The Story of the Ants in Relation to God: A Philosophy of Religion Perspective on the Aggressions of Muslims Against Yoruba Traditional Religion Practitioners in Nigeria's Ilorin

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

The Story of the Ants in Relation to God: A Philosophy of Religion Perspective on the Aggressions of Muslims Against Yoruba Traditional Religion Practitioners in Nigeria's Ilorin

       Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                       Compcros

Myrmecological Philosophy 

Myrmecological philosophy  is the study of the philosophical significance of ants.

It deals with interpretations of the philosophical perspectives of ants.

It also studies the philosophical interpretations of ants by human beings.

Myrmecological philosophy thus deals with how ants think. It also investigates what human beings think about ants as 

humans reflect on the significance of human life and life in general from studying ants.

This philosophy thus  focuses on the thoughts of ants as well as  human thought derived from ant behavior and thought.

Myrmecological philosophy  was developed by African  scholar Ujopeda Niyotawolo from comparing nature centred world views and the behaviour of ants, as well as various human engagements with ants,  as such explorations have been constructed across the centuries, from African oral thought, evident, for example, in Ahamadou Hampate Ba's " The Living Tradition" in The UNESCO General History of Africa vol. 1, to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the present.

 

Myrmecological Philosophy of Religion 

Myrmecological philosophy of religion explores ants' orientations towards religious issues as well as human interpretation of ants in relation to religion. 

One aspect of the field focuses on how ants perceive the universe and the other on how human beings understand the universe, using ant life as a template.

Emic Myrmecology

Emic myrmecology is the study of ants in terms of how they think. Niyotawolo discovered that ant trails not only lead to food sources but also lay patterns suggesting a dialogue between the ants, a dialogue which her scientific instruments were able to decode after years of work.

One such dialogue unfolds about the nature of the creator of the universe. One group, represented by one set of patterns, present the creator as similar to an ant, only infinitely more powerful.

Another group depicts the creator as comparable to nothing in existence.

Wars at times broke out within sub-groups within these  groups and  between the larger groups. 

Most of the groups eventually moved on from fighting while a significant number of members of one group persist in this fighting.

Etic Myrmecology

Etic myrmecology is the exploration of human views about ants. Etic myrmecologists  wonder-what can a creature of such minisculity  as an ant adequately conceive of the creator of a  cosmos that far transcends the scope of awareness and even the scale of reference of an ant?

Some go further to reflect on the distance of nature and of  perception  between ants and such a creator and that between the human being, ants and that creator.

Is the human being not closer to an ant  than to such a creator?

Creatures walking the earth, their existence enabled by factors beyond themselves, their lives' emergence and cessation ultimately beyond their control, are these not bonds of kinship humans share with ants, bonds far distant from an invisible creator of the cosmos, if such a one exists, a creator representing the ultimate summation of all ideas about the beginnings and endings  of things?

In Nigeria's Ilorin, at least three sets of ants are at play. One set insists it understands God best and looks down on the others' understanding of God whom none have seen and about whom many conflicting reports abound.

A number of these views from various sets of ants describe God as a very big ant, with feelings like an ant, of competitiveness for food, struggle for survival and other qualities of ants but infinitely more wise, knowledgeable and powerful than any ant.

The group of ants that sees itself as superior to the others has some members who have attacked members of another group because they think differently from them about God. 

This group, some of whose members have been known to violently insist on the supremacy of their views,  are now insisting that one of those other groups must worship their deities in private, never in public, because they see the other group as ignorant and backward.

Yet, all these groups are more similar than different. They look up from their little universes at the miniscule range of vision accessible to them, and make claims about issues far beyond their full understanding.

How can an ant understand a human being, yet the ant may declare it understands God?

Should the ants not cooperatively share their scraps of understanding, dim as they are?

In such a puzzling universe, where even what is seen is challenging to fully understand, what degree of factuality should be accorded even such an effort as this essay to understand the universe of entities who depend on the solidity of earth for their existence, legs or bodies hugging the earth as they hold on tenaciously for survival, yet aspire to understand that beyond even the sky?

Salutations to the Brethren of Purity, the authors of The Case of the Animals Versus Man before the King of the Jinn,  Jorge Luis Borges' "The Theologians" and Tunji Suleiman, writer of the Guardian Nigeria's three part series  "Ilorin Emirate and the Ghost of a Fallen Empire".

Sceptics could claim that the scholarly piece above is an imaginative reworking of the stances dramatized by the works on animals vs man and that on the theologians,  a reworking inspired by Suleiman's rich analysis of the intersection of politics and religion in Ilorin, as Islamic and Yoruba traditional spiritualities are syncretised even as Muslim conservatives struggle to maintain what they understand as Islamic purity.

 Such sceptics could Google  "Myrmecological Philosophy" and be enlightened by The Daily Ant website among other illuminations.