₦airaland Forum

ghost1718:
when did muslim start Believing in jesus

Through the fall and winter, the Islamist militant
group Boko Haram has seemed nearly unstoppable.
It has captured town after town in northeastern
Nigeria and laid siege to the fishing hamlet Baga
and nearby villages, killing hundreds of people. But
over the weekend, the group finally suffered a
significant setback. The militants tried to invade
Maiduguri, a city of two million in the northeast, as
well as two towns in the area, Monguno and
Konduga. While Monguno — which is 80 miles north
of Maiduguri and houses a military base — fell under
Boko Haram control on Sunday, Maiduguri and
Konduga held their ground, in no small part because
of vigilantes who fought alongside the Nigerian
military.

Hundreds of Boko Haram militants descended upon
Maiduguri from two directions and were met by the
vigilantes and soldiers. The assault prompted
Nigerian troops, who were caught by surprise, to call
in airstrikes. Scores of Boko Haram members — and
probably soldiers too, though numbers have not
been released — were killed in the fighting. Without
the vigilantes, the battle would have most likely
been lost.
One of these vigilantes was Abba Aji Kalli, whom I
wrote about for the magazine in November. I called
Kalli early this week to find out how he was faring
after the battle. “We are doing fine,” he told me.
“We pushed them back. They didn’t enter
Maiduguri.”

Kalli said his men recovered artillery and rocket-
propelled grenades from the militants. None of the
vigilantes died in the fight, he added with his usual
cockiness, though some were wounded during the
battle, which lasted about 90 minutes. “Maiduguri
was surrounded by Boko Haram,” Kalli went on.
“They had been trying to break into Maiduguri at
different locations, but, God help us, we are
repelling them.”

Like other residents of Maiduguri who were fed up
with the Nigerian military’s weak response to Boko
Haram’s insurgency, Kalli helped create what
became known as the Civilian Joint Task Force, a
battalion of volunteer combatants who organized to
defend their homes from the Islamist militants. Kalli
eventually abandoned his job as a government
auditor to command his own unit, leading his
friends and neighbors in what has been a
sometimes-ragtag struggle against Boko Haram.

With homemade arms and self-taught
counterinsurgency strategies, the vigilantes have
managed to push the group out of Maiduguri.
Meanwhile, the military struggles to keep its
soldiers, who complain of a lack of munitions, from
abandoning their posts whenever they’re attacked.
(The military and the vigilantes have each been
accused of engaging in abuses in the name of
ending terrorism: arbitrary arrests and beatings,
summary executions, forced recruitment and the
use of children in their ranks. Kalli denies that he or
anyone in his group has ever been involved in any
human rights abuses or that any members of his
group are under 18. “We don’t kill anybody,” he told
me in November. “We hand them to the authorities.
We have to protect ourselves, but we normally catch
them alive.” )

Kalli told me that his men were alerted on Saturday
night to Boko Haram activity near Maiduguri. By 7
the next morning, when the militants tried to enter
the city, Kalli and other vigilantes were blocking
their way. At least eight people died during the
clashes, and residents were forced to flee from
nearby housing estates. Some residents, worried
about their safety, have not yet returned. But life in
Maiduguri — a rambling, sandy metropolis with a
university and historic mosques — is otherwise back
to normal, or at least what residents now consider
normal given the recent suicide bombings
orchestrated by Boko Haram. The city’s relative
peace may be fragile, but Maiduguri, largely
because of the vigilantes, remains a haven for
residents of nearby towns and villages who are not
as lucky — the inhabitants of Monguno, for instance,
who fled into the city.
I asked Kalli if he thought Boko Haram would try
again. “They are always ready to try,” he said. “But
we are always ready to engage them.”

The All Progressives Congress (APC) yesterday unfolded its power agenda should it presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, be elected.

The party plans to generate at least 20,000 megawatts (mw) of electricity in four years to surpass Nigeria’s consumption level of around 15, 000mw.

In a statement, the party’s Presidential Campaign Organisation (APCPCO) expressed dismay that the Federal Government under President Goodluck Jonathan had only added 1.400mw to the national grid in four years.

The statement by Mallam Garba Shehu, the spokesman of the campaign, quoted Gen. Buhari as saying that while he will not run a witch hunt government, he will not hesitate to deal decisively with cases of impunity and corruption. No probe of any government official, he added.

