Ioseph's Posts
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Evablizin:LMAO "The oyinbo see this as disturbance" actually anyone who isn't an idiot sees it that way. This woman is batshit crazy and people are going to see her as batshit crazy. It's not so much spreading the "word of god" (Christianity has been in Britain over a thousand years before it ever got to West Africa) as it is spreading the stereotype that Nigerians are religious lunatics. Nothing wrong with public speaking. But if your public speaking consists of shrieking Bible Quotes then you're going to be taken for a looney, and rightfully so. |
butterflylion:Yes, I can make meaning of the bolded. It is a description of you and your stance in regards to religious belief. The alternatives to the abrahamic creation myth are not delusion or idiosyncrasy - they are facts. We have telescopes that can see into the universal past through the observation of light rays hitting earth after travelling at lightspeed through vaste expanses of space over billions of years. Our world's advanced practices of Physics and Chemistry allow us to observe the age of sediments and materials through carbon dating, and our huge repository of cultural, anthropological and archaeological history reveal far more about the creation of the Earth, the history of the earth, the origins of life on earth and evolution than any Abrahamic creation myth has ever done, and it was done through analysis, reasoning and the scientific method, not through blind obsession with the Biblical Genesis. Not that I expect you to have any other arguments up your sleeve aside from more insults, posturing and sensationalism. |
A pedophile and his wife in the style of Islamic pedophilia, even with the names "Mohammad" and "Aisha", following an contradictory Islamist realpolitik. What a 'lovely couple'. [img]https://www.aic.cuhk.edu.hk/web8/vomit.jpg[/img] |
butterflyl1on:What? Did you read anything in that post at all? I don't ascribe to agnosticism or agnostic atheism at all - I was explaining what it was and why it's more thoughtful than believing in an abrahamic god. A lot of your propositions about agnostic viewpoints (such as a "creator god" being defined and designed by their followers) are ironically perfect arguments for agnosticism over Christianity or Islam - Agnosticism simply posits that there is a "creator being" without presuming of it's character or role in history while agnostic atheism views matters on it's existence as unknowable, but religions like Christianity and Islam do the exact opposite. They paint a face on this "creator being", give it a name: God. Say that it was involved in the construction of earth through a (false) creation myth, say that "God" has rules that "He" wants humanity to follow, and that all others claiming the exact same thing are blasphemers or kuffar or whatnot. I responded to your questions and you cut discussion with a winky face and call me delusional. I think you should take a look in a mirror. |
butterflyl1on:Agnostic atheism is not "logically impossible" - it denotes uncertainty. butterflyl1on:Because while 'technically' the existence of a so-called "creator being" is not ruled out, the idea of an abrahamic god in line with the Judaic, Christian or Muslim faiths is utterly nonsensical. The creation myth is simply put, debunked. The abrahamic god has no claims to legitimacy over the god or gods of any other human religion, and it's intense following worldwide through Islam and Christianity was created from conquest and the spread of religion by sword., not by any rabbithole of comparison and reasoning. butterflyl1on:Actually, it's the other way around - this is exactly how Christianity works. butterflyl1on:Christianity and Islam are a mad-man's agnosticism. |
frosbel2:Homosexual intercourse is objectively none of those things. Aside from the fact that it is not a "perversion of nature" as I discussed in my previous post, for what reason is it considered 'disgusting', 'sick' or, heavens, 'evil'? Homosexual intercourse does not imply a lack of consent, or any other sort of personal infringement at all. It is completely and utterly harmless. And the fact that you boil homosexuality down to the simplistic notion of men having anal sex with each other says a lot about the way you view relationships. Plenty of Nigerians seem to have no problem with a man having intercourse with a WOMAN from an 'orifice designed for poo' (check the Nigerian statistical trends on porn searches), and there are plenty of other sick, gross and evil things Nigerians have committed in the past, e.g. sexual abuse, pedophilia, drug shipping, piracy, etc. which have real social, political and economic consequences, not to mention they result in horrible psychological and physical scars, broken societies and murder. The harmless act of two men consensually having intercourse is so utterly innocent in the face of these things, and maybe if you were free of the Christian geass you claim to be beyond you'd understand that. |
