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Showing posts from July, 2017

STEM

Science, Engineering and Mathematics, No Arabic, Please! We have heard with consternation that the Federal Ministry of Education has introduced a new curriculum in our school system that places emphasis on Arabic, Religious Knowledge and Civics. The Honourable Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu is a friend; an ascetic and incorruptible public intellectual for whom I have high regards. But if what is said is true, the new policy is retrogressive. I have nothing against Arabic. I lived and travelled throughout the MENA countries, the Middle East and North Africa. I can hold my own in conversational Arabic. I’m known among my Arab friends as Obaidallah, same as the Hebrew Obadiah or Avadiah (servant of the Most High). I have communed with the greatest Muslim philosophers:  Jalaluddin Rumi, al-Ghazali, Averroes, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Sinna; and the medieval sages of Cordoba, al-Andalus, Samarkand and al-Zaytuna. No intellectual could possibly downplay the contributions of Arab-Muslim