Though the English word “hypocrisy” literally means Nifaq in Arabic, it doesn’t always convey the strictest sense of the term in Islamic terminology, which is feigning being a Muslim while deep down rejecting Islam wholly or partially. Accordingly, “hypocrite” is too light to mean the strictest sense of its Arabic equivalent, “munafiq”.
Nifaq thrives only in a largely Muslim community where some individuals who deep down reject Islam or some parts thereof feign being Muslims to blend in. It began in the Madinah phase of the Messenger of Allah’s mission when the Muslim community developed into a substantive state in the Arabian Peninsula with the potential to develop further into a global power. Ever since then, there have always been munafiqs among Muslim communities.
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Munafiqs’ motives vary depending on the circumstances of the Muslim community they infiltrate at a given age and area. However, their main objective has always been to manipulate as many unsuspecting Muslims as possible into disbelief, in disguise. The less a Muslim knows about Islam or the more he holds on to any prejudice, the more vulnerable he is to the influence of munafiqs.
Though munafiqs’ modus operandi differ from one Muslim community to another, they have always focused on questioning the authenticity of the sources of Islamic principles and values, and interpreting the Qur’anic verses and the Sunnatic hadiths out of context using deceptive philosophical instruments to form their “arguments”.
Modern times munafiqs i.e. the neo-munafiqs are unsurprisingly more “sophisticated” and more “convincing” than their ancient predecessors. In the past, misguidance was relatively easy to detect whereas standards have now been distorted, which makes it increasingly difficult to detect misguidance and the agenda behind it. The standards of identifying good and bad in many aspects of life have been hugely undermined. Consequently, misguidance is now institutionally sanctioned and vigorously promoted as “the right thing”.
The ensuing confusion has grown so deep-rooted that, unlike in the past when munafiqs themselves realised deep down that they were indeed munafiqs, the neo-munafiqs today are under the illusion that they are still within the Islamic fold as long as they call themselves Muslims and don’t openly renounce it.
The degree of public and individual commitment to religion in a particular Muslim community determines how the neo-munafiqs operate in it. In Muslim communities where that commitment isn’t a priority due to some cultural, historical or other influences, the neo-munafiqs operate unapologetically, for they risk losing nothing.
However, in Muslim communities with a considerable influence of Islamic values, the neo-munafiqs are mostly subtle in promoting views that undermine commitment to Islam. They already realise that they cannot afford the social stigma associated with being blatant in this regard. They equally realise how a blatant approach may expose them to the risk of losing social status and jeopardising their potential to achieve their worldly pursuits in society.
They, therefore, pursue their agenda subtly hiding behind, say, liberalism, humanism and other principles, which are basically positive but whose meanings have been deliberately distorted to serve that purpose. A few of them, however, grow too unashamed to remain munafiqs, hence they bare their true faces and become atheists.
As “liberals” or “humanists”, the neo-munafiqs are particularly obsessed with not only justifying but also promoting moral decadence on the pretexts of tolerance and cosmopolitanism, whose meanings have equally being distorted for the same purpose. One particular feature that often defines their arguments, even in unrelated matters, is their penchant for subtly ridiculing Islam and Muslims, and attributing every instance of worldly backwardness to the failure to adopt western philosophy of life hook, line, and sinker.
In Muslim Northern Nigeria, for instance, where the neo-munafiqs realise the counterproductive impact of making obvious references to non-Islamic sources in their purported arguments, they desperately look for any semblance of a supposed argument in Muslim sources to confuse unsuspecting Muslims and manipulate them into doubting some aspects of it, which anyway means renouncing the whole religion.
Since the emergence of one AbdulJabbar otherwise known as the Kogo cleric who has recently been officially discredited, though he has never been credible in the first place, after all, the neo-munafiqs have been particularly excited having found a purported Muslim cleric determined to confuse unsuspecting Muslims in their Iman.
The notorious Kogo cleric has been a major source of “inspiration” to the neo-munafiqs for his obsession with discrediting the very generation of Muslims who learned the religion and narrated its details directly from the Messenger of Allah (SAW), and the subsequent generations of Muslim jurists over the centuries. The (neo-munafiq) rightly realise that he is effectively out to discredit the religion altogether because a religion whose narrators weren’t trustworthy and credible can never be valid.
Besides, despite the sheer ridiculousness of the Kogo cleric’s “logical” deductions in his heretical and blasphemous interpretations of the Prophetic Sunnah, the neo-munafiqs would always, albeit subtly, seek to justify his disgusting conclusions to equally justify “the need for a logical review of the Prophetic Hadiths.
Also, though the neo-munafiqs aren’t actually happy with the turn of events following the recently organised “debate” in Kano, which culminated in discrediting the Kogo cleric publicly, they pretend to equally welcome the development. However, they still inadvertently betray their true stands about the cleric’s claims that he unrepentantly maintains in his recent video following his earlier ambiguous explanations, which some people had wrongly regarded as repentance.
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