How does the idea of a creator being make ANY sense? What is a creator being? What is it made of? Within which physical dimension does it reside? Is it sentient? How is it that we humans, a bundle of self-aware molecules on a tiny planet in a tiny solar system amidst billions of solar systems within a tiny galaxy amidst BILLIONS of galaxies, are - prior to any expedition - so utterly sure of the existence of such a being? This is the joke. It doesn't take much to realise that the concept of a "creator being" is just us humans projecting ourselves onto the environment. The idea of a "creator", with a mind and a penchant for design like us humans, that "made the universe out of nothing", is such an utterly humanised concept that I'm surprised more people in the ancient world never talked about it. God didn't make us in their own image, we made God in OUR own image. A deity, no matter what it is, simply has no evidence and no explainable REASON to have ever existed - and it's association with human or animal qualities like children or intelligence or life and death makes it painfully clear that god was only ever an idea. |
frosbel2:Acceptance of Homosexuality is a progressive social viewpoint. You can't subvert "nature" and inject your own personal values into it in order to claim "perversion" of whatever it is you don't like. Homosexual behaviour is found in numerous animal species and our own, homo sapiens, is no exception. By the Oxford dictionary, the term "Nature" in the english language is defined as: the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations. "the breathtaking beauty of nature" Homosexuality is a part of the phenomena of the physical world and of the variety of human behaviour. By definition it is a part of nature, and your claims of 'perversion' hold zero objective weight. You claim to not be religious, yet you are a mindwhore to Abrahamic ethos. You've also sidestepped any discussion over the thread topic, that devout Nigerians tend to be massive hypocrites in practice. |
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France and later all of Europe understood this hundreds of years ago. Religion is the ultimate sedative, keeping an exploited public content, a scientific culture dead and a corrupt government healthy. "Religion is the opiate of the masses" and whatnot. Religion is a guise for brainless followers of even more brainless clowns like Pastors, who can't see the forest for the trees, and can't see a purpose beyond their immediate enrichment and pleasure. |
The same goes for Muslim Nigerians. This is such a bizarre phenomenon, and actually extends to a lot of other post-colonial African states. The overwhelming majority of Nigerians are extremely zealous Christians or Muslims, and there is a staunch hatred of homosexuality and progressive social viewpoints that contradict the teachings of the Bible and Quran, often to the point of violence towards people who argue in support of them. Some are so devout that they will enact behaviour of questionable sanity, such as a crowd stamping and praying in front of a dangerous factory fire because they think the prayer will put the fire out. Some Nigerians know (or claim to know ) the entirety of the Bible or Quran by heart and voraciously quote from it when their religious society is challenged, either by followers of other religions or proponents of the big bad bogeyman of "Western culture", the catch-all slogan used by conservatives around the world from Ukraine to Saudistan for civil rights movements and humanistic policies (unsurprisingly the same people don't seem to mind other aspects of the "Western culture" they so despise, such as financially impossible national debt imposition and complete deregulation and privatisation of the national economy, but the people they appeal to aren't that bright to begin with).But the sweetest irony of this all is that Nigerians are some of the biggest breakers of Christian taboo on earth. Just think about it. Nigerians spout conservative Christian values but they are some of the most seedy and debaucherous people on earth. Look up the rates of Pornography searches in Nigeria compared to the rest of the world, look at shit like Nollywood or Big Brother Nigeria. Naijan Christians and Muslims always paint the West in the negative light of a mindless, sexually debaucherous pleasure palace. Well all I can say to that is, take a look at yourselves! Many in the West do not follow a rigid code of religious sexuality or modesty, at least not to any major extent - yet they are nowhere NEAR as sleazy as the average Nigerian. This sexual lecherousness extends to sexual abuse and harassment, where people are unaware of their own social boundaries and disrespectful to those of others. In example, a woman in the UK made a collage on her phone of nasty people who leered and catcalled at her in the street, a LOT of them were NIGERIANS. Naijans spout Christian chastity and work ethic, but they have sex on the brain. To an outsider, it just looks utterly stupid, a people who scream and shout about debauchery at the idea of two men loving one another, but do things themselves that Soddom and Gommorah wouldn't even DREAM of doing. There is an insane amount of political and economic corruption in