POVERTY MADE IT A NORM

They would journey on foot - through thick and thin - from Lagos to Ibadan, to Iwo, and then to Ilorin, all in the name of garnering Islamic knowledge, of course, to benefit the Ummah - you and I. That was an unprecedented sacrifice to behold by anyone with functional blood in his veins! Kudos to our forebears on whose yesterday today was ensured! May Allah accept their deeds and forgive their misdeeds.

To acquire just a tip of the iceberg by them, not less than five years would go in for it. The studentship - even in old age - was spent in death-like hunger and sometimes in orphan-like destitution. Rather than expend the little on them to get fittingly attired, they would spend it to buy books for learning. They are worth our endless commendations despite their human imperfections. 

They would return home on completion of the hectic, arduous expedition only to end up as imams of mosques and/or administrators of madaaris. Even with wives and children in their care, no penny was accruable to their imamship and madrasah twin-job. They had no money to fulfil gastronomic, shelter and clothing obligations. The elite under whose trust the finances of the mosques were never deemed it appropriate to remunerate them. Parents whose children were under the imams' feeless tutelage equally refused to show appreciation for the services rendered; hence the reason they would tactically beg to feed, to cloth etc. They were left to the mercy of the relatively generous members of the mosque - those who would seldom give either on request or willfully. 

They could not but devise the means through which their insatiable needs could be relatively satisfied. They resorted to using what they had to get what they wanted. And that gave birth and astronomic rise to several phenomena which were alien to Islam. Such acts, unfortunately, still linger till today where those who originated them are referenced as proof (a ba lowo awon baba wa ni - it was a legacy of our fathers). They became norms by circumstance (not by Islam), and any attempt to call the upholders to order, hell is let loose as though some fundamental had been sinfully flouted. Sometimes, one is even labelled as an extremist and portrayed as a hater of our fathers. 

For instance, special Qur'an prayer found its route into the religion and built a seemingly untouchable haven therein. Imams, alfas, sheikhs would voluntarily offer to specially pray for rich men via Qur'an recitation, and in the end, get paid for the sweats exerted. 

Usually, on a Saturday or Sunday, the rich man's living room would be filled up with alfas and madrasah students hired from far and near. Copies of the Qur'an would be shared and the venue taken over by cacophony for the period the exercise would span. Even those who could not sail through Qur'an recitation among the prayer warriors would deceitfully dance their lips as well. Did I hear you say haba! Don't doubt it, because I used to be a culprit in the days of jaahiliyyah, too - about two decades ago. May Allah forgive me and those who asked me to act as such. In the end, the hidden purpose for which the act was innovated would follow. Envelops filled with cash would be distributed to all for a job well done. And that would be after having had the stomachs serviced to their fill. Sometimes, each person would go home with a nylon containing raw meats considered to be sadaqah. For that day and a couple of days beyond (maybe a week or two, or just a few days), the happiness of the wives and children of the imams or alfas would know no bound. So imagine that such a "lucrative contract" was secured two or three times a week. Imagine that an imam was fortunate to be contracted by generous rich men. 

Poverty made it a norm, not Islam. Neither the holy Prophet nor the Sohabah had such in their records of legacies. For every problem, there was a prescribed prayer,  and none included the aforementioned - congregating to recite the Qur'an - not even in the mosque. 

That small book sold for just #200 - Hisnul Muslim (Citadel of the Believer) - answers it all. There is no problem without a solution (as prescribed by the Prophet) in that book. Try it out.!

May Allah overlook the shortcomings of our forefathers and grant them Jannah for their sacrifices.

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