{"id":36050,"date":"2015-02-15T13:29:37","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T12:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/?p=36050"},"modified":"2015-02-15T13:29:37","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T12:29:37","slug":"religion-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/articles-opinions\/religion-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"The Religion of Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0<\/strong>Damola Awoyokun<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is nothing ISIS, the Taliban are doing today that has not been done before in Northern Nigeria even long before Boko Haram emerged as a matter of fact. Only that the world wasn\u2019t paying attention then.\u00a0 When the West was still fighting communism and the USSR, when J.F. Kennedy declared that\u00a0“Ich bin ein Berliner<\/em>\u00a0in his 1963 speech, whenRonald Reagan challenged Gobarchev in 1987 to \u201ctear down this wall,\u201d Nigeria has been fighting the ruling Islamic hardliners. Boko Haram is only the latest incarnation of a very long series of a progressive malaise. In February 2000, Governor Mohammed\u00a0Ahmed Makarfi of\u00a0Kaduna,\u00a0the most multicultural state in the North imposed sharia. Not only was the imposition contrary to the provisions of the country\u2019s secular constitution, it was an act of religious extremism. The apex Islamic bodies,\u00a0Jama’ tul Nasril Islam (JNI) and Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs (NSCIA)\u00a0did not condemn that extremism.\u00a0The second bloodiest religious riot in Nigeria\u2019s history then ensued in the state and the body count ran well over 2000<\/a>. But it was\u00a0Zamfara\u00a0State\u00a0governor Ahmed Yerima Sani who a month earlier launched the sharia spree that has now engulfed 12 northern states. To confirm his seriousness, in March 2000, he ratified the cold-blooded cut of\u00a0Buba Bello Jangebe\u2019s hand for an allegedly stealing a cow<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0He too allegedly stole billions from the public purse- one of the worst according to the federal anti-corruption czar, yet his own limbs are still with him.\u00a0His deputy then,\u00a0Mamudu Aliyu\u00a0Shinkafi\u00a0was the one in November 2002 who pronounced the fatwa that scurried\u00a0ThisDay<\/em>\u00a0fashion correspondent, Ms Isioma Daniel into exile in Norway during the Miss World pageantry officially hosted by Nigeria.<\/a>\u00a0The fanatics were virulently opposed claiming the event was not supposed to hold during their holy month of fasting.<\/p>\n

Despite the fact that the show organisers conceding that the girls would not wear bikinis on stage, the fanatics still went to work.They seized on the 18 words of Isioma Daniel that speculated on what\u00a0\u00a0Prophet Mohammed would think of the beauties. Sponsored riots that led to the death of 217 broke out in Abuja and Kaduna.\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0The extremists didn\u2019t want the pageantry because they claim it would violate the holy month of fasting but they didn\u2019t think their killing spree would.<\/p>\n

Instead of Islamic leaders condemning the mass murder, they blamed the organisers. Dr Lateef Adegbite, secretary general of\u00a0Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) argued that with the murderous riots the government and the organisers will learn to take them seriously. If they don\u2019t want a programme, they don\u2019t want it.\u00a0To which\u00a0Wole Soyinka, Nigeria\u2019s Nobel laureate called him \u201ca fool\u201d<\/a>\u00a0i.e. how can you stake your need for respect on the lives of others<\/a>. Then Zamfara state deputy governor pronounced:\u00a0\u201cIt is binding on all Muslims wherever they are, to consider the killing of the writer [Isioma Daniel] as a religious duty. \u2026. Just like the blasphemous Indian writer Salman Rushdie, the blood of Isioma Daniel can be shed.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Two years later, he rose to become the governor of the state while his boss became a federal senator and married\u00a013 year old girl<\/a>. The Zamfara Information Commissioner, Tukur Umar Dangaladima added a week later:\u00a0\u201cAnyone who kills her [Ms Danie]is a martyr who will go to Heaven\u2026it is a reality based on the teachings of the Quran.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

All these were not said or done by outcast terrorist organizations or criminals giving Islam a bad name. They were not done by people who misunderstood the true meaning of Islam. They were politicians who campaigned that they were going to introduce sharia as contained in the Quran and not the cherry-picked one that formed the basis of the penal code. June 2009, in the town of Sara in Jigawa State,\u00a0a mob descended<\/a>\u00a0on a police station and burnt it down for failure of the Police to hand over a fleeing man that sought refuge there. They claimed he had blasphemed against the holy prophet. October 2007,\u00a0Shehu Sani\u2019s book\u00a0The Phantom Crescent<\/em>\u00a0satirising sharia leaders, lawyers, judges, and Hisbah (their police officers) was banned in Kaduna<\/a>\u00a0by the\u00a0Upper Sharia Court. In February 2006,\u00a0the extremists took to the streets of Maiduguri over the Danish cartoons<\/a>; 16 people were killed including\u00a0Rev Fr Mathew Gajere\u00a0<\/a>who was helping his altar boys escape when the siege began. They didn\u2019t know why they were rioting; they were just told to go into the streets by their sponsors. And so they choose their usual targets: non-indigenes, non-Muslims but no Danish nor European.<\/p>\n

