O Prophet! Indeed, We have sent you as a witness to all the world; and as a bearer of glad tidings of everlasting delight in Paradise to those who believe; and as a forewarner to humanity of God’s nearing Judgement; and as a caller to God, by His permission; and as a luminous beacon to all nations. (Q33V45-46.)

Our Khutbah today is a continuation of the decolonisation of the Muslim minds. We began with Knowledge and located the correct Knowledge and Absolute Reference Frame for Knowledge, Life and Living as the Qura’n. Today in this KHUTBAH, we are going to deconstruct our understanding of the teacher of Knowledge, Prophet Muhammad(SAW) and his Sunnah.

The following are the summary of the conversation on the Greatest Teacher from the human and prophetic  perspectives:

He was a human model for any human no matter what or who you are (Q33:45-46). He was an excellent teacher who acknowledged his ignorance and got taught by Allaah (Q18:110). He was a model Husband but a privileged Prophet whose marriages, wives and management of same was uniquely meant for him and his wives as special people not to be copied by others. He could marry more than four, marry anyone who offered herself without the normal conditions for the believers, could attend to anyone of his wives at his discretion, must NOT marry after the ordinance  (Q33:59-52). His wives were not ordinary (Q33:32) and so should be content with little or get divorced (Q33:28-29); must not commit clear immorality to avoid double punishment (Q33:30); must stay at home and not come out like the days of ignorance (Q33:33) and abide by sundry restrictions as students of their husband and people of the House.

Believers are instructed to regulate their visits to the house of the Prophet and never to seduce his wives let alone marry his widows (33:53).

All these establish at least two facts about the great Teacher Muhammad. He was a human being in all ramifications and was therefore also instructed, censured and rewarded with privileges that others didn’t and shouldn’t take for themselves.

Secondly, his family had a share of their own crises so that we will not attribute perfection to them and condemn ourselves for failing to have a perfect marriage and family.

However, taking extremes of oriental or occidental view of the Prophet presents a serious epistemic and therefore spiritual confusion and crises. The orient takes the Prophet either as extremely ordinary Arab who was just a teacher and may not be emulated beyond the semitic outlook. This is their own Sunnah. The occident takes a Judo-christian view of him as a divinity and part of Godhead who is the be-all-and-end-all. They neglect the Qura’n and embrace anything else provided it could be called Hadith and therefore Sunnah. When the two clash, the issues bidia becomes the most contentious matter in religion and Muslims begin to fall into sects with all negative implications. Whereas there is no prophetic outlook, Muslim semitic or oriental outlooks have become the Sunnah including the outlook of our teachers of the Deen.

All we do is to islamise it and we are good to go. The crises of identity, however, continues to hunt us and our conflicts multiply almost daily.

How did we get here?
We got to this sorry and tragic situation after we got lost in the wilderness of confusion arising from the suffocation of the Muslim mental world.
Knowledge expanded negatively due to interaction with foreigners and the colonisation of the Muslim Mind leading to near Epistemicide. Nationalism combined with fear of losing the focus of Islam to reckless knowledge to make well meaning scholars to close the gate of ijtihad. Mental explosion became inevitable as a result of the necessity of knowledge to expand. Human minds must be engaged. Brilliant minds had to resort to writing poems, fables etc to express knowledge in terms of islamising old pagan philosophy, mysticism and didactic fables. Arud became the main focus of scholars who must continuously engage in the pursuit of knowledge while Fiqh and argumentations rapidly developed into balkanisation of the Muslim communities into schools of thought and their conflicts leading to further crises till date .

The results include the tragic abandonment of the Qur’an and reckless embrace of poems, songs and fabrication of and correct citing of  Ahadith as the hallmark of Muslim intellectualism. While all that may mesmerisze the Muslim small minds , the serious minded Muslims got frustrated and sought functional knowledge in material education in order to be able to fit in and compete with the world.

Islamisation of knowledge became the main option to get out of the entanglement of confusion and frustration. It became clear that those who sought material education also became sandwiched between the Arab and Euro-American mental colonialists on one hand, and between these two and their African parents and teachers who constitute their local schools and homes into strong mental slave camps. The colonisation of the Muslim Mind continues till today.

How do we decolonise the Muslim mind? Decolonisation of the Muslim mind must begin with the acceptance of the Qur’an as the only authentic source of correct knowledge and the rejection of other sources as equal or superior to it as Epistemicide and mental strangulation between the oriental and occidental colonialists.

To insist on over one thousand years old understanding or opinion to engage a 21st century octopus and satanic ideas already running in the veins of our Gen.z adults and children is to commit socio-economic and spiritual suicide. It is exactly the same case if we recklessly embrace sophisticated modern kufr in ribba-based economic life by islamising the capitalist financial institutions and its terrorising democratic religion as substitutes to the khilafah.

• Prof. Taofiq Adesina Azeez is Chief Imaam of University of Abuja Muslim commuinty. He gave the sermon at the Main Campus of the university last Friday (September 13, 2024).