ACCRA — In the ordinary business of life, at what point does a man pause and resolve to destroy human life for pleasure or satisfy a certain unfathomable religious conviction that the dastardly and wicked act of killing innocent people would afford him some reprieve or secure him a blissful destination in the afterlife? By now, we are almost unanimous that the people behind the terrorist attacks in France, Nigeria, Kenya, the U.S. and other countries are not Muslims, at least not true members of the religion that is Islam.
Our idea of Islam, the kind practiced by Khuram, Saani and Hawawu, is not supposed to be different from the Christianity practiced by Benjamin, Peter and Jacob, and all the other peace-loving religions that admonish their followers to love their neighbours.
The extremists hiding behind religion to harm and main and kill are foreign to the ideals of any religion that traces its roots to Abraham. The world is getting to the end of its tether and we need not sound patronizing or feel any restraint in coming strong on those who have resolved to take away our joy. However, if the recent trend of Islamophobia, discrimination and the general mistrust and mistreatment of some innocent Muslims continue, the world would be creating its own brand of terrorism to hasten our cataclysmic end before the second coming of Christ.
The reaction around the world to the Paris attacks has been varied, in some cases needlessly violent. In London, a man pushed a Muslim woman into oncoming underground train while in Melbourne another man brutally punched a Muslim woman in retaliation. Elsewhere in Britain, Muslim students were turned away by a coach driver over their ‘smelly’ curry stew. Then in the U.S., a Muslim woman’s face was smashed with a beer mug for not speaking English. These are ill-guided responses to a huge problem that requires the collective action of the world, united in arms and ready to confront evil with measured and calculated answers.
Why would anybody want to harm the Nigerian people? They are naturally very nice and loving people who have nothing idiosyncratic about their human constitution except being Nigerians. We have stopped asking why the cowards commit these heinous crimes. What we want to find out is how they get the guns to kill. In France, more than 129 people were slain and several hundreds wounded. Words alone are unable to communicate our disgust. But, emotions do not solve problems, they only put us on the edge of things.
The world should not wait for another terrorist attack on any human soil before we flaunt our anger and abhorrence for the senseless slaughter of precious human lives. How many more lives shall we lose to wicked and abominable extremists who have no regard for human life and have dared to substitute our peace with pain and tears? The world must be assuaged in the conviction that more than ever, we are united to defeat evil and restore hope once again to a broken humanity.
It is difficult to imagine that Khuram or any of my Muslim friends could be a terrorist or could be associating with any terrorist group to bomb and kill innocent people. A nice gentleman with a positive outlook to life, Khuram relates very well with his Pakistani Muslim brothers and people of other ethnic or racial backgrounds. We met at the University while I studied in London. He loved to joke that he would convert me to Islam because I would make a fine Muslim. I had assured him that if I became Muslim, my name would be Abdul, after he explained the meaning of the name to me.
In Khuram’s thinking, the people hiding under the banner of Islam to terrorise and kill innocent people are not Muslims. He objected to the uncharitable designation of ‘Muslim Extremists,’ insisting that the Quran has no accommodation for extremists. On account of Khuram’s insightful understanding of the Quran, I picked a few valuable lessons about the Muslim faith to deepen and sharpen my Christian convictions. Once in a while, Khuram would remind me that Islam is the best religion in the world.
There are things I admire about Islam and the Muslim people. Their devotion to prayer and fasting, and the strict rules that forbid women from dressing in sexually provocative clothes, especially in public, is good. It makes sense that a married woman should not behave like a freethinking single lady. It is a bitter foil to the hyper-sexualized dressing and cleavage-advertisement we see in our churches and other Christian gatherings. I also support administering a few lashes of the whip on adulterous women, but I would settle for a few lashes less the a hundred. Khuram and I loved these exchanges.
I found Khuram to be very tolerant and accepting of my Christian faith than I am of his Muslim religion. He would not be in haste to catalogue his dislikes for my religion, as I often did. Khuram is the kind of person anybody would love to have as a neighbour next door, and you will not feel any restraint inviting him for dinner any day.
Suddenly Khuram flipped over 9/11. He believes in those weird theories that the 9/11 atrocities were planned by Americans themselves, to buy reason to launch an attack on Muslims. He has mastered some wild justifications for his convictions, often asking: “Can you clap with one hand? America wanted to clap and they needed both hands, so they planned the attacks on themselves.” I found it very extraordinary that a PhD student would be gullible and childish enough to believe in such theories, especially when he is also very aware that the axis of evil is a real axe in the hand of extremists.
The Iraq war is Khuram’s best excuse. He thinks the Coalition forces of America and Britain erred greatly in attacking Saddam Hussein and destroying Iraq to install a puppet democracy. I told him I also disagreed with the invasion and so did many Britons and Americans, but that does not justify terrorist attacks on any country. He asks why the rest of the world are quick to count and express our collective anger when 10 Americans are killed while we have lost count of the thousands bombed by drones in other countries.
Khuram and I left England in 2008 after our studies. He relocated to the U.S. (most surprisingly) and finally to his native Pakistan to teach in a university while I settled in Canada. The day al-Shabab extremists attacked innocent shoppers at the Westgate Mall in Kenya, killing the professor who taught me English at University, I wondered whether Khuram spoke into time when he warned that the world would see more terrorist activity until America and other Western powers stopped their wars in Islamic nations.
How do we pull the brakes on terror and allow evil to reign? How do we advise Western nations to be circumspect in their regime change foreign policies in distant lands? Can the war on terror continue, with the fierce urgency, on both sides of the debate, until spring is reborn under our bright steps?
This is what Ann Coulter said in a recent blog post to her supporters who seem to hate anything that has legs: “Pederasty, child brides, honor killings, clitorectomies, stonings, wife beatings — when will America grow up and join the 21st century? (A lot sooner if Marco Rubio has his way!) Obama pulled every last American troop out of Iraq, then brought enemy troops to America, as refugees. After the last 50 years of mass immigration from the Third World, we’re good on Islamic terrorists, Mexican rapists, Russian arms dealers, Asian human traffickers and Pakistani Medicare scammers. We’re not running short on those anytime soon.”
The issue is that in America especially, there is a war on Wisdom. There is a war on Knowledge, and there is a war on History itself. How can a people who are so misinformed partake in an uplifting democratic process?
Thank you Kwesi once again you write so clearly about the issues at hand. I appreciate your frankness. We have no right, nowadays, to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of the disaster to our children black and white.
I am hopeful that the explanation for terrorism given here actually is what spreads to all parts of the globe. While the west is busy launching a war on Islam and Terrorists eager to convince all Muslims to join in, there is a need for this kind of measured writing and media outlet. Mr. Tawia-Benjamin has done a remarkable job to capture the ethos all religions, and denounce those who hijack scripture for their own uncunning ends.
“I found Khuram to be very tolerant and accepting of my Christian faith than I am of his Muslim religion. ” This is in essence the fact of the history of the two Abrahamic Religions. Muslims are actually accepting of all peoples and all religions. Muslim kingdoms have made peace with more people than Christianity has. but this is no indictment on Christianity, it only goes to show that people need to be circumspect in their need to paint the world in blue and white. The war on terror is not about Islam. It is not about Christians getting up to fight Muslims. But American Republican politicians would like us to believe this simplistic view. Why? They need money to go to war so they can make huge profits to further enslave their own peoples.