Jakadan Zaman Lafiya

By Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu, "The Khalifa In London: Sheikh Qaribullah As Ambassador For Peace" - Leadership Nigeria - Abuja, FCT, Nigeria
Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The British Government, through the British High Commission, Abuja, Nigeria, extended a special invitation to the leader of the Qadriyyah Sufi Movement in West Africa, Sheikh Qaribullah Nasir Kabara, of Kano State, Nigeria, to visit key religious institutions in the UK in the first week of March 2008 for dialogue on conflict resolution and peaceful engagement with Islamic institutions.

Professor Abdalla Uba Adamu, a cultural anthropologist with special interest in the Anthropology of Islamic Groups accompanied the Khalifa’s team.

He made a film of the trip called The Khalifa in London – Jakadan Zaman Lafiya [Ambassador for Peace] which was screened on Friday 18th April 2008 on the eve of the Qadriyya Sufi Movement’s Maukibi for 2008. This is his report of the trip.

Engagement with Islam has become the new template for understanding Muslim peoples and creating a new world order in which peace, mutual respect and understanding of each others’ perspectives has become necessary to make the world a better, secure and more peaceful place.

Consequently it has become increasingly clear that the only way to achieve a successful engagement based on mutual respect is through dialogue on common grounds.

It is based on this that the British High Commission, Abuja, Nigeria, extended a special invitation to Sheikh Qaribullah Nasir Kabara, the Khalifa of the Qadriyya Sufi Movement in West Africa, to visit the United Kingdom and interact with various Muslim and Christian institutions with the view of exchanging ideas concerning the role of young Muslims in maintaining peace on the planet.

What makes the invitation to the Khalifa more appealing was the fact of his being a mesmeric node of a vast network of Qadriyyah Sufi adherents throughout Western and Northern Africa – most of whom are young men and women who will increasingly play a significant role in the balance of peace in the future.

Khalifa Sheikh Qaribullah Nasir Kabara is the leader of the Qadriyyah Sufi Movement in Nigeria and the entire West African region. He ascended to the Khalifa in 1996 after the death of his father, Sheikh Muhammad Nasir Kabara.

With adherents stretching from Chad basin to the Senegambia, the Qadriyyah Tariqa is the most focused concentration of Sufi adherents in post-colonial Africa. Under the leadership of Khalifa Sheikh Qaribullah, the Qadriyyah has become more globalised, while retaining its local roots, using media technologies to spread the message of peace and conflict resolution through mutual dialog – for instance through a well-developed website.

Thus the invitation for the Khalifa to visit key strategic institutions in the UK as part of larger strategy of show of respect for the Khalifa and his approach to peaceful co-existence amongst people of differing faiths is significant in its wider implications for mutual respect for all religions. The visit to the United Kingdom took place between 2nd to 6th March, 2008.

The first institution visited was the School for Oriental and African Studies where the Khalifa and his team were met by Prof. Graham Furniss and Prof. Phillip Jaggar – both Hausa scholars and who could speak the Hausa language very fluently. Indeed during the discourse on manuscript preservation, Prof. Graham Furniss impressed the Khalifa’s team by recited, off hand, and word-for-word, a famous poem by the late Sheikh Nasir Kabara, Yaro Ka San Akwai (Child, You Know There Is).

As I said earlier, the main objective of the visit to SOAS is to explore ways of preserving Arabic manuscripts and how Darul Qadriyyah could help in this process. The sharing of the old manuscripts of the Nasir Kabara Diwan (volume) is one of the successful outcomes of the interactions.

The next visit was to the offices of the Union of Muslim Organisations in the UK and Eire, where the Khalifa exchanged views with officials about the significance of bringing differing Muslim groups together under the same umbrella for peaceful dialogue with other clusters of believers.

This visit highlights how the various Muslim groups in Nigeria – Qadriyyah, Tijaniyya, Izala, Shi’a could form an internal network of advocacy for peace among the various adherents of Islam, not only in Nigeria, but also in the West African sub-region; at the same time such internal network could also form a basis for networking with non-Muslim organizations for further dialogue. The outcome of the visit to the UMO was to highlight the power of unions in religious dialogue.

Another significant site visited was the Houses of Parliament in London where the Khalifa and his entourage were given exclusive tours of the Houses of the Lords and the Houses of Commons.

