Friday, February 24, 2017

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Emir Sanusi on Polygamy, Procreation, and Poverty


The very first line of Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield : "I was ever of opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population. "

Speaking here as a free electron, not chained, a mystic if you like, I am not aware that the Almighty commanded "that the Jews should sally forth to all corners of the world beget and flourish and extend their populations all over the globe."

Such a perception is at the heart of much misunderstanding. We know this much about Adam (the legendary early family of mankind )

"And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the sky and over all the beasts that tread upon the earth. " (Genesis 1: 26- 28). It's important to know that Adam was not Jewish and that it was only after Adam failed in his mission and long after that generation that Abraham - the first so called "Jew" was entrusted with the reconstituted mission that was originally Adam's - and that of course Israel was the promised land by which I understand that the Almighty did not command Abraham's offspring to " sally forth to all corners of the world" and conquer other lands etc. "and extend their populations all over the globe"

You (whoever you are) must admit that it should be difficult to contradict the Almighty's edict / executive order to "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it" even if according to your estimation or prognosis the earth is already filled or at the breaking point of being overfilled so the cup to "runneth over". Just try telling that to some of the orthodox rabbis who are populating like rabbits and - with the decimation of world Jewry by six million souls so recently behind them continue to have large families forever aware & thinking about the so called demographic nightmare Palestinians about to drown them, they will probably ask you, " Who are you? Are you God? The Messiah?"

From that point of view it's probably unfair for example for that Cairo Conference on population to come out with such decrees or recommendations. There are many conspiracy theorists who believe that any talk of population control is calculated to severely weaken or reduce the growth of Muslim populations that would contribute significantly to the army of al-Islam - and for a very similar reason (self-interest) my radical Muslim friend says that he sells alcohol : "to weaken the kuffar"...


On Thursday, 23 February 2017 11:46:08 UTC+1, Olayinka Agbetuyi wrote:

Lets put the Emir of Kano's comments in its right perspective. No Emir can sit in Nigeria and change Islamic Law  since it did not originate in Nigeria so his alienated comment is simply a figment of his own imagination.  Islamic Law is theological in nature and he owes his position in the Nigerian society to that Law. 

In the ideal world religious considerations would not form the basis of societal laws; paradoxically societies do not function outside religions.  But I do know that a considerable part of western laws and jurisprudence derive their basis from Cannon Law which is religious in origins (extensions from the Bible and the Mosaic Ten Commandments). 

 I recall the Biblical injunction that states that the world and all that resides therein belong to the Lord (meaning Jewish God -Yahweh) and that the Jews should sally forth to all corners of the world beget and flourish and extend their populations all over the globe.

Yes the Quoran did not impose polygamy on anybody but those who could afford it(or think they could, including those thinking their not-so-rosy present circumstances would change in the future) choose to adopt it.

No. Its not only men who relish procreating in abundance to boost their masculine egos. I shared a cab with a woman 20 yrs ago in London who boasted of having ten children.  She goes around to the flats of each of her daughters to give them some support  with their kids and spoke with the pride of an accomplished woman.  She was middle aged Middle Eastern and on welfare.

I know the Irish communities favour large families of up to 10 or 13 children per woman believing that contraception is against the law of God.

The mindset of Moses's relative reflects a view in rural communities in which abundance of children help on the farms and can be the basis of future wealth of the parent in terms of the increase in yield consequent on the expansion of human labor.  If the children are adequately trained  (not necessarily only in western education) it can boost the the cooperative financial output of the extended family or clan.




Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: Kenneth Harrow <har...@msu.edu>
Date: 22/02/2017 22:55 (GMT+00:00)
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Emir Sanusi on Polygamy, Procreation, and Poverty

It's very difficult for many people to see issues outside their own narrow cultural orbit.

It also takes a small amount of facts to determine how overpopulation impacts the larger community, the state, the continent, the world. We have a finite world, with far too many people in it, given our resources. We'll go own increasing demands for energy and food, demands on water, and  go on hearing meaningless responses, like, look how much land there is. that's like saying the earth is flat because it looks that way.

When we refuse an inoculation for our child, thinking we are protecting it, we endanger all children. We need to think in community terms on a planetary scale. Arguments in favor of ethnic or cultural exceptionalism only damage everyone.

Lastly, arguing to a muslim that they can't take more than one wife accords with the qur'an which states you can't marry more than one woman unless you can afford to pay all the necessary expenses. If people ignore that injunction, they violate a reasonable law, as if they are somehow exceptions.

