Torn between
In the special issue of Time magazine of December 31 1999, one of the people celebrated as the most important of the millennium was the great Muslim warrior and king, Salah-al Din Yusuf -Ibn Ayuub (Saladin) born in 1138 to a family of Kurdish adventurers in the (now Iraqi) town of Takrit. In the Muslim-Christian […]
In the special issue of Time magazine of December 31 1999, one of the people celebrated as the most important of the millennium was the great Muslim warrior and king, Salah-al Din Yusuf -Ibn Ayuub (Saladin) born in 1138 to a family of Kurdish adventurers in the (now Iraqi) town of Takrit. In the Muslim-Christian battle for Jerusalem, Saladin captured Jerusalem after fewer than two weeks of battle. In stark contrast to the earlier blood baths associated with crusades, Saladin’s occupiers neither killed Christians nor looted their property. His words at that battle re-echo till date, he said: Christians everywhere will remember the kindness we have bestowed upon them. Looking back at this comment and the instruction of Saladin to his son and successor, I dare say that this leader won more converts to Islam than a million clerics preaching for a thousand years could possibly achieve. These same words are quite relevant today as all men and women of goodwill struggle to curb the extreme radicalization of youths in northern Nigeria.
Following the 2008 Jos crisis, the words and deeds of Saladin kept agitating my mind. He represented those great virtues our Muslim neighbours taught me. Though my father and mother are Christians, most members of my family were born among Muslims and considered them family too. We the children, grandchildren and in-laws are mixed, some are Muslim, others Christian, and many of the grandchildren are Muslim. We are from Borno State but our father settled in Jos North in the 1950s. Most of us family members and other members of the extended family lived together in my father’s two houses surrounded by a single wall right in the midst of a Muslim community. My father, like a local chieftain who must embrace all people in his domain, managed to lead his unique family in such a way that mutual respect and love for both religions of Islam and Christianity thrived. Our neighbours knew that Christmas, Ramadan and Sallah were celebrated in our house. Bibles, Qurans, prayer kettles, prayer mats and prayer beads coexisted there side by side. My father always said to us: If you must be a Muslim or Christian, then be a good Muslim or good Christian and a credit to Islam or Christianity enough to attract others to your faith. Let all who meet you desire to convert to your religion. God deals with only the mind of man, not the outward appearance of piety.
Since the year 1987 when ethno religious crisis began to wax strong in Northern Nigeria, a lot has changed. People began to run from their neighbours, building their homes in impossible places and setting up walls high enough to scare the fiercest animal in the bush. The minds of both Christians and Muslims became equally barricaded from each other. They began to see and call each other unbelievers, something traditional worshippers find very amusing about the adherents of the two “foreign” religions (Christianity and Islam). This affected and saddened my mixed family beyond words. The year 2008 marked our own watershed. Our family houses were attacked in the dead of the night and vandalized beyond description. Even some of our dogs were not spared. As a religiously mixed family, this was doubly devastating. I cannot fathom how my siblings feel but these are my personal feelings about that unforgettable incident of 2008: I felt for the loss and violation of HAKIN MAKWABTAKKA AND AMANAH (sacred rights of neighbours/good neighbourliness, trust and promise). These are virtues Muslims taught me, the lessons I will live and die within my heart:
1. Muslims taught me that the hardest and most important Jihad (holy war) one can fight is that which seeks to improve oneself to be a better human being spiritually and intellectually.
2. Muslims taught me that every neighbor will be given an opportunity to testify for or against his neighbor before the Almighty on the last day.
3. Muslims taught me that one must want for others what he wants for himself.
4. Muslims taught that whatever one cannot improve, he must not destroy but walk away.
Sometimes I feel that God must have a very soft spot for tolerance; that is why he refused to allow any human the power to choose any of these three things: one’s neighbor, the family to be born into, and the opinion even his own child holds.
The crisis of 2008 in Jos was not strictly a Christian-Muslim conflict as many Muslims considered sympathetic to non Muslims were not spared at all. They too suffered not only at the hands of fellow Muslims but unfortunately in the hands of some Christians too. It was however gratifying to see the best of humanity when our Muslim neighbors retrieved some of our belongings and returned them to us in the place we fled to.
I ask myself this question often: Who is my neighbor anyway? Must it be a Christian if one is a Christian? Must it be a Muslim if one is a Muslim? The holy books of both Islam and Christianity say no. Christians and Muslims must know that without love one cannot reach out to anybody.
The recent post-election violence calls for great caution and immediate mass marshal plan to permanently check crisis in Northern Nigeria. We must quickly gather up wandering children and almajiris off our streets and put them in primary, secondary and craft schools. These 3 steps must be taken very quickly.
1. Jonathan and Sambo must now concentrate on building those 100 schools (33 primary schools, 33 secondary schools and 34 craft schools) annually which Namadi promised the NSCIA. Craft schools must be added for learning handiwork like mechanics, blacksmithing, welding, upholstery, carpentry, GSM repairs and so on. We must head for the root of our problem in the north and deal with it, targeting the 5 to 19 year age group. This is the energetic and volatile segment of our population. The building of new universities should be in 202. Let’s fund the old universities first.
2. Like the great Muslim kings of old, every Muslim traditional ruler in Northern Nigeria must begin to sponsor at least a primary school and a small library in his domain, not just collect tributes and rest. Sultan Sa’ad’s Foundation can supervise the schools.
3. Every northerner in government must contribute a token amount annually to his former primary school for expansion. As far as I am concerned, a quick expansion of the frontiers of knowledge is the security bulwark against violence and radicalization in Northern Nigeria, not Police and guns. Northern leaders will ignore this security advice at our collective peril.
SAMDI LAZARUS MUSA, NIMR MAIDUGURI, BORNO STATE