Nigeria, especially in the Churches. This leads to political and economic mismanagement, which props up poverty and poor living conditions, which props up, you guessed it, crime! There is so much crime in Nigeria! "Thou shalt not steal" has been run over in the mud by Nigerians at this point. The same goes for violence and the reactions to that violence. So many Nigerians just don't give a shit if someone is murdered, if someone is tortured, if someone is raped - it's the common news to them. Some just shrug, many wouldn't help a neighbour in danger, etc. - there is no sense of Christian community, no sense of "treat others like you would like to be treated" - it's just mindless, non-self-aware solipsism in a country where social responsibility doesn't exist. All in all, I find it hilarious that a country with so many religiously devout people is one of the most morally bankrupt, violent, corrupt and inhuman places on earth. |
How are atheists the angry ones? Usually it's Christians, Muslims, etc. who are up in arms of breaches of their religious codexes... |
Is the only thing anyone does on this forum copy-paste things? |
Jesus sucks. |
saved |
Everywhere over Africa it's the same old same old. - There has been a coup by a military group of an African government who was dared to attempt economic policies that would improve quality-of-life and lessen Western (and at this point probably Gulf State and Asian) profits. - Instead of understanding the politics of the country and supporting the spirit of debate and democracy, most Africans wallow in maleducation and ignorance of their country's structure, while all of the people in the upper echelons of government are rich corrupt swindling thieves that don't care about nor represent the African peoples of their country, who steal millions of dollars in aid relief for their money-worshipping pigsnout families and bank accounts, and sellout on economic and political reforms by giving away Africa's great wealth for free to the highest Western or Chinese bidder (who just replace the government pigs with new ones using their long intruding anti-democratic tentacles if said pigs dare to lose their snouts and become respectable non-corrupt representatives for the country they are supposed to be running). - An African country is torn apart because people cannot get over petty tribalism or live in multicultural harmony, destroying the economy of the emergent nations from the bloody wreckage, obliterating government structure and education in exchange for pumping testosterone and horrific massacres, rapes and atrocities, and serving the interests of foreign governments along with their businesses who can, using the old Divide and Conquer tactic, back whichever militia or angry ethnic group who will give them the better chance of gobbling up the most natural resources with the least regulation. A perfect example of this is the Amhara repression of Oromos, and the subsequent Oromo calls for independence. Naturally independence would utterly devastate the economies of both Ethiopia and an emergent Oromia, lands already marred by starvation and drought, but the senseless tribalistic inability to think in fairer and more cool headed terms has brought the country to a tipping point. Much the same can be said of Nigeria. - Africa not only has some of the most extreme levels of rampant Christianity and Islam on earth, but it has a commonality for extreme violence , making it nearly impossible for secular voices to be heard without being attacked. Imagine trying to argue against Shariah law in the middle of North Nigeria with a devout muslim village - you'd be lucky to leave that village alive! There is rarely ever any criticism of religion or religious customs, which feed into a cycle of domestic violence, pedophilia (Buhari himself married his wife when she was 12! The leader of the largest nation in Africa, Nigeria, is a PEDOPHILE!), and other social ills. The rampant homophobia is delusional violent fearmongering, where people are told that homosexuals are satanic, evil and unclean. Religion is also used by greedy pastors and Imams, most of which are probably atheists themselves, who can make money off of the poor and dupe them into being Christian or Muslim mindslaves without any criticism for government policy or political movements to improve their country's infrastructure, education, humanities and wellbeing. It almost feels as if someone can approach an African crowd, scream loudly while waving a cross madly above their heads, and that crowd will believe and do anything!! Africa just feels like it's heading in a continuously downward spiral.... there is no hope, no culture of political debate or intellectualism, all governments have been sold out to the highest capitalist bidder, from Gupta in South Africa to Chinese, French, American, British and Korean corporations in the East and West of Africa, and the people have all the consciousness and worldly understanding of slugs, blindly following their religion, refusing to think about a bigger picture for their society, indulging in a petty combination of theological and pornographic pursuits with disregard