Suicide Bombing: Nigerian Muslims Are Peace-Lovers - From
Nigerian Masjid
4 January 2010
By Isa Ali
Ibrahim-Pantami
The recent global happenings to Nigerian Muslims
portray Islam and the country in bad image to those
that are far away from reality and first-hand
information. The happenings include “Boko-Haram”,
concoction against Darul-Islam, alleged attempted
suicide-bombing, Kala-kato crisis in
Bauchi and a host of other minor instances.
Islam is a comprehensive and universal religion that
teaches peace, mercy, caring, justice, kindness and
compassionate. The religion protects human life
irrespective of religion, gender, race or continent.
Innocent lives are being protected through out human
history.
There is a clear demarcation and partition between the
injunctions of Islam and the practice of some people
in the name of Islam. Today, because of the sentiment
of others, they enjoy attaching any bad or ugly action
to Islam in order to equalize their feelings. The
Noble Prophet of Islam has enunciated that any action
that is not sanctioned by us is rejected. On the basis
of this, some people take an advantage of our infinite
and unlimited border of freedom in Nigeria, to
perpetrate evil and attach it to Islam, while their
action is not sanctioned by the Noble Prophet.
The suspected suicide bomber, Umar Farouk Mudallab got
this idea definitely from somewhere not Nigeria,
because of three reasons. First, his biography
indicates this. He studied and visited places like
Togo, United Kingdom, Egypt, Dubai and Yemen. Second,
in his Northern Nigeria, we have never heard anything
like suicide bombing in our midst; we only hear it on
international stations. Typical northern Muslim like
my humble self considers an aircraft like a grave or
perforated ship which sails on high water. Whenever we
join it, we are devastated, finding it difficult to
eat, drink, pray, sleep or discuss. Aircraft is a
strange technology to most of our Northern Muslims to
date. Third, we have never heard any attempt in the
past by a Nigerian Muslim to carry out a similar
mayhem, here or anywhere in the world. The action of
Faruok’s father where he reported the situation of his
son to the relevant authorities is enough to vindicate
how patriotic is he, and how northern Muslims are
upright, peace-loving and sincere. His father demands
commendation.
It is true that in recent times, Northern Nigeria has
not been an exemplary place for religious tolerance.
Many young energetic Muslims and Christians have
perpetrated and perpetuated holocaust and genocide in
the name of religion. They use knives, sticks,
cutlasses, daggers and locally made single barrel gun,
but you can hardly hear of any sophisticated weapon,
except in very few instances and clashes.
This episode portrays the level of insecurity in our
airports. How could someone come and pass all the
screening phases and even entered an aircraft without
identifying him. The failure must be either from the
security personnel or the security gadgets in the
airport he left and even the Amsterdam airport, or
from both of them. Our rebranding campaign has become
lip service without any impact on the country.
No one will deny the existence of moral decadence in
our communities, particularly in the midst of our
youths. This failure manifests itself from the
negative contribution of many segments of our country,
which includes governments at various levels, parents,
scholars and traditional leaders.
Our country is governed without equality before the
law; there exist an infinite border of freedom.
Security personnel perpetrate what they were urged to
stop. Killing innocent people has become rampant.
Parents allow their kids to interact with any company
of people- the good, the bad and the ugly. Rich
parents send their kids abroad to study, to become
educated, secularists and enlightened. Parental
supervision occupies a fundamental position in Islam,
which cannot be achieved by abandoning them abroad.
The best our Islamic organization and scholars do, to
condemn any act of extremism after the damage has been
done. But “Prevention is better than cure”. Our
scholars need to have sincerity in their hearts, unite
the Muslim Ummah, obey the methodology
of our pious predecessors, inculcate morality into
our community, teach our younger ones moderation,
because Islam neither agree with laxity nor extremism.
The recent event of Kala-Kato in Bauchi
is enough to vindicate how the name of Islam is being
tarnished, subdued and vanquished by so-called
Alarammomi or scholars. Fire-brigade approach
will not solve our problem, but rather we need total
rehabilitation, reorientation and rejuvenation of our
youths and communities in general.
The entire western world should not take this as a
pretext of subjecting Nigerians to unnecessary
investigations, harassment and checking. The British
witnessed the ugly trial of their Shoe bomber, Robert
Reid their fellow Briton. He attempted to blow up a
transatlantic flight some years back. Timothy
McVeigh, the man who blew up a Federal Building in
Oklahoma City in 1995 was an American. This is just a
tip out of the iceberg.
Muslim youth should avoid taking laws into their
hands, but rather need to acquire sound and genuine
Islamic knowledge from Arrabaaniyyun-
pious and sincere scholars.
Violence should be condemned, including the killing of
innocent people in Palestine by the brutal Israeli
Army. Islam never supports these killings, let us
continue inviting people to Islam and allow peace and
tranquility to dominate the world. These are really
the signs of the last hour, let us get prepared.
Isa Ali Ibrahim-Pantami can be reached at
Masjidul-Qur’an Jumu’ah Masjid Bauchi/ATB University.
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