The statement also quoted Gen. Buhari as saying he is passionately concerned about the sorry conditions of our armed forces today who, despite huge budgetary allocations, have failed to effectively deal with manifest security threats, including the Boko Haram terrorism.

“What he said at every given opportunity is that he is keenly interested in knowing what has gone wrong, if any, with the army that he knew. When he has access to them as Commander-in-Chief, he will like to hear from his commanders what problems they are dealing with so that they can be solved,” Shehu said.

“In a democracy such as ours, all institutions of government, including the armed forces, are accountable. No country can achieve results in its counter-terrorism efforts when there is no transparency in the management of huge resources for the purpose. He (Gen. Buhari) will reinvigorate the armed forces and restore their rapidly evaporating morale,” he said.

The APC Campaign Organisation accused the PDP of wasting billions of naira on non existent power, managing to add a yearly average of 87 megawatts of electricity, showing a massive failure to substantially raise generation and distribution of electric power despite promises and cash infusion of between $16 billion and $20 billion.

Shehu said “nearly 16 years of PDP administration gave this country a miserly addition of 1,400 Mega Watts against the expenditure of more than $16 billion. That translates to 18.5 MW per annum”.

He noted that “this abysmal power production and distribution, with its attendant socio-economic implications, is the most irresponsible thing a government can do to its people.

It explained that the PDP has shown an “appalling lack of capacity to deal with just any problem confronting this country and the lack of vision and commitment to dealing with electricity supply was just one of the myriads of the others begging for attention.”

“The only conclusion to draw from this is that the PDP is more interested in feathering the nest of importers of generators than in the wellbeing of Nigerian citizens and their businesses.”

The organisation accused President Jonathan of massive corruption in the country’s agricultural sector, saying “President Jonathan has failed woefully in the agricultural sector, and all the self-praise of the administration on agriculture is simply a ruse”.

It maintained that whereas President Jonathan had promised in 2010 to make Nigeria self-sufficient in rice and wheat production by 2015, “the grim reality on the ground today is that Nigeria emerged as the world’s highest importer of rice in 2015, and a whopping $11 billion is spent annually by Nigeria to import rice, wheat, sugar and fish.”

The statement added that according to the former Acting Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Dr. Sarah Alade, Nigeria as at 2014 spends $4 billion on rice importation – that is about N600 billion annually on the importation of 2.1 million metric tonnes of milled rice.

“This is after the Federal Government had approached the China Exim Bank for a loan of $1.2 billion for the financing of 100 large-scale rice processing plants with a total capacity of 2.1 million metric tonnes.

“The troubling truth today is that Nigeria is nothing close to self-sufficiency in rice production and what we have at hand is a close web of corruption where government cronies stumble over each other to get import licences for rice.”

“According to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, Nigeria’s wheat consumption as at year 2000 was about two million metric tonnes. But, by 2010, wheat importation to the country had risen to four million metric tonnes and Nigeria spends N635 billion annually on wheat importation.

“Five years into the Jonathan administration, Nigeria spends even more than we did in 2010 to import wheat; yet the government continues to brandish false achievements in the agricultural sector – a situation that is completely at variance with what President Jonathan promised Nigerians in 2010, saying that his government would make Nigeria save N635 billion annually on rice and wheat importation.”

The statement also faulted the government’s claim that local farmers now have unhindered access to fertiliser through the Growth Enhancement Scheme and described as “excessively labourious and technically difficult for the farmers to work through” are two bags of fertilizer throughout the entire farming season, “and government has not come out in one instance to tell Nigerians how much it receives as grants on fertiliser distribution to farmers from donor agencies.

“The government will want to give us the impression that fertiliser is being given to farmers free of charge. But we know that what subsists is a 50 per cent subsidy per bag of fertiliser. Our farmers are being shortchanged under this so-called e-wallet arrangement because of lack of transparency.

“We may be looking at another subsidy scam over fertilizer unless the Jonathan administration comes out clean to tell us how much it has received as grants over fertiliser and how it comes about the 50 per cent subsidy per bag of fertilizer.”

While dismissing President Jonathan’s claims of achievement in the agricultural sector, the organisation said that “throughout the periods preceding the Jonathan’s administration, the contribution of agriculture to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was at 7 per cent, while under the so-called transformation agenda of President Jonathan, agriculture’s contribution to the GDP has been consistent at 5 per cent – an all time low.