for their neighbourhoods or community, and if some group or another does arise that dares to uphold the torch of the original flagbearers of anti-imperial African Independence movements and Pan-Africanists in parliament, he or she will be choked of life and arrested or killed, or be toppled by an internationally paid-for military group of thugs. Do you think that there will ever rise a secular, conscious African society, beyond the bounds of tribalism, corrupt governments, uneducated masses and religious fervour? Beyond the violence so common in African countries that many Africans are normalised to nightmares before they are even teenagers, beyond the holding hostage of the continent's wealth by vile international corporations that hire paramilitary groups to kill people who threaten their money-seeking psychological modus operandi? Could that country be Nigeria? |
I'm no muslim nor am I a Christian - I am a complete Atheist through and through, but JihadWatch is a sensationalist claptrap filled with pathetically obvious anti-Islamic and pro-US Foreign Policy political motivations and a cherry-picking attitude with regards to history in order to paint Islam as the big bad bad and Christianity as moderate good good, creating the illusion that they have revealed something scandalous about the West's attitudes to the Islamic World. I don't suggest copy-pasting from their pages because it shows the impression that you are not willing nor capable of holding a mature discussion on the subject yourself. |
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Ancient Greece and the Mediterranean was a powerhouse of ancient philosophy, science, mathematics and politics, and has heavily shaped the modern world to this day with it's huge number of scholars and their works - The names Euclid, Ptolemy, Pythagoras, , Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus and Thucydides to name a few were incredible pioneers in these realms and laid the groundwork for much of what is modern science, history, politics and mathematics. The Romans carried on this legacy of scientific and mathematical scholarship within their own Republic for hundreds and hundreds of years, even through the emergence of the dictatorship of the Roman Empire and the Roman state's collapse. But this torch would be blotted out by a wave of fanaticism that spread like wildfire throughout the Empire. The fanaticism that ultimately toppled the Greco-Roman pantheon of gods and painted all of Europe, and later via colonialism, the entire world in it's golden gilding. That fanaticism was Christianity. While the ancient Greeks were fairly comfortable with other faiths besides their own (they would often - as is what happened with Egypt - assume foreign gods as simply variations of their own gods), and the Romans, while brutal to faiths they did not approve of (turning Christians into human candlesticks was pretty bad), at the very least approached other faiths in a decently analytical sense, and appreciated the voluminous wealth of study from the distant past, taking care to preserve it. Christian Rome, in the later years of constant economic and social decline, was not like this. It was an anti-intellectual theocratic dictator state. In the 4th Century AD, 700 years after Euclid published his book on the Elements of Geography, the most in-depth classical book on geography ever written in history, after Plato had mused about the constant pursuit for knowledge, wisdom and understanding of the natural world that the Greeks later became famous for, the Christian Lactantius wrote "What purpose does knowledge serve ... what blessing is there for me if I should know where the Nile rises, or whatever else under the heavens the 'scientists' rave about?" a sentence belittling curiosity and cheering on close-mindedness and ignorance. Later, in the 5th Century AD, the Saint Augustine, who was a proud Manichean before he coincidentally converted to Christianity just as a law was passed stating that all non-Christians would be executed, spoke of "the disease of curiosity which drives us to find the secrets of nature". These were signs of the times - intellectualism in the Mediterranean and Europe plummeted, whereas early scholars in the Islamic world, embracing the literature and studies of ancient Greek philosophers and scientists, broke with major tenets of the Quran and soared ahead of the West in the development of science, economy and trade, law, philosophy, maths and medicine, during a time known as the "Islamic Golden Age" (though many of the people who made it a golden age would be tried as apostates by most modern day Muslims). After the collapse of Rome, the German tribal invasions and the rise of the Islamic world, it would not be for another 600 years until the West would experience the Enlightenment (kickstarted by the retranslation of ancient Greek texts from Arabic into Latin within the Italian peninsula) and slowly outpace the Islamic world, which had heavily suffered from the Mamluk Rebellion and Turko-Mongol invasions, in many of these fields. Anthony Gottlieb, an editor for the Economist, writes "The colossal ignorance of the Christian West in the second half of the first millenium. By the year 1000 [In Europe], all branches of science, and indeed all kinds of theoretical knowledge except theology, had pretty much disintegrated. Most classical literature was largely unknown. The best educated people knew strikingly less than many Greeks did 800 years earlier". |
