𝑰𝒅𝒓𝒊𝒔 𝑨. 𝑶𝒏𝒊 PhD@IdrisAOni1
This is partly why I decided not to keep quiet. Please read:
*I had a counselling session last week. It was with a particular Habibaty who is preparing for her first MB exam. That is the first professional exam that those who study MBBS write, written in 300 level. It is a central exam and quite intense.
Before the exam, they actually write one in 200 level called pre-MB. It is like a mock exam, just like when you're about to write WAEC and your school gives you a mock exam to prepare you and give you a taste of what the main thing will be like.
Our session basically centered around preparing for her exams, and from the look of things, she does really get a hang of it, and I'm rooting for her.
But we didn't suddenly get here. Our sessions have been a while coming.
Her mother first reached out to me last year and booked counselling appointments for her.
What happened?
An 18-year-old teenager in 200 level, very, very brilliant, given her A-levels grade and the fact that she got her MBBS admission the first and only time she tried, suddenly stopped attending classes. Stopped reading. Stopped doing that which her parents sent her to the university to do.
Because she had moved with the wrong crowd, not the type that you're probably thinking about.
These types are the extremist types. The ones that tell girls that education is fitnah and exposes them to corruption, and all sorts of jargon.
I don't know at what point she became brainwashed.
But it all started with accompanying a friend to one halqah around the campus. After that day, she went back, and again, and again.
And with each passing time, her Eemān “rises,” and she further disassociated from her education, as she saw it as mere distraction from her utmost goal, which is the ākhirah.
She started spending all of her time going to these people’s halqah, madrassah, sittings, meetings, etc.
Thankfully, she had a roommate who immediately notified her parents.
And boy, were they disoriented?
The mother was crying when she called me. She said they were not a particularly rich or even comfortable family. They scraped pennies to pay for her A-levels and for her school fees at the university.
They had tried to correct her and even punish her by restricting her stipends, but she only got more adamant.
They actually managed to get her to come home so they could talk sense into her, but instead, Habibaty started telling them about how corrupted the university system now is with the free mixing, the dress code required of her, how endless studying contributes nothing to her ākhirah. What if she died before she got to complete her education?
She further worsened the situation by saying she was ready to get married to one of those people, yes, the same extremist people who brainwashed her. She was going to be a third wife to a man who was clearly not succeeding in taking care of the first two and their battalion of children.
For a girl given so much, that would be tantamount to ruining her own life.
It was the type of misfortune that one never recovers from, and one's generation continues to suffer for it.
The mother said they had to lock her up in the house because she had grown way too stubborn. She was very exhausted already, and the father's BP was high.
She said they had gotten my contact from someone who follows me on Facebook and knows I have a Mentorship for teenage Muslim girls.
I was not surprised, actually. Parents call me for all kinds of things for their teenage daughters, and I'm so glad that they see me in that role.
Aside from being a professional counselling psychologist, I appreciate the impact I have on young girls all over. The other time, a sister’s parents actually called me regarding their daughter’s NYSC. Both of them were speaking on the phone while asking questions: Is it ideal for a Muslimah? Is it ideal for this? For that? How about dressing? How about exposure and free mixing? Etc."
1/