Category: Friday

Beware of a calamity that may not spare the innocent ones amongst you when it descends; and know that Allah’s retribution can be very severe”. Q. 8: 24

 The world of humans is predominantly governed by a phenomenon called politics. No individual or family can escape the web of that pervasive phenomenon. Either overtly or covertly, politics is a virus cruising ceaselessly in the nerves of every man or woman. It is one phenomenon that permeates all aspects of human life directly or indirectly and showers it with a dew of acid. In Nigeria, there is as much politics in religion as there is even in football.

An altercation between President Goodluck Jonathan and some elders of the Northeast last week over the official handling of Boko Haram insurgents is a confirmation of the above assertion. Following Mr. President’s visit to the region, the latter called for official amnesty for the insurgents as a way of ventilating the atmosphere for peace and harmony in the country. But labelling the call a political shroud, Mr. President bluntly rebuffed it saying he would not grant any amnesty to ‘FACELESS TERRORISTS’. Judging by the venomous politics embedded in that altercation at this precarious time, one can imagine the extent to which politicians can go with politics at the expense of the country they are supposed to govern.

Ordinarily, with the precedent laid down by the late President Umar Yar’Adua in 2009 when he granted unconditional Presidential amnesty to the Southsouth economic pirates, no one would have expected President Jonathan to wait for such an altercation. After all, the late President Yar’Adua did not seek to know the faces of those pirates before he acted in that exemplary manner. And it was that laudable policy which no one opposed at the time that brought respite to the polity in the country. The danger in politicising only one of the three legs of insecurity in the land at this crucial time may transcend any short term imagination.

Besides, claiming facelessness as a reason for not wanting to grant amnesty for the purpose of peace may be quite illogical where hundreds of people are being detained without trial for being members of Boko Haram. Is it possible to detain faceless people? And we have been told many times of the killing of some members of Boko Haram by the Joint Task Force (JTF). Can those being continually killed in the various crossfire operations for being members of Boko Haram be said to be faceless?

More than 90% of people killed by the combined forces of Boko Haram and JTF in the North since the commencement of insurgency in that region are innocent women and children. Should such people continue to be murdered in cold blood just for being residents of the areas of insurgency? It is obvious that for every one member of Boko Haram said to be killed at least 10 innocent civilians are murdered in what may qualify for ethnic cleansing. This is the reason why some foresighted elders in the region are calling for Presidential amnesty as a way of calming the vexed nerves in order to bring back peace to Nigeria. It should be recalled that even the Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence, (Dr.) Muhammad Sa‘ad Abubakar III had earlier made a similar call based on instinct and foresight. The question now is this: for how long will the government forces run after the ‘faceless’ suicide bombers who are ready to die and care not about other people’s lives?

It is difficult to give politics its befitting definition without dabbling into controversy in Nigeria. While the partisan politicians will describe politics as a means of governing through the legislature, the judiciary and the executive arms, others will call it a means of exploiting the majority by the minority. From whatever angle it is viewed, however, politics, particularly in Nigeria, is a cankerworm eating deeply into the fabrics of human lives often with the exhibition of negative rather than positive effects. Perhaps, no nomenclature is more fitting to politics in Nigeria than SPHINX.

Nigerians who are well familiar with European literature must now be reminded of the riddles of a sphinx in Thebes (a capital city of ancient Greece). In a tragic drama entitled ‘Oedipus Rex’ and produced in 411 BC by Sophocles, a Greek dramatist who lived between 496 and 406 BC, we are told of a curse which once befell the land of Thebes. As a result of the curse, not only were citizens afflicted by mysterious sicknesses and dying in droves but the cattle and herds too were also gripped by an epidemic of reindeer-pest even as the crops in the farms were blighted.

At that time, Oedipus was the king who earned his people’s trust in resolving the crisis. This was because as an adolescent, he had saved Thebes from a similar calamity wrought by a monstrous sphinx which mysteriously took its permanent seat on a rock by the roadside that divided the city into two. That sphinx had a riddle which she put to every passerby. And if the accosted person failed to solve the riddle she promptly devoured him.

Thus, for a long time, the city of Thebes remained under the plague of the monstrous sphinx which was feeding fat on the flesh and blood of the citizens. The entailed sadness and hopelessness turned Thebes into a mourning city of passive inhabitants. In such a situation, when the population of the city was decreasing at an increasing rate, how could any thought of mating for the purpose of reproduction ever cross the mind of anybody? A citizen could only be sure of the moment in which he was without any hope for a minute later. Many people went on hunger strike. Many committed suicide while many more embarked on endless seclusion.

