Tribute and Prayer

When he landed at then Kano International Airport in 1984, all he possessed by way of clothing was contained in a small hold-all—a plastic bag—slung across his shoulder, as he made his way to baggage claim. After he had claimed the last baggage, he needed the help of at least ten people to move his […]

When he landed at then Kano International Airport in 1984, all he possessed by way of clothing was contained in a small hold-all—a plastic bag—slung across his shoulder, as he made his way to baggage claim. After he had claimed the last baggage, he needed the help of at least ten people to move his luggage out of the airport building—all of 47 boxes, or, so it was said, and each of them contained only books. That was vintage Tijani.
We were just forming the Ummah when Professor Tijani el-Miskin left these shore. When it was formed, he was there in spirit; and when he came back, he took over intellectually. Between 1978 and 1984, Tijani was off to Indiana University, Bloomington, USA to study for a master’s and doctorate degrees in comparative literature; and he took time to learn French je ne sais quoi in France, and Spanish a un alto grado de calidad in Mexico and Cuba, and he spoke them with native speaker proficiency. Already fluent in Arabic and English, he added a spattering of proficiency in German to a linguistic repertoire that included Hausa, Fulfulde, Shuwa Arab and Kanuri, his mother tongue. And with these, he delved into the corpus.
Much of his extensive research output, especially those on Arabic literature, Islamic studies and education, was commissioned by international bodies like the United Nations, the Islamic Universities League and the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation, UNESCO.
Perhaps, with respect to aspects of his intellectual and extracurricular accomplishments, no one could have put it better than his long-time colleague and admirer, Professor MunzaliJibril. “Professor el-Miskin’s exploration of delicate nuances in Arabic literature in respect of authorial disavowal, reverse analogy, courtly tradition and other critical themes got wide acceptance across several journals in various countries and appeared in highly prestigious publications,” Professor Jibril said. “[H]is twenty-five years of service in the university system, his widely recognised community service, his national and global academic reach and contribution to learning, his inspiring personal qualities as a teacher all go a long way to reinforce his status as one of the leading scholars of Nigeria.”
Despite his vast erudition, Tijani was a self-effacingly humble person. When you discussed any topic with him—and it was more likely than not that he knew it better than you—he never showed it nor assumed any airs that made you uncomfortable. Often, he suggested response to you such that you ended up telling him the right answer by getting it from him. When in the company of those of us who didn’t know, it became for him almost a crime to know; and in such a circumstance, he became a temporary, honorary ignoramus.
It has been said that he whose knowledge is only from books must be ignorant even of them; and a truly educated person like Tijani was someone who had learnt at the feet the of true scholars, had developed and exchanged views with lecturer-scholars; had read widely, digested and understood books and had such critical thinking powers as would enable him take and defend a stand as his own—a true scholar.
In Ummah circles, the story of his arrival from Indiana has been told and retold. When he arrived then Aminu Kano International Airport in 1984, his hand luggage, which was a big polythene bag slung across his shoulder, contained all the clothes he had. When he left baggage claim, he needed more than ten people to help him with his luggage—47 packages that contained his books on almost all subjects imaginable. His main area in school was Arabic and comparative literature, but he had imbibed Islamic knowledge at the feet of his illustrious father—the venerable Sheikh Abubakar el-Miskin, the adept and guide, who died last year.
Tijani was a true product and a fruit of best of both worlds—a man of multiple talents, a son of the East and a child of the West, an intellectual citizen of the globe at home at all its axes; a celebrated Arabist, a polyglot and linguist and an original critic of classical and modern Islamic and Arabic literature; a quintessential Sheikh of the Tijaniyyah Order, who understood and practiced zikr, who constantly indulged in contemplation and truly traversed the Way, not just one content with a knowledge of theoretical Tasawwuf; and he combined this with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the religion and the hundreds of other subjects he had in his lifetime mastered.
