Tomiwa Samson

A Wrong Version of Islam I grew up in the wrong version of Islam. An Islam mixed with fear, not faith. An Islam built on incantations, sacrifices, concoctions, incisions, amulets, soaps and spirits, not God. When I was young, my Alfa would send me to look for lizards. Me and other boys would roam uncompleted buildings, chasing them, catching some alive, killing some already dead. I became very good at it. I mastered how to catch them without stress. I was proud of that skill. I watched him put the lizards in a pot with stems and roots of different trees. He added alligator pepper and burned everything into ashes. I watched him put a big black cat inside a sack, slam it against the wall while it cried, fighting for its life, until the life was beaten out of it. Then he burned it into ashes. One day I asked him if Islam permits burning animals alive in such a cruel way. His answer was always the same. “Take care of your own life. You don’t need to worry about some things.” And because he was the scholar, because he was the Alfa, because he was supposed to know better, we kept quiet. His room was always packed with bottles of schnapps. Mysterious calabashes. A strange white bowl he claimed to consult. He said a spirit lived inside it and spoke clearly. You could hear the voice. But if you opened the bowl, it was just a gourd inside. Sometimes he gave us powders while chanting incantations for minutes, mentioning the names of gods and spirits. Later, I bought an exercise book and started writing everything down. Every charm I learned from him. That was my own account book. Charms for good luck. Soaps for blessings. Charms that bullets could not penetrate. Charms that could make a woman fall in love with you. I wrote over a hundred of them. For a long time, I thought this was Islam. I thought this was life. Until I met the true Islam. The Islam that told me all of this is shirk and idolatry. That burning animals this way is not Islam, it is cruelty. That consulting sand, water, spirits, bowls or calabashes is not spirituality, it is falsehood. That fear-driven rituals are not faith. That God does not share His power with charms, powders or spirits. Only God knows how many Muslims are still trapped in this false version of Islam. An Islam inherited, not understood. An Islam mixed with culture, fear and silence. An Islam that looks religious but has nothing to do with God. And the most dangerous part is this. Many of them think they are defending Islam, when in reality, they are worshipping something else entirely.