That was the situation in Thebes until the young Oedipus emerged as the hero of his time by finding a final solution to the riddle of the sphinx while the latter leaped, in despair, from the rock and dashed out into permanent oblivion. Thus, the veil of curse was lifted on the city of Thebes and Oedipus became the king even as he was immortalised as the saviour of the Thebesians.

Today, Nigeria, like Thebes of yore, is passing through an experience of a similar spell in terms of insecurity. The difference, however, is not only that Nigeria’s case is taking a tripod formula, there is also no obvious presence of an Oedipus here who can handle the problem in such a way as to bring succour to Nigerians and thereby become a hero.

Rather than one sphinx encountered by the Thebesians, Nigeria is encountering three at the same time. There is the vivid presence of Boko Haram vandals in the North; there are the economic pirates called militants in the Southsouth and there are the devilish human kidnappers in the Southeast all of whom have jointly hijacked the governance of the country albeit tacitly. The only part of the country that is seemingly less restive for now is the Southwest. And, incidentally, that is the place from where the Nigerian water stream is being clandestinely polluted for all and sundry through the media. Today, Nigeria has become an unsafe haven in which dangerous tribal and sectarian species are operating with unbridled audacity under various guises.

It was all like a comic drama in 1987 when a frontline Nigerian journalist (Dele Giwa) was blown up with a letter bomb in his living room in Ikeja, Lagos. That criminal act was followed by public lamentations and condemnations. But the politics of the time never allowed it to go beyond that level as no reports of the inquiries into the matter saw the light of the day. With that, an evil precedent was laid in a country where imitation of evil practices has become a fundamental norm.

On October 1, 2010, the first public bomb blast in Nigeria occurred at the Eagles Square in Abuja while the country’s 50th anniversary of independence was being celebrated. The bomb killed several people and injured many more others. But rather than nipping it in the bud, the incident provided the politicians another opportunity to trade politics as usual at the expense of peace and tranquility in the country. And today Nigeria is grappling with more insuperable problems of insecurity than ever before.

The real essence of history is for human beings to learn from its lessons. Without such lessons, history would have served no purpose in the life of man. Governance is like driving in which no one can claim to know all or see all. The essence of having people around you as a leader is to seek and utilise their constructive advice so that if any failure occurs you will not bear the brunt all alone. No human being has monopoly of wisdom and nothing in governance destroys more than sheer whim.

The late President Yar’Adua did not act alone when he declared unconditional amnesty for the Southsouth pirates. He must have surely done it in consultation with some people. And no section of the country raised any objection to it. Perhaps without that singular policy, more than 30,000 former Southsouth pirates who are currently enjoying the Nigerian amnesty programme in various forms would have remained in the jungle killing and maiming innocent people as the Boko Haram terrorists are now doing and vandalising oil pipelines as well as other economic installations.

Tracing the history of amnesty in Nigeria recently, the Special Adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on Niger Delta Affairs, Kingsley Kuku recalled with delight that when the late President Yar’Adua proclaimed unconditional amnesty for the Southsouth militants on June 25, 2009, on condition of willingness and readiness to surrender their arms, a total of 20,192 former agitators gave up their arms and ammunitions. “In return, the FG under Yar’Adua administration pledged its commitment to institute certain programmes to assist the disarmament, demobilisation, rehabilitation and reintegration of the former agitators”.

Kuku continued by saying that: “pursuant to the letter and spirit of the Amnesty Proclamation, the Federal Government instituted a Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) package for those who accepted the offer of amnesty on or before the expiration date of October 20, 2010. But “another batch of 6,166 was added in November 2010 to constitute a second phase of the programme, bringing the number of persons enlisted in the Presidential Amnesty Programme to 26,358’’. He further said that the Federal Government also approved the inclusion of yet another batch of 3,642 former militants, bringing the total to 30,000 in October, 2012. Kuku said the PAO was committed to funding the disarmament process of 3,642 former militants newly enrolled for the third phase of the amnesty programme.

