As traditionally done quarterly, the topmost echelon of Nigeria Interreligious Council (NIREC) held a two day meeting in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, last week Monday and Tuesday (February 11 and 12, 2013). Yours sincerely was invited to the meeting as a guest speaker but the presentation of my paper entitled âTERRORISM: GENESIS, CAUSES, EFFECT and SOLUTIONâ did not take place due to what was called âtime constraintâ. Thus, for the benefit of all and sundry I hereby present the speech which I termed âPep Talkâ. Please, read on:
âIn Yoruba ancient mythology, a dragon fly dancing on the surface of a stream was believed to symbolise a puzzling omen. But convinced that killing the fly would not remove the omen, the elders consulted an oracle which disclosed that the dancing dragon fly had its drummer beneath the water. Unless that drummer could be identified and stopped from drumming, the dragon fly might continue to frighten the stream water drawers with its puzzling dance.
The similitude of terrorism anywhere in the world is like that of a suffocating smoke spirally oozing out of the chimney of a kitchen and dangerously polluting the environment for everybody. To stop the ensuing pollution and save people from its suffocating effect, dispelling the smoke can never be a solution. For as long as the fire keeps burning inside the kitchen and gives vent to the oozing smoke, the environment will continue to be polluted unabatedly. In that situation, it can only be wiser to quench the fire than to chase the smoke around. Dispelling the smoke can never have any effect on the burning fire. On the other hand, quenching the fire will automatically stop the polluting smoke.
In the same token, dialoguing with the terrorist as a way of solving Nigeriaâs problem of insecurity will serve as a better option than engaging any group of terrorists in a very costly war of attrition. People who have no value for their own lives cannot respect any value in other peopleâs lives. And in any ensuing melee, it is the innocent people that will invariably pay the price. Perhaps that was what the late President Umaru Musa YarâAdua considered when he granted the Southsouth militants an unconditional amnesty before asking them to lay down their weapons. The same solution ought to have been applied using the same principle in the case of Boko Haram if only to enable peace return Nigeria for the purpose of progress.
It may be quite parochial and self-deceptive to think that the current trend of terrorism around the world is all about religion. The historical factors that gave rise to terrorism clearly transcended religion. When the first act of terrorism was perpetrated by a Jewish Zealot group, about 2,000 years ago, neither Christianity nor Islam had taken any firm root. Though Prophet Isa (Jesus) had come and gone by then, his divine mission had not reached the Gentile. And Prophet Muhammad (SAW) had not been born. If violence alone is what constitutes terrorism as many people wrongly tend to believe, then, it never emanated from religion though religion has sometimes been used as a cover up and blamed for it. No genuine message from God ordains or supports violence of any form among human beings.
Therefore, the engendered terrorism by the Jewish Zealots in 06 CE was rather a violent expression of resentment for the domination of the Jews by the Roman Gentile than a fight between two religions (see Luke 6:15, Acts 1: 13 and Mathew 10: 4 for confirmation). By connotation, that resentment was a resistance to the domination of a culture by another culture. Thus, as it was in the beginning, so it is today. From the above brief historical account, it is clear that terrorism is neither a phenomenon peculiar to the modern time nor a new innovation rooted in religion. And its causes and effects remain the same today as they were some centuries back.
What should be understood about terroristsâ method of operation is that any evil doer will look for a justifying reason, whether tenable or untenable, to indulge in evil deed. And the reason often given is one which appeals to people of like minds at least in the neighbourhood. This is to elicit their sympathy and support. The common denominator among all terrorists is the theory of âusing what you have to get what you wantâ. This theory has a fundamental meaning to all agitators in their quest for redress against what they perceive as injustice.
Terrorists are like cultists whose nefarious atrocities are carried out secretly. And no secret activity is ever carried out by any group without involvement of an oath and sometimes, consumption of intoxicants in the case of terrorists. Terrorism is not about violence alone. Its causes and effects are as various and as multi-dimensional as the circumstances that brought them to bear.
