By Abdu Rafiu
Love, it is said, conquers all things. The saying was echoed by the Archbishop of Homs for the Syrian Catholics, Jacques Mourad while narrating his harrowing experiences in captivity. He was among several Assyrian Christians in North-East Syria abducted in February, 2015. According to Agency reports at the time abduction occurred when ISIL fighters seized two Assyrian villages from the Kurdish forces in the Province of Hassakeh. Between 70 and 100 people fell victims. Archbishop Mourad said disarmingly that treating others with love is the Christian’s duty even in the most difficult circumstances, and to the youths, his message was that they should cultivate and preserve spiritual and moral values in all situations. On his attitude to his tormentors, the bishop said hatred has no place in the believer’s heart, emphasizing the point that forgiveness and mercy are essential to the Christian faith.
The situation in Syria is not too dissimilar to the Nigerian situation. For those who can invite themselves into deep contemplation, they will see a bigger picture of our world upside down, in turmoil. And it will get worse as purification of the planet earth intensifies and accelerates with the unusual pressure of Light Power encompassing our universe. That Light Power is mediated by the Holy Spirit, the World Judge, unsuspected by a great many of the believers. In August this year, it can be recalled that 27 were killed in an attack on worshippers in a mosque at the village of Unguwan Mantau in Malumfashi Local Government Area. The Katsina State Commissioner for Internal Affairs, Nasir Muazu, said the attack occurred during morning prayers with the gunmen opening fire inside the mosque, shooting sporadically. At the last count, the death toll had risen to 50, and dozens were abducted. Muazu said the local government “reaffirms its unwavering support for community-based security initiatives.” The local government called the incident a reprisal attack, fearing that it might have to do with the ambush by local residents two days earlier during which some bandits were killed.
The attack on the Great Mosque of Kano occurred on Friday, 28 November, 2014. Al Jazeera reported that banditry is rife in North-Western Nigeria and Central Regions, where herders and farmers clash and armed gangs target locals for financial gain.
In March this year, on the 21st to be specific, assailants from the Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS), said to be an affiliate of ISIL surrounded Fambita Mosque and randomly shot at worshippers, according to a statement from Niger’s Defence Ministry. They then set a market and several homes on fire. The attack took place on a Friday and left 44 worshippers killed. The incident was in the last 10 days of the month of Ramadan. Authorities said it was intended to cause as many civilian casualties as possible. The agencies including BBC in its digital bulletin report that in recent years, the Sahel has seen a major uptick in violence, following the expansion of armed groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL terrorist groups which took over territory in north Mali following the 2012 Tuareg rebellion there. Since then the violence has spread into neighbouring countries of Niger and Burkina Faso, and more recently, says the report, into some coastal West African nations. UN Deputy Secretary-General, Nigeria’s Amina Mohammed characterized the Sahel as “ground zero” for one of the most brutal security crisis in the world.
Despite efforts by member states, terrorism-related deaths in the region have reportedly soared past 6,000 for three consecutive years, making up more than half of all global fatalities. It is said the attack on Fambita Mosque should be a wake-up call to all-including international community-“as to the seriousness of the situation and the widening risks faced by civilians in Niger.”
Everything put on the scale, the attacks on Christian communities, their farms and homes as well as their priests are more, both in frequency and extent. Therefore fears have been expressed about genocidal motives undergirding the attacks. What with 100 people killed in June and Amnesty International had to call for the government to end the “almost daily bloodshed in Benue State.”
In attacks that led to what agency reports have dubbed mass exodus, at least 15 million people have been displaced, forced to abandon their villages, ancestral homes and churches to flee the massacres. Efforts by this column should be to heal wounds and not to inflame passions and emotions. As such the column refrains from getting into gory details. As we all know, however, and it is corroborated by Intersociety, a non-governmental organization, as well as Catholic News Agency, the worst hit states include Taraba, Adamawa, Borno, Kaduna, Benue, Plateau, Enugu, Imo, Niger, Kogi, Nasarawa, Bauchi, Yobe and Southern Kaduna where Jihadist groups such as Boko Haram, ISWAP (Islamic State West Africa Province), herdsmen and bandits have combined religious terrorism with criminal motives.
Professor Dr. Michalis Marioras of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens reflecting on the way forward would like to see vastly improved inter-religious dialogue and cooperation.”We need fewer words and more actions,” he is quoted to have said. “In my vision of interreligious dialogue and cooperation, the main aim is to pass from academic dialogue or theological dialogue to social action. I’m very happy to see that now we are talking about the real problems of our days. As an academic teacher I believe in education; education can change stereotypes and mindsets but we have to be honest. We have to prepare new generations to be ready not only to co-exist but to cohabitate in our planet.”
