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A Rebuttal to Jonathan Ishaku’s Right of Reply By Sani Lawan Addu
Whenever I am on the net, either checking and replying mails or searching for relevant information related to my profession, I always join my site of interest with the popular gamji forum, this is because of my love for the site, owing to its educative and entertaining contents. What largely interested me about this site is the diversity of views on both issues of local and international interest. Studying contrasting views on any issue gives one the opportunity of not only having a full understanding of the context but, also clear identification of where lies the problem.
A little while ago, after checking my mail, I scrolled down the content of the gamji website to select a prepared article for my usual study. I came across a rejoinder by Jonathan Ishaku captioned ’Right-Of Reply To Mohammed Haruna’s Jonathan Ishaku’s Misrepresentations’. When I read the rejoined on the net, it was so sensational that, I had to down load it on my laptop and gave it a second reading at home. After a careful study, I find its necessary to respond to some of the issue raised by Jonathan Ishaku.
This piece is not in any way aimed at depending Mohammed Haruna or joining Ishaku in his struggle to pin down Haruna for what the almighty made him to have the ability to distinguish between black and white.
After a lengthy complaint, Ishaku was at last good enough to admit that Haruna is a fair minded fellow. His Right of Reply was finally published and the aim has been achieved, never mind the time. The publication of the Ishaku’s Right of Reply was achieved despite the Haruna’s ‘anti-christ drivel’ and I am sure Ishaku had received adequate attention and handful of respect that Haruna will never enjoy in any media control by ‘pro-christ drivel’ person like Ishaku.
Now lets move to the frontal argument on Jos crises. The clear fact that Ishaku and his alike failed to admit is that, the Jos crises is per from been a religious complicit. It started as struggle between the predominant Hausa community in Jos North local government and Plateau state government over a rigged local government election. The crisis then transmuted into what can best be described as expression of the most lunatic hatred of an ethnic group. While some other crises that occurred in different parts of this country could largely be said to have been religiously motivated, all the crises in plateau state could only be described as timely genocide on the flimsy excuse of indigenship.
Ishaku and his alike are not comfortable with the use of the term genocide to describe the recent massacre in Jos. According the 2009 Encarta Dictionary, genocide is defined as the systematic killing of all the people from a national, ethnic or religious group or an attempt to do this. The last section of this definition perfectly described what happened in Jos. Lets still draw a simple correlation with the genocide in Rwanda to see if we can justify why the Jos massacre is a genocide. If for example, we can not call the massacre of unarmed men, women and children on the streets, in their private homes, business premises, public offices for what they are; Hausa- Fulani a genocide, what word has Ishaku to describe the collective massacre of about two hundred ‘Islamiya’ school children? Is it not worse than the collective killings of school girls in Rwanda, for daring not separate out Tutsis among them? Why is the massacre in Rwanda called a genocide? The reason for their argument is clear. It is an effort to reduce the massacre in Jos to a mere religious crisis, because, culprits of organized religious crises escape justice in this country. This clearly manifested in the aftermath of the Kafanchan crisis where the culprits were arrested and released without being punished.
The perpetrators of Jos Killings were fully aware of this historical event. After committing the heinous crime, they tactically gave it a religious coloration by first claiming to have arrested foreign mercenaries, for which we are yet to be shown a single person that comes from the extreme Northern states, talk more of Niger or Chad republic. They went further to convince the Christian community that they committed the crime in the name of the Christ. Instead, for the Christian community to distance themselves from the criminals, they swing into action falling over another to defend them. People like Ishaku take their blood smeared pen to justify to the world why the genocide was committed.
Unlike Ishaku who is only reluctant in engaging in sophistry, I hate sophistry in its totality. I am firmly of the believe that, it is necessary for people of knowledge and probity to enjoy a far-reaching depth of vision. This will help in convincing those in the position of leadership not to pursue decisions made by individuals and circles, under the pressure of circumstances, that fail to take ethics and right of other people into consideration. Such are the choices that lead this country to deprivation, and recurrent inhuman conflicts. It is therefore, necessary to engage in earnest public debate to try and bring about better understanding of both Islam and Christianity among our people and prepare the way for a better future for the generations to come who are expecting a lot from us.
It is the realisation of the need for a better understanding of Islam among the non-Muslims that lead to the invitation of late Dr. Ahmad Deedat -a professor of both Christian and Islamic theology, in 1993 to deliver a lecture on Islam and Christianity. But, Deedat was not allowed entry into Kano after arriving at the Mallam Aminu Kano AirPort. Kudos to the efforts of those who drink from the blood of our Christian brothers. About the same period when the Muslim community has not even recovered from the hysteria of denying Deedat entrance, a German evangelist was invited by the Christians to preach in Kano. It was the tension created by this injustice and the continuous provocation by the Christians that lead to the 1993 religious crisis in Kano.
Ishaku’s description of people and government of Kano as having zero-tolerance to other religions than Islam and the banning of Christian religious studies in government-run schools, demonstrate his extreme ignorance about Islam. As a public commentator, he is yet to known the relationship between Islam and Christianity. This clearly shows that Ishaku lack the required basic knowledge on the historical development of semantic religions, necessary to better understand his religion and its relationship with other religions that follow the same ideology.
Christianity has been given most comprehensive coverage from the genealogy of Jesus Christ, his miraculous birth to his ‘crucifixion’ in the Holy Book of Islam then even the Holy Bible it self. Moreover, Islam teaches that the Christians are closer to the Muslims than any other people. With Islamic religious Knowledge no need for any Christian religious studies for a child to have a comprehensive knowledge on Christianity. What is Ishaku expecting the Muslims to teach their children about Christianity that is contained in the Holy book of Islam? The controversial trinity, the begotten son, or the original sin? The very problem with the Ishaku and his alike is that, they are very poor in comparative religion and they lack the necessary courage to give Islam a single chance. Moreover, their priests continuous to preach to them, that study of Islam is the most unholy thing a Christian can do in order escape the risk of been understood. I was able to realised this, when I attended church services and occasions organised by churches during the period of my national youths service corps (NYSC). If the Christians have the basic knowledge about Islam, most of the religious crises in Nigeria will have been averted, for they were instigated by unnecessary provocations due to ignorance.
The statistics present by Ishaku on kano crises between 1982 to 2006 was an intentional misrepresentation of realities. His statistics seems to come from two sources; the usual beer parlour stories and those he claims to have obtained from New York Times, which I am not sure if they are really more authentic then the beer parlour stories. Who was the correspondent of New York Times as at that time? How does he substantiate his figures. Infect, any report from New York Times between 2001 to 2003 may not be just to Muslims because, the ‘Proprietor’ of New York Times (United States of America) was at war in all fronts with the Muslim world.
It seems I was totally wrong in my assumption of Ishaku’s ability to read circumstances. The staging of a Miss World beauty pageant in Kaduna in November 2002 was directly aimed at provoking the Nigerian Muslims, especially as it comes at a time when the west was neck with the most of the northern states, for their efforts to restore Islam and all religious values and morality through the implementation of Shariah legal system. The objective of staging Miss World beauty pageant in Kaduna, was to instigate unnecessary and avoidable crisis in order to give Islam a bad name.
Our predicament in Nigeria today is that, we are living with a religiously confused society that perceived Christianity to be nothing beyond fighting Hausa-Fulani. The task before us is to help people like Ishaku to have a better understanding of their religion and trace their exact locus in the global religious divide in order to know weather they are really what they called themselves - Christians.
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