User:Adeoti12
My take on Islam in Nigeria, especially the section on Islam in South Western Nigeria... First, I want to say that I am a Yoruba man from South West of Nigeria. So, Yoruba is my first language. I also studied it at higher level of education. Now, no Yoruba man will interpret or call Mali 'Imale'. No! In Yoruba syntagmatic word construction or morphological inflections, Mali has no reason to change from Mali as it naturally follows their consonant vowel or vowel consonant relationship/arrangements of words. Thus, Mali will still be Mali, or at worse, Manli or Monli. It could never have been 'Imale'. As I have said, 'Imale' reading as suggested in the history as placed on Wikipedia now is a revisionist history that seeks to distort the Yoruba reading of Islam as 'Imo lile', meaning hard, difficult or harsh knowledge or belief. Yoruba are known to call Islam 'Imo-lile' suggesting a form of obstinacy and forcefulness in its mode of teaching... Thus, the earliest Muslims are known to respond by singing that: Eni ba pe Musulumi loni 'mole, ko ke'wu, ko gbede, alaimokan ni. Meaning, 'Whoever calls a Muslim one with a difficult belief, he/she has not learn Quran or the hadit, he/she is ignorant... This is the true history. If 'Imale' means Malian, there would have been no need for that fight or drama... I am aware that Islamic historians have been struggling to review or revise that history, the history of 'Imo'le' among the Yoruba. Thank you all.