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Emir Sanusi decries high poverty, illiteracy rate in the North, blames elite silence

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By Ishaya Ibrahim

The Emir of Kano, Muhammad Sunusi II, has said that the high rate of poverty in the north is a potent threat to Islam in the region.

Sanusi made the remark at the 50th anniversary of the Islamic Education Trust.

“Believe me, if poverty continues in the north, Islam will disappear from the north. Poverty can lead to disbelief,” he said.

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He added that the Almajiris on the streets could easily be converted from the Islamic belief if a non-Muslim cleans them up and gives them medicare and education.

He also said Islam does not licence pedophilia.

“We have just codified the Muslim family law in Kano. And one of the issues that is very controversial is the question of how do you regulate a stage at which a girl gets married.

“And you have (Islamic) scholars that will tell you there is no Hadith (teachings of Islam Prophet), there is no aya (verse), there is no scholar that said you cannot marry a girl at the age of three, or four of five. And it is true. They might say that.

“And you try to tell them that in Islam, there is something called regulating that which is lawful.

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“And to give an example that we can all understand. We all have freedom of movement. You have the freedom to enter your car and to drive your car. Yet someone says to you, if you see a red light, you must stop. He has not stopped you from driving. He has regulated driving because if you keep going through those red lights, you can kill someone, you can cause accident, you can damage society.

“If you say wait until a girl has reached a certain age before you marry her, you have not stopped marriage. You have simply regulated a certain element of it that has been shown to cause harm to society. We have seen all the harm associated with all these,” he said.   

He said in Nigeria, poverty is more deepened in Muslim dominated areas.

“If you look at all the poverty indices in the world today, you find that in South West Nigeria, the instance of poverty is 20 per cent.

“In the North West, it is 80 per cent.  The North East is 80 per cent. Why is it that the poorest part of this country are the Muslim part? Why is it that in a state that started Sharia in 1999, how come it is not the most educated state? How come that in that state in 2017,  only 24 children got five credits in secondary school?

“How do we define Sharia? How do we define Islam? Illiteracy? Malnutrition? Children on the streets? We have to ask ourselves. And we can’t ask ourselves until we begin to understand through Usul (Islamic principle) that you have to live in this world well in order to serve Allah well for the hereafter.

“For Islam to prosper, we need educated Muslims. We need Muslims that are not begging. We need Muslims that can stand on their feet,” he said.

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