On Muslims and Global Crises

Last week in Dutse, Jigawa State, the Zaria-based National Islamic Centre (known generally as Ummah) held its Annual National Convention with the theme “Islam, Muslims and Global Crises.” It so happened your Columnist was Guest Speaker. This week, we present excerpts from the keynote paper. In the opinion of this paper, the topic is simple […]

Last week in Dutse, Jigawa State, the Zaria-based National Islamic Centre (known generally as Ummah) held its Annual National Convention with the theme “Islam, Muslims and Global Crises.” It so happened your Columnist was Guest Speaker. This week, we present excerpts from the keynote paper.
In the opinion of this paper, the topic is simple because Islam is positively affected by these Global Crises because many important individuals continue to become Muslims and many world leaders continue to show respect to the religion in their speeches at every occasion. It is also complicated because it is mostly Muslims who bear the brunt of these ‘Global Crises’ – they are the ones been killed, they are the ones being injured, they are the ones ejected from their homes and made into refugees, they are the ones widowed and orphaned, and they are the ones going hungry every night.
And a hundred percent of the weapons Muslims use today to kill their fellows are manufactured by the same countries who are in the forefront of oppressing us: the Israeli UZI, the Chinese Type 79 and the Russian Kalashnikov. Double jeopardy! They kill our brothers in Palestine, Xinjiang and Chechnya, and then sell weapons to us to finish off those they cannot reach!
An inexhaustible list of Global Muslim Crises include:
NORTH EAST NIGERIA: In Nigeria’s North East, and in Cameroon, Chad and Niger Republic, Boko Haram has still not lost its teeth. In fact, as if to score extra points against the new Nigerian Administration, the insurgents have stepped up their indiscriminate attacks, mostly using drugged young girls. People in these areas live under the trauma of not knowing when or where the next bomb would explode. Add to them the millions of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs.
EGYPT MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD: A few weeks ago, the military in Egypt raided an Ikhwanul Muslimun administrative office where officials were meeting and cold-bloodedly murdered nine leaders of the Movement, plus several protesters on Sallah Day in Cairo’s Giza neighbourhood. And then the legitimately-elected President of Egypt, Muhammad Mursi fasted his Ramadan on death row, while the very anti-thesis of democracy, former President Mubarak, roams free!
PALESTINE QUDS ISRAEL: The world continues to watch as Israeli impunity continues. Gaza continues to be one huge prison camp, hemmed in on almost all sides – including seawards – by Israel, and blocked on the Egyptian side by Al Sisi, on instruction from his Israeli, Saudi and American masters. Some analysts in fact opine that the coup against Mursi was directly related to the fact that Mursi had opened the Egypt-Gaza border wide open for Palestinians to ‘breath’.
YEMEN SAUDIA BOMBINGS: The dirt-poor people of Yemen fasted their Ramadan and had their Eidul Fitr under the wicked bombing of Saudi America. In their avowed aim to dislodge the Houthis, the wicked undemocratic minority militia oppressing the majority Yemenites, the Saudis are bombing the wretched country of Yemen back into the tenth century. Airports, roads, power plants, waterworks and other infrastructure have all been destroyed in a country which has no resources to re-build them.
IRAQ SYRIA ISIS: The ‘Mother’ of Boko Haram, so-called Islamic State in Syria and the Levant, or IS, continues its turmoil, fitnah, in Iraq and Syria. IS bombs from one side, the wicked Bashar Al Assad drops barrel bombs on his own Syrian people while America bombs from on high. Bashar is surviving because Israel is more comfortable with him as Syrian helmsman. A commentator recently asked: “If the IS is really fighting a Jihad, don’t they know Israel is just across the Golan Heights?”
UIGHUR CHINA XINJIANG: As happens every year, the Muslim people of China’s Xinjiang Region were banned from observing the last Ramadan fast, as it has been over the past several decades. This Muslim minority continues to suffer from China’s religious and political persecution. World Uighur Congress says: “The government of China forces Muslims to avoid fasting, evening prayers [tarawih], or other religious activities. Imams go through unimaginable indignities!”
ROHINGYA MYANMAR BURMA: No sanctions, or even strong condemnation, is coming the way of Myanmar (Burma) in its treatment of Rohingya Muslims in the country. Persecution has forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas to flee the country through perilous sea crossings to other countries where more often than not they are sent back, while thousands perish at sea, and no international organisation is speaking up for them.
TALIBAN AFGHANISTAN DRONES: Afghanistan continues to be a virtual no-man’s-land. The American-backed Government holds sway only in Kabul, while the rest of the country in under incessant Taliban marauding, their version of our Boko Haram. Meanwhile, American drones keep droning overhead and murdering innocent civilians in the quest for Al Qaeda.
ALSHABAB SOMALIA KENYA: The East African Boko Haram, Al Shabab, continues its wicked ‘mission’ in Somalia and Kenya. Through their efforts, Muslims are receiving the end of the stick in all circumstances.
SELEKA BALAKA C.A.R.: Many of us have forgotten the religious cleansing that occurred two years ago in the Central African Republic. Muslims were specifically targeted and massacred, in full view of so-called French and UN peace keepers. The so-called Anti-Balaka militias murdered and raped thousands of Muslims they called Seleka-supporters.
SREBRENICA BOSNIA TWENTY: Many have completely forgotten about the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 in Bosnia, until the recent 20th anniversary. In 1995, Serb militants rounded up almost ten thousand unarmed Muslim men and boys and murdered them in cold blood and buried them in mass graves. And Srebrenica was at that time under the control of a so-called United Nations Peace-Keeping Force who looked the other way while the crime was being perpetrated. Worse than the murders were the massively organised rape of Muslim women and girls during the period.
OTHER MUSLIM CRISES: Add to all these the chaos that is Libya today; the attempt at Mediterranean Sea Crossing to Europe by African young men and women; the continued sufferings of the Muslim nation of Kashmir under the occupation of India; the Muslim peoples of Mindanao in the Philippines; the Muslim people of Patani in southern Thailand; the Kurdish Conundrum, among many others.
WHO IS BENEFICIARY?: In the opinion of this paper, that beneficiary is Israel. First, attention is off Israel while it continues oppressing Palestinians, then Muslims themselves help Israeli propaganda of giving Islam a bad name, and then with our own hands we kill Muslim young fellows, thus saving Israel its bullets.
WHAT’S OUR PROBLEM?: The Muslim World is in such disarray because there is no central authority respectable enough to command unity. As illustrated by the Srebrenica and Central African Republic massacres, we have no hope in the United Nations. Less so in NATO. We are on our own. And history is only a teacher – it does not feed you!
A MODEL UNION: Late Professor Najmuddin Erbakan, Prime Minister of Turkey in the mid-1990s started the D8, or Group of Eight Developing Countries in October 1996. What he did was to invite eight developing countries with large Muslim populations to start a movement. The members are Turkey, Nigeria, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Egypt, the only Arab member.
A MODEL LEADER: There is the need for a Leader to lead such a Muslim Union. But such a Leader must be one who is Arifun BilLahi wa Arifun bi Zamanihi; one whom the Muslims of Kosovo and Bosnia in Europe can accept; one whom the Muslims of Mozambique and Sierra Leone in Africa can understand; one whom the struggling Muslims of Patani and Mindanao in Asia can work with; one whom the minority Muslim peoples of Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago in the Americas can look up to.

May Allah bring peace to the world. Hasbunal Lahu wa ni’imal wakil!