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Abstrait

Dichotomy between Primeval and Contemporary Scholars’ Role to the Spread of Islam in Yoruba Land: Countervailing Appraisal

Abdulkabir Olaiya Suleiman

The growth and development of Islam in Yorubaland is avowed due to the determined efforts of some scholars who had laid down their life to broaden the fundamental teaching of Islam day and Night. Meanwhile, painstaking assessment has dichotomized the idealism of the eminent scholars of Yesterday and acclaimed scholars of today in the light of the original teaching of Islam. This paper agrees that primitive scholars were conversant of heavenly instruction given by Allah and they were very much enthralling onto it. Their conviction in line of duty is between faith in and fear of Allah to have perceived all trials as tentative consequence. On a contrary, this 21st century witnesses a lot of calamitous and ruinous acts engendered by today’s scholars in the nukes and crannies of Yorubaland. The manuscript specifically laid emphasis on some religious leader and so called scholars to have turned to the agent of corruption, manufacturer of ritual Money, builder of monster, contractor of part of human body and backbone of political henchman. An attempt is, therefore, made in this paper to juxtapose the traits and contributions of primordial scholars to the growth and development of Islam in Yorubaland in comparison with the agnostic, wickedness, dissipated, debauched and intolerable peculiarity of the contemporary scholars. The paper concludes that, some contemporary scholars has either misinterpreted the divine teaching of Islam or belittle the gravity of sin and severe wrath of Allah as a reward of depravity.