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PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA The Lesson of Gumi’s Detention
Almost exactly seven years ago this month, The Economist published a survey on Islam and the West entitled “In the name of God.” Nine years earlier in August it had published a similar survey with the headline “The next war, they say.” Both surveys came to the same conclusions that there was nothing inevitable about a war between the West and Islam. It is significant that the second survey was published after 9/11. Still the fact remains that on Main Street in both the West and among Muslims most people are unlikely to share The Economist’s conclusions. One telling evidence of the widespread street-level sentiment in the West that a clash of the two civilizations is inevitable is the Islamophobia that has gripped the West exemplified by the 2004 French ban on hijab, the Islamic headgear for women, last year’s Swiss ban on minarets and the current raging controversy over the plan by a New York Muslim group to build an Islamic cultural centre near “Ground Zero,” the site of the fallen twin towers that were destroyed by the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. Evidence that this Islamophobia is reciprocated on Main Street among Muslims is the increase in attacks against American and Western targets in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere in Asia and in the horn of Africa. So-called Muslim extremists are invariably blamed as the chief villains of the piece in all this, at least by most mainstream Western media and by their leaders. You will search the Western media in vain for anything that hints at the role of Western foreign policies in the creation of such extremists. Yet as Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Church of England said in effect not too long ago in an article on his website, more than anything else, the way the West has tried to corner the world’s resources and to impose its ways on the rest of the world is to blame for the rise of radical Islam. “It is possible,” he said, “to eliminate the one, two or even 1000 terrorists, but if you don’t go to the cause of terrorism you will never eradicate the phenomenon. And the causes are political, economic and cultural...Not only the United States but the entire West should make an examination of its conscience of how they oppress the rest of the world.” Obviously this is a sentiment most Western secular leaders, including most certainly, former British prime minister, Tony Blair, do not share. For such leaders it makes no difference that America alone with an annual defence budget of about $700 billion spends as much on arms as nearly the rest of the world put together. For them it does not matter that in the last ten years America alone has, as The Economist said last month, sent over 2,000,000 troops to impose its hegemony on Afghanistan and Iraq. As far as these leaders are concerned 9/11 and other attacks by so-called radical Muslims on American targets is simply because Muslims, in the words of erstwhile American president, George Bush, “hate our freedoms.” For such Western leaders as Bush, and of course Blair, the only good Muslim is a dead one. For them, all their protestations to the contrary, every Muslim is a closest terrorist. This can only be the explanation for the detention last February of the prominent Islamic cleric, Sheikh Ahmed Abubakar Gumi, in far way Saudi Arabia where he has resided for many years at the behest of the Americans on no better grounds than that the phone number of Faruk Umar Abdul Mutallab, the alleged under-pant bomber, was found in the cleric’s handset. The detention of Gumi who was released only last week sent shock waves through the country’s Muslim umma not only because he had often preached against religious extremism but also because in his last Ramadan tafsir before his detention he had, to the surprise of many Muslims, given explicit support to American and Israeli oppression of Palestinian. Long before then he had become a divisive figure in the way he had persistently condemned the Darika sects as apostates and had even sought to legitimize the killing of the country’s Shi’ites, aka Muslim Brothers. If the Americans would instigate his detention by the Saudis in spite of all this you need no further proof that for them the only safe Muslim is a dead one. Yet Islam, as the two surveys by The Economist argued, does not necessarily pose a threat to the West. If a clash between the two seem inevitable it is because, as the late Professor Samuel Huntington, the chief priest of the thesis of the clash of civilizations admitted in his now famous essay of the same title, “A world of clashing civilizations is inevitably a world of double standard: people apply one standard to their kin-countries and a different standard to others.” This inconsistency in Huntington’s thesis is food for thought that should teach Muslim leaders, including of course Gumi, the obvious lesson that divisions within their fold can only make them easier prey for the enemies of their religion.
Re: President Jonathan: the home front
Mohammed,
I usually explain your anti-south, anti-Obasanjo, anti-Yoruba and anti-Awolowo bombasts as manifest of your northern oligarchical training and patronage. You are simply playing the tune of your Fulani paymasters. Even when you put up that nonsensical defence of paedophilia for Ahmed Yerima, I suspected you and some of your paymasters might be married to underage girls too, hence the need to close ranks to forestall prosecution for what is clearly an abuse and crime. Also when some time ago I read your critique of Turai Yar’Adua to the effect, I seem to remember, asking the then President, her husband, to keep her on leash, I thought you might know things we did not but, really, this gratuitous put-down attempt (“his wife’s rather limited education”) is the depths. Is it something personal? I have no relationship whatsoever with the Yar’Adua family but Hajiya Turai is, as of now, just another poor grieving widow. In the event, the woman reportedly holds a degree in languages from the ABU. That is hardly illiterate. It makes me wonder what, in those days in the late seventies in the University of Ibadan, made us look forward to reading your column even though we knew it was rabidly pro-north, a habit I have been unable to give up even now. We must have been seduced then by the rare literacy, perhaps more so even now, of your writings. However, it takes more than the ability to put two sentences of English together to be a polite journalist or an objective commentator. Olaitan Ladipo
Haruna, have you heard? That in one of the North Central States, the state First Lady thundered into His Excellency’s office at about 10pm and chased out all female workers, warning them never to keep late hours with her husband. Perhaps the First Lady forgot that as far as the governor remains in the office no worker can close. From Makurdi Sir, Your piece on President Jonathan arrived at the same conclusion as I had a few months ago even though by another route which goes to prove my point. His genuine friends should advise him to quit now with his luck. Mrs. Ndukwe, Port Harcourt. Sir. Your piece “President Jonathan: The home front, “is vintage Mohammed Haruna! Dame Goodluck to me reads like “Damn Goodluck”. Be assured that Jonathan’s presidency will turn out to be an ill wind that blows no good. Nigeria needs deliverance from the evil behemoth that PDP is! (pls protect my no. I am a public servant). Let me see the day you would be our president and your wife won’t be a henpecking harridan. It’s just a women-on-top thing! Power. Some things are better ignored. Barr. Chima, Benin Sir, You are an unrepentant fundamentalist and won’t see anything good about President Goodluck (Jonathan). A hundred of your type can’t stop him. We are waiting for you and your paymasters.
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