The focus of Chapter Seven is interesting and engaging in its examination of “Between Rajm and Magun: A Comparative Analysis”. Here, Shittu Sulaiman returns to the issue of Zinah directly and indirectly focused on in Chapter Three. Apart from providing the theological and jurisprudential basis for rajm or stoning to death in Islam as a punishment for extra-marital sexual relationship, he also states that the conditions for rajm are extremely difficult if not outright impossible to implement except the offender voluntarily confesses. This is contra-distinguished from the instant and one-sided justice that underpins the Yoruba concept of magun translated as “thunderbolt”, an allusion to Tunde Kilani’s blockbuster movie that examines the subject. In magun, a wrongly suspected woman still dies or suffers on the strength of mere suspicion while in rajm, the punishment is only administered when the crime is proven beyond reasonable doubt. With neither the Islamic rajm nor the Yoruba magun, in its eye-popping forms, desirable, the sub-text is the call for self-discipline and self-control on the vagaries of sex and sexuality.
The next Chapter, “The Veil and the Muslimah: a Review of Katherine Bullock’s Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil…” is a book review done by Khalid Afolabi. The author leads us on a chapter-by-chapter excursion into the world of the 2003 book that serves to correct the impression among many Westerners that hijab is a symbol of oppression. The importance of the Chapter derives from the scholarship undergirding Katherine Bullock’s work, the Muslim perspective or the alternative theory brought into the debate for the Western audience by the Muslim revert and the relevance of the subject to Nigeria. To wit, many Nigerians still remain largely ignorant and intolerant of hijab as evident in the travail of Firdaos Amosa Abdulsalam who was denied of her Call-to-Bar right on December 13, 2017 just because of her hijab. It is instructive that as Bullock, the author, and Afolabi, the reviewer, both submit respectively, “it is a request that Muslim women who enjoy wearing hijāb be treated with respect, be listened to gracefully, and disputed with in the spirit of goodwill” and “hijāb is not just a recommended religious emblem, it is an integral part of a Muslim woman’s identity.”
The remaining four chapters follow the same pattern of deepening Islam and intellectualism. While Sulayman O.Nafiu Al-Mavericky expatiates on the elements of the Islamic society, which include individuals, activities and relationships, Sharia’h law and the universe in his “What is the Islamic Society?”, Dr Shafi’i Abdul Azeez Bello provides the “Bahrain Model of Shariah Governance for Islamic Banking and Finance”, adding an international dimension to the Shariah debate with insights for the theory of banking and implications for the practice of Islamic Banking in Nigeria. Then, in the penultimate chapter, written in Arabic, Afeez Akanni Otun attempts to pay back the celebrator by treating the Arabic homonyms taught and extensively researched on by the latter for four decades with admirable finesse in “Homonyms in Arabic Language.” The last chapter, also in Arabic, examines “The Life and Works of Shaykh Nasrudeen Kabara”, a foremost Islamic scholar of Kano extraction. In the article, Ibrahim Ismail Ibrahim also seeks to follow Prof. Abubakre’s footprints in scholarship and contributions to history and Arabic literary appreciation over the decades.
As the tributes and their authors in the last part of the book speak for themselves from their diverse sociocultural and religious backgrounds, it is hoped that this commemorative book will serve to cultivate and nourish some of the ideals that have defined Prof. Abubakre in the readers, especially the students, to whom the icon being celebrated has dedicated his life. This point further explains why the selected chapters are largely from these budding scholars, having first celebrated him in 2015 under the auspices of the National Association of Osun State Students (NAOSS), University of Ilorin, Ilorin, on January 20, 2015 with a Personality Lecture here published for the first time as the first chapter. With another commemorative event on January 20, 2018 under the auspices of the Postgraduate Class of Arabic and Islamic Studies (2016/2017), University of Ibadan and Federation of Iwoland Students Union, University of Ilorin Branch, the students and the academics who support them are appreciated for proving that teachers’ rewards are not only in heaven, their rewards can manifest in this life through several means, including but not limited to a publication of this nature which marks an important life’s milestone.