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18/12/2025

New crown 👑 chief of Mabrouk his royal highness Mohammad Salahoddin Ofoliquaye 111

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07/12/2025

Hajj Umar’s Intellectual Development

Hajj Umar Ibrahim was the first Ghanaian student to graduate from the Islamic University of Medina and the first Saudi‑trained scholar to preach what would be widely considered the Wahhabi doctrine in Ghana.

Born around 1934 in Koforidua to a successful cocoa farmer, Hajj Umar began his Qur’anic education with Mallam Issaka Wangara, who combined cocoa farming with teaching. Like most Qur’anic‑school students, Umar and his peers in Mallam Issaka’s school worked on the farm during the day and studied at night. After Umar completed a portion of the Qur’an, Mallam Issaka referred him, along with other students, to a more competent teacher, Mallam Bunyaminu. Mallam Bunyaminu combined teaching with traveling to provide spiritual consultancy services, taking his students with him on some of his tours so that they would continue studying while helping him prepare concoctions for his clients.

In 1946, during one of these trips to Nima, a suburb of Accra, Bunyaminu stayed much longer than anticipated. Concerned that Umar’s education was not advancing because of the teacher’s constant traveling, Umar’s mother encouraged Mallam Bunyaminu to settle permanently in Nima. Because he was also a tailor by profession, Umar’s mother helped him open a shop in Nima, where he taught his students tailoring during the day and the Qur’an at night. Yet when the teacher passed away in 1950, Umar had neither completed the Qur’an nor mastered tailoring, which disappointed him immensely. “After several years of studies, I did not even complete the Qur’an,” he lamented.

In 1958, he decided to continue his studies at Al‑Azhar University in Egypt. His mother’s savings were not enough for a plane ticket, so Umar decided to travel to Cairo by road through Sudan. However, the Egyptian embassy in Sudan denied his visa on the grounds that he should have obtained one in Ghana before departing. Unable to obtain the visa, in 1960 he proceeded to Saudi Arabia to perform the Hajj and then try to enter Egypt from Saudi Arabia. Having arrived before the Hajj season, he enrolled in Arabic classes at Baab al‑Umra, one of several specialized schools near the Kaaba, where he studied Arabic grammar and the Qur’an while waiting for the Hajj.

While in Mecca he realized that he did not need to go to Egypt. Rather, he could study at Dar al‑Hadith, one of the prestigious Hadith schools in Medina. Fortunately, he gained admission to this renowned institution despite his limited Arabic even at this stage of his training. There he met other West African students. The director of the institute, Sheikh Umar al‑Fullati, was a Fulani from Nigeria, and there were other West Africans among the teachers. These included the highly respected Hadith scholar Sheikh Hamid Bukur, probably a Malian by origin. Eager to ensure the success of their fellow West Africans, these scholars not only pressured West African students to excel, but also helped them obtain financial support from local philanthropists so that they could concentrate on their studies. As he remembers, with such support, he completed the equivalence of elementary school within two years.

The early 1960s marked a new beginning in Saudi Arabia’s Islamic foreign policy; it sought to establish the kingdom’s preeminence in the Muslim world by promoting Islamic reform based on the teachings of Muhammad ibn Abd al‑Wahhab. It was for this reason that the kingdom founded the Islamic University of Medina in 1961 to train scholars from the Islamic periphery and then support them in spreading the Wahhabi doctrine of reform in their own societies. The university specialized in religious subjects: the Qur’an, Sharia, da‘wa (Islamic proselytism), and Hadith. Students who did not have a background in Arabic could take two years of Arabic before pursuing their college degrees.

With the recommendations of Umar’s mentors among the West African scholars, he was admitted to the Islamic University in 1962 but was required to spend the first two years in the Arabic preparatory institution annexed to the university, which had been established for students whose native language was not Arabic. He completed a bachelor’s degree in Sharia and Hadith in 1968. As was often the case during this period, graduates were employed by Dar ul‑Ifta to preach in other Muslim societies. Umar was posted to Nigeria, but he asked that he be sent to Ghana to be closer to his ailing parents. Umar’s request was accepted, and he was posted to Ghana in 1968 to teach Arabic and Islamic studies.

Excerpts from the book Unveiling Modernity in Twentieth-Century West African Islamic Reforms by Ousman Kobo

06/12/2025

06/12/2025

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04/09/2025

HALAQATUL HADAFAIN, 2ND ANNUAL MUSABAQA

19/08/2025

There were many Black Sahabah (companions of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ). Some of the most well-known include:

Bilāl ibn Rabāḥ (RA) – the first mu’adhdhin (caller to prayer) of Islam, an Abyssinian (Ethiopian) slave who was freed by Abu Bakr (RA). He was one of the earliest Muslims and very beloved to the Prophet ﷺ.

Usāmah ibn Zayd (RA) – son of Zayd ibn Harithah and Umm Ayman (who was also Abyssinian). He was a young commander appointed by the Prophet ﷺ to lead an army.

Umm Ayman (RA) – also known as Barakah, she was of Abyssinian origin, a caretaker of the Prophet ﷺ in his childhood, and one of the women promised Paradise.

Miqdād ibn Aswad (RA) – one of the early Muslims and among the first to fight in the Battle of Badr.