Bothered by these causes and effects of terrorism in modern time, a German dramatist and social critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) who was a son of a Protestant Minister and one of the leaders of thought and enlightenment in his time came up with the following stanza:
âThere are good men in every land; the tree of life has many branches and roots; let not the topmost twig presume to think that it alone has sprung from the mother earth; we did not choose our races by ourselves; Jews, Muslims, Christians, all alike are men; let me hope I have found in you a manâ.
In the quoted poem above, Lessing did not restrict his view to religion alone. He was actually talking about human rights and the justice that ought to serve as its vehicle. As a German and a Protestant, he believed that differences in race and faith ought not to be the main determinant of human coexistence. This is a fact that eluded Adolf Hitler in his blind pursuit of racial supremacy that precipitated the World War II.
When he was innocently coining that famous poem, Lessing was hardly aware of the contents of the Qurâan regarding the harmonious coexistence of mankind irrespective of the differences in races, colours and faiths as divinely ordained in that divine Book of Islam. The Almighty Allah who created the entire universe tells us in Qurâan 49:13 thus: âOh mankind! We have created you males and females and classified you into races and tribes that you may interact (and benefit from your diversity); surely the best of you are the ones who fear God mostâ. It is unimaginable that any sane human being will ever want to engage in terrorism using religion as a cloak.
It is not only in Nigeria that some vandals like Boko Haram and Akhwat Akwop are using religion (Islam and Christianity respectively) as alibi for terrorism. At least the case of Joseph Kony of Uganda who has been waging a rebellious war on his country and on Central Africa Republic in the name of Jesus is still very current. For the past two decades or thereabout, that former Catholic altar boy from northern Uganda has been using Biblical 10 Commandments to execute his terrorist activities in the region by recruiting thousands of kids into his army and by killing and maiming innocent women and children indiscriminately.
Joseph Kony and his over 3,000 heavily armed men constituting a terror army are still a minority among Ugandan Christians just as Boko Haram members in Nigeria are a minority group among Nigerian Muslims. Yet, this does not make Kony a crusader for God neither are his satanic activities related to Christianity in the media. Anybody can give any religious reason, according to his or her interpretation of the religion in question for engaging in terrorism, in order to get what he/she wants. And that does not make him a true follower or representative of that religion.
It will be a grave mistake to continue to proclaim Boko Haram a faceless body when some scores of its members are held in governmentâs detention. At least those members were arrested and detained for being members of the terrorist group. That is however based on the assumption that the group is still operating as a single body that it was a couple of years ago. As a matter of fact, Akhwat Akwop (Nigeriaâs Christian group that operates in the name of Christianity) is more fitting into allegation of facelessness than Boko Haram. If dialoguing with a single group of Boko Haram was difficult in the past because of the amphibious nature of its terrorist activities, the presence of those arrested detained among them has surely changed any claim of the groupâs facelessness. People who are firmly held in government detention cannot be said to be faceless. The concern here is much more about national security, through safety of lives and property than apportioning blames through religious sentiments.
Terrorism often begins with ordinary militancy. But when the threat of state power is intensified against rebels, an all out violence becomes the necessary weapon with which to counter what the rebels consider to be state terrorism. Thus, to those called terrorists, violent activities are only a counter terrorism. The South/South of Nigeria is a good example of this.
Seemingly, the most effective means of curbing terrorism is reasonable dialogue which the UN must seriously facilitate with sincerity and self-dignity. This can only become possible if the notion of super and veto powers are obliterated or de-emphasized at least to enable concerned parties dialogue on equal level. The lopsidedness created by the super power syndrome has turned the whole world into one massive animal farm in which all animals are supposed to be equal but some are claiming to be more equal than others. This was the kind of situation which forced the former colonies to rebel against their colonizers in various ways in order to become independent. And today, none of the allied forces fighting terrorism in the name of NATO can claim to have won any.
Tragic and condemnable as it is, international terrorism only accentuates the bitter resistance of certain cultures to the domination of others especially as exhibited by the relationship between the West and the East. In modern time, the origin of the use of bomb as a means of resisting injustice can be traced back to 1939.
