President Muhammadu Buhari
Shiites,
President Muhammadu Buhari
Shiites, Buhari, Religious Bigotry, and I
By Farooq Kperogi
A Shia Muslim reached out to me privately a few days ago and
said things to me that I frankly couldn’t relate to. When he
realized that I was genuinely ignorant of what he said, he said
he’d thought I was a Shia Muslim, to which I responded that I had
mentioned several times in the past, including in my columns, that
although I respect the right of people to be Shia—or anything that
their consciences tell them to be so long as they don’t infringe on
other people’s right—I am not one.
He said he had read that but that he thought I was practicing
protective mimicry to avoid social exclusion. Apparently, because
Shias have been historically persecuted in most parts of the
Sunni-dominated Muslim world, publicly denying being Shia or
intentionally being silent about—or omitting to mention—being Shia
is a well-practiced art among them. Denying being Shia to escape
persecution is called taqiyya and deliberately being silent
about—or omitting to admit— being Shia for fear of social isolation
is called kitman.
My interlocutor thought my criticisms of Buhari’s regime were
inspired by the government’s mass murders and continued persecution
of Shias, which I have condemned in the strongest terms in my
social media updates and columns. I told him—and showed him
evidence—that I’d been critical of the Buhari regime even before
its mass slaughters of Shia Muslims. Interestingly, many Shia
Muslims from the north here on social media had attacked me for
criticizing Buhari “rather too early” before he supervised their
mass massacres.
The man said he had developed a “renewed respect” for me to know
that I’m a Sunni Muslim who defends Shias (whom many Sunnis don’t
even recognize as Muslims) with such passion. (I don’t know where
people get the idea that a northern Muslim can’t be critical of
Buhari unless he’s a Shiite). But here’s the thing: I’d be a
flaming hypocrite to be a religious or sectarian bigot. Although my
father was a Sunni Islamic scholar and teacher, his own father (and
some of his siblings) converted to Christianity in the 1940s in an
otherwise over 90 percent Muslim society.
I was born in an American Baptist Christian missionary hospital
in my hometown, attended Baptist Christian missionary schools for
my primary and secondary education, and my dad taught Arabic and
Islamic Studies in a Christian Baptist missionary school for more
than three decades. Plus, I live in America, a predominantly
Christian country, that accepts me for who I am and allows me to
thrive and live my dreams. My best friend here in America, Moses
Ochonu, is a Christian.
If I’m at peace with Christians, and Christians are at peace
with me, both at home and abroad, why would I resent fellow Muslims
on the basis of trifling doctrinal differences to the point of
looking the other way—or, worse, cheering—when they are murderously
persecuted because of their beliefs? That’s not how I was
raised.
Professor Farooq Kperogi
Writes from USA