Martin John Mwaipopo - Former Lutheranp Archbishop
(It was December 23, 1986, two days away from Christmas, when Arch Bishop Martin
John Mwaipopo, announced to his congregation that he was leaving Christianity
for Islam. The congregation was paralysed with shock on hearing the news, so
much so, that his administrator got up from his seat, closed the door and
windows, and declared to the church members that the Bishop’s mind had become
unhinged, that is, he had gone mad.
Little did they know that inside the Bishop’s heart lay a decision that would
blow their minds, and that the entertainment was only a farewell party. But the
congregant’s reaction was equally shocking!
They
called the police to take the "mad" man away. He was kept in the cells until
midnight when Sheikh Ahmed Sheik, the man who initiated him into Islam came to
bail him out.
That incident was only a mild beginning of shocks in store for
him. Al Qalam reporter, Simphiwe Sesanti, spoke to the Tanzanian born former
Lutheran Arch Bishop Martin John Mwaipopo, who on embracing Islam came to be
known as Al Hajj Abu Bakr John Mwaipopo) Credit must go to the Zimbabwean
brother, Sufyan Sabelo, for provoking this writer’s curiosity, after listening
to Mwaipopo’s talk at the Wyebank Islamic Centre, Durban. Sufyan is not
sensationalist, but that night he must have heard something - he just could not
stop talking about the man! Who would not be hooked after hearing that an Arch
Bishop, who had not only obtained a BA and Masters degree, but a doctorate as
well, in Divinity, had later turned to Islam?
And since foreign qualifications
matter so much to you, a man who had obtained a diploma in Church Administration
in England and the latter degrees in Berlin, Germany! A man, who, before
becoming a Muslim, had been the World Council of Churches’ General Secretary for
Eastern Africa - covering Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, and parts of
Ethiopia and Somalia. In the Council of Churches, he rubbed shoulders with the
present chairman of the South African Human Rights Commission . Barney Pityana
and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission ‘s chairman, Bishop Desmond Tutu. It
is a story of a man who was born 61 years ago, on February 22 in Bukabo, an area
that shares its borders with Uganda. Two years, after his birth, his family had
him baptised, and five years later, watched him with pride being an alter boy .
Seeing him assisting the church minister, preparing the "body and blood" of
Christ , filled the Mwaipopos with pride, and filled Mwaipopo Senior with ideas
for his son’s future.
"When I was in a boarding school, later , my father wrote to me, stating he
wanted me to become a priest. In each and every letter he wrote this" , recalls
Abu Bakr. But he had his own ideas about his life, which was joining the police
force. But at the age of 25, Mwaipopo gave in to his father’s will. Unlike in
Europe where children can do as they will after age 21 , in Africa , children
are taught to honour their parent’s will above their own.
"My , son , before I close my eyes (die), I would be glad if you could become a
priest", that’s how father told son, and that’s how the son was moved, a move
that saw him going to England in 1964, to do a diploma in Church Administration,
and a year later to Germany to do a B.A degree. On returning , a year later, he
was made acting Bishop.
Later, he went back to do Masters. " All this time, I was just doing things,
without questioning . It was when he began to do his doctorate , that he started
questioning things. "I started wondering … there is Christianity, Islam, Judaism
Buddhism each different religions claiming to the true religion. What is the
truth? I wanted the truth" , says Mwaipopo. So began his search , until he
reduced it to the "major" four religions. He got himself a copy of the Qur’an,
and guess what?
" When I opened the Qur’an , the first verses I came across were, ‘ Say : He is
Allah , The One and Only; Allah, the Eternal, Absolute; He begeteteth not, nor
is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him? (Surah Ikhlas)’ ", he recalls.
That was when the seeds of Islam, unknown to him, were first sown. It was then
that he discovered that the Qur’an was the only scripture book that had been
untampered with, by human beings since its revelation . "And in concluding my
doctoral thesis I said so. I didn’t care whether they give me my doctorate or
not - that was the truth, and I was looking for the truth." While in that state
of mind he called his "beloved" Professor Van Burger.
"I closed the door, looked him in the eye and asked him ‘of all religions in
the world, which is true’, I asked.
‘Islam’, he responded.
‘Why then are you not a Muslim?’, I asked again.
He said to me "'One, I hate Arabs, and two, do you see all this luxuries that I
have? Do you think that I would give it all up for Islam?’. When I thought about
his answer, I thought about my own situation, too", recalls Mwaipopo. His
mission, his cars - all these appeared in his imagination. No, he could not
embrace Islam, and for one good year, he put it off his mind. But then dreams
haunted him, the verses of the Quran kept on appearing, people clad in white
kept on coming, "especially on Fridays", until he could take it no more.
