria goes beyond acceptance of Islam (and not all
Arabs are Muslims, anyway). There are genuine
Arabs in Nigeria, some of whom migrated from North Africa and settled in northern Nigerian cities of Kano and Katsina since
1450 (Adamu 1968, 1998). Others,
such as Baqqarah who speak Shuwa dialect of Arabic (and therefore
referred to as Shuwa Arabs) are indigenous to Nigeria – no matter the
configuration accepted, and not transnational migrants (see for instance, Brann 1993, Holl and Levy 1993, Owens
2005).
While Muslim northern Nigeria reflected
not only Arab influences in its traditional learning
cycles of methodologies, school calendar, curricular structures and textbooks, the rest
of Nigeria trod a more secular, and often antagonistic path. The historical reasons
are easy to locate, as indicated in this excerpt
from Nigeria Since Independence – The First 25 Years Vol IX:
Religion History textbook aimed at College students:
The
type of education received also influenced the religious orientation and world
view of the Nigerian leadership.
While leaders like Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, had close allies and friends in the Arab world,
others like Chief Obafemi Awolowo got attracted by the development experience and strategies of Israel. This divergence
in the orientations of the leadership
was bound to affect the foreign policy, the economic system and the general political
ideology of the country (Balogun
1989:57).
What also emerged was a sustained
hostility against Arabs, Islam and northern Nigeria
in the Nigerian critical civil society. It also found its way into textbooks. A fairly
typical distortion of historical truth by Nigerian
Christian textbook authors
was the allusion to the
“foreign invader theory”, which in some textbook accounts made Hausa Muslims foreigners to Nigeria! An example is given by Oladele et al (1977:34) who re-wrote Hausa history in Nigerian Social Studies by declaring that:
The
Kano Chronicle records that the people of Hausaland came originally from
Baghdad. According to this tradition,
one Bayajidda, Abuyazid fled from Baghdad to Kanem-Bornu after he quarreled with his father. He also came to Daura where
he was said to have met the Queen of Daura whom he helped by killing
a snake which had become a menace to the people by preventing them from getting regular
supply of water. The end result of the association as the marriage between
both resulting in the birth of
a son called Gawo. Later, Bawo had seven
children,
who became the founders of the original Hausa States called Hausa Bakwai. These were Kano, Daura,
Gobir, Zaria, Katsina,
Rano and Biram.
The “Chronicle” said nothing of the sort.5 The Chronicle merely provided the process of state formation in Hausaland, and did not in any place indicate
that Hausa themselves were Arabs. But the association
of Hausa with Islam, an association that dates
back to over 600 years created the impression that the Hausa themselves must necessarily have been Arabs. In this
Africanist context, Islam is seen as alien to the base “African” culture, and therefore any association with Islam
must be foreign. Similar
accounts were more accurately given by non-Nigeria History textbook author,
Adu Boahen (1966:38) but whose textbooks are heavily used in Ghana, his
home country, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. He observed that:
The
Hausa have their own traditional accounts of their origins. The most popular
and well known of them is the account
known as the Daura legend. According this Daura was the first of the Hausa states to be founded by one
of the daughters, named Daura, of a grandson of a Canaanite named Najib who left Palestine with all his family and
settled in Libya. During the reign of
her successors, the son of the King of Baghdad arrived in Daura with his
followers after having first lived in
Bornu. He is said to have killed a huge serpent that was preventing the people of Daura from fetching the
water from their only well except on Fridays, and in appreciation of this service, the Queen agreed to marry him.
They had a son called Bawu (sic) who
succeeded his father. He also had six sons and each of them founded a town
which later developed into a state,
hence the seven Hausa bakwai.
Again in this account the Hausa, at
least in the primary Hausa political state, Daura, was connected to Canaanite, essentially therefore making Hausa
who originated from Daura
(the Hausa did not singularly originate from any one city) Arabs. However, a more sanguine account of Arab relations
with Black Africa is given in the same history textbook
by Adu Boahen when he noted that
The activities of the Almoravids contributed to the fall of Ghana…First, the wars and conquests
between 1054 and 1087 diverted attention from the soil. The countryside was
laid waste and agriculture was
neglected. Ghana must, therefore, have lost part of her fertile land and consequently part of her productivity and wealth. Secondly…the kings of Ghana derived a great
part of their revenue from import and export duties while the ordinary
Ghanaians earned their livelihood by
acting as middlemen in the caravan trade. The wars of the Almoravids, which affected the whole of the western
Sahara and Morocco and even extended into the
Iberian peninsular, must naturally have disrupted the caravan trade in
those regions. The inevitable result
was a great decrease in the income
of the Ghanaians… p. 11. Adu Boahen.