It is the lie that makes people roll over one another to murder and slaughter innocent lives, and to kill themselves and their own families. It is the lie that makes people drone through their life without questioning whether they have the short end of the stick, without questioning a corrupt government, wicked society or unfair social stratification. It is the lie that makes subjugated and oppressed peoples worship their conquerers, and the ideals of their conquerers. It is the lie that makes parents mutilate their children, that makes people strap bombs to themselves and blow themselves up amidst crowds of innocent victims to be. It is the lie that makes people give their wealth, trust and labour to lying snakes, those evil, devilish manipulators of the lie - Imams, businessmen, politicians and pastors alike, who secretly worship the dark god of Greed, and leave their hordes of faithful robbed and betrayed. It is the lie that infects generation after generation with ceaseless end, causing wars of religion, draconic societal abuse, suppression and murder of people who do not follow along to the lie, and cripples academia. Truly, the first person to come up with the idea of a god must have been the greatest liar of all. ![]() |
This thread is just one big back-and-forth between two stupidities. ![]() One the one hand, a Righteous Christian painting the entirety of Islamic history with one brush, without respect to it's historical grounds. On the other, a thick-minded Muslim who cannot criticize nor contemplate problems with the reasoning, bases or proofs which reside behind their beliefs, masking themselves with a facade of pseudo-intellectual prose. Dispelling some of the crap discussed heavily above: -Allah is not real. Shariah law has zero basis other than tradition and a misplaced belief in a creator being which does not exist. -God isn't real either. -Muslims absolutely did and still do practice various forms of taqiyya. -Jesus DID wish death upon people, particularly villages who refused to hear his lectures. -Mohammad was a hedonistic and malicious warlord who used the Islamic faith as an excuse for his own disgusting impulses (rape, multiple wives, cheating, pedophilia, etc.) to spread Arab control over nearby territories. -Similar practices were done by Christian nations within and outside Europe at the time. -Contrary to some racist Westerners who claimed that the early Caliphates turned back the clock, the Islamic Caliphates were FAR more advanced than European nations up until around the beginnings of the European renaissance, after which the West rocketed ahead in science and technology. -Also contrary to common belief is the fact that many of the caliphates (e.g. Abbasid, Ummayad, etc.) were actually more progressive and less literalist to the Quran and Hadiths than Salafist and Islamist groups and governments today, e.g. ISIS, Saudi Arabia, Al-Quaeda, etc. Even though today ISIS and Saudi Arabia strictly forbid music, music flourished in the Caliphates of 1000 years ago and was celebrated as a science much like the ancient Greeks the Islamic World took inspiration from. Beer and alcohol was also common, among the caliphs themselves might I add. Poetry, one of the biggest cultural developments of the caliphates, often challenged Quranic beliefs and narratives and prodded social values and lifestyle. The Caliphates of yore were constantly innovating (at least for their time), compared to Saudi Arabia and ISIS and conservative Muslims nowadays who are a bunch of brutish nostalgic apes. |
God's not real. |
https://humanism.org.uk/2017/07/05/53-of-britons-are-non-religious-says-latest-british-social-attitudes-survey/ http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/rue89/rue89-monde/20150118.RUE7494/la-carte-de-l-atheisme-dans-le-monde-la-france-numero-4.html https://web.archive.org/web/20131104224923/http://www.czso.cz/sldb2011/eng/redakce.nsf/i/tab_7_2_population_by_religious_belief_and_by_regions/$File/PVCR072_ENG.pdf 53% of British people are non-religious, up from 51% from a few years ago. France and the Czech republic have some of the most non-religious/atheist populations on earth. Switzerland's non-religious population has grown by 20% over the past few years. Almost everywhere, atheist populations are exploding. Many atheists or non-religious in Muslim countries are believed to hide their identity for fear of retribution from their families, government or society, but they are absolutely there. Muslims are growing sheerly due to the fact that they keep having children and indoctrinating said children, rather than any sociological shift. |
http://www.aljazeera.com/video/news/2017/07/biafra-young-nigerians-renew-calls-independence-170705120220867.html NEWSNIGERIA6 HOURS AGO |