Indeed, the Khalifa and two of his team were given an exclusive chance to watch the Prime Minister’s Question Time during which the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, showed his oratory and skills in constructive dialogue with the opposition Members of Parliament.

Later, the team had a chance to meet with John Robertson, Labour MP who had earlier in 2007 visited Kano and paid courtesy calls to the two Khalifas of the Sufi movements in Nigeria – Sheikh Qaribullah for Qadriyyah, and Sheikh Isyaka Rabi’u for Tijaniyya.

John Robertson remembered his visit which was conducted on the basis of the British All Party Parliamentary Group on Nigeria for which John Robertson was the Chairman, and the recommendations of the report of the Group on how best to move Nigeria forward is through engagement in dialogue.

Although I have lived in London for some years – and during its most colorful years of the Punk era in the 1980s – I have never had the opportunity to visit the Houses of Parliament until this visit. The Khalifa’s team were given a special tour of the Houses of Parliament and its two chambers – House of the Lords and House of Commons and at the end of the tour, the Khalifa and two of his team were given a special concession to watch the Prime Minister’s Question Time. The rest of us watched it from the restaurant of the Houses of Parliament on TV!

The Khalifa was profoundly affected by the sheer transparency he witnessed during the Question Time. As he told us, apparently a contract for the production of new Police uniforms in the UK had been awarded, and a member of Parliament was commenting that he once saw the Prime Minister shaking hands with the person given the contract – what’s the explanation!

The Prime Minister gave an answer that was quite accepted by everyone. In Nigeria such a situation would not probably have arisen, for leaders are used to giving contracts to their cronies without a care about public accountability.

After the Parliamentary visit, then a lunch meeting took place at the excellent Indian Redfort Restaurant in London, and highlights another significant point on the role of dialogue in combating terror.

The lunch was hosted by Arthur Snell, the Head of Counter-Terrorism Division of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Again during this business lunch frank issues were discussed about the role of religious leaders in peaceful dialogue. Interestingly enough, the dialogue between the Khalifa and Arthur Snell was conducted entirely in Arabic.

No one would have been given the opportunity of going to London without visiting the BBC – and the Khalifa’s team were no exception. At the BBC headquarters at Bush House in London, the team was met with courtesy and utter respect and promptly taken to the Hausa Section where the Khalifa recorded a live interview on his visit with Suleiman Ibrahim Katsina.

Almost immediately after the interview, calls started coming in from as far away places as Malaysia and Saudi Arabia welcoming the Khalifa to London and congratulating him for his advocacy for dialogue, not violence , as a means of bringing peace on the planet.

On the final day of the visits, which was Friday 7th March, 2008, the Khalifa was hosted at the London Central Mosque by the Imam, who paid a courtesy call to the Khalifa after the Friday prayers and they exchanged perspectives on Da’awah work and the need to keep emphasising unity among the Ummah.

A finale to the day was a special Zikr session held in the honor of the Khalifa at two central London mosques which stopped 3.30 a.m – and only because the Khalifa had a plane to catch back to Nigeria the following day.

The visit – facilitated in part by The Bridge Builders – was tremendously successful in providing an ecology of Islamic groups most have never seen before.

Full of frank discussions about the role of Islam in maintaining world peace, and specifically the role of Tariqa movements in advocating peace, the manner and intellectualism with which the Khalifa conducted himself – in both English and Arabic – impressed me as a bystander about his emerging role as Ambassador for Peace – Jakadan Zaman Lafiya.

A film of the journey – significant for the insight it provides into how religious groups send messages about peace to the world has been made. It is called The Khalifa in London – Ambassador for Peace.

It is the first full-length documentary by Visually Ethnographic Productions – a documentary film unit with special focus on cultural anthropology of northern Nigeria.

An audio of the Qasidas – Poems – recited for the Khalifa in the two London mosques is also available. All from the Qadriyyah Movement Headquarters in Kano, Nigeria.

Interestingly, one of the Qasidas was sung in a hip-hop style form in English by Rakim Fetuga of the UK Islamic Da’awah rap and hip-hop group, Mecca2Medina and who had previously performed at the British Council in Kano, Nigeria.

[Picture: Shaykh Qaribullahi Nasiru Kabara. Photo: Darul Qadiriyyah. Read the Shaykh biography and visit the Tariqa's website http://darulqadiriyyah.org/mb/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=27].