|
Islamic Terror and All That Jazz: A Letter to Mohammed Haruna By Chima Ejiofor
Dear Mallam Mohammed,
It is my pleasure to finally write you after having dreamed of doing so for a while now. You’d recall that after your last call to me in reaction to an earlier text message I sent to you which was itself in reaction to your Daily Trust article ‘’First Bank, The West and ‘Islamic Terror’ and..’’, I had promised to write you a short piece. Rather than a formal article, I’ve elected to make this a letter to you, Mallam, and I hope you’ll appreciate it as such.
Mallam, like most people who know you from having read you, I like to say that I know you more than you know me, if at all you do know me. I think I started reading you way back in the 80s from your days in NN right to your stint with ‘Today’ as a columnist through to the Citizen magazine days and then now. All through this, I had totally found your writing to be a mine of information and knowledge and the writing itself truly impressive. It is not often that public opinion moulding writers combine the two. For a connoisseur like me that possibly enjoys the medium more than the message, a great writer was often s/he that leaves a vivid impression on me from the printed page by virtue of the clarity, flow and resonance of his/her writing. It didn’t matter if his view was opposed to mine. His elegant style alone would have made my day.
Making my day is, of course, only part of the picture. Though I tend to enjoy good, indeed great, writing, I also have reservations for worldviews that appears only one sided, narrow in perspective and generally solipsistic. To me it seems that when the issue is Islam, Muslims and the rest of the world (and these days it is increasingly becoming so,) you are almost unwilling to recognize the other perspectives to the issue in so far as these other perspectives are a counter to your views about the matter. This is why it seems to me that some of the most pungent reactions to your writing that I have read have focused on this shortcoming.
I was still thinking of how to state these things in my promised article to you when you published the reactions to your FBN piece, one from the bank itself and an entirely opposite one from your colleague and friend, Aisha Yusuf. Despite the clarifications from the bank and the proof that you got your initial facts about the money transfer issue wrong, I agree that these things (that is, writers forming opinions about issues without the full information) happen. But to have Mrs. Yusuf criticize you, no matter how respectfully, for so-called echoing of Western opinions about Muslims was just like confirming my hunches about this same matter of narrow-mindedness in all issues by Muslim intellectuals about their religion. She was confident, naïve, or self-deceiving enough to deny any links, no matter how tenuous, to a pre-meditated and well planned Muslim terror groups in the London, Bali and Madrid bombings with much of her denial being made on the altar (no puns intended) of lack of proof.
Lack of proof has over the years become the mantra which the accused, even with the smoking gun dangling from their holsters, employ to obfuscate issues, buy time or simply refuse to submit for punishment. Though Muslims are certainly not the only groups linked with the escalation of world terrorism, the tendency to deny their contribution to this global menace and to, instead accuse others, is part of the major problem of finding an answer to the question. Why is it impossible for Muslims to admit, to accept, that there is something wrong in their house, no matter how benign or embarrassing that thing might be? Mallam, why would Aisha, almost out of instinct, summarily dismiss cases of group violence in which scores of lives were lost from a pattern of terror tactics established over the years with the glib retort that culpability of the suspects has not been proved? Proved by whom? When almost a quarter of a century ago, the Pan Am bombings took place over Lockerbie in Scotland and the United States emphatically laid the blame at Gaddaffi’s doorsteps, I’m sure the Aishas and Harunas of this world were the first to scream: ‘Muslin Profiling’ and argued for the innocence of Libyan agents accused of the crime. Years later, we all now know who admitted guilt and responsibility.
It seems to me, Mallam, that the Ostrich Position is one that most Muslim intellectuals are in admiration of. Provided it is not mentioned, the position seems to state, then the crisis did not happen or is non-existent. I like to look at Lebanon and the latest political killing there. Though the victim was Christian, I’m willing to allow that his anti-Syrian politics rather than just his religion was the reason for his assassination. But Syria and its leadership are an acknowledged sponsor of terror both in the Middle East and elsewhere, including Africa (please don’t ask me for proof or whose acknowledgement.) The same goes for other countries and their governments in and around Asia which are mainly Muslim. Again, I like to look at the long history of muslim-on-muslim violence in Iran, Sudan, Algeria, Somali, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc much of which is against innocent and defenceless Muslim women and children and totally without justification. This is besides the several other cases of obviously unprovoked (I use the term advisedly since both you and Aisha are among those who seem to condone or justify any violence by Muslims once it appears to meet the cause and effect requirement) Muslim attacks on people of other faiths in Israel, England, Spain, Philippines and, of course, Nigeria (I’ve got a bit to say about the Nigerian example given that I’m an Easterner resident in Northern Nigeria but that’ll be for another day.)
This blatant denial by Muslim opinion leaders of the obvious is what puts a lot of reasonable, even sympathetic non-Muslims off the several unjust treatments meted out to thousands of Muslims around the world. How could you be in the right frame of mind to argue the case against Muslim oppression and injustice when you, an Igbo resident in Northern Nigeria, had just finished reading a specious treatise by a Muslim intellectual or politician about how a carefully planned and executed attack on your people, their businesses and places of worship over issues unrelated to them, is really not religiously motivated but actually the handiwork of misguided miscreants. Instead, you rather ask yourself, since those who peddle the miscreants’ theory already seem to have a closed mind, when these so-called vandals who are no religious chauvinists realized the cultural significance in targeting their hated brothers’ places of worship?
Mallam, I think that the burden Muslim intellectuals and leaders who, in vain seek to distance their religion from the violent activities of Islamic activists (used, again advisedly since fanatic isn’t apparently a word the Aishas of this world admire) - that is, insisting that the individual Muslim or the group who/which attacks a non-Muslim does so outside the tenets of the faith since the faith is all about Peace - bear is the same burden that insists that there is no separation between the religion and its politics. How do you convince others of the truth in the two when both reinforce each other? This is why I always tend to have a problem with your conclusions about western terrorism when you draw parallels with a religion-spouting George Bush or even IRA’s Northern Ireland. For all the truth in those examples, you will agree that since the French Revolution, the separation of state and religion has remained an article of faith (again no puns meant) in Europe and the rest of the West and that any attempt to pin the atrocities of a specific western country’s government on the religion of the vast majority of its citizens automatically comes crashing down. In conclusion, Mallam, it goes without saying that except Islamic leaders, be they political, intellectual, religious or, in fact, a combination of all three, are prepared to take responsibility for the successes as well as failures of their society and pointedly state the issues as they are, they will continue to battle with the onerous task of persuading a vast swath of humanity outside their own circle of the nobility of their faith and the unrelatedness to the faith of terror activities by professors of that same faith.
As for your column, Mallam, you’ll further make my day the day you publish a critical article, either by yourself of from a Muslim intellectual, questioning some of the received assumptions which, thanks to the fear of official or state terror, have remained unchallenged by non-conformists within Islam. Or is it that within Islam’s one billion people everybody simply agrees with everything as they have been laid out?
Thank you, Mallam, for your patience to read through this. Extend my sincere regards to your family and wishing you all the best that the coming festive season shall bring.
Yours sincerely,
Chima
P/S, Please, Mallam, this letter for your personal appreciation. However, if you feel compelled to use portions or all of it in your writing, do me the favour of disguising my name identity for personal reasons. Thank you.
|