So, on December 22, he officially embraced Islam. These dreams that guided him -
were they not due to the "superstitious" nature of the Africans? "No, I don’t
believe that all dreams are bad. There are those that guide you in the right
direction and those which don’t, and these ones, in particular, guided me in the
right direction, to Islam", he tells us. Consequently, the church stripped him
of his house and his car. His wife could not take it, she packed her clothes,
took her children and left, despite Mwaipopo’s assurances that she was not
obliged to become a Muslim. When he went to his parents, they, too, had heard
the story. "My father told me to denounce Islam and my mother said she did not
"want to hear any nonsense from me", remember Mwaipopo. He was on his own! Asked
how he now feels towards his parents, he says that he has forgiven them, in fact
found time to reconcile with his father before he departed to the world yonder.
"They were just old people who did not know. They could not even read the
Bible…all they knew was what they had heard the priest reading", he states.
After asking to stay for one night, the following day, he began his journey to
where his family had originally come from, Kyela, near the borders between
Tanzania and Malawi. His parents had settled in Kilosa, Morogoro. During his
journey, he was stranded in Busale, by one family that was selling home brewed
beer. It was there that he met his future wife, a Catholic Nun, by the name of
Sister Gertrude Kibweya, now known as Sister Zainab. It was with her that he
travelled to Kyela, where the old man, who had given him shelter the previous
night had told him that that’s where he would find other Muslims. But before
that, in the morning of that day he had made the call to prayer (azaan),
something which made the villagers come out, asking his host why he was keeping
a "mad" man. "It was the Nun who explained that I was not mad but a Muslim", he
says. It was the same Nun who later helped Mwaipopo pay his medical fees at the
Anglican Mission Hospital, when he had become terribly sick, thanks to the
conversation he had had with her. The story goes that he had asked her why she
was wearing a rosary, to which she responded that it was because Christ was
hanged on it. "But, say, someone had killed your father with a gun, would you go
around carrying a gun on your chest?" Mmmhhh. That set the Nun thinking, her
mind "challenged", and when the former Bishop proposed marriage to the Nun
later, the answer was "yes". Secretly, they married, and four weeks later, she
wrote a letter to her authorities, informing them of her leave. When the old man
who had given him shelter, (the Nun’s uncle) heard about the marriage, when they
arrived at his house, they were advised to leave the house, because "the old man
was loading his gun", and the Nun’s father was enraged, "wild like a lion". From
the Bishop’s mansion, Mwaipopo went to live in a self built mud house. From
earning a living as the World Council of Churches’ General Secretary for Eastern
Africa, he began earning a living as a wood cutter and tilling some people’s
lands. When not doing that he was preaching Islam publicly. This led to a series
of short term imprisonments for preaching blasphemy against Christianity.
While on hajj in 1988, tragedy struck. His house was bombed, and consequently,
his infant triplets were killed. "A bishop, whose mother and my own mother were
children of the same father, was involved in the plot’, recalls Mwaipopo. He
says instead of demoralising him, it did the opposite, as the numbers of people
embracing Islam, increased, this including his father in law.
In 1992, he was arrested for 10 months, along with 70 followers, charged with
treason. This was after some pork shops, against which he had spoken, were
bombed. He did speak against them, he admits, saying that constitutionally,
since 1913, there was a law against bars, clubs and pork shops in Dar es Salaam,
Tanga, Mafia, Lindi and Kigoma. Fortunately for him, he was acquitted, and
immediately thereafter, he fled to Zambia, exile, after he was advised that
there was a plot to kill him. He says that that very day he was released, police
came to re-arrest him. And guess what? "The women said no ways! They said that
they would resist my arrest physically against the police. It was also the women
who helped me cross the borders unnoticed. They clothed me in the women’s
fashion!", according to Mwaipopo. And that is one of the reasons that make him
admire women.
"Women must be given a high place, they must be given good education in
Islam. Otherwise how would she understand why a man marries more than one
wife…It was my wife, Zainab, who proposed that I should marry my second wife,
Shela, (her friend), when she had to go for Islamic studies abroad", it’s the
bishop who says so. Yah? To the Muslims, Al Hajj Abu Bakr Mwaipopo’s message is,
"There is war against Islam…Flood the world with literature. Right now, Muslims
are made to feel ashamed to be regarded as fundamentalists. Muslims must stop
their individualistic tendencies, they must be collective. You have do defend
your neighbour if you want to be safe", he states, also urging Muslims to be
courageous, citing the Islamic Propagation Centre International’s Ahmed Deedat.
"That man is not learned, but look at the way he has propagated Islam".