This, according to him, was aimed at reconciling the disarmament records of the former agitators, who had surrendered their arms to military formations and security agencies, in the third phase of the amnesty programme and concluded that out of the 30,000 former agitators, more than 11,525 had been placed in skills acquisition/training centres, as well as in formal education within the country and offshore. “Of this number, 4,929 are being trained offshore, while the balance of 6,382 have either been returned to formal education or placed in skill acquisition centres within the country”.

Similarly, Kuku said that “6,067 transformed ex-agitators are currently being processed for deployment to reintegration centres (both within the country and offshore) in the fiscal year 2012’’. The presidential aide added that 113 former militants had been assisted in securing employment in maritime, welding and fabrication companies at home and abroad.

He also disclosed that Proclad Group of Companies in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, (UAE), offered employment to 30 of the 150 ex-militants, who were trained by the Proclad Academy because of their exceptional conduct and performance.

“The Presidential Amnesty Office, in collaboration with the International Centre for Non-violence and Peace Development (ICNPD) secured the employment through a partnership with Proclad Academy”. He did not stop there but went further to say that he also facilitated the immediate employment of 40 maritime trainees by the Century Energy Group in Nigeria’’ adding that his office also offered employment to another 24 maritime trainees consisting of “four welding and fabrication trainees who had been employed in Nigeria by Plants and Processing Service Company, while five were offered jobs in South Africa by Ashland Investment Services in addition to “ten who were offered employment by Learning Resources in Ghana’’.

Looking at all these facts and figures from an official who should know, one cannot but ask some vital questions: are we all Nigerians? Should some Nigerians be enjoying the above mentioned facilities while others are being chased about with guns despite committing the same offence in different ways? What else is piracy or kidnapping if not terrorism? Why should there be different strokes for the same offence in the same country?

One fact must be made clearer here. No one is calling for amnesty in sympathy for terrorism. Evil is evil, no matter what colour it wears. And no sane person will ever condone evil. The point here is that if the late President Yar’Adua, a northerner, could go so far to do what he did for some recalcitrant southerners in order to bring about peace to the land, what stops President Jonathan a southerner from doing same for some northern miscreants for the purpose of peace and harmony? Terrorism may have different colours, tastes and flavours but the bottom-line is one and the same: POVERTY engendered by joblessness. The former US President Bill Clinton emphasised this much recently here in Nigeria and he is not a Nigerian. If more than 60 million youths are jobless in an OPEC member country, the government must re-examine itself. A stitch in time saves ten. This, and not later is the time to save Nigeria.

Instinct is the main cursor of vision. It is the indicator of where today’s ship will anchor tomorrow. A man without instinct can be likened to a blind bull struggling to pass through the hole of a needle. Without instinct there can be neither projection nor premonition. All visionary prophesies are based on instinct.

It was only by instinct that Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was able to prophesy the signs of the last days when he said: “One of the signs of the last days is for the sun to rise in the West and set in the East….” This prophecy is pregnant with meanings. Which sun was the Prophet talking about? Was it the physical or the hypothetical? Only a few people of other religions in history were able to comprehend that prophecy as much as the celebrated (Christian) Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950).

Based on his understanding of the contents of the Prophecy, Shaw decided to study Islam through deep researches. And consequently, he concluded as follows:

“The Medieval Ecclesiastics, either through ignorance or bigotry, painted Mohammedanism (Islam) in the darkest colours. In fact, they were trained both to hate the man Muhammad and his religion. To them he was anti-Christ… I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing face of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him, the wonderful man, and in my opinion, far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the saviour of humanity. I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness.

I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today…”

America was just emerging as a champion of the modern world when Bernard Shaw made his famous prediction quoted above. Western civilisation was then restricted to Europe and Shaw had taken any emerging civilisation from America as an extension of that of Europe. He had thought that whatever would be acceptable to Europe ought to be automatically acceptable to the emerging power of the New World, the former being an offshoot of the latter. He was right.

Although, Islam had reached America long before Christopher Columbus arrived in what was then perceived as a New World, very little was known about the Muslims in that country until 1886 when one Noble Drew Ali of North Carolina started to spread Islamic faith to the black masses in the new world. However, that Noble D. Ali’s jihad became prominent with the growth of media influence in the United States did not necessarily make him the first American Muslim preacher.

It is on record that the famous Arab geographer Al-Idrisi (1100-66) wrote about Muslim sailors who ventured from Lisbon to the Caribbean and were met on arrival by native people who could speak Arabic. Those natives were already preaching the divine religion through their culture and traditional lifestyle.