Full of speculation “…Iberian
peninsular, must naturally have disrupted….”, it goes out of its way to blame any misfortunate of the Ghanaian
empire on the Almoravids – and
subsequently set a template for young learners to acquire a taste of bigotry
early enough.
In some textbooks Islam is placed
squarely and exclusively in Arabia. This is for instance given in Ilesanni
Social Studies for Nigerian Primary Schools Book Six, where it stated:
The
Islamic religion is common in the Northern parts of Africa, Arabia (the
original home of Islam) Asia and parts of southern
Europe (Adelola 1980:55)
In others, Arabs barely get a mention.
For instance, one of the most widely used geography
books in Nigeria, Certificate Physical and Human Geography (Areola et al 1992) provides no information about Arabs
or the Middle East – thus denying Nigerian
school children to learn their heritage – for Kano alone has thousands of Hausa Arabs – or provide
global education for school children. The main focus
of the textbook is on Western Europe
and industrial development.
Similarly, Social Studies for Junior Secondary Schools Student Book 3 (Ahmed
et al 1990) was unsure of the racial
position of Arabs in its categorisation of Human Race.
Adopting a more anthropologist perspective, it gave the following categorisation:
Negroid – long-headed, wooly hair, dark complexion, flat-nosed. The negroes and pygmies of Africa are typical members
of this group.
Australian
– long-headed, wavy hair, dark complexion, flat-nosed. These are the original inhabitants of Australasia, also including certain
primitive tribes of Southern Asia.
Caucasian – long-headed, wavy hair, brown to light complexion, narrow-nosed. These include the long-headed peoples of Europe and North
Africa, Western and Southern Asia. There are traces of similar populations further to the east.
Mongoloid
– Broad-headed, straight hair, yellow or red complexion, nose of various types. This group includes most of the peoples of
Eastern Asia, such as the Chinese, and the original inhabitants of America
(pp. 12-13, emphasis
added).
Thus this gave the impression that
Americans, Italians, Britons and North Africans (whether Arab or not) belonged to the same racial category –
Caucasian. Other History textbooks
exploited the more negative, but factual, reconstruction of the relationship between North African
Arabs and Africans
south of the Sahara, particularly the slave trade. For example,
according to an account in School Certificate History
of West Africa Book One (Onwuibiko’s1985:258)
…with
the Muslim conquest of North Africa and its conversion to Islam in the seventh century A.D. the trans-Saharan slave trade
increased greatly in volume. Because Islamic law forbids Muslims to enslave fellow Muslims, the pagan Negroes to
the south of the Sahara desert were
purchased in ever-increasing numbers and sold to Arab slave dealers who took them to North African slave-markets in
Cairo, Alexandria, Tunis, Tripoli and Fez. When the Sudanese states were converted to Islam, the pagans of the
forest belt of West Africa became the
victims of slave-raids. The caravan routes of the Sahara told the story of the
barbarism of the trans-Saharan slave
trade. the routes were littered with the skeletons of slaves who died during
the long journey
to North Africa
(Onwuibiko 1985: 258).
Aisha Lemu’s portrayal of pre-Islamic
Arabs was done without any prejudice – despite her being an English woman who converted
to Islam and married a Nigerian. In her narrative, given in Islamic Studies
for Junior Secondary Schools Book One,
she noted that
The
Arabs identified himself (sic) with his clan or tribe, right or wrong. He took
greater pride in the deeds of his
forefather. It was considered a point of honour to uphold this tribal pride. Consequently when any dispute broke out
between individuals of different tribes, the quarrel would spread to other members and became an inter-tribal
dispute. If a member of one tribe was
killed it became a matter of honour to avenge his death. In this way vendettas
and wars between clans and tribes
could continue for many years. The Arabs were therefore never united as one nation. Instead
they were divided
and formed shifting
alliances and confederations among the various
tribal groups (Lemu
1993:179).
