YOUR BOYS HAVE BECOME DEVILS

YOUR BOYS HAVE BECOME DEVILS.

— Olanrewaju Alhassan Adedokun

There is some news about your teenage boys that you must listen to; you might never have a better chance to hear this in a clearer voice; the only other chance you might have at hearing this -maybe when they are indicted for rape – would be a shaky voice laced with tears.

At this point, you might say that this is commonplace; a warning about raising ‘some boys’ whose nuisance cannot be contained by their parents, but no, this is not about ‘some boys’ but your own teenage kids; those ones that have memorized the whole Qur’an, those ones that speak fluent Arabic, those ones you literally hold to have become scholars; who you think only need a law degree now before they would become the next chief Imam of Lekki and their tectonic lectures would be listened to acutely all over the country.

I’m not going to bore you with those tedious and shallow talks about the society and how it will corrupt your teenage boys, I simply want to tell you about your teenage boys and how they are already constituting nuisance to the society, how, soon, their shame will be corroborated in the village square, to tell you how your girls’ lives are at stake.

What you are about to hear might sound too perturbing to be true, but you may never hear this clearer, I repeat. You will read things that you wouldn’t expect from a Lagos conductor who doubles as a weed seller, I urge you to find solace in knowing that you will never hear them say these things to you; you are their parents, I am their friend.

Call this what you may: an attempt at self-righteously strutting my uprightness, just don’t let that overshadow the grievousness of what ensued between me and your son, my ‘friend’; your Haafidh son who is under 16, who told a girl (jilbaabite) how he much of ‘a rough kisser’ he was. And if it sounds strange and a little over the top, if it seems far fetched that your own son would say this, then I am honoured to congratulate you on your failure.

If you think what this teenage haafidh said is worth the fuss, then I’ll tell you that it is not strange to me. It is what I hear daily from my friends, your huffadh sons. It is no more than a single scene in a string of recurring events. And I would not have raised an alarm if it hadn’t come from a 14 year old whom I had always deemed quiet and reasonable, if he hadn’t been talking to another fourteen year old who thought him to be ‘cocky, sexy and cool’.(in her own words)

We meet at the KBC, at the Lekki Conference, at the One Ummah Convention. I know them too well. Different families, different ages, different backgrounds, but one ambition: girls.
We are all guilty of sins, but if we wait for the one who is sinless to cast the first stone, then no one will. I swore to myself to expose all the kinds of things I’ve heard from my ‘huffadh and Arabic-speaking friends’, to challenge them to correct me on the things they know me to do wrong too.  I would mention more horrendous atrocities being committed but for the fingers that would be pointed.

If you think your boys are safe because of some madrasah they attened, I am glad to inform you now, so that you won’t be too shocked when they impregnate a sister. That sounds far-fetched right? Wallah, Billah, it is very close. Very. Very, very. I know your sons in this aspect more than you. And no, they will not impregnate one Sister Mercy, they will do it to one of your girls too, a jilbabite, maybe even niqabi. If you have heard what I have, and seen what I have, you will agree with me that it shouldn’t be us shaking our heads at videos of a Hausa boy smoking weed and reciting Suura Taa-Ha. You should know better by now, that your boys, we, are now as bad.

You should know that you are sitting on a keg of gunpowder. The chicken will soon come home to roost, and when it does, it will be you, and the girls that will bear the brunt of it all.
This is not about Huffadh whose trousers ‘keep Lagos clean’ or boys who don’t pray. This is worse. Worse. Things that must not be said. If you dismiss this now, you will come back to it in a few years. You will know how bad it had become now, how taciturn and economical I am with revealing the extent of this decay.

If you wonder why this is directed to you rather than my friends, who, apparently, are deserving of my correction, then I’ll tell you that the reason is because I believe the blame is on you. And the teachers. And the madrasahs.

Many of you want your children to be huffadh to substantiate their curriculum vitae, you do not want them to have a sense of duty to Islam. You simply want their profiles to be more alluring. You do not really train them to become ‘Alfas’. You do not respect the scholars for their scholarly positions, but for their abilities to double as Islamic scholars and lawyers, engineers, doctors, and that is the beginning of it all.

Your children are self centred, they do not consider themselves as having the duty to change the society, to become Islamic scholars, to be ambassadors of Islam. They look down on those who pursue ‘Islamic scholarship’. They know how much you parents compromise the deen, why then, can’t they compromise some things too?

But you don’t know how bad, you won’t know now. You are free to believe it is just about your kids feeling no obligation to spread Islam. Soon, you will know how easy it is to slip when you don’t have the sense of duty. You will learn how your children lost respect for women; at 16, the friends I have talk about ‘using and dumping girls’ by Allah. They look at those few who warn them (Because yes, some of them are actually still upright) ad being too committed and unlively.

Your children have no sense of duty to Islam because you never imbibed it in them; but they have lost something bigger with it. They have lost respect for women. If you think Salafiyyah subjugates women, then you should listen to my huffadh friends talk about girls; how they talk about them like some piece of trash that can be used and dumped at any time. You need to listen. You need to know how much of a devil they have become. How they have lost all the care a Muslim should have for women, all the respect. An ideal Muslim kid who feels a sense of responsibility to Islam would respect, care for and be protective of women. He would be wary of all the stereotypes against Islam and be keen on breaking them. Your boys care not a tad about Islam or defending it. If your boys are raised to become dutiful to Islam, if you make them realize that becoming upright Muslim scholars comes before anything in life, they would feel embittered when they see Muslim girls exposing themselves to the world to feast on; but if on the other hand, they are raised to believe that one lives life as it comes, and memorized the Quran to boost his profile, then they would be the ones seeking to unveil the veiled sisters.

And our Ustadhs have to take note too. We won’t say more. No one will give you the more gory details. But please know, that what you are in for is worse than what you know. Do not trust us or assume us to be naturally upright. Things are happening. Don’t just teach these kids the Qur’an and Arabic. Engage them in deep conversations. Let them speak their mind. Let them understand the reasons behind Islam’s prohibition of things; especially those related to relationship with the opposite gender. It may require that our Ustadhs also ‘upgrade’ a bit, but it is necessary.

By the time this generation of ours start to marry, you will know what the kids have lost along with their sense of responsibility to Islam. They will marry and beat up their wives, they will treat ’em like trash, they won’t be satisfied by them because of what they had tasted.  The boys will rape your daughters, they will use and dump them, and they will move on with their lives. The brunt would be on you and the girls. We know it all and are warning before it gets there. And don’t think that the advent of this is farther, than tomorrow is to today. We know what we have seen already.