CBN’s Aisha Ahmad and Religious Hypocrisy in Northern Nigeria By Farooq Kperogi.

Religion in the Muslim north revolves around (1.) a sick, prurient obsession with the female body under the cover of religious morality, (2.) exhibitionist displays of the rituals of religiosity, and (3.) identity politics without a care for ethical virtues, truth, honesty, and kindness. 

You can lie, cheat, murder, rape, steal and generally be a monster of moral perversion and you won‘t attract the condemnation of self-appointed guardians of public religious morality as long as you observe the public rituals of religiosity and mouth off familiar, stereotyped religious idioms. And you can be the very apotheosis of justice, truth, probity, compassion, etc., but if you don’t “perform” religiosity through your sartorial choices and through your public utterances, you’re the devil himself. In other words, religion is more about form than content, more about appearance than substance, more about cold structures than essence, and more about public performance of group identity than about the internalization and performance of genuine morality and piety.

Every Muslim woman who falls short of the standards of sartorial modesty enshrined in Islam is invariably described as being “naked” and condemned as a “prostitute.” Such a woman’s moral character is irrelevant as long as she violates—or is thought to violate— this sacred sartorial code. But she can be morally debauched and be the proverb for cruelty, and she would be celebrated (or at least be allowed to live in peace) as long as she wears a hijab, knows her “place,” performs the identity rituals expected of her, and doesn’t make a public show of her debauchery. In other words, a Muslim woman’s entire worth is measured by her dressing.

The self-proclaimed male moral police who are fixated with what Muslim women wear and don’t wear won’t admit that if they, too, are judged by the standards and requirements of the religion they purport to defend they’d all come up short. All of us would. Most of them don’t lower their gaze when they encounter women, they patronize banks that traffic in riba, have pre- and extra-marital sexual liaisons, etc. What animates the sentiment that their own transgressions are more tolerable and more defensible than a Muslim woman's choice not to wear a hijab?

In fact, a two-term governor and serving senator from Yobe State was recently caught almost literally pants down—and with irrefutable video graphics corroboration, too— in a threesome with two “un-hijabed” girls in a cheap, grubby brothel. There was no outrage from the self-anointed moral police. On the contrary, most of them defended the senator’s right to privacy and cautioned against exposing a fellow Muslim to ridicule. Between being unclad in a hijab and engaging in adultery and being impenitent about it when caught, which is worthier of moral outrage?

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. View complete profile. 

You are not Above a Good Articulate Sub, By Joy Isi Bewaji.

Steve Jobs was fired from his own company. After starting something phenomenal at 21, becoming a millionaire at 23, then at 30, kicked out at Apple – a company he built. It was a public failure. A humiliating crash. But it didn’t faze him. He continued with the fight to win. We know he eventually succeeded beyond measure, beyond what anyone would have thought possible after his first loss.

Oprah addressed mad cow disease, and the entire Texas cattle ranchers fought her tooth and nail. “The only mad cow here is Oprah,” they mocked.  Hungry Nigerians with no clue how to improve a nation without basic infrastructure have analyzed the woman’s life, claiming “how can she be happy when she has no child?” But in your country, they accuse children of witchcraft, beat them silly and abandon them under suspicious and disgraceful cultural/religious beliefs. But you have a mouth. None of this has stopped Oprah from winning.

Can we talk about Serena? A woman who has been called every unpleasant thing, and told she is neither male nor female, thus does not belong on this earth. Yet she is the greatest of all time.

I have seen ugly wretched abominable cursed Africans on Mark Zuckerberg’s private wall dropping hateful comments about his wife’s looks. Yet Mark is still greater than every person - dead or alive or about to be born in your family, and all your African leaders put together.

Half the contestants and winners of “America’s Next Top Model” become extremely resentful regarding their expectations after winning or losing. They sell-out to blogs, acting ratchet on tabloids, talking shit about Tyra and her work, thinking they are running her down but all the while they are exposing their filthy opinions for the world to feast on for the moment. Tyra is still winning.

I can give you a thousand other examples.

Now let’s talk about YOU – what happened to you?

Oh! Someone subbed you and you have spent the last one year acting like you are above a good sub. You have manipulated conversations, gathered e-losers such as yourself, re-grouped morons in your inbox, plotted, schemed, pulled out your beard or hair as the case may be, formed and dissolved cliques, cliqued with people based on common enemies, expended all your energy and purpose on trying to get back at someone who thinks very little of you. You are a narcissistic, delusional, bipolar, schizophrenic, washout, has-been, non-achieving flop.

How’s that for a sub?

Life hasn’t taught you anything, has it? You want to start a cause and you want the entire social media to support you. You want to put a picture of someone that means something to you – whether a child or a lover and you want everyone to coo. You want people to understand you. You want your kind of (non)beauty to appeal to everyone, you want the size of your bones to be appreciated, you want us all to like what you like, you want your dreams to be endorsed by people who you don’t know. And you think you are not mad.

What you have suffered, is it greater than being booed and banana peels are thrown at you when you are living your purpose on a pitch?  Have you ever thought of what it must feel like to walk into your office one day and find something that represents hate – for your skin colour or just for being you? Will you survive it? Serena and many black athletes survive every day. And don’t tell me it’s about money. They wouldn’t have “seen” any money if they gave up OR in your case - concentrate on a sub.

YOU ARE NOT ABOVE A GOOD ARTICULATE SUB. JUST KNOW THAT NARCISSIST.

It’s a tough job for you because this subee knows how to win. I will NEVER stop winning. And if there are no rooms created to win anymore, I will create one. I can turn anything into gold.

Anna Wintour of Vogue wore a mink coat to an international fashion show, and activists threw raw meat at her in protest. Imagine stepping out of your limousine and onto the red carpet, making your way into the hall, then meat starts to land on your face and your expensive designer dress.

Did she spend an entire year trying to, err, drive some of the people from social media? Did she gather her rich celebrity friends to attack and yada yada? No. It is clearly beneath her. These people are mere pawns in the scheme of things. Just like you. A pawn.

What did Anna do? She took the meat off her skin, asked for wipes and a handkerchief, raised her head up and walked into the hall like the winner she always will be.

That is me.

That is the difference between you and me. I am better. You are just an angry, bitter dregs, suffering deep-seated inferiority issues; insecurity stretched out like 100 yards of Nigerian wife material. Ultimately a Nobody.

 

You will never win this war. My homework, my A-game is tighter than your weave, spandex or briefs as the case may be.

Scurry away with your old and worn two-year-old war. This Edo girl already had your flesh for dinner.

Joy Isi Bewaji, a prolific writer, columnist, and the managing director of Happenings Radio and Happenings Magazine.