Professor Michalis Marioras is a member of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Reference Group, an inter-religious Dialogue and Cooperation. He spoke in Athens, Greece, at the 60th meeting and the Life and Work Centenary Conference in May, this year. He believes that leaders have to go from the spiritual elite to the grassroots. “We need the people,” he says. “It is very easy to communicate as academics or clergy between us. But the results must go down to the grassroots, the people, everyday life.”
However, while it is necessary to establish inter-religious dialogue and cooperation, it will remain hollow without true knowledge of life and existence and implications of activities by both the leaders and the led.
That reminds one of the Indian uprising 33 years ago. At the last count in December, 1992, no fewer than 1,016 persons had been killed in the Hindu-Moslem uprising which erupted following the demolition of a 16 Century Babri Mosque in Ayodhya town in Northern India. The violence climaxed a series of clashes on the land by adherents of two major religions not only in India, but the whole world. When the uprising sparked, leading to the death of 50 persons overnight, it spread rapidly to eight states of India, and then expectedly to the tinder-box state of Uttar Pradesh and indeed across the countries and the seas to the United Kingdom where there were reprisal actions against Hindu Temples.
The land on which the mosque then 464 years old was built had been a source of constant conflicts and cause of litigations. As of the time the Hindu fundamentalists moved in to pull down the mosque, a case was pending in the Supreme Court which had ruled that the status-quo be maintained. Other authorities, Federal and local, had favoured a status-quo ante.
The Hindu groups had claimed that the site was the birthplace of Rama, a war hero whom they had deified, and had erected on it a temple which they lost to those they described as Moslem invaders who overpowered the Hindus and built their mosque nearly 500 years as of 33 years ago. The Moslems had dismissed the historical claim by the Hindus as a fallacy. The Hindus said they had foreseen a Temple rising again on the land, and they considered it their responsibility to reclaim the land, preserve it, and when guided to kick-start the building the Temple, they would gladly do so. Mercifully and commendably, the Federal Government of India, upon receiving news of the attack on the Mosque, immediately pledged to rebuild it.
It would require Solomonic wisdom to say who the rightful owners of the land were. The Moslems? The Hindus? Whose child was it? That was the naughty question Solomon faced when two women met him each laying claim to a child.
It is reckless in the extreme to pull down any mosque, church and what have you, places dedicated to the sublime and humble worship of the Most High, our Maker; places where people gather to send their gratitude to the Almighty Creator of all the worlds, seen and unseen, all universes and all the Realms, for experiences of each day. It is inexplicable that people dare move against hallowed places, for whatever reason. It is even more condemnable that people are killed ostensibly to please God, the Most High. Many a man deludes himself into believing that if he kills, his place is assured in Heaven. He who kills in the name of religion or the state does so to please his religion or the state and not the Almighty Father. Evil is completely alien to the Creator. Evil cannot be found in Love, and the Most High is Love. He is Love, Justice and Purity. He is goodness and perfection embodied. It is only goodness that can come out of goodness, and perfection out of perfection. What else can we expect to come out of goodness if not goodness! Evil belongs to Darkness. Since Darkness cannot withstand the Light, it follows that the products of Darkness cannot also withstand the pressure of the Light. Darkness has no foundation. But Light is Living. It is Life which is eternal. The idea to create hell can never arise from the Purity of the Most High God. Hell is a creation of man, arising from wrong-doings.
To kill is to transgress the Law, The Fifth Commandment which says: “Thou shalt not kill!” To kill, therefore, is evil. And according to the Living Knowledge made available to seeking human beings on earth today, we now know that the commandment goes beyond physical elimination, to deadening of a person’s gifts meant to be developed and be of great benefit to mankind. If killing is evil, it is logical to conclude that it cannot be pleasing to the Creator. He who kills in the name of religion, or even destroys another person’s property will bear personal responsibility for his activities as the Laws of Creation do not know state or religion.
Apostle Paul it was who said we cannot live in sin and expect Grace to abound. The Hindus may not have been familiar with Paul’s monumental statement. But they can recall Buddha’s admonition that when evil deeds arise, they bring harm to you and to others.
Destroying a mosque is evil. So is destroying a church.
