Preamble
“Nights are pregnant. They give birth to wonders in the days. What we look is not what we see. Thus, our focus becomes dimmer and dimmer as the days and nights of life roll out spirally but gradually into permanent oblivion. And the living man is pronounced dead.”
The results of America’s presidential election last Wednesday have confirmed the assertion in the above Arab poem. We live in a world that is both dynamic and ephemeral. Nothing is predictable with precision.
Effect of language
Yoruba language may have no plural or gender in its structural syntax. It may be poor in vocabulary and clumsy in grammar. But it is surely not lacking in proverbs and mythology. The speakers of that Kwa language can hardly express a sentence without enriching it with two or three proverbs. One of its famous proverbs has become an axiom in theory and practice. And many other languages have borrowed it for a token of experience. It goes thus: “A toddler who insists on preventing his mother from sleeping will surely not enjoy the serenity of the night rest”. This subtle axiom has its equivalence in English language. “A drastic problem requires a drastic solution”.
Language and culture
Language is the root of all human cultures. It is the means of communicating thoughts, ideas and experiences. A people without language can be said to be without culture. Take a man out of his culture and he will immediately become like a fish out of water. His next action will be to rebel against the new but strange environment. That is the kind of situation that is cloaking the world in form of terrorism today.
From time immemorial, language has been like a double edged sword. At a time it is used to attack. At another, it becomes an instrument of defence. Concord and conflict as well as love and hatred emanate from the use of language. Without language, there can be no marriage or divorce. Neither can there be business or even government. As a matter of fact, no tribe or nation can lay claim to civilisation in the absence of language.
Language in Islam
In Islam, language is everything human, including life and death. That is why a stammering prophet like Musa (Moses) would need an interpreter like Harun (Aaron) in his mission. Buddhists, Hindus, Judaists, Christians and Muslims, all proclaim Holy Books in one form or another, through their endowed languages. Not only must a prophet possess the power of language, he must also be eloquent in it. Prophet Muhammad (SAW) recognised the enormous power naturally embedded in language and warned the Muslims thus: ‘Tongue is like sword, if you fail to hold it, it may hold you down”.
A person’s first language is called mother tongue while a standardised dialect within a tribal language is said to be ‘received’. If there is one aspect of culture that is not substitutable, it is language. The greatest havoc ever done to any group of people in history, especially through slave trade and colonialism, is language substitution. Nothing is more enslaving than substitution of language. Once language is renounced or substituted, nothing else is left of culture with another language. The black citizens of the world, outside Africa, otherwise classified as Diaspora, are victims of this indelible psychological trauma.
English speaking countries
There are only four countries in the world today with English language as their mother tongue. These are Britain, the United States, Australia and Ireland. What would have been the fifth country is only partially English speaking. And that is Canada where other languages such as French and Spanish are spoken. All other countries that speak English as lingua franca today only adopted it. Believing English to be the language of modern civilisation, the rest of the world have tacitly adopted it either as a lingua franca or as language of business. Yet the natural speakers of the language don’t seem to be satisfied with this development.
Evil axis
With the role which America played in bringing an end to slavery in the 19th century, the world had expected the self-styled ‘God’s own Country’ to be the messiah of the modern age. But that expectation has turned forlorn. Rather than championing the course of peace and tranquility, America has replaced Germany of the 1930s/40s as the greatest threat to humanity in the 21st century. And she has found an inseparable ally in Britain to form an ‘Evil Axis’ of untamable aggressors.
Both English speaking countries had jointly piloted the modern world into a technological civilisation culminating in what is now known as global village. But they have used the same technology to turn themselves into ‘policemen of the world’.
There is no part of the world today in which a suffocating effect of their presence is not felt. Like a pair of scissors, both countries have jointly subjected many nations and races to untold terror and humiliation thereby forcing countries to disintegrate and compelling friendly tribes to become foes all to further the course of their capitalist interest. Thus, they have planted the seed of terrorism in all corners of the world either in the name of capitalism or in the disguise of democracy.
In the process of doing this, they have drawn the wrath of many nations, groups and individuals who now tend to react with venomous reprisal. If the militant liberators in Ireland or the patriotic defenders of motherland in Falkland are quiet today, it is not because they have been placated. The fact is that they have not got the power with which to demand for their rights. When they do, the situation may change.
Propaganda
Now, using their propaganda machinery to bully on the rest of the world, the US and Britain have almost succeeded in branding any revengeful reaction to their brigandage as religious terrorism. What was the religious connection in Britain’s claim of the Falkland Island far away in Argentina in the early 1980s? What is religious in America’s capturing of the ruling President Noriega of Panama in his country and taking him for trial in the US where he was jailed and had to languish in prison for years? What is religious in forcing monolingual countries like Korea and Cambodia to break into North and South? What is religious in invading Iraq even after it became evident that the poor country was not harbouring any deadly weapons as alleged? What actually qualifies the US, Britain and other Western countries to be nuclear powered and disqualify others?
