Re- Kperogi's “Wonders of Hausa-speaking Northern Christian names”
Cornelius Hamelberg
With such a suggestive title, for once I was expecting miracles, signs and wonders, at least one. My appetite had been whetted but now the expectation has been deflated, punctured. I read until I came to the last full stop, but thankfully, I did not arrive at e.g. the anticlimax to this poem by the Finnish poet Edith Södergran. Not quite. On the contrary. Quite.
Yes, one has to know one's territory, the environment and the people amongst whom we live and that's why this time I have to thank Kperogi profoundly (but not profusely), for his bringing this awareness back to yours truly – for the re-awakening to a sort of re-awareness, on high alert, that Arabized Christians can and may have Muslim-sounding names, astaghfirullah, that it's not every Mohammed that is a bona fide Muslim.
To date, I cannot count the number of times I have been a victim of encounters in which I found myself condemning and even cursing (ad nauseam) the kuffar, the mushrik and the masihiun, when in fact and indeed unbeknownst to me I was actually talking to one of them. The very last time that I was in such a very embarrassing situation was over twenty-something years ago, on a rainy day in Stockholm when I shared a taxi with a bunch of heavily bearded guys in black who by their looks I identified as hasids, also because they were joking in colloquial Hebrew. So, where in the holy land do you guys come from, I asked, and in unison, they exclaimed “Yerushalayim !” - at which point - in an assumed spirit of solidarity, I launched into a savage attack on the terrorists and burst into a song in praise of Zion. It turned out they were a bunch of Muslims from Nablus. They could have made some not so halal kebab out of me...
Yesterday evening, Baba Kadiri told me two things that gladdened my heart:
He said that Brother Buhari had been to Mecca on Hajj (Mashallah!) and was returning to Nigeria, even as we spoke. I think it's commendable that Nigeria has a God-fearing man as president.
That he Baba Kadiri had travelled all the way to the heart of Stockholm to obtain a personal copy of The Economist in order to get to the bottom of that article about Nigeria. That's the extent to which Baba Kadiri loves his country. Unlike some of us, the Baba's library features a magnificent section devoted to his one and only: Nigeria. You can't accuse him of not being a nationalist.
“Perhaps, Kperogi will do an analysis of that article in his Saturday column” suggested the wishful-thinking Baba, I supposed, so that he Baba Kadiri would have no other option/alternative than to do his painful duty for the good of the country, as is the purpose of the correctional facilities, to hammer Kperogi and his inflated ego, as mercilessly as usual or as mercifully as always, to correct big grammar and other wayward errors.
He will write about that Economist article this Sabbath? He will do no such thing. I retorted. If anything, he will continue to play it safe by avoiding any manifestly controversial issue from which he knows he could take a lot of flak. The tender ego does not knowingly invite the hammer. It should have been in place to quote Caesar: “Danger knows full well that Caesar is more dangerous than he: We are two lions litter'd in one day, and I the elder and more terrible”
So, playing it safe, here we are with something as innocuous as this curioso about the Christian names of the Hausa Brethren, whilst Rome burns.
And no mention of the Sistren, either.
Professor Kperogi, isn't this negligence on your part or is it a deliberate act of gender discrimination of the Hausa sisters?
Trust Kperogi to hyperbolate even in discussing some straightforward theme such as personal names, place names, the fastidiously correct and incorrect spellings of names, the correct and incorrect pronunciation of names, depending on where you first sucked your mother's milk - since these pronunciations tend to vary from place to place and all of which vary from Iran, through Afghanistan, through Sokoto and down to Farooqi's unbarbaric, nicely or not so nicely Islamized & civilized Bariba folks over there in Kwarra that borders the Republic of Benin.
This is my honest, uninfected response to “Wonders of Hausa-speaking Northern Christian names.” Could it be retitled “Wonders of Northern Christian names among the Hausa-speaking Christians of Northern Nigeria”, I wonder.
In Her Majesty's English, the sayings are three :
“Wonders never ceases” - in Her Majesty's Broken English the Ghanaian equivalent to that usually written on the fisherman's boat is “ Sea never dry”
“Curiosity killed the cat “ - also killed many an investigative journalist e.g. the martyr Dele Giwa
And this is Biblical “What good can come out of Nazareth?” - the answer to that question has made Christians out of many a disbeliever, hence we could take a cursory look into the lyrics of the Negro Spiritual “ Amazing Grace” and if moved by the spirit we could sing along
In June 1991, out of curiosity I attended a Church service in Alexandria ( Egypt ) and was surprised that they praised “Allah” (God - in Arabic) and piously exclaimed a couple of times, “Alhamdulillah”. Unhappily, soon after that visit, I was arrested by the secret police, asked to accompany them to the police station, for wearing my typically green jellabiya and turban from Sudan and going to church.
Otherwise, I'm quite familiar with the Islamized names from the Bible ( that Jesus is Isa, John is Yahya, Moses is Musa. and Mary is Mariama etc.). If you're interested in names, especially place-names - names of the same place in different languages even more interesting than such common knowledge about the names of the Hebrew Prophets in Islamic Arabic is this book which did not cause such a stir :
The Bible Came From Arabia by Kamal Salibi
( It's worthwhile to take note that after Saul /Paul's conversion after his visionary encounter with Jesus, on the road to Damascus, he then took off to what is now Saudi Arabia, and there he stayed for the next three years before returning to the Holy Land. According to my former classmate Charles Macaulay ( who is now a pastor), Paul was taught personally by our Lord and Saviour Jesus the Christ, during his sojourn there.
So, with that background I read what Kperogi had to say here, of course, not expecting any linguistic wonders or miracles from him and I'm sure that for me and all manner of Nigerians from all over the Federation there were hardly any wonders in what he had to say, and here too I assume that the “wonders“ he could have in mind is bringing some light from the darkness to the uninitiated, the totally uninformed students, friends and acquaintances in his neck of the Savannah Georgia, about the Hausa people in his neck of the woods, the sand, the nooks and the crannies in his homeland Nigeria. Had I read this piece about thirty years ago, it would have made a difference because it was then that I met my very first “ Rev. Mohammed “ - a Hausa man; he told me that he was a student of Björn Beckman - and was studying human rights & democracy etc. at Stockholm University. I had met him accidentally in the tube and was quite taken aback when he introduced himself as the incongruously named “Rev. Mohammed”, which at the time I felt was a gross contradiction in terms, a gross insult, something of an oxymoron, reminiscent of me walking down St Paulsgatan in Stockholm ( St. Paul's Road) side by side with Rabbi Meir Horden and in the middle of our discussion saying to him, “When Moses received the Quran” and immediately miscorrecting myself by saying, “ Sorry, I meant when Muhammad received the Torah” and either unflustered or nonplussed the rabbi's kind reply, “Alright Cornelius, take your time, make up your mind who received what, where, and when “ as we walked on...
In the case of the so-called “ Rev. Mohammed “, I thought that he was joking. I have a close Hausa Muslim friend from Ghana, Ishaq Muhammad, a serious, 100% Quran & Sunnah observant -Sunni Muslim, another from Nigeria, now late Idries Ibrahim who in an over thirty-something years acquaintance and perhaps a few dozen cups of tea shared with him, I always thought was Muslim because we discussed Islam and culture so many times, but lo and behold ( wonder!) he was Christian.
Names being such an essential part of our identities, either in Fragments or Why Are We So Blest? , Ayi Kwei Armah asks what happens to the soul of an African boy who grows up being called " Mike" ?
