The Genotype Blindness
When medical science can reveal serious hereditary risks before marriage, ignorance is no longer an excuse. For Muslims, taking the necessary precautions is not a failure of faith but part of the responsibility that comes with marriage, family and the lives that may follow.
“…And do not throw yourselves with your own hands into destruction…” (Qur’an 2:195)
By Abdullahi Yusuf
In this age of blood banks, diagnostic centres, teaching hospitals and roadside laboratories, it is astonishing that many Nigerians still walk into marriage as though they were entering a raffle draw. Names are compatible, tribes align, families consent, but yet the blood is never questioned. Genotype is ignored like an inconvenient footnote, until a child arrives bearing the burden of adult negligence.
One wonders what exactly is romantic about ignorance. How does love neutralise hemoglobin? Or how does prayer reverse a preventable genetic condition? Yet, many Muslims continue to contract marriage blindly, only to fill hospital corridors later with cries, appeals and endless medical bills. By then, the matter is conveniently rebranded as destiny. The consequences are neither light nor hidden.
Children born with incompatible genotypes live between pain and hospital wards. Parents oscillate between guilt and exhaustion. Marriages that began with celebration soon stagger under emotional and financial strain. Some marriages do not survive it. All this, not from war or famine, but from avoidable ignorance. More troubling is the silence around the matter.
Families suppress genotype discussions so as not to “lose” a suitor. Some cleries treat the subject gingerly, as though medical facts offend faith. Others wave it off with pious slogans, forgetting that Islam never dignified recklessness. Tying the camel was never optional.
In a country like Nigeria where healthcare is expensive and unreliable, knowingly ignoring genotype compatibility is not just foolish, it is cruel. It adds unnecessary suffering to a society already stretched thin. No civilisation progresses by repeatedly manufacturing avoidable pain.
Marriage is not only about companionship, it is about consequence. If Nigerians cab insist on wedding colours of the day and imported souvenirs, surely we can insist on knowing what flows in our veins. Genotype blindness is not faith. It is negligence dressed in tradition.
Editor’s Note: This is a reflective and satirical column drawn from the “Front of the Book” pages of PEACE Magazine. It seeks to provoke introspection, not hostility; reform, not ridicule.
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