A monstrous mass murder of
innocent souls has occurred in Jos
again and we are, as always, being
insulted with unimaginative,
flyblown, and soporific platitudes
by our political, media, and clerical
elites. Almost every prominent
Nigerian who has commented on
this heartless, high-tech mass
slaughter has mouthed one of
three predictably ready-made
bromides: oh, this is all about
politics, not religion; it ’s a failure of
security and leadership; and it’s the
consequence of poverty.
This is the safe, standard,
prepackaged rhetorical frippery
that our elites effortlessly
regurgitate whenever violent
communal convulsions erupt in any
part of the country. But this is
getting insufferably trite. If the
hypocrisy or intellectual laziness
that actuates these thoughtless,
simplistic sound bites didn ’t have
far-reaching consequences for our
continued existence as a nation
and, in fact, our very survival as a
people, one would simply yawn in
silence and ignore them.
But it so often happens that after
these hypocritical, clichéd phrases
are uttered, the nation will be
anesthetized into a false sense of
security and normalcy, the culprits
will never be ferreted out much
less punished, and everybody will
go to sleep —until the next
upheaval recrudesces and jolts us
all out of our pigheaded
complacence.
A scene from the bombings in Jos
And then the predictably mind-
numbing, mealy-mouthed
banalities will be invoked again by
the elites to explain away what
happened, and so on and so forth.
This rhetorical formula is safe
because it absolves people in
political and cultural authority from
the triple burdens of thinking,
confronting uncomfortable truths,
and taking action. That ’s why
politicians are often ironically the
first to blame “politicians” for the
episodic fits violence that now
punctuate our national life. Well,
“ politician” is a floating signifier that
encapsulates everybody in politics,
and what refers to everybody
refers to nobody. Case closed.
To be sure, political manipulation,
inept security and leadership, and
poverty are all deeply implicated in
the perpetual cycle of violence and
recriminations that have become
fixtures in our socio-political
landscape. But a murderous
pervasion of religious doctrines and
violent, unthinking ethnic
particularism are even greater
culprits. People who are
brainwashed into believing that
those who don’t share their faith
deserve to be murdered, or people
who are so wedded to their
ethnicity that they lack the
capacity to tolerate others, are just
as dangerous and as culpable —if
not more so— as the politicians
who “manipulate” them.
Poverty, in and of itself, does not
predispose people to violence.
There are much poorer countries in
Africa than Nigeria that are
remarkably peaceful. Take, for an
example, Benin Republic, our
western neighbor. Or Senegal, an
over-90-percent Muslim country
that elected a Roman Catholic as its
first president. And, of course,
security lapses become an issue
only in societies that have a
predisposition to senseless,
unprovoked violence, such as ours.
Now, a group which calls itself
Jama ’atu Ahlus Sunnah Lid Da’awati
Wal Jihad has claimed responsibility
for the deadly bombs
in Jos. It also claims to have
perpetrated its savage murder of
innocents, some of whom may in
fact be Muslims, on behalf of
Muslims and Islam. But the
preponderance of reactions to this
unsettling revelation among our
Muslim leaders and commentators,
including security agencies, has
been to impulsively dismiss the
group ’s claim even when they
have no contrary evidence—much
like Goodluck Jonathan and his
minions unthinkingly exculpated
the Movement for the
Emancipation of the Niger Delta
(MEND) of responsibility for the
October 1 terrorist attacks even
when the group claimed
responsibility for the attacks. Same
attitude, different personalities.
That is the Nigerian story.
One uncomfortable fact that our
elites in northern Nigerian have
been shy to confront meaningfully
and fearlessly is that we do have a
worryingly enervating crisis of
noxious religious literalism. By
religious literalism I mean lazy,
literal, and de-contextualized
reading of religious texts, which
current Central Bank governor
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi almost
singlehandedly fought for several
years in newspaper articles when
he was an ordinary banker. I ’ve
heard so much thoroughgoing hate
and blatant call to murder by local,
often ignored, religious clerics in the
name of sermonizing. These are
unmentionable sermons that will
curdle the blood of any sane
person and cause them to wonder
if they share the same humanity
as these ignorant, homicidal clerics.
Boko Haram ’s leader’s video
justifying and claiming
responsibility for the Jos bombings
is an eerie echo of these hateful
sermons.
But I know these sermons to be
atrociously grotesque perversions
of Islam ’s core teachings because I
am the son of a Muslim scholar who
knows as much about Islam as any
educated Muslim should. My 80-
something-year-old dad taught me
to read and write in Arabic before I
even learned to read in the Roman
alphabet. And my dad’s dad was a
Christian. So were many of his
brothers and sisters. Yet we lived in
peace. My dad always took care to
remind us, like all broadminded
Muslim scholars do or should, that
the references to “unbelievers” in
the Qur’an are not to Christians or
Jews; they are to seventh-century
Arabian idolaters who launched
unprovoked attacks against the
emergent Islamic religion.
Christians and Jews are properly
called “ahlul kitaab” (translated as
“people of the book”) in the Qur’an.
Although the relationship between
early Muslims in the 7th century
and Christians was not without
problems, it was, for the most part,
marked by tolerance as evidenced
in several Qur ’anic verses.
Examples: “Surely those who
believe, and those who are Jews,
and the Christians, and the Sabians
-- whoever believes in God and the
Last Day and does good, they shall
have their reward from their Lord.
And there will be no fear for them,
nor shall they grieve" (2:62, 5:69,
and many other similar verses);
“ [A]nd nearest among them in love
to the believers will you find those
who say, ‘We are Christians,’
because amongst these are men
devoted to learning and men who
have renounced the world, and
they are not arrogant ” (5:82). In
the second verse, you can almost
mentally picture Reverend Hassan
Matthew Kukah and many
(Catholic) priests.
But ignorant, hate-filled, and
hidebound religious literalists have
stripped adherents of other
Abrahamic faiths of their status as
“ people of the book” and have
dressed them in the borrowed
robes of “unbelievers.” And they
are straining hard to make gullible
people believe that all the scriptural
verses about retaliatory aggression
against “unbelievers” in the Qur’an
refer to Christians and Jews.
Unfortunately, these hitherto fringe
perverts of the message of the
Qur ’an are beginning to enjoy a
position of dominance in northern
Nigeria ’s religious discourse, and
many sane, thinking people are
afraid to contradict them, lest they
be tagged as “hypocrites” or
“sympathizers of unbelievers” and
then murdered by their
sympathizers.
I know I speak for millions of silent
Nigerian Muslims when I say that
these blood-thirsty, homicidal
beasts who murdered innocent
men, women, and children in the
name of Islam don ’t represent us.
But until enough Muslim leaders
and commentators come out to
openly denounce these people and
the ideology of hate that animates
them, they will continue to hijack
and appropriate the mainstream,
and we will all pay dearly for this--
literally and symbolically.
But, first, the perpetrators must be
be made to face the consequences
of their murders. Unfortunately,
Goodluck Jonathan has robbed
himself of the moral capital to bring
these murderers to justice because
he also publicly shielded his own
MEND kinsmen
from the consequences of their
own savage terrorism against
Nigeria.
The question is: can we afford to go
on like this, especially now that we
are entering a really dangerous
phase of mutual annihilation
through bombs? Certainly, our
elites ’ habitual, knee-jerk,
platitudinous reactions to
communal violence will hasten our
collective ruination. But we need to
always remember that the
consequences of a violent break-up
won ’t be pretty for everybody.
Tolerance, understanding, and the
acceptance of our diversity are the
only values that can sustain us a
nation.

