Nur Alkali: Eleven years after by Abdulhamid Al-Gazali

BY ABDULHAMID AL-GAZALI, AUGUST 05, 2025 | 08:24 PM

A series of trips, deadlines, and bookings have almost succeeded in making me fail a necessary duty--the duty of writing this tribute to my late father and boss, Prof. Muhammad Nur Alkali, CON. August 1 this year, also a Friday, as was the case in 2014, marked the 11th year of his exit.

We have entered another decade without him. Like him, we have lost several other men of great virtue. As such, we must use every opportunity to remember, celebrate and discuss the refined and exceptional few among us, their making, qualities and contributions—especially in these times when we run riot without ourselves to "accept" the current set of nonchalant, shortsighted, self-serving rabble-rousers parading public offices as statesmen and leaders.

We are at a time when the quality of our thoughts, even our imagination, and the wisdom needed to build sustainable systems have gone record time low, along the calibre of men.

The teachers to whom we surrender our children, the policemen we entrust our lives and properties to, the health workers who determine our wellbeing, the men we give our daughters to, and the leaders we elect to make our lives better, among others, don't think beyond the walls of their homes. It is a dangerous trend.

Any one of them could be the predator preying on your little daughter's innocence. Or son's sanity. In their care, we lose our kids to ruin. Hidden behind clothings and job titles, they cow our girls into lesbianisms, boys to drugs or gangsterism, and throw our collective future into a waiting disaster.

He would ask us whenever there was a marriage proposal in the family: Is this marriage, giving the individuals involved and their families, going to serve the interest of the future we are imagining for our deen, ummah and immediate society?

He would further tell us: 'When a man cannot make an effort to retrieve your item from fire, do not go into building anything with him, least of all a marital relationship.'

I didn’t make sense of any of them. Not until I am in a situation where I had to be telling same to family and friends--and equally get misunderstood. As we often do at our early stages of self-discovery, I thought they were some conservative philosophy and therefore wouldn’t augur well for contemporary circumstances.

The interpretation is simple: is this man, given the record of what was known of his parents, capable of guiding your daughter, who would be his wife, to the paradise--the one of this life and the hereafter?

How can one tell? A family led by selfish, shameless, corrupt, unprincipled, weak, and unorganised men is already in fire itself, let alone rescuing you or yours from it. If his or her father, grandfather, great grandfather, uncle, or grand uncle, among others, is any or all of these, there is a great risk of finding anything worthwhile.

His argument was that when the household isn’t strengthened in quality, discipline and responsibility, the quality of the society, as well as the leaders, policies and systems it will produce will remain poor.

It was not a case of the egg and the hen; he always argued that the individual and the household must be okay first before everything else.

As such, marriage and parenting were very sacred to him. They were not just biological necessities. Or mere social activities. To him, marriage is not for you and your spouse, or even your families, alone.

It has to transcend the individuals involved, and must set objectives that go beyond the marriage’s entire lifetime. This is why the decision of who to marry, when and where, was a very important concern for him.

A marriage should have a transcendent purpose. When it doesn’t, then it is nothing but mere animalism. So must childbearing and parenting, be.

There’s nothing treated with so much nonchalance and ignorance today as marriage and parenting. They follow no given order, process, or thought.

This is why a young man or woman thinks he or she is resourceful or experienced enough to choose a spouse for themselves. And because it is now treated as a casual thing, parents go ahead to solemnize it regardless of what he or she brings forward, without any probe or due diligence. Even far worse things happen now.

I came across a recent case of a girl who was impregnated by her fiancée few weeks to their wedding. The would-be couple travelled to Kano, unaccompanied, to buy items for their wedding. After what happened had happened, he fled.

Even in serious families, a wedding ceremony is now more important than the actual marriage.

Marriage, with social media and celebrity couples everywhere now, have become more for the optics than anything. Yes, a pre-wedding picture, an anniversary photograph, for Instagram post is more important than committing to raising a responsible, healthy, and capable child! This is the bane of our society.

The foundation of a strong family--he always emphasized, was in being upright. Despite the abundance of subtle gimmickry and fakery today, true uprightness attracts uprightness, naturally. It provides a filter and control to determine who to associate with and keep in one's company. It also exacts submission, imposes legitimate authority, and therefore leads.

Today, we seem more interested in changing things that are far removed from us than those within and around us. We are more worried about political crises in faraway lands, or how the richest man in the world spends his wealth or even how the climate is. Things that are entirely not our problems or responsibilities to fix. In fact, we seem to have been so consumed by such things that we derelict from our primary responsibilities.

For example, the man using hashtags every day fighting over something called climate action is leading a family that dumps refuse in public drains! Elsewhere, our own immediate responsibilities such as parenting are almost entirely outsourced--to teachers, house helps, and TVs.

When we fail at our basic responsibilities or things that seem inconsequential, we will certainly fail when we have a chance to make great changes. A minister of environment who grows up in a family, or is himself dumping refuse in drainage systems, will hardly do anything remarkable to address flooding.

This was our father’s legacy. In every role—as man, sibling, father, teacher, administrator, leader—he embraced absolute responsibility. Discipline, restraint, order, and dedication defined him. He always emphasized them.

His measure was simple: Can this man pull you from fire? Our world burns because too few can answer 'yes'.

May Allah grant him eternal rest and a mellifluous entry into the highest paradise.