Re: The Burdens Of Islam
It is true that truth is a burden. This is why i found something to agree with when i read the article ” The Burdens of Islam ” as written by Anthony A. Kila. In the said article, the author identified two ” burdens of Islam ” and at the end of the article you get an idea of what the whole talk was about: ‘if you must be a Muslim, then let me be the one to define Islam’ and indeed Anthony is not alone in this attempt to gag Muslims and redefine Islam.
When he spoke of the first ” burden ” of having to be sensitive when you speak of Islam so as to prevent Muslim reaction he did not speak of the burden placed on the Muslims so that when they speak of their religion, they too have to be ” sensitive ” because there is an army of non-Muslims always ready to assign derogatory titles to whoever from among the Muslims say the Islamic position on things without compromise. A Muslim cannot say he wants sharia without being accused of supporting violence: just in case you are looking for the correlation, that makes two of us. A Muslim cannot say our Government killed innocent Muslims in Maiduguri in 2009 without being called Boko Haram or boko haram sympathizer and a Muslim in our time cannot even ask the Lagos State Government to allow our women wear hijab without being called extremist, fundamentalist, bigot and all these popular mumbo jumbo. Simply put; a Muslim either acts like a Christian or he is called “extremist”
This explains why people accuse us of being ” too serious ” and they are also intolerant to appreciate the fact that, while they may find nothing wrong joking with their faith, to the average Muslim Islam is serious business. Hence do not expect to find a Gordons among us to ” crack your ribs ” by making mockery of his Creator and the faith he claims to profess. This concept of tolerance that says since the Christians are making jokes with Jesus Muslims must do the same with Muhammad is in itself massive bigotry. Even more crass is the attitude of a lot of Christians who think since Muslims won’t joke with their religion, they will help them do it so that we now have ” Holy Mallam ,” ” Aboki for Jesus ” as well as a newspaper reporter who helped the Muslims joke about who Prophet Muhammad would have married during the Miss World saga and at the end of the day the same people nag about ” Muslim reaction ” . The question is. Why is it so difficult to leave us alone and make fun of your own stuff?
Now to the Second, and perhaps most ridiculous, a burden as suggested by Mr. Anthony. This burden is the burden of ” do not generalize .” The gentleman speaks about how people are told not to blame the activities of a few Muslims on the general population of Muslims as there are good Muslims who will not do such. And then he asked a question in that tone of someone who suffers the self impressed impression that he is speaking intelligent.
” how come out of those millions or so Orisa worshippers in the world, that Christians and Muslims scornfully call pagans, we do not have cases of just a few Orisa terrorists? ”
To answer the question we should simply inform the fellow that there is no Orisha land similar to Palestine, which has been under occupation and slavery for 66 years. There is no Orisha land similar to that of Afghanistan, which was operating peacefully before they were invaded to uproot their religion and sister of Government. There is no Orisha little girl called Abeer Qassim Aljannabi, who was raped at the age of 14 by a US soldier who afterwards killed her, her, five years-old sister and the rest of her family and said, ” I did not consider them to be humans .” There is no Orisha land like Pakistan which Obama sends 2 bombs into every single week killing innocent women and children and there is definitely no Orisha land like Iraq, which was invaded for absolutely no reason leaving over 600,000 dead. Look at everywhere you find what you call Muslim terrorist, and you will always find they have been invaded by one force or the other while being hitherto peaceful, you will always find dead bodies of women and children killed by drones and you will always find that these deaths from these invasions and heavy bombardment is not an issue to the world because of the real burden: the burden of being called ” terrorist ” and ” extremist ” whenever you draw the attention of the world to this mess and the burden of being accused of being in support of extreme reactions to these evils whenever you mention the evil themselves.
Omatse ” cult ” of Niger state would have made the same claim that none of them is a ” terrorist ” some months ago, but they presently have the blood of 95 police officers on their hands because they tasted something less than a pinch of what it meant to be invaded and persecuted. In our case, we are murdered too and guess what, when those who murder us are discussed it is world-renowned psychologists we see on CNN trying to ” understand ” why they did what they did but when a single Muslim kills a soldier on the street of London, in a country where such exact kind of crime is recorded 350 times daily, the guests are different; terrorism experts; no post traumatic stress disorder excuse, everyone falls on each other to use the toughest world against the ” terrorist ” . Even the Muslim leaders do too, and this turns them against these youths who think they kept mute when the Muslims were at the reaching end and at the end of the day, there is an Oritsajafor screaming ” call your people to order ” , which people? The same people the man is alienated from by your arm-twisting-induced condemnations?
What we need is not to redefine Islam or find some modern interpretations as the author suggested. What is needed is honesty. The honesty that will make us remind ourselves that 37 MILLION people were slaughtered in the First World War, and Muslims were not involved. The second world war put an end to the lives of 2.5% of the then world population; almost 60 million people and Muslims were not responsible for these deaths. If not for want of space I would have gone through the wars of the last 150 years and wish Mr. Anthony goodluck finding just 5, which relates to Islam and Muslims, out of the 101 wars I am aware of. Some of these wars took millions of lives, and the Muslims were not mentioned in the whole narrative. Do we really want to generalize this list? I don’t think so.
Today if I go to Maiduguri and with a broad smile on my face and face the JTF and shout ” Allahu Akbar ” i will be shot dead. If that is not enough generalization already what is?
Eseoghene Al-Faruq Ohwojeheri
Benin City
http://www.facebook.com/eseoghenefaruq
http://saharareporters.com/article/re-burdens-islam