bamdly:Allah won't hear you because Allah doesn't exist. You're clearly one of the brainwashed I outlined in this post. Did you even care to read or contest anything I've written here? ![]() I'm not afraid of Allah because Allah is imaginary. I'm afraid of Allah's followers who go around killing, bullying and covering women in curtains and refusing to listen to human fairness or reason. P.s. I'm a proud Ex-Muslim apostate. I would be killed in North Naij for my views. Does that make you angry? |
whitebeard:You are mind-numbingly missing the point. Not only is there no proof that Allah exists, there is no reason to BELIEVE that Allah exists AT ALL. Almost EVERY major event according to human perspectives can be scientifically explained. The origins of life or humanity and evolution, the beginning of the world with element-dating and geology, even the very beginning of our universe of 13+ billion years can be explained in terms of mathematics and cosmology. With the revelations brought forward with these academic fields, it becomes less and less logical to believe in a divine creator being like god or Allah, as they are clearly personifications of the human values of ancient human societies rather than having any reasonable place in nature or history, and as amazing as we humans are, we're utterly insignificant in the history and breadth of our universe: We have existed as a species for less than a million years, less than 0.0001% of the current lifetime of the Universe. Our planet, Earth, of ~12'500 kilometers diameter, is just one planet out of many which orbit our enormous nuclear Sun in our solar system of diameter 8.9 BILLION (~8'900'000'000) kilometers, and this colossal Solar System is just ONE of the MANY BILLIONS of Solar Systems that make up our Galaxy the Milky Way, and the Milky Way is just one of over 100 BILLION GALAXIES IN THE UNIVERSE, and those are only the ones able to be SEEN FROM EARTH! With this in mind, we would be absolutely insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe! And our human ideas of "beings" and "souls" and "gods" and "minds" and "creators" are more and more clearly reflections of OURSELVES, not some outer creator being! But most Muslims never ponder any of this. The average response ranges from dismissal to trying to kill you. They do not learn secularly of the beginnings of life or the universe. They do not ponder the development of human philosophies and religions, nor the beginning of Islam and the way it was spread (breeding and murder). No, they're born to the words "LA ILAHA IL'ALLAH" "THERE IS NO GOD BUT ALLAH" and are battered and brainwashed with Quranic teachings and visions of heaven and god, and are told to follow the messages of the Quranic teachings to the letter WITHOUT QUESTION and to CULL from the "pack" any of their peers who stray from these teachings. It's moronic and violent and primitive and based on lies. Allah's not real and anyone with the time on their hands to ponder humanity with the aide of historybooks will be likely to come to this conclusion. |
There is no god, there is no Allah. And there is no evidence for this creature as having ever existed. There is no demonstrable proof of it's existence. There is no reason other than human word of mouth and society to believe that it exists. Yet billions of people prostrate to it. Billions of members of the human race daily get on their knees and grovel for a god that does not even exist, an imaginary friend. Hundreds of millions of people live in countries ruled by governments who believe genuinely that a being named Allah actually exists, and structure their laws around the dogma that is connected to him (The Quran and Hadith). Millions of Muslims will fight, kill, rape, pillage, enslave and cause havoc in the name and laws of a god that does not even exist. How utterly pathetic it is to watch on as Salafist Muslim psychophants, brainwashed from infancy with Quranic teachings, commit crimes against humanity, destroy the industrial structure and human future of their country with the disgusting excuse of a heaven that is not real, of a god that is not real! Even now, the crime for apostacy - leaving the religion - in Islam, is DEATH. HOW can a religion claim to be a genuine representation of truth and a one true god, when it MURDERS those who question it!? What on earth!? Within the Quran itself, there are verses encouraging Muslims to ignore criticisers of the religion when they are the minority, and to slaughter and oppress them when they are the majority. In short, the Muslim logic is to be CLOSE MINDED, BREED and then KILL OPPOSITION. That way, Islam spreads and non-muslims eventually become minorities - the question of a god is NEVER broached! The questioneers are simply outnumbered then silenced or killed! That is the most APELIKE and PRIMITIVE of psychology! The "Muslim world" needs an anti-Muslim revolution. Islamists are hijacking justified fights against Western colonialism, Islam is hindering education, civility and social progress, and countless lives are threatened, oppressed and lost, all because of a frantic belief in a god that DOES NOT EXIST! |
ZaraGift:Hey, god-fearer. Happy Ramadan!
