Our Dangerous Interpretations of the Massacre of Muslims in Burma
By Gimba Kakanda
Not long ago, I challenged attempts by some Muslims in my part of the country to smuggle religion into their activism around the killings in Palestine, and reminding them of the racial and national diversity of the key participants in the outrage. We formed dangerous support groups around Palestine and Israel, for Islam and, ironically, Christianity, respectively. Some of them didn't know that Israel isn't a Christian country and that there are Arabs, something they seem to portray as sacred race, who are Christians, some even in Israel.
A number of us overemphasized "brotherhood of faith" that seemed to ridicule the advocacies of non-Muslims who had stood for the liberation of Palestine even before their parents met. I mentioned Edward Said, an Arab Christian of Palestinian descent, as outstanding voice of the people.
What unsettled them really was my observation that the killings in Northeast Nigeria should be a priority for them, fellow Nigerians, over the ancient tragedy in Gaza, which of course was being fairly televised, the dead identified and announced. Unlike the spate of unreported killings in our backyard.
That intervention was described as blasphemy, and they spelled their confusion for me clearly. That the campaign for rescue of Chibok girls, which I was dedicated to, was only for the Christianity of the girls and that a Palestinian Muslim ranked higher than a Nigerian Christian in their understanding of Brotherhood of Faith.
Since reports of the killings of Rohingya Muslims in Burma began to make headlines, the same characters are out to single Saudi Arabia out as cruel for doing nothing to save the Muslims in Burma, apparently expecting Jeddah to invade a sovereign country to achieve this.
Saudi Arabia is a political space that came into existence in 1932, a space that happens to host holy sites that serve as its plugs and immunity in tampering with the gullibility of Muslims all over the world. And yes, Saudi Arabia plays its politics wisely to stay out of trouble. Strangely, there are people that still won't believe that the same Saudi Arabia they adopt as protector of Muslims is killing innocent and unarmed Muslims like them in Yemen, and that they too would've been victims if they were Yemeni in affected regions.
Our inability to interpret global politics is the reason you see a mob in Jos or Kaduna taking to the street and burning shops and residences of their non-Muslim neighbours and friends for an assault on Islam in, say, Denmark. You will never get how destroying the property of fellow Nigerians or disrupting the peace of their cities amount to justice in Denmark.
In case you're waiting for someone to interpret this to you, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a political space that privileges its citizens over you, and that it will never see you as equal to its citizens, and also will never cite your religion alone as reason to issue visa to you. And there are millions of Arabs who, despite this abused concept of brotherhood of faith, see you as inferior to them, merely for the colour of your skin, and some won't even let you lead them in a Salat.
You can never fix the world by promoting exclusivity, weakening alliances with your neighbours and countrymen in solidarity with a people who probably don't know of your existence. We can only fix the world by building bridges and showing our neighbours we love them just as much as we love our brothers and sisters, and not this Musulmai versus Arna politics we think is the language of international politics, even when secular America is the biggest ally of the custodians of the Holy Mosques.