By Donu Kogbara
A week after Islamic terrorists murdered 12 employees of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, the victims’ colleagues defiantly featured a provocative cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed on the magazine’s front cover.
Predictably, protests flared up in various Muslim countries, including Niger Republic, where at least l0 people were killed, while over 170 were injured.
During a weekend of violent demonstrations, several buildings were also set ablaze: A Christian school/orphanage, 45 churches and various hotels and bars.
Detructive fixations
Outraged Muslims also took to the streets in Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia and Algeria. And I really don’t understand their destructive fixations.
What I don’t get is this: Sure, folks of all religious persuasions are entitled to be upset when they see or hear anything they regard as offensive or downright blasphemous. But do the mostly impoverished citizens of developing nations like Niger Republic, Pakistan, etc, not have more pressing worries?
They are suffering en masse from chronic problems – disease, unemployment, etc – and struggling to provide themselves and their children with basics such as housing, education, healthcare, work opportunities and brighter futures.
If I were in their shoes, I’d be too concerned about day-to-day survival issues to care about what a bunch of foreign intellectuals and artists are getting up to…or about the contents of publications that are appearing on the other side of the world!…in cities that I will probably never get a chance to visit.
If I were busy trying to eke out a paltry living in Niamey, Karachi, Mogadishu or wherever and someone told me that I should carry on like a thuggish pyromaniac because a faraway European had insulted the Prophet, my attitude would be:
“What is my own with complete strangers who do not share my values? How will me trashing my home town hurt them or help me, my family or The Prophet?”
How dare he?
Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram’s boss, has just described President Jonathan and Maj-General Muhammadu Buhari as infidels who cannot rule Nigeria.
Shekau, who spoke in a 36 minute video released via Youtube earlier on this week, also warned that more attacks would be launched in the near future, boasted about the ammunition his group has seized from the army, said that Boko Haram will soon bring Nigeria to its knees and issued threats against the governments of neighbouring countries (Chad, Cameroon and Niger).
Shekau, who appeared in the video with serious military hardware, including anti-air assault guns, also accused our troops of cowardice.
According to him, the Nigerian army “kept deceiving the world that you can’t fight us because you have no arms. Liars! You have all that it takes; you are just coward soldiers….Is it not amazing that we, who started with sticks and machetes, are today the biggest headache to the almighty Nigerian soldiers?…
“What a shame!…This is just the beginning of the killings; what you’ve just witnessed is a tip of the iceberg; more deaths are coming. This will mark the end of politics and democracy in Nigeria. This is to confirm to you that we carried out the Baga massacre, and we are going to do more….
Infidel and enemy
“Nigerians are busy with politics, hailing Buhari! Buhari, Jonathan! Jonathan! Do you think even Buhari is a good Muslim? Buhari is not a Muslim as far as we are concerned – He is nothing but an infidel and our enemy…
“After this I will be setting ablaze the Nigerian flag just like we always do in all the places that we have conquered. It is a useless flag and its relevance would soon be a thing of the past….What we have in our armoury now, plus all that we had before, is enough to execute a victorious war against the whole Nigeria….Nigeria is dead; her constitution is dead!!!”
This animal’s ranting arrogance and evil taunts beggar belief. He struts around, imagining himself to be a warrior. And yet, he is the lowest of the low…and possesses no skills beyond coordinating abductions and unleashing murder and mayhem.
Who is he to call any other man a coward when he is the worst coward on the planet? How dare he claim to be Allah’s defender when he not only wages war on fellow Muslims who have harmed nobody but specialises in butchering unarmed civilians, brutalizing frail pensioners and assassinating babies and toddlers?
Is it courageous to rape women, strap explosives to them and then send them into crowded urban centres as suicide bombers? Is it heroic to steal little girls like our Chibok sisters and daughters from their parents in the dead of night?
By the way, I hope that those who have hitherto found it convenient to depict Buhari as an Islamic bigot will now see that he is as hated by Boko as Jonathan is.
A week after Islamic terrorists murdered 12 employees of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, the victims’ colleagues defiantly featured a provocative cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed on the magazine’s front cover.
Predictably, protests flared up in various Muslim countries, including Niger Republic, where at least l0 people were killed, while over 170 were injured.
During a weekend of violent demonstrations, several buildings were also set ablaze: A Christian school/orphanage, 45 churches and various hotels and bars.
Detructive fixations
Outraged Muslims also took to the streets in Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia and Algeria. And I really don’t understand their destructive fixations.
What I don’t get is this: Sure, folks of all religious persuasions are entitled to be upset when they see or hear anything they regard as offensive or downright blasphemous. But do the mostly impoverished citizens of developing nations like Niger Republic, Pakistan, etc, not have more pressing worries?
They are suffering en masse from chronic problems – disease, unemployment, etc – and struggling to provide themselves and their children with basics such as housing, education, healthcare, work opportunities and brighter futures.
If I were in their shoes, I’d be too concerned about day-to-day survival issues to care about what a bunch of foreign intellectuals and artists are getting up to…or about the contents of publications that are appearing on the other side of the world!…in cities that I will probably never get a chance to visit.
If I were busy trying to eke out a paltry living in Niamey, Karachi, Mogadishu or wherever and someone told me that I should carry on like a thuggish pyromaniac because a faraway European had insulted the Prophet, my attitude would be:
“What is my own with complete strangers who do not share my values? How will me trashing my home town hurt them or help me, my family or The Prophet?”
How dare he?
Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram’s boss, has just described President Jonathan and Maj-General Muhammadu Buhari as infidels who cannot rule Nigeria.
Shekau, who spoke in a 36 minute video released via Youtube earlier on this week, also warned that more attacks would be launched in the near future, boasted about the ammunition his group has seized from the army, said that Boko Haram will soon bring Nigeria to its knees and issued threats against the governments of neighbouring countries (Chad, Cameroon and Niger).
Shekau, who appeared in the video with serious military hardware, including anti-air assault guns, also accused our troops of cowardice.
According to him, the Nigerian army “kept deceiving the world that you can’t fight us because you have no arms. Liars! You have all that it takes; you are just coward soldiers….Is it not amazing that we, who started with sticks and machetes, are today the biggest headache to the almighty Nigerian soldiers?…
“What a shame!…This is just the beginning of the killings; what you’ve just witnessed is a tip of the iceberg; more deaths are coming. This will mark the end of politics and democracy in Nigeria. This is to confirm to you that we carried out the Baga massacre, and we are going to do more….
Infidel and enemy
“Nigerians are busy with politics, hailing Buhari! Buhari, Jonathan! Jonathan! Do you think even Buhari is a good Muslim? Buhari is not a Muslim as far as we are concerned – He is nothing but an infidel and our enemy…
“After this I will be setting ablaze the Nigerian flag just like we always do in all the places that we have conquered. It is a useless flag and its relevance would soon be a thing of the past….What we have in our armoury now, plus all that we had before, is enough to execute a victorious war against the whole Nigeria….Nigeria is dead; her constitution is dead!!!”
This animal’s ranting arrogance and evil taunts beggar belief. He struts around, imagining himself to be a warrior. And yet, he is the lowest of the low…and possesses no skills beyond coordinating abductions and unleashing murder and mayhem.
Who is he to call any other man a coward when he is the worst coward on the planet? How dare he claim to be Allah’s defender when he not only wages war on fellow Muslims who have harmed nobody but specialises in butchering unarmed civilians, brutalizing