Tijani was a scholar par excellence—a madrasah student, a Sufi son of a Sufi, who was schooled in the Western tradition to a level of understanding its actuality, but who, nonetheless, remained true to his origin, and continued to tread in the footsteps of that unending caravanof those who sought direct intuitive knowledge of ultimate reality through personal religious experiential cognition.
As he fell in that preventable tragedy, this great scholar went away an accomplished person, but he went away leaving un-scribbled papers, untutored students, untrained murids and a poorer country. If knowledge could really die, this must be one such instance of its doing so. And for his associates and students, the sense of loss occasioned by the death of his might be likened to the helplessness uttered by Yahya bin Jafar al-Baykandi on the death of Imam al-Bukhari: “If I was capable of increasing the life of Muhammad bin Ismail, by taking it from my own lifetime, I would do so; indeed, my death is the death of one man, but his death is the disappearance of knowledge.”
And in the melee, Tijani fell down with his friend—HajiyaBilkisu Yusuf. Even though we are known as professional colleagues, it was on the Islamic lecture circuit that we first met and were exchanging notes as colleagues and activists before she joined us at the NEW Nigerian.
Bilkisu’s life is the best example of an eminently successful Muslim woman—educated, sophisticated, yet simple, successful on the domestic, social, professional fronts. An easy-going, hardworking editor, a thorough professional in love with her profession and not overly concerned with comfort, her areas of interest ranged from non-governmental organisational activism to Islamic sisterhood work and pure feminist struggle for the space for women to be, and she was always out there in the vanguard.
Bilkisu was always serious even in jest, and she was always doing something useful—and it was for others. A very hard working professional, she stands out wherever she was. Her distinguishing marks were her authenticity as a person, her dedication to any cause she believed in, and her total lack of pretentiousness whatever the circumstances. And because of all that, she was a person respected without her ever demanding it, as Hakeem delicately put it.
She could be playful and funny; and with Kabiru Yusuf in Lagos and the three of us in Kaduna, we were a very happy and happy-go-lucky family of idealistic practitioners who, by refusing to bend to the tune of the profession’s business-as-usual note, effectively saw to the untimely demise of the Citizen promise. We were too naïve to properly appreciate the true nature of the environment, too straight to stoop to take a bribe, too proud to condescend to ask for a favour, and too much in honour bound to trade away the ethics of the profession of journalism. And so we soldiered on in poverty but with great professional contentment.
Bilki was a very religious person in terms of both practicing the rituals on time and living the faith in her life. And she is gone, but to all believers in God, death, which is an inevitability, is merely a return to origin; and it is only bitter because it severs all links and attachments to the world and whatever is in it. Everyone just bides his time and waits for his turn on the divine roll call, whether ready or not. For those who answer and depart, the more selfless their links to the world, the bitterer for us the pain of their separation—and the more disconsolate and more rueful the spate of our mourning. And thus—and that ever this should be, and how utterly painfully—have we now been made to taste the departure of Tijani, Bilkisu and thousands of other devout Muslims just when they were on the verge of finishing the Hajj rites.
At the stage of stoning, the pilgrim has already erased his everyday identity and joined the anonymity of the white sameness of the Ummah at the Tawaf; he has traversed the Safa-Marwa valley to show readiness to struggle physically for a better world; and he has taken time to plan well and stone and shatter the devil of ego in order to spiritually empty self of volition—and, in the end, be accepted by God. And he is now ready for the stay at Mina—to learn the virtues of introspection, constancy and eternal vigilance. For, you don’t throw stones to cast out the demon only once; because, the fight against the devil—the ego and the appetitive soul—is not a one-off affair; it’s a struggle all day, every day.
Tijjani had just gone to throw his stones, and Bilkisu had gone to throw hers before departing for the Tawaf. They had no chance to make it to the Jamarat, and would not be circumbulating the Ka’aba ever again; because both of them were killed within seconds of each other—he trampled in the stampede, she by the resulting suffocation, bitterly complaining about what had happened, intoning the Kalimah to the very end. And these two, whose paths had often enough crossed on the Islamic lecture circuits, have now been reunited at the commencement of eternal life. May they, along with all the others, be covered by the grace and mercy of God.