The Book for Man or the Man for the Book

By Nigerian Bishop Emeritus of Ekiti Catholic Diocese, Michael Olatunji Fagun.

The opinion expressed in Much ado about Qur’an burning by Disu Kamor, Director of Media and Communications Muslim Public Affairs Centre (MPAC) in the Wednesday March 7, 2012, edition of The Guardian, page 51 makes a good defense of the sacred and due respect for cultural values and personal feelings of others, making reference to the age old saying in every religion – treat others as you would like to be treated.

But the expressed opinion of Kamor, as good and convincing as it was, fails to see the other side of the problem beyond the sacrilege of burning holy books. That is, the sacrilege of wanton destruction of human life at the least provocation of Muslim religious sentiment.

Every sound religion condemns murder and culprits are decisively dealt with. Two wrongs do not make a right. In fact, in honest opinion, human life is more sacred than any holy book, for the book, whatever its source, is made for man and not man for the book.

Though Kamor, in his socio-political harangue against the Western world, referred to Pope Benedict’s reference to what an emperor said about Islam without truly meaning any harm, but seemed to have closed his eyes on the wanton killings of unconnected people by some irate fanatical Muslims on that occasion, as if it did not matter. Let me limit this intervention to our problems with Muslim fanaticism in Nigeria.

The wisdom of our people advises that while you lash out on the thief, you should caution the robbed to be security conscious. Right thinking Nigerians would expect the enlightened members of the Islamic religion to caution and do something positive to stop the excesses of the so called radical or fanatical Muslims from desecrating human life in Nigeria as it is customary of them, even without any provocation, except for the existence of people of different faiths living where Muslims are in the majority. This is evidenced in our history as shown below.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, jihads fought by Uthman Dan Fodio and others led to the forced conversion, enslavement or killing of traditional believers he overcame in Nigeria. Victims of this episode are still licking their wounds and nursing their grudge in the Plateau area of Nigeria.

An offshoot of Islam called the Yan Tatsine violently rebelled against the authorities and non-members. These radical Muslims were inspired by Maitatsine in 1972 using Qur’anic students called almajiri or gardawa and unemployed migrants to lash out havoc on the Nigerian populace.

During the 1980s, Islamic religious riots were very prominent in Nigeria. They occurred in and around the cities of Kano in 1980, Kaduna in 1982, Jimeta in 1984 and in Gombe in 1985 involving gory killings of human beings.

There were clashes in October 1982 when Muslim zealots in Kano were able to enforce their power to keep the Anglican House Church from expanding its size and power base, as they saw it as a threat to the nearby Mosque, even though the Anglican House Church had been there forty years prior to the building of the Mosque.

The sad practice of not granting land for church building in the Muslim north of Nigeria is still prevalent.
Also, there were two student associations in Nigeria who came into conflict, the Fellowship of Christian Students (FCS) and the Muslim Students Society (MSS). On one occasion there was an evangelical campaign organized by the FCS and brought into question why one sect should dominate the campus of the Kafanchan College of Education, Kaduna State.

This quarrel accelerated to the point where the Muslim students organized protests around the city that culminated in the burning of a Church at the college. The Christian majority at the college retaliated on March 9, 1982 when twelve people died and several Mosques were burnt.

The most worrisome today is the Boko Haram movement that has also been connected to the Al-Qaeda movement who claim to be promoting the cause of Islam. They want to implement Sharia law across some six Northern States of Nigeria through the bombing of Christian Churches and indiscriminate killings of innocent Nigerians currently. No right thinking person would accept this infernal ideology and practice.

These occurrences do not speak well of any religious body. Enough is enough. Let our good Muslims redeem the name of Islam in Nigeria from the hands of its spoilers. There should be no more of the proverbial swallowing of the camel and spitting the gnat. The book is made for man and not man for the book. Both should be held sacred. There should be no more human sacrifice at the altar of any sacred object.