Abegi! We all know these killings are not religiously motivated! Its politics! Agreed ur campaign ought to be pursued but what is most urgent now is remedial measures for a FAILURE IN LEADERSHIP!!! If we don't get rid of GEJ these crisis will soon assume even domestic dimensions where wives start bombing their husbands and primary school kids start burning their teachers!!!!

soldee:

Abegi! We all know these killings are not religiously motivated! Its politics! Agreed your campaign ought to be pursued but what is most urgent now is remedial measures for a FAILURE IN LEADERSHIP!!! If we don't get rid of GEJ these crisis will soon assume even domestic dimensions where wives start bombing their husbands and primary school kids start burning their teachers!!!!

I they are no religious undertones as you are suggesting above, why thenmust d bombings be on christmas eve and new year eve and not sallah eve? why target only churches, leaving out mosques?

james_ibor:

I they are no religious undertones as you are suggesting above, why thenmust d bombings be on christmas eve and new year eve and not sallah eve? why target only churches, leaving out mosques?

Muslims were amongst those who died in the Mogadishu barracks bombing. The day of the act has little or no bearing on a particular religion. Abuja was bombed on 1st of October, abeg na which religion dey celebrate on that dey?

Muslims are very wicked people.

Its all religiously motivated, no matter what anyone think. Muslims are nothing but cowardly killers.

muslim
murder
islamaBAD
tat for no tit
burn
blood
blast
sad news
tears.
All these are synonyms.
Am not saying that islam is bad.