“The fool who knows his foolishness is wise at any rate so far. But the fool who thinks himself wise, he is a fool indeed.” – Dhammapada
Nigerians can be petty. I have heard so many debates regarding the removal of Arabic letterings on our currency. Assuming the Arabic letters are taken out, what other form of decimals will be used? Answer: the Arabic Numerals will be used!
A lot of buffoons do not know the name of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0, is Arabic numerals. So you want to remove words, as we have it written on the Naira notes such as…
“نير طرى بين”
The above Arabic letterings simply translate to mean 200 Naira. So those people trying to break their hearts unnecessarily that having Arabic writings on the Naira is synonymous to islamising Nigeria have to contend with the fact that the decimals from 1 to 0 are still Arabic! You used the same writings to study in school, conduct your businesses, document dates and communicate.
Those letterings on the Naira wouldn’t stop Christian’s from traveling to Arabian countries. I don’t think by merely being in Dubai I’d assume I’m being converted to a Muslim Arab yet I must deal in their currency, read from menus that have both English and Arabic, use roads that bear Arabic signs, etc.
Whenever you buy any products, ranging from phones, cereal, computers, automobiles and many more things clearly have written Arabic in their user manuals. The use of such is no different from Mandarin, French, Spanish etc. Their purpose is only to communicate how to use whatever it is an individual purchases and nothing more.
We should bear in mind that Islam and Christianity do not recognise Sunday as a day of worship yet it has been imposed on both religions by certain forces in Rome as early as 306 AD during the days of Flavius Valerius Constantinus, or as he is referred to in English, “Constantine I”. He added Sunday to the sabbath and making it into a day for worship.
If my Christian brethren trace what Constantine did to Christianity which is similar to what Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab ibn Sulayman al-Tamimi who was born between 1703 to 1792, we would understand they were responsible for allowing certain negative traits to venture into the two major religions in this world. However, since we’re only discussing on the Naira, I wouldn’t ruffle any feathers by categorically stating the wrong things they did, as deep a discourse as it may be, since it’s not the matter at hand. I will only inform us of this simple contrast to the Islamisation accusation against Muslims. Take, for example, Muslims accept to go to work on Fridays and return to work after the Friday prayers even as important as the day is to them. They’ve never complained about Sundays being imposed on them.
It will do us good if we will shelve mischief and unnecessary hate towards one another and simply live in peace. Those letterings on the Naira wouldn’t stop Christian’s from traveling to Arabian countries. I don’t think by merely being in Dubai I’d assume I’m being converted to a Muslim Arab yet I must deal in their currency, read from menus that have both English and Arabic, use roads that bear Arabic signs, etc. I don’t think US citizens ever castigated their former President Thomas Jefferson for owning a copy of the Qur’an, the ultimate Islamic scripture. We must learn to be wise.
* Mr. Mukhtar is the Executive Director/CEO of Suburban Crafts Limited. He can be contacted via email: [email protected]