However, in a section she herself
labeled “objective assessment”, she noted,
Not all the habits
of pre-Islamic Arabs were bad. Some were good, and were also commended by Islam. Among such good habits was the practice
of hospitality both to friends
and strangers. The Arabs’ value for personal
courage and endurance
was also commendable…However, by and large the practices
described above indicate
a society of low morals, a harsh way of life and confused
beliefs. It is all of these which are comprised in the term Jahiliyya (Lemu 1993:181).
Islam transformed these beliefs and
behaviors of the Arabs to a new more dynamic
society which served
as a model for other countries and communities to emulate.
Finally, perhaps one of the most devastating portrayals of Arabs in Nigerian curricula
must surely be Ayi Kwei Armah’s reconstruction of African history
in his novel Two Thousand Seasons
(1973). Perhaps imbued
with accounts of the impact
of Arab slave
traders in historical accounts of a fellow Ghanaian, Adu Boahen, Armah
spared no punches in painting as dark picture
of Arabs as he could in the novel, which is part of the reading materials for secondary
school students in Nigeria. In the novel, the
setting is an unspecified African
country, standing for all of sub-Saharan Africa.
The story truly begins with
the coming of the predators – Arabs – who bring ruin. And always there are the weak and complicit locals helping to bring ruin from within.
As a typical scene narrates,
depicting the debauchery of the Arabs,
Faisal:
He, the only one this night, had insisted on having his favourite askari with
him inside the place this night.
Not, indeed, for the askari’s normal duties of defence against justice armed, but for reasons even sweeter to the
predator’s lechery. Most of the night Faisal had spent happily licking his young askari with not one thought of
females…Faisal sang that night. Laughing
he sang. The words, what were they but a demented Arab praise song to black
bodies? The lyrics were a confession Faisal wished to make, having lost
control of the last remnants of his will, a confession that all his religion’s stories
of odalisks (sic) and little
white virgins were fantasies for weak, crippled
minds with little
of the power of imagination, and no knowledge at all of the real truth
(Armah 1973:22).
Thus Arabs, initially labeled as
predators, were painted as lecherous, sadistic, and hedonistic, although the dramatis
personae in the novel all got their just desserts when they were murdered by their victims – an event graphically
described by Armah, as if expunging
the pains of historical arrival
of Arabs to Black Africa.
Conclusion
As I argued earlier, there are at least
three main reasons for cultural reflection of a particular group of people in school textbooks. The first was
desire for global education. The
world is getting increasingly small due improved communication facilities – Internet, satellite
broadcast, mobile telephony, etc. Consequently there is a need
to provide school children with a more accurate depiction of a group people. In any event, even if textbook writers do
not provide this accurate picture, the Internet will, since it provides almost everyone with the opportunity to correct any impressions given.
Secondly, the same media often creates
an imagery of a group of people based on often
violent and distorted political history. The Western media used its effective powers to portray its bigotry against
Arabs in all media (Majaj 2003, Ahmed 2002, Akram 2001, Ezroura 1995, Jabara 1989,
Velloso 1998, Loshitzky 2000, Saad 1996).
The Muslim Hausa of northern
Nigeria face similar
imagery from Nigerian
press that often paints a violent and bloodthirsty picture
of what the press calls
“almajiri” during times of communal conflicts. Two of the
more typical commentaries from the more virulent anti-Northern newspapers in Nigeria
are as follows:
ThisDay (2001):
“…due
to the low level of education and orientation, the majority of the Northern
Muslims still behave very barbaric by
constituting themselves into nuisance to unleash terror on their fellow
human beings…It is basically as a result
of the lack of integration and parental training
arising from the almajiri syndrome in the North that has given birth to
the moral degeneration of the
Northern youths, leading to the frequent religious crisis in the North.”
Lumumba C. Achilonu, “Analysis, Northern Muslims And Religious Violence” in ThisDay, 12th November 2001,
online edition.
Vanguard (2004)
“Anyone
that is familiar with the history of almajiris might find it difficult to
isolate violence from it. They are
violence personified…At the slightest provocation, the almajiris are on the streets
maiming, killing and destroying properties of private citizens.
