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Home grown terror

Author: Sola Fasure | Published:Monday, January 4th, 2010

The botched attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (UFA) to onboard bomb an airplane over the skies of Detroit in United States on Christmas Day is the apotheosis of the terror Nigerians have faced in the hands of home-grown terrorists scattered around the northern part of the country. Effectively, after saturating Nigeria with last year’s Boko Haram disturbances, they have decided to export their infamous product to the rest of the world.

Since independence, Nigerians domiciled in the northern part of the country have been in the throes of ethno-religious terrorism. Any issue, even unrelated matters like a controversial cartoon in a Danish newspaper sparked violent attacks on southerners and Christians. This has divided Nigeria on North vs. South, Moslems vs. Christians and Hausa/Fulani vs. others lines.

UFA was raised within a socio-cultural environment of gross intolerance, prejudice and zealotry. From the Igbo massacre of 1967 to the Boko Haram killings of last year, people of other ethnic groups and religions are fair game to religious fanatics. This is a fertile recruitment ground for suicidals indoctrinated into committing mass murders in other countries. Let us draw the parallels. What is the difference between killing southerners and Christian infidels in Nigeria and the ones in America? What is the difference between strapping bomb on your laps in an airplane and running into assault-rifle and automatic weapons wielding policemen and soldiers with bows and arrows? The motivations are the same: hatred, zealotry and fascination for suicide. Actually the three are interlinked. It is just the scale that is different. In both cases, the attacks are divinely sanctioned hits.

For those familiar with Northern Nigeria, as in other Islam-dominant societies, anti-West, especially anti-America and anti-Israel, sentiments are predominant values, even among their intellectuals. The citizens are daily fed on a diet of hate and rage. But it is hypocrisy and deception of the highest order. The elite nurturing their people on hatred are in social and economic alliances with the West they so vilify publicly. There is a huge investment by Arab Moslems in Israel that could lead to heart failures if the Israeli economy should collapse. The entire western economy is sustained by huge investments from Middle East wealth. Middle Eastern oil Sheiks are falling over themselves to buy off clubs in the English Football Association Premiership, the new secular religion of backslidden and atheist Europe. There is no prominent Nigerian Moslem family that does not have (or does not aspire to have) homes in the UK and United States. The culmination of the hypocrisy is their conspiracy with Western powers to keep political power in Nigeria in the hands of the Hausa-Fulani Moslem Northerners.

UFA, as a student, reportedly lived in a £2 million home. Besides, it is an inherent lifestyle of the Northern Nigerian Moslem elite to give their children the best of western education. The intention obviously is to prepare them for political and economic leadership in the country.

But in UFA, Western education became dysfunctional. He was recruited by Al Qaeda while he was a student at the University College, London. He went through the university in order to cultivate his mind and acquire liberation for his soul, but in contrast, his soul was put on ice and frozen. He therefore passed through the university, but the university did not pass through him. While Chinese and Brazilians students went to Western universities to study engineering in order to acquire the technology of building airplanes, UFA and his ilk were interested in how to destroy them and use airplanes to commit mass murder.

It is very tempting to blame Islam for the terrorism and violence unleashed on the world by radical Islam, yet lurking menacingly somewhere in between is religion. A commentator once observed that while it is fallacious to argue that all Moslems are terrorists, we cannot ignore the fact that virtually all terrorists are Moslems. This is significant social statistics and food for thought. Knowledge is the accurate interpretation of events and our experiences. We talk therefore about trends and patterns where there is an observed regularity in a particular direction.

For the sake of mischief makers, let it not be said that I am anti-Islam. I have argued in the past (and I still stand by it) that Islam is not the problem and should not be blamed for the sins committed by Moslems. After all, when a John or Mark commits robbery or murder, it is not blamed on Christianity, why should we blame crimes committed by Moslems on Islam? There is nothing inherent in Islam that predisposes an adherent to violence. However, when people commit crimes in the name of religion, the temptation is great to lump faith with the person. But crime is personal because in the final analysis, every person will give account of himself to God. There shall be no respect for persons. But I digress.

At the core of every religion is the quest to make the adherent a better person and improve the human condition. Two cardinal commandments in every religion are: ‘thou shall not kill’ and ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’. There are copious references in the Koran that abhor violence and enjoin Moslems to live in peace with people of other faiths. Indeed, in the South, there is mingling of faiths as Christians, Moslems and pagans live harmoniously together, work together and intermarry. Churches are built next to Mosques with their loudspeakers annoyingly and frenetically competing for attention in chaotic neighbourhoods.

But religion can be hijacked for some other purposes and the Scriptures manipulated and deployed for sinister ends. What the rise of radical Islam signifies is the gradual hijack of Islam by Islamofascists. Over the years, they have cultivated a cult of death by recruiting young people and indoctrinating them into a perverted form of Islam that feeds on hatred and death. It is into the vortex of this cult that thousands of Moslem youths and obviously UFA have been sucked. Their intention is to establish their own orthodoxy and make their brand the mainstream Islam.

UFA’s case has shattered the myth that terrorists are recruited from the ranks of the poor and underprivileged in society. This is a harebrained attempt to find explanation for terrorism outside of faith. The orthodoxy used to be that poverty and deprivation drive people to embrace violence, but now that the theory has been confronted with an anomaly in UFA, the theory has changed. It is now being argued that pampered childhood and opulence drove our man to violence. The truth however is that socio-economic status has little or no bearing on disposition to violence. Records of suicide bombers and sundry terrorists confirm that all social classes are represented and class therefore ceased to be a significant factor.

The challenge of the moment is for Islamic tolerant moderates to rescue their faith from mass murderers who are bent on imposing their narrow worldview on others in the name of Islam by force. The moderates have been blackmailed into silence by not wanting to be seen to be opposed to and critical of co-religionists.

They should heed the warning of the inimitable Wole Soyinka that the geography of the victims might expand to include those who thought they are protected by the anonymity of silence. It was Detroit on Christmas Day, it could be Lagos, Abuja, Kaduna Port Harcourt or Sokoto tomorrow. Then terror would have come home. God forbid.