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-40353265 'I thought I was going to die': Jailed and ransomed in Libya By Martin Patience https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/9DB9/production/_96577304_femi.jpg Nigeria correspondent, BBC News 21 June 2017 Seun pictured near his home in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria Image caption Back home in Nigeria, Seun says he regrets ever setting out for Europe It was called "Morning Tea" - a brutal flogging with a hosepipe. Every morning for four months, Seun Femi's captors beat him at a makeshift prison in Libya. "They would flog my head, my hands, my bum," says the 34-year-old. "The guard would beat me until he got tired." Two of Seun's fingers were broken during one of the brutal sessions. But the Nigerian says it could have been far worse. One man was beaten to death in front of him. "I thought I was going to die in that prison," he says. Seun was one of the tens of thousands of West Africans who cross the Sahara Desert into Libya every year, from where they hope to be trafficked by boat to Europe. Desperate journey The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates there are between 700,000 and one million people in Libya awaiting their chance to cross the Mediterranean. It was always a dark and desperate journey but now appears to be increasingly dangerous as undocumented migrants fall prey to militias and criminal gangs in war-torn Libya. https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/12FDB/production/_94878777_migrant-routes-624.png Map showing Central Mediterranean migrant routes Earlier this year, the IOM reported that African migrants were being sold by their captors in "slave markets" in the south-western Libyan city of Sabha. It was in the same city that Seun says he was held with about 300 other African migrants for ransom. "We thought the traffickers were taking us to a place to stay and not a place to lock us up," he says. Seun says a hunchbacked Libyan called Ali ran the makeshift prison. Read more: African migrants sold in Libya 'slave markets' 'My sister drowned getting to Europe' The start of the desert trek from Africa to Europe Why is Libya so lawless? https://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/1565F/production/_96574678_mediaitem96579007.jpg A migrant boat seen off the coast of LibyaImage copyrightAFP It was a half-constructed building. The male migrants, mainly from Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal, were separated into large rooms, each called a ghetto. Seun was held in the Nigeria ghetto. In two of the ghettos, called Ghana and VIP (for very important person), the guards would extort a higher ransom in order for the migrants to be freed. "We were packed on the floor like sardines when we tried to sleep," says Seun. There was little food but enough bottled water as otherwise the migrants would die of thirst in the stifling heat. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/7979/production/_96579013_040109801-1.jpg Illegal immigrants are seen sleeping at a detention centre in LibyaImage copyrightAFP Image caption Up to one million migrants are thought to be in Libya attempting to reach Europe The brutal business model was simple, says Seun. Guards with nicknames like "Rambo" would beat the migrants and then hand them a phone. "They would let us phone our people once a day," he said. "They would whip us while we were on the call so our families would get the message. We would beg them to send us money." On Tuesday, the Italian authorities said they had arrested a notorious human trafficker known as Rambo on charges of torturing and killing migrants but it is not possible to verify whether it was the same man. 'He helped me' Seun needed to a pay a ransom of approximately $500. It was to be deposited in a bank account in Nigeria. But he did not have the money. He urged his ex-girlfriend to sell his car. "It was in bad shape. It took three months for her to sell it," says Seun. "There were no buyers." The irony is that Seun, a taxi driver, had no money to repair the vehicle in the first place, which is why he decided to go to Libya. His ransom was finally paid last December. Seun thought he was free. But then he was told he needed to pay a "gate-fee" of approximately $50. He had no money. But a Nigerian baker who sold bread at the prison took pity on him and paid the fee. "He helped me a lot by taking me out of that place - it's bad, very bad," says Seun. Seun then paid the man back by working in his bakery for several weeks in Sabha. He then pushed on to Tripoli but was detained by Libyan police earlier this year and held at a detention centre. He was repatriated to Nigeria in April. Now back in Lagos, he has no work, and rents a small dark room in one of the city's sprawling slums. He is trying to piece his life back together. He hopes to raise cash to buy a car and work as a taxi driver again. He wants to move to a better area so his young daughter can visit. He regrets ever setting out to Europe. "The desert is such a dangerous place," he says. "Many people died on the way. No-one should follow that path." |
praisejoshua:Or god doesn't exist and Christians are woman-hating sexist cavemen? |


) the entirety of the Bible or Quran by heart and voraciously quote from it when their religious society is challenged, either by followers of other religions or proponents of the big bad bogeyman of "Western culture", the catch-all slogan used by conservatives around the world from Ukraine to Saudistan for civil rights movements and humanistic policies (unsurprisingly the same people don't seem to mind other aspects of the "Western culture" they so despise, such as financially impossible national debt imposition and complete deregulation and privatisation of the national economy, but the people they appeal to aren't that bright to begin with).