“In any case, food commodities are items Nigerians buy on a daily basis. If the Jonathan administration was sincere with the statistics it reels out on agriculture, why would the government buy pages of newspaper advertorials and TV commercials to force bitter falsehood of its achievements down the throats of Nigerians? The Jonathan administration has failed woefully in its agricultural policies and the facts are self-evident out there at those food stalls in our markets.

“In 2015, Nigerians know they spend far more to buy food than they did in 2010. That reality, in itself, is President Jonathan’s scorecard in agriculture.”

saintsinner360:
Islamic leaders, seeking to motivate would be suicide bombers, inducing them to commit murder in the name of Allah, have been quoting Islamic sources, which promise 72 Virgins in Paradise to those who kill and are killed in Jihad for Allah.

Many Muslims, especially those exposed to Western culture, are aware of the jokes and the ridicule that the 72 Virgins legend has brought upon them and upon their brother believers. Consequently, they blame the Jews for spreading the myth in an attempt to downgrade the image of the Islamic "freedom fighters".

Despite the disclaimer by some Muslims, the truth is very clear. The 72 Virgins notion has its origins in the Qur'an. Although the holy book does not specify the number as 72, it does say that those who fight in the way of Allah and are killed will be given a great reward. It goes on to stipulate that Muslims will be awarded with women in Islamic heaven. It even describes their physical attributes—large eyes (Q 56:22) and big, firm, round "swelling breasts" that are not inclined to sagging (Q 78:33). The Qur'an refers to these virgins as houri, companions of equal age, but the highly-flavored emphasis of their bodily characteristics, including their virginity, gave rise to many hadiths and other Islamic writings.

Hadith 2687 is where the number 72 is mentioned. "The smallest reward for the people of Heaven is an abode where there are eighty thousand servants and 72 houri, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine and ruby, as wide as the distance from al-Jabiyyah to San'a."

Qur'anic commentator Al-Suyuti (died 1505) and Orthodox Muslim theologians such as al Ghazali (died 1111 CE) and Al-Ash'ari (died 935 CE) graphically elaborated sensual pleasures attributed to Muslims in paradise". Al-Suyuti wrote, "Each time we sleep with a Houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one [i.e. Muslim] will marry seventy houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetizing vaginas."

On the whole, the Qur'an and the hadiths are filled with sexual fantasies that Muslim men are awarded when they reach Islamic heaven. Anas bin Malik, an Islamic scholar, claimed that "The Prophet used to visit all his wives in a round, during the day and night and they were eleven in number… The Prophet was given the strength of thirty (men)." Muhammad (hadith 24) apparently claimed that devout Muslims would be given the sexual strength of 100 persons upon their arrival in Heaven. (This is apparently more than what was attributed to the prophet himself).

The sexual obsession by Muslim men as conveyed by Islamic writings, takes its cue from the founder of the religion.  The description depicts him as a sexual predator. Aisha, Muhammad's wife since she was a nine-year-old girl, described her sexual experiences with the prophet. When she was six years old, he could not have intercourse with her due to her young age. As a consolation prize, he placed his penis between her thighs and massaged it softly. Aisha explained that unlike other believers, the prophet had control over his penis."

Being consistent with its sexual obsession and predatory practices, the Qur'an permits pedophilia (sura 65:4). It also discusses rape in detail. It lets you know that men can rape female slaves and captives (Q 23:6), even in front of their husbands (Q 4:24). Other writings advise that when having sex with captives, it's better if you don't pull out at the end (Sahih Bukhari 3:46:718).

It's no wonder that 72 Virgins in Paradise are a fundamental piece of Islamic culture. Sex, sex abuse, pedophilia, and enslavement of women take central stage within that religion. Encouraging martyrdom by pointing to sexual rewards in heaven is a natural corollary of that tradition. Although the Qur'an may not be as specific, it nevertheless, offers many clues, which subsequent inscriptions reinforced, interpreted, and broadened.

I have written this article in response to many questions I had been asked by book club members who'd read my book 72 Virgins. In that book, I did not discuss the roots of that evil thinking. Instead, I told a story, a thriller about a group of Jihadi terrorists and their quest for martyrdom. The story builds on the Jihadists' motivation for targeting so many innocents and exploiting the victims' massacre as a stepping-stone to their dream of eternal paradise next to Allah's throne. The real question I've tried to answer is not whether Jihadists' plots will ever cease to emerge. There's no chance of that. The question the book seeks to answer is—will the next one be stopped before it's too late?