Radical ignorance is the threat to peace

The relentless shrill and coarse broad-brush denunciations of Islam that filled the entire article only provided another proof that Islamophobia is thriving in certain quarters in Nigeria and that certain individuals are more than happy to be its flamboyant figurehead. Some people have wondered how someone like the author could brazenly express radical ignorance on […]

The relentless shrill and coarse broad-brush denunciations of Islam that filled the entire article only provided another proof that Islamophobia is thriving in certain quarters in Nigeria and that certain individuals are more than happy to be its flamboyant figurehead.
Some people have wondered how someone like the author could brazenly express radical ignorance on the pages of a national daily without any hint of rigorous research. Yet, as the former President Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States once remarked “the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.” (Reagan 1964). Dr Cole’s article places him squarely in this category.
To a discerning mind, many of the false beliefs published in the article are easily dismantled. For instance, he states that Islam “condemns to death any Moslem marrying outside the religion.” This unsubstantiated claim, like other outrageous ones in the article, flies in the face of reason. In fact it would have been laughable were it not for its potentially serious consequences.
Also, if Islam is truly hate-filled and calls to vigilante terrorism as Dr Cole would like us believe, then why was there never a Jewish Holocaust in a Muslim country in the last 1400+ years? If indeed the Islamic worldview has no place for non-Muslims, why do the Iranian Jews refuse to leave Iran and go to Israel? Why is it that in Palestine, the birthplace of Jesus Christ (AS), there still exists today a Christian community which traces its history back to Jesus Christ?
As a Christian in this country, it may be comforting for Dr Cole to believe that he commands such moral heights when he declares that “all conflicts in the world except Ukraine is Muslim based”, yet, he chose to neglect the fact of the millions of massacred civilians stretching from Wounded Knee to Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hanoi, Panama City, and more recently throughout the rubble strewn streets of Baghdad, Falluja, Ramadi, occupied Palestinian territories and the victims of the latest bombing of worshippers at the Kano Central mosque. All these places bear silent witness to the unspeakable horror that people have experienced at the hands of other human beings. Interestingly, the conveniently ignored fact is that most of the victims are Muslims.
Dr Cole, by his own hands, has shown that he is a direct reincarnation of the Encyclopaedists in the eighteenth century who did not know and did not care to know what the Muslim believed, nor seek to know the views of Eastern Christians with regard to the Islamic faith. He attributes all the conflicts in the world to Islam and Muslims but forget that in July 2011, Anders Behring Breivik was arrested and charged with terrorism after a car bombing in Oslo and a mass shooting on Utøya Island that killed 77 people. Hours prior to the events, Breivik had released a 1,500-page manifesto detailing his beliefs that immigrants were undermining Norway’s traditional Christian values.  
The National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), a rebel group that seeks the secession of Tripura, North-East India, from the country, has been described as Christian terrorists engaging in terrorist violence motivated by their Christian beliefs. The NLFT includes in its aims the forced conversion of all tribes, people in Tripura to Christianity. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a cult and guerrilla army, is currently engaged in an armed rebellion against the Ugandan government. Since 2005 when the rebellion started, the LRA has been accused of using child soldiers and of committing numerous crimes against humanity; including massacres, abductions, mutilation, torture, rape, and using forced child labourers as soldiers, porters, and sex slaves. LRA, pretty much like Boko Haram, is a quasi-religious movement that mixes some aspects of Christian beliefs with its own brand of spiritualism.
The public lynching of Muslims in the press by mercurial personalities and the demonization of Muslims as a result of the evil activities of the Boko Haram cultists simply have to stop. In a situation where simply thinking about condemning Boko Haram can get one shot in the head (and countless Muslims have died this way), posterity will remember those Muslims that have stepped forward to condemn Boko Haram, an act dismissed by Dr Cole, as courageous. What else would Dr Cole have us do when the Muslim community has bent over backwards and done far more than expressing outrage against this common enemy? Literally, many Muslims have acted as human shield against the terrorists and have paid dearly for their heroic actions.
In a dysfunctional system where personal security for anyone cannot be guaranteed, where death rains down on the hapless victims of terrorism without proper protection, majority of those caught in the line of fire are Muslims. These unfortunate victims have had their lives disrupted, some irretrievably. Other Muslims, like their counterpart citizens, make daily sacrifices providing critical services in hospitals, saving lives, donating blood, providing for the orphans or, as members of the armed forces, dying gallantly in battles – as unsung heroes. These are some of the important contributions that Muslims are making to advance national security and defeat terrorism. But of course, Dr Cole is having none of it.

Kamor is Executive Chairman, Muslim Public Affairs Centre