Having said this, do the Hindus have a responsibility to reclaim and preserve their sacred land? Is it possible for them to receive guidance about the uniqueness of a piece of land? Certain lands are sacred and are to be protected for humble service to the Creator according to the light of those who may lay claim to them; and it is possible for them to have been guided to such lands. But how do you lay claim to a land lost nearly 500 years ago?
The heavy weight of ethereal deposits from mankind has caused the earth to move ponderously below its orbital path. With purification going on in all countries on the face of the earth at the moment, manifesting in political instability, economic collapse, social decay and attitudinal degeneracy, all brought about by the pressure of the Light increasing by the day, the earth is gradually rising from the depths. In the process areas of the earth which cannot join in the movement owing to their weight, cause cracks in the earth crust, and larva escapes on to the face of the earth which we refer to as volcanic eruptions. The weight is signal to the elemental beings the builders of the earth to set to work. This is why tremors and earthquakes occur almost continually in these past decades. The same is true of plane crashes, making nonsense of scientific calculations and notions which have been regarded as settled. The calculations of aeronautics engineers and geographers are progressively rendered null and void, to use the language of lawyers. It is all in line with the seeming cacophony of the trumpet of the World Judgment. Nature is speaking to mankind, but man is expecting the fulfillment of Light promises according to his own wishes which are governed by his limitations, the capacity of his intellect which is only a tool for material comprehension. But Light happenings speak only to the spirit, the real man sojourning on earth. Ennoblement arises only in the spirit.
The point this column is getting at is if at a point in the history of India, a community had come to recognition of the Holy Will of the Most High, and had lived in conformity with this Will which manifests in the Laws of Nature, the activities of the Holy Spirit, that community would be clarified, so would be the air-their environment generally. The land would be consecrated in the purity of their activities. It is such a land which has not been poisoned and dragged down that would be preserved for Light Activities. It is, therefore, possible for those with inner purity, inner probity, those with rich inner life, to see what land has been reserved for what purpose. Divine messages can never be intelligible to him who thinks only in the earthly way, for what they reveal can only be absorbed by the spirit. Land radiates. A wholesome land will radiate correspondingly. Even if the whole world does not believe the promises, even if they are not aware of them, it does not make the promises false.
Prophecies are not made to please men. And human opinions in the matter do not count. Was Mount Sinai on which Moses was mercifully permitted to receive The Ten Commandments an ordinary land? Certainly not. Israel was the Promised Land prepared and preserved for the use of the Lord Christ to save mankind from their self-inflicted ruin with His Word of Truth.
He came to arrest the alarming decline in spirituality, and through His Word, free mankind from their faults and weaknesses which hold them back from getting to Paradise. Israeli land was, therefore, not an ordinary land. If the Hindus were right in their claims to the land, it still does not justify the destruction of the mosque. If the land is not being used for the purpose for which it was intended by the Light, for the pure worship of the Most High, in the reckoning of the Creator not that of man, the Creator knows what to do. They would be guided as to how to go about reclaiming it. And this would not involve the use of violence, for violence is not the way of the Creator as He will not work against His own perfect Will to fulfill any promises which can find fulfillment only in the Will. The Hindus should have prayed and left the repossession to the automatic workings of Creation. If they were pure and earnest, their prayers would go to the Throne of Grace and would be answered. No one pleases the Creator by his religion, but by the purity of his thoughts, speeches and deeds-the activities of his hands, which, as we are permitted to know through higher knowledge today, are tantamount to doing the Will of the Most High, that we will become mature, become true spiritual personalities with talents and abilities unfolded.
Where there is Truth, there can be no controversy. And with the unfolding of Truth light will be beamed to all issues and all questions will be answered. And nothing that does not stand on the foundation of Truth will exist anymore. Then the hour will have arrived “when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father…but in Spirit and in Truth for such the Father seeks to worship Him.” – John 4: 21.
To reduce recriminations and conflicts, and foster inter-religious understanding in the land, the government should reactivate the Advisory Council on Religious Affairs set up by Gen. Ibrahim Babangida in 1986, then in the saddle, following the controversy that trailed Nigeria’s membership of OIC, (Organization of Islamic Cooperation). There was also the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council, a voluntary association made up of equal numbers of eminent Christians and Muslims. The composition rose to 30 on either side following co-option of women and youths-from 25 on each side at the inception. The brief to the council set up by Babangida was to promote inter-religious peace and stability-what both Bishop Jacques Mourad and Professor Michalis are advocating for Syria “to move forward together on the path of understanding.”
• Abdu Rafiu is a renowned editor, newspaper manager and respected elder of journalism.
