When a ‘Malam’ isn’t one

It is generally used by the Hausa speakers of Islamic West Africa to refer to an Islamic scholar or a man learned in Qur’anic studies.In contemporary Muslim North of Nigeria, it is a title used for a respectable Muslim man or woman. Beside this religious connotation, the import of the word has further been widened […]

It is generally used by the Hausa speakers of Islamic West Africa to refer to an Islamic scholar or a man learned in Qur’anic studies.
In contemporary Muslim North of Nigeria, it is a title used for a respectable Muslim man or woman. Beside this religious connotation, the import of the word has further been widened in the Nigerian context to add a regional dimension to its meaning. Every Nigerian from the northern part of the country is either a Malam or Malama. In this wider sense, the word ‘Malam’ is used especially by non-Hausa speakers as a form of address that is synonymous with “Northerner”; the geo-poitical description of a man or woman from northern Nigeria.
Now, who is a ‘Malam’ in the technical sense of the word? Using the moral and religious standards by which persons are recognized as such in traditional Muslim communities of Nigeria, everyone addressed with this title should, in addition to possessing basic knowledge of Islamic religion, be virtuous in character. A Malam in a typical northern Nigerian Muslim setting, for instance, must be honest; trustworthy; principled; dispassionate in all issues of shared interest; committed to the pursuit of common good; selfless; contented; chaste; humble; modest; courteous; and above all pious (as mentioned in Qur’an 35:28). These are some of the qualities of anyone who, in the general perception of Muslims in Nigeria, desires to earn or profess the noble title of ‘Malam-ship’. One does not, however, need to be a prayer leader (an Imam) in a mosque before he could earn the title. It is a name that could be earned by a politician, civil servant, businessman, engineer, army officer, etc.  Malam Aminu Kano and Malam/Retired General Garba Ali Muhammad are, in my humble though conservative opinion, examples of a politician and a military man who respectively earned the Malam-ship title.
But having briefly laid this ethical background, one is prompted to wonder whether many of those who today lay claim to this title actually deserve to enjoy the prestige and privileges that go with the name. Judging from what is public knowledge in contemporary Nigeria, the indiscriminate use (or rather misuse) of the title of ‘Malam’ by Muslims who possess the least qualification to earn the title including those who by their actions are moral liabilities to the sanctity of Islam and image of Muslims, is only but a reflection of a society that survives on eroded moral values; and of a people who have lost the greater part of their religious consciousness.
When people want to build empires around themselves or score cheap political points or to attract sympathy from the poverty-stricken members of Muslim communities, they resort to using the title ‘Malam’ before their names. But worse than these criminals and professional hypocrites are the people that foolishly acknowledge such illegitimate claims to the title.
If not for a society with sinking fabrics, how come former Kano State Governor Ibrahim Shekarau who turned controversial in his recent political schemes is yet carrying and using the title ‘Malam’ without a religious sense of history as required of anyone called by the name ‘Malam’.
The Daily Trust edition of Wednesday, April 16, 2014 published a photograph on page 7 in which Mr. Ibrahim Shekarau, President Goodluck Jonathan and other party supporters were dancing to the music supplied by Sani Danja at a rally in Kano where Shekarau was formally received into the PDP. In the photograph, Mr. Shekarau could be seen dancing shoulder-to-shoulder with Sani Danja, a Kannywood actor he once banished from Kano during his 8-year rule for reasons of immoral consequences that were occasioned by singing and dancing. Shekarau, by this singular act of insincerity, looses the ‘Malam-ship’ title. If Mr. Shekarau, as a matter of righteousness, outlawed Kannywood during his tenure as governor of Kano State, what are the reasons he has today to make what he previously considered prohibited (Haram) to now become permitted (Halal)? It only portrays him as a shameless betrayer and a hypocrite of his own religious conviction. This further puts Shekarau’s integrity to question.
Breaking of covenant is not in the virtuous character of a genuine Malam, which is why this column finds it necessary to strip Mr. Shekarau of the self-acclaimed title of Malam-ship. Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, as the leader of Muslims in Nigeria, must start thinking of evolving a mechanism for regulating the use of the title ‘Malam’. This is one of the ways of preserving the worth of the title. Is it not embarrassing enough for Muslims that a leader who is popular with the title of ‘Malam’ especially in its religious sense would be seen to be inconsistent in his words and actions?
How also come, Mr. Shekarau who had a cultural re-orientation programme called ‘Adaitaita Sahu’, which was the driving force of his administration, agreed to be part of a public dancing show at a political rally that took place less than 24 hours after the killing of over 70 people and wounding of hundreds in a bomb explosion at a motor park in Nyanya, a suburb of Abuja?
The post-2011 Ibrahim Shekarau which is a contradiction of the pre-2011 Shekarau could perhaps be the actual personification of a perceived ‘Malam’ that amazingly turned ‘un-Malamic’. For most men and women, their true nature is known only when there is an upward or downward mobility in their social, political or economic life. Our knowledge of others is better improved upon when those we claim to know lose what they possessed or own that which came their way; by design or by chance. Such things that people lose or obtain and by which their true  nature comes to fore may include political power, authority, wealth, health, women, children, rank, status, fame, etc. Each of these, when bestowed upon man, may be considered to be a favour. They are indeed the means  by which Allah (SWT) puts mankind on trial. Their loss by man is equally a trying process, which is probably  the form of trial that is easily appreciated by many. May Allah (SWT) protect us from becoming puppets in the hands of man’s worst enemy, the Shaytan, amin.