 

If we think of ourselves as belonging to one large family, then we have to accept the demands of the whole family, not just our immediate family.

That means u.s. wealth and western wealth can't go just to our citizens; it also means what one member of the family decides to do impacts all of us.

Ken

 

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "meoc...@gmail.com" <meoc...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wednesday 22 February 2017 at 11:51
To: usaafricadialogue <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Emir Sanusi on Polygamy, Procreation, and Poverty

 

 

Emir Muhammadu Sanusi of Kano recently caused controversy by proposing a new Islamic family law to regulate polygamy, which he linked to unregulated procreation, poverty, juvenile delinquency, and terrorism.

In principle, I agree with the emir of Kano's pronouncement on polygamy, procreation, and poverty. However, there is need to proceed with caution on the legislative intervention he is proposing. I am not Muslim or Hausa so I may not be able to speak to the theological and cultural issue at stake. However, I do know that our societies in Africa are driven by patriarchy and notions of masculine pride and dignity. This culture tends to mediate how people see these things.

Like the emir, I used to display an unqualified intolerance for people who want to bring many children into this world despite lacking the means to care for them. I used to preach vehemently and somewhat haughtily against unbridled procreation among my own poor extended family. 

Then I decided to scold this stubborn member of the family, a primary school teacher who insisted, as he put it, on having as many children as God would give him, despite clearly not having the means to care for them. Several people in our family had spoken to him to no avail.

Because I was occasionally supporting him financially I felt that I had some leverage and sway with him and could convince him to see what every other person was seeing and drop his policy of unrestrained procreation. The first time I talked to him, he listened to my long speech and politely promised to look into the matter.

A couple of years and another child later, I decided to confront him again on the issue. Everyone felt that he would only listen to me. This time he was ready for me, fuming while listening to me. Because he is much older than me, I took his fuming to be a response to my tone and decided to persuade him rather than scold him for his choice. 

When my sermon was over, he cleared his throat and declared that he too had something to say to me. He said essentially that as a man, a man of our ethnic group, there are two things that one aspires to possess in abundance: wealth and children. These two possessions or at least one of them, he said, made one a man. He said he didn't have money and could never be wealthy, having become too old for wealth to happen to him. All he had left to demonstrate his masculinity in order not to be considered a failure in life was to have as many children as he could have and to be remembered for being blessed with children when he is gone. He said people like me who "have money" would not understand, since we already had the ability to possess the two gold standards of manly success. He said if he had money like me, my advice would make sense and he would not need to have many children.

Folks like him, he said, will have lived unremarkable, vain lives if they did not procreate liberally when they were on this earth. With my wealth (he saw me as wealthy) I was already guaranteed respect as a man, and regardless of how many children I have, I was assured of maximum cultural capital as a man, as well as a legacy. He then tried to appeal to my clan pride. He said I was a small boy, that I didn't know that our lineage had been depleted by untimely deaths and needed to be repopulated, and that I should appreciate and support his effort to assure the lineage of continuity and human capital in the future. Finally, he asked if I didn't think it was mean and selfish of me, a successful man assured of recognition and respect, to stop him from fulfilling his manly destiny the only way he could still do so. He was accusing me of trying to stop him from getting to where I was--a place of masculine accomplishment as defined by our culture. He was accusing me of trying to kick away the proverbial ladder that got me to the place of respect he imagined me to occupy. 

I was humbled. I piped down. He had successfully emotionally blackmailed me. He had turned the leverage I thought I had on him against me. I came into the conversation on the offensive. He had put me on the defensive. I now had to reassure him that I was not out to keep him from building a legacy of masculine accomplishment. Even though I still disagreed fundamentally with his rationalization of his unbridled procreation, he made sense from a purely cultural perspective, the most dominant frame of reference available to him.

We agreed to disagree on the issue, and I told him that he would see my point in the future and that I hoped that he would not regret shunning my advice.

Even though we parted on a note of disagreement, I came away with a better appreciation for where he was coming from, for his masculine anxieties, and for the unspoken patriarchal cultural pressures against which he was struggling, and which were unfortunately determining his procreation decision.

I knew that he was speaking from a well established cultural script. In my village in Benue state, a man considered successful in the old days would boast that he had money and he had many children, meaning that he was complete. I connected what he had said to this manly tradition of success and fulfilment.

I realized that as personal as this issue may seem, it is deeply interwoven with our society's notions of masculinity and masculine pride, and that unless the culture evolves persons operating solely within it may never be persuaded to act outside of its dictates.

 

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