Even if a country chooses to use religion as her guide in governance as in the case of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran how does that affect Britain and the US thousands of miles away? Is Northern Ireland not a Christian country like Britain? Why the aggression against that country? And is Britain not using religion as an instrument of governance? Why does the Queen of England combine the two designations of Head of State and Head of the Church of England?
If the truth must be told, the real problem of the world today is the greedy willingness of Britain and America to dominate the economy of other countries in a manner of brigandage. And that has led the duo to adopt military might as a means of cowing down some countries while subjecting others to imperial terror.
Brunt bearers
It is rather unfortunate that those who are bearing the brunt of these evil actions are innocent people who are going about their businesses legitimately. Otherwise, neither America nor Britain would have deserved any sympathy for the various terrorist attacks on certain targets in the two countries. Their plight would have been taken for merely reaping the fruits of their labour.
Religion is being used as a scapegoat in the world today, not by Afghanistan or Ireland, but by Britain and the US because that is their most convenient alibi for unbridled aggression against weaker countries. No sooner had Donald Trump emerged as the new American President than Israel announced that with the new leadership in America the world should forget any thought of a Palestinian State. That statement was made subsequent to Trump’s disclosure that over 12 million people, especially Muslims might be expelled from the US.
Who wants to die?
No one loves to die deliberately in Palestine or in Iraq or in Afghanistan or in Ireland. But when you are forced to live without essence, the tendency is to ask yourself the need to live at all. And, to answer such a question some people might desperately conclude that if they must not live, those who are forcing them to die must also not live. “Man is not innately wicked, but when an attempt is made to consign him to the scrap-heap he shows resentment in no uncertain terms”. Terrorism begets terrorism. But what is one nation’s terrorism is another nation’s heroism.
Allah warns against corruption and the acts of brigandage in chapter 8:25 of the Qur’an thus: “And guard against calamity that may afflict not only the wrong doers (but even the innocent ones among you). Know that Allah’s punishment can be very severe”.
Solution
How can we change this evil trend? This, perhaps, is the new reality which dawned on a former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, when he was about to exchange baton with his predecessor, Tony Blair, some years ago.
In a chat with Labour Party members in Manchester shortly before he assumed office as Prime Minister, Brown said he recognised the fact that global extremism could never be defeated by military force alone. His words:
“Our foreign policy in the years ahead will reflect the truth that to isolate and defeat terrorist extremism now involves more than military force….it (terrorism) is a struggle of ideas and ideals that in the coming years will be waged and won for the hearts and minds here at home and around the world”. Many well-meaning, foresighted Nigerians have drummed the same warning to the ears of Nigerian government. But a government that is wiser than its subjects will never heed such a warning.
When he was making the above statement, Brown never thought that Britain would soon come under a new terrorist attack. But just a few days after that famous speech, Glasgow Airport became a target of terrorist attack. And that was on the very day he formally assumed office as Prime Minister. What became clearer especially with September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, was that no country is actually immune to terrorist attack. History has not cited a single example of terrorism which was conquered on the battle field. Thus, since no power on earth can claim to have monopoly of terror peace would better be achieved by sharing the wisdom of others through dialogue in ending terrorism.
Reality
That is the reality to which the West, especially Britain and the US, had deliberately been blind. If that reality had become the spectacle with which the West viewed the world before now peace would have returned to its rightful place as the reigning force of human universe and the idea of manufacturing and supplying weapons to some people against others would have stopped permanently. Now, with the emergence of a new ‘Fuhrer’ in the US, hat reality seems to have become daydream.
The religious world was once peaceful until America renounced her policy of isolationism in 1945. It took that country to join Britain in using the Press to invent labelling names and acronyms to derogate certain religions (particularly Islam) and to demoralise their adherents. One major fact which the world is yet to realise is that every religion is built on the foundation of culture.
No religion can be attacked to the exclusion of its culture. And nothing in the life of man is called civilisation outside culture. That is why some people are ready to die when their religion comes under a violent attack from those who are ignorant of it.
The Greeks, the Romans, the Assyrians and the Persians of the ancient world did not fight wars because of religion. Their motives were material but today they have all gone into irreversible oblivion. Today’s people who are bent on exhibition of power will eventually follow their way. Materialism is nothing but vanity which is invariably ephemeral. That is why Prophet Muhammad (SAW) or any of his disciples never crossed swords with Christians when they were alive.
The very first international wars fought for religious reason which by necessity pitched Muslims against Christians were the Crusade Wars. And these were caused by sheer miscarriage of information. Yet, about one thousand years after those unwarranted wars, their scar still remains indelible in the world today.
Conclusion
Violence on the basis of religion can terminate lives. It can destroy properties and ruin cities and towns as well as cause dislocations and relocations of people and settlements. But it can never win hearts nor change conviction. Truth is bitter and thus repugnant to people of falsehood.
But despite all these, oppressed Muslims are ready to join other oppressed people of the world in welcoming a new initiative from the West with a view to forging peace for all and sundry. Donald Trump’s America must tread softly to ensure a peaceful continuity of the modern world.