Al-Idrisi, (according to Encarta Encyclopaedia) was an Arab geographer, scientist, and author of one of the greatest geographic works of the medieval world. He travelled widely throughout the Mediterranean region, and joined the court of Roger II of Sicily in about 1145 where he worked in Palermo for the rest of his life. His major works include a ‘silver plan sphere’ showing a world map, a sectional map of the world, and a geography text (the Book of Roger) that contains information from his own travels and reports from persons sent from Sicily to obtain new information. (See Encarta Premium 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation).

Since inception, Islam has not only been spreading its tentacle across the geo-political arena of the world while playing a pivotal role in reshaping the world economic order it has also been living up to its reputation as the fastest growing religion in the world. The evidence of this is vivid in the United States where the growth of Muslim community is on an average of 350,000 per annum.

Today, Bernard Shaw’s prediction of the early 20th century is no longer a mere dream. It has rather become a reality with geometric acceleration. Today, there are about 2,106 mosques and 300 Islamic schools in the US. These, added to about 750 Muslim associations, the community is in control of over 330,000 businesses as well as 210 regular publications. All of these are not only providing jobs for the residents. They are also enhancing America’s social security.

The top five states with the highest number of mosques are: New York: 257; California: 246 3; Texas: 166: Florida: 118; Illinois: 109 and New Jersey: 109.

Muslim population in America increased dramatically with a large influx of Muslim immigrants following the liberalisation of US immigration policies in the 1960s. According to a 1993 report by the American Muslim Council, there were between 5 and 6 million Muslims in the US in 1999. The ethnic percentages of this population were then put as follows: African American: 42%; Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi: 24%; Arabs 12.4%; Africans: 5.2%; Iranians: 3.6%; Turkish: 2.4%; Southeast Asia: 2%; White Americans: 1.6% and others: 6.4% excluding 5,000 Hispanic Muslims.

Among these, women accounted for over 75% of European American Muslims. And about 70% of Muslims in the US lived in 10 states. These were: California , New York , Illinois , New Jersey , Indiana , Michigan , Virginia , Texas , Ohio and Maryland . As far back as 1910, African Muslims had exceeded a population of 100,000 in the South American country of Brazil. And long before then the West had taken vivid interest in Islam and the lands it dominated all over the world.

But despite over 60,000 publications by the Western Orientalists between 1800 and 1950 disparaging that divine religion and denigrating the personality of prophet Muhammad (SAW), Islam continued to wax stronger even as it displayed dynamic tendencies on a regular basis. Today, with a global population of about 1.7 billion adherents in the world and with certain mundane ideologies and philosophies crumbling like a pack of cards, Islam has remained an unstoppable religion, the implacable hostility of the West to it notwithstanding.

Islam made its first physical appearance on American soil in the sixteenth century when Muslims were brought as slaves from Africa but were forced to convert to Christianity. These Muslims were followed by a new wave of immigrants who came in the late nineteenth century as labourers from Middle Eastern countries like Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. In the second half of the twentieth century, a large number of Muslims came from virtually every country of the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia who were more sophisticated than their predecessors. As those immigrants settled in large cities and small towns, they built mosques, Islamic cultural centres, and schools. Although African-American Islam emerged in the early twentieth century, it was not until the sixties and seventies that Islam through them became visible, but yet a religion of immigrants, in the American society. Today, Islam is the fastest growing religion in America and the third largest religion after Christianity and Judaism. Given this fact and taking into consideration the new wave of American Muslims (i.e., first generation children of immigrants, Americans converting to Islam, and the growing African American Muslim community), Islam has finally emerged as an American religion. American Muslims, who have grown in number to about well over million, have succeeded in transforming Islam into an American religion, but these Muslims seem to be more concerned about their survival as a religious minority in a largely un-Islamic society. American Muslims have so far resisted adaptation and change in a Judeo-Christian society based upon secular values. Today, American Muslims live as a minority “in a dominant culture often ignorant of or hostile to Islam . . . and are challenged by an America which, despite separation of church and state, retains a Judeo-Christian ethos.” The question now is this: will Islam survive in America?

But the real root of Islam in the US can actually be traced to 1790 when the South Carolina legislative body granted special social status to a community of Moroccans which gave that community the freedom to practise its religion. And in 1797, President John Adams signed a policy declaring that United States had no “character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Musulmen (Muslims)”.

