Nigeria, Oct. 30 -- Last Saturday, I was the reviewer for a book presented as a festschrift organised by CITAD in honour of my good friend, Ibrahim Muazzam. It was in recognition of his fifty years of scholarship, research, documentation, teaching, writing and reflections on life, society and human organisation. If everybody calls him Malam, it is because that is what he is, a teacher. I was particularly glad to notice many articles published over the past few weeks by many of his former students thanking him for the intellectual guidance and inspiration he gave them.

It is appropriate that the focus of the book is the quest for philosophical understanding, as Ibrahim Muazzam is indeed a philosopher. This means he is a critical thinker w...