They constitute a serious menace
to non-northerners and non-Muslims living in the northern part of the country.…Because
of their little or no education, they have been misdirected and misused against indigenes of other ethnic groups
living amongst northerners. They have not been a good advertisement for the northerners.” Vanguard, Editorial, “Educating the Almajiris”, 25th August 2004, online edition.
Thus after the American 9/11 incidence, the “almajiri” have graduated to “terrorists”
– in a blind desire
to link any civil disturbance to Arabs – whether Islamic
or not. This is shown, for
instance, in the arguments by Awofeso et al (2003:320) trying to link what they define as terrorist activities
with the madrassa system drawing parallels between
the Islamic schooling system in Nigeria and Pakistan. As for northern Nigeria,
they argued that
During the Zangon-Kataf riots, fundamentalist Mallams
called for the killings of all “infidels” (meaning all non-Muslims), in Kaduna State,
in retaliation for the killings
of “pious” Muslims
earlier in the riot. The scale of the retaliation, and the manner in
which terrorist acts were carefully
targeted by the Almajirai on churches, Christians, and Mallams’s critics during
the Mallams’s sanctioned Jihad, attests
to the Mallams potential to facilitate terrorist
acts.
The al-muhajir
– referred to as “almajirai” in Nigeria – are Islamic education pupils exposed to highly organised form of Arabic
learning system which has been a consistent
educational fare in northern Nigeria for over six hundred years. However, in Nigerian political economy, their
Islamic education is equated to illiteracy – and subsequently a tinderbox of murderous rioting behavior. Further
exacerbating the anti-Arab
sentiments in Nigerian secular
intelligentsia was the presence of the script – Ajami
Arabic – on the Nigerian
currency. This is seen as the adoption
of an “foreign” script – when the script had been in use in the country
hundreds of years before any of the secularist cities were even formed.
Textbooks – and academic research papers – therefore became
the new media
in promoting bigotry
not only against
Arabs but also against Muslims
in northern Nigeria.
Third, the transnational flow of people
across borders provide a sufficient base enough
to incorporate images and depictions of migrant groups as part of in-group culture. However, as I pointed out
earlier, Arabs are not alien to Nigeria – indeed when the first Arabs migrated to Kano early 14th century (Palmer 1908), the rest of
Nigeria had no defined empire-states.
When Islam came in 13th century – via Black Dyula (Wangara)
merchants – it found an established civilization in northern Nigeria
– a far cry from southern coastal
territories that were still scattered villages. The increasing absorption of Magheribi (Smith 1997) Yemenite
(Adamu 1999) and Lebanese
(Albasu 1989) into the social and cultural
fabric of northern
Nigeria, as well as
the presence of “authentic” Baqqara (Shuwa) Arabs in North-Eastern Nigeria clearly created a problem for textbook
writers who see Arabs or Arabic language as foreign to their conception of Nigeria.
This lack of representation (for some
of the textbooks were notable for their lack of representation of Arabs in any sphere) is not surprising
considering the fact that Nigerian ethnic
groups are not sufficiently portrayed in the textbooks. This of course
reveals the static nature of the curriculum – in which despite hundreds
of communal clashes (Muhammed and Adeoye 2006, Alanamu et al, 2006) yet the textbook developers in Nigeria would
rather pretend on dry static and often quaint descriptions of Nigerian societies.
The Nigerian curriculum, and by extension, the textbooks lack global relevance in the contemporary world. Their failure
is not only in relation
to insufficient representation of a vital chunk of Nigeria’s population – the Arabs – but also
inability to even capture the
currents at home that should provide a template for future citizens about the real structure of their future
world.
Notes
1.
Pierre Philippe Rey (2001) Al-Andalus : Scientific Heritage
and European Thought. Paris, Unesco, under
“Culture and Unesco”
website series, at http://www.unesco.org/culture/al- andalus/html_eng/rey.shtml
2.
Ibid.
3.
For details see, H. A. R.’ Gibb, Ibn Batuta: Travels in
Asia and Africa, 1325-1354, and published originally
in 1929; re-printed as Ibn Batuta:
Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325-1354, London, Rutledge and Kegan
Paul, 1983, p. 322.
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