Then, in his autobiography, published in 1791, President Benjamin Franklin stated that he “did not disapprove” of a meeting place in Pennsylvania designed to accommodate preachers of all religions and concluded that: “even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.

Thomas Jefferson on his own defended religious freedom in America including those of Muslims and explicitly mentioned Muslims when writing about the movement for religious freedom in Virginia. And in his autobiography also, Jefferson wrote: “When the Virginia bill for establishing religious freedom which was finally passed,… a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it should read ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.’ The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometans (Muhammadans), the Hindus and the infidels of every denomination.” As a confirmation of that policy, President Jefferson also joined the Tunisian Ambassador for an Iftar (Ramadan fast breaking) in 1809.

Also, in 1888, the American Ambassador in Philippines, Alexander Russell Webb surprisingly embraced Islam and became the first prominent Anglo-American Muslim in history. And in 1893 he was the only person representing Islam from the US at the first Parliament for the World’s Religions.

Subsequently, the coming into the American Muslim fold of people like Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, Muhammad Ali, Abdul Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and a host of others in the mid 20th century came to boost the image of Islamic religion tremendously in the US thereby attracting many adherents.

Given the above historical antecedent, it is only normal to expect that some inquisitive people outside Islam might raise inquisitive questions. One of such questions was raised by John L. Esposito the author of ‘Islam: The Straight Path’ (published by Oxford University Press in 2005, pp216). His question went thus:

How possible is it to be fully American in a society often characterised as Judeo-Christian or secular and at the same time retain Muslim faith and identity? If majority of Americans need to realize that Muslims are indeed ‘us,’ many Muslims must also struggle with the nature of their identity, to reconcile the relationship of faith with that of national identity.

Are they Muslims in America or American Muslims? For American Muslims, as for American Jews, how to simultaneously retain one’s distinctive religious identity and values and also become part of the majority culture, part of the fabric of the society is a major challenge in the ‘American melting pot”.

Esposito closed the question as follows: “Should American Muslims attempt to integrate into American society or would they be better off remaining alienated from society in order to preserve their Islamic

Identity?” In other words, Esposito wanted to know which will eventually prevail: Americanisation of Islam or Islamization of America.

That question can be best answered by the Americans. At least wherever they too go or settle, they hardly allow themselves to be culturally assimilated. Americans are generally known to live in isolation anywhere they go and no one has ever queried their policy of isolationism. It will therefore amount to discrimination to expect Muslims in America or people of other religions, for that matter, to get assimilated into American culture at the expense of their faith.

In an article once published in the New York Times, titled: ‘Muslim Schools in the U.S.: A Voice for Identity’, Susan Sachs wrote on the rising demands for Islamic schools in the U.S. saying that “across the country,

Islamic schools…that offer religion and Arabic classes…are expanding and flourishing, with many becoming oversubscribed so quickly that principals are scrambling for money to build more. Thus, the surge in the number of Islamic schools may be attributed to the success and determination of a Muslim community that strives “to define itself as a cohesive religious minority in the secular American society”.

Earlier, ‘The World Street Journal’ in its August 7, 1987 edition reported thus: “At a time when Marxism is so debilitated and is being shored up by capitalism; when Christianity lacks much of the missionary fire that once drove it; when Maoism is all but entombed with its founder and when democracy sounds only a muted appeal to much of the world, Islamic fundamentalism stands out as the movement on the march”.

By and large today, not only is Islam formally recognised as the second religion after Christianity in the US, it has also become a tradition for the President and his cabinet to host Muslim leaders in that country to Iftar during the month of Ramadan.

Today, with technology virtually reaching its climax, and backed up by over 60% of the world’s oil reserve in the Islamic world, the rising of the sun from the West as prophesied by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) is becoming undeniably vivid.

Were George Bernard Shaw alive today he would have been delighted to see his prediction come true even as Islam remains undaunted in the face of unbridled persecution in the West. Despite the malfeasance of some vagabonds going about killing innocent people and pillaging the society in the name of Islam, Allah’s divine religion remains like a pure spring incessantly watering the plants and animals around it. The refusal of some animals to drink from its water does not stop it from bringing forth the enlivening water. Rather, it is the rebellious animals that will die of thirst.