In August that year, a German American physicist Albert Einstein sent a letter to the then U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to hint him of the possibility of discovering a powerful explosive device through the fission of uranium and warned Roosevelt of the danger in allowing other nations to develop it before the US. In response, the U.S. government established the top secret Manhattan Project in 1942 to develop an atomic device. The leader of that Project was a U.S. Army Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves whose team worked in several locations but largely at Los Alamos, New Mexico, under the direction of American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The team designed and built the first atomic bomb which was test exploded at Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. And that was the weapon used by the US to destroy Japanâs two cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki an episode that brought the World War II to an end.
Following that episode, the fear of proliferation of nuclear arsenal compelled the so-called super powers to initiate the idea of Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty which was signed in 1968. By this initiative, virtually all countries of the world besides the known nine nuclear nations formally pledged not to manufacture those weapons. The pledge was made under the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which came into force in 1970. The treaty has since been ratified by 187 non-nuclear weapon states. Yet, secret proliferation of those weapons remains a major cause of terrorism.
The problem concerning terrorism here is not about the signing or breaching of treaty per se. Neither is it about armament reduction. It is rather about some nationsâ determination to balance power with rivals. This was the factor that led to the invention of atomic bomb by the US in the first instance. And this factor has now advanced into balance of terror not only among nations but more between those perceived as oppressors and the private groups who feel oppressed as the knowledge of developing weapons of mass destruction keeps spreading.
Policing proliferation of nuclear weapons as is now the case can never ventilate a peaceful atmosphere for the world. It will rather aggravate the existing conflict situation. Proliferation is only possible with the existence of a substance that can be proliferated. And one means of stemming terrorism around the world is for those who manufacture and are in possession of destructive weapons to stop their activities along that line. The alternative is to liberalise development of nuclear weapons and let any capable nation possess them. After all, there is no guarantee that the so-called five super powers campaigning against nuclear proliferation today cannot use it tomorrow if compelled by necessity.
Terrorism often begins with ordinary militancy. But when the threat of state power is intensified against rebels, an all out violence becomes the necessary weapon with which to counter what the rebels consider to be state terrorism. Thus, to those called terrorists, violent activities are only a counter terrorism. The South/South of Nigeria is a good example of this.
Seemingly, the most effective means of curbing terrorism is reasonable dialogue which the UN must seriously facilitate with sincerity and self-dignity. This can only become possible if the notion of super and veto powers are obliterated or de-emphasized at least to enable concerned parties dialogue on equal level. The lopsidedness created by the super power syndrome has turned the whole world into one massive animal farm in which all animals are supposed to be equal but some are claiming to be more equal than others. This was the kind of situation which forced the former colonies to rebel against their colonizers in various ways in order to become independent. One can imagine what could have happened if other super powers like Russia and China were to be as aggressively bellicose as the US, Britain and France. Arrogance of power is a major toga propelling terrorism in the various parts of the world which ought to be shed if terrorism must be sincerely repelled. Terrorism has become such an implacable monster that no single country or click of power mongers can confront without the cooperation of all other countries. And such cooperation must be on the terms of majority of those other countries and not on master/servant terms. As for internal terrorism which is far more dangerous than the external one, only good governance can curb it and ventilate the atmosphere for peace.
The opportunity of the recently announced voluntary withdrawal of terror by a group of Boko Haram must not be wasted. No government has ever been able to defeat terrorism by the use of force. Nigeria cannot be an exception. Wherever terrorism is seen to have simmered, diplomacy and dialogue rather than force must have played a vital role. This fact must be considered very seriously. And in finding solution, three major hitherto unfocused areas must now be handled without levity. One is checkmating sources of weapons used by the terrorists. Another is a device for mass employments for the youth. And the third is official regulation of religious propagation in the country to check possible excesses that often breed fanaticism. Managing these three areas with sincerity will definitely make tremendous difference in curbing the spate of violence in the land.
Despite our diversity in tribes and faiths we have managed to come this far to live together in harmony as a people. What remains is the maintenance of that togetherness based on tolerance and compromise. We must not allow religious or tribal sentiments to destroy the house which the Almighty God has guided us to jointly build. God bless Nigeria!
