HRH, Muhammadu Sanusi II:
“During the era of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), he permitted pilgrims who came on camels to stay in Makkah after Arafat, instead of staying in Mina and sleeping at Muzdalifa.
“So, if the Prophet can give such grace to some people, just to protect their animals, why didn’t our scholars educate our people properly to avoid this untoward hardship and death?
“Therefore, it will be part of my recommendation to the Federal Government that, if we cannot get accommodation close to Jamrat where the Arabs reside in Mina, then this year may be the last time we will sleep in Mina and Muzdalifa because we want to stone the devil.
“If one deliberately refuses to perform the stoning of the devil ritual, all he needs to do is just to slaughter a ram. So, if this is the situation, why do we go and suffer and die instead of sacrificing a ram.”
Soon Sanusi will be condemned by people who know very little about him that he should shut up because he is not a scholar on Islam. But I doubt if Sanusi ever aimed to be a scholar. If so, he would have most likely preferred to prefer the ram to survive and the pilgrim to perish.
Instead, all his life M. Sanusi II aimed to be an intellectual. And he is one. That is why he will prefer the life of a pilgrim over a ram that will be sacrificed instead.
A scholar is a person who relies on his bòoks and hardly ventures beyond doctrine. He sees perfection in those books even where they were written centuries before him. He applies the judgement of their authors to his society without moderation. His books are his strength and the yardstick of his judgement. His effort is to duplicate the past in today and tomorrow. He hardly discovers knowledge or changes society. To him, yesterday is the most perfect creation of God that must be reinvented.
An intellectual is different. He has the books, no doubt, but he does not cover them with a mantle of infallibility. His eyes are open. He sees the books only as the material for the new student in a field of learning or someone who is researching into what his predecessors said about a certain matter, a material for literature review, essentially. However, he relies less on his books and more on his intellect when it comes to judgement. He is the living brain that sorts out human problems by marrying reality with information beyond the narrow sphere of doctrine into the adventurous spacious world of the human intellect. Finally, once his intellect rejects something, he is less likely to honour it. Once it settles on another, he is less likely to abandon it. Because of his penchant to go beyond yesterday, he discovers knowledge and changes society.
Each of us is free to choose what he or she wants to be. To the best of my judgement, Muhammadu Sanusi II has since his days as SLS chosen to be an intellectual.
To solve our problems, we need more of his kind.
Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
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