This is from\u00a0The Punch newspaper of March 22, 2007: “Muslim pupils at a secondary school in Gandu, Gombe state, beat a teacher to death after accusing her of desecrating the Koran… The teacher, Oluwatoyin Olusesan, a Christian, was invigilating an Islamic Religious Knowledge exam at the Government Day Secondary School, Gandu when the incident occurred….the teacher suspected that a foul play was about to take place when one of the students wanted to come in with his books to the exam hall. The teacher collected the books and threw them outside, unknown to her, there was a copy of the Holy Koran among the books. The principal said before they knew what was happening, the students had started chanting Allahu Akbar (God is Great). All efforts to control the rampaging students proved abortive even when the school principal, Mohammed Sadiq, tried to protect the teacher in his office. The principal was also terribly beaten and injured while they set the teacher’s car, three classes, the school’s clinic, administrative block and library on fire.” Note: these happened during their Islamic Religious Knowledge examination. Well, maybe they did not know like everybody else that Islam is a religion of peace.<\/p>\n

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In the state that eventually became the epicentre of Boko Haram; during the January 2001 lunar eclipse in Borno,\u00a0Muslims youth began a rampage destroying hotels, bars and brothels blaming them for the cause of the eclipse<\/a>. Western education is indeed a sin. In September 2001, Governor Yerima Sani forbade women to come out and cheer President Obasanjo on his official visit to his state because according to sharia, women and men should not mix freely in public. The women refused. In October 2001 in Sokoto,\u00a0Safiya Hussaini\u00a0was sentenced to stoning to death for adultery by Judge Mohammed Bello Sanyinlawal while acquitting the 60-year-old Yahaya Abubakar who impregnated her. After sustained international pressure, Safiya was acquitted a year later\u00a0and made honorary citizen of Rome. Sokoto Governor Attahiru Bafarawa and Zamfara\u2019s Ahmad Sani condemned the honour with the latter adding, it was act of proselytization<\/a>. It was the turn of Amina Lawal in March 2002. She was sentenced to public stoning for getting pregnant outside wedlock in Katsina<\/a>. In 1998, Muslims youth like the Taliban that can\u2019t get use to the compromises of tolerance and diversity, invaded the Olofa\u2019s palace and razed down\u00a0the shrine of Moremi,<\/a>\u00a0a traditional goddess in Offa. December 1994 in\u00a0Kano\u00a0city,\u00a0Gideon Akaluka, a trader, was beheaded and paraded\u00a0danse macabre\u00a0<\/em>because his wife\u00a0desecrated the Koran<\/a>. In February 1989, death to Wole Soyinka posters were carried around during\u00a0Zaria\u00a0riots because he defended Rushdie\u2019s\u00a0The Satanic Verses<\/em>, urged artists to launch their own creative jihad against the Iranian Ayatollahs, and called on civilised nations to expel Iranian diplomats from their territories. And then the\u00a0Maitatsine massacre\u00a0<\/a>in December 1980 in\u00a0Kano\u00a0-the bloodiest single massacre in the nation\u2019s history.\u00a04,177 lives were lost, 8,712 received various degrees of injuries. As usual, there were no convictions.\u00a0 In the west, they call people like these extremisms when in actual fact they see themselves as true Muslims following the true calling of the Quran and Hadith. It is the so-called moderates that need to spiritual help. And when they unleash their brutalities on the society, the Nigerian press has a history of not calling it Islamic violence; they call it religious violence because they do not want to be seen as biased.<\/p>\n

Then came Boko Haram which emerged because they said the upgraded sharia the 12 Northern governors then imposed on their respective states was not Islamic enough and was limited to the North only.\u00a0 To continue with the tradition of no conviction, less than 2 weeks after the\u00a0bombing<\/a>\u00a0of the UN headquarters in Abuja,\u00a0the governor of Kano State,\u00a0Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso\u00a0ordered 20 members of Boko Haram released as part of celebrations of the end of the holy month of fasting.\u00a0Vanguard Newspaper of 30th<\/sup>\u00a0August 2011 quotes him: \u201cAs a government<\/a>, we consider all Islamic and Christian religious sects the same. It is the duty of government to embrace all religious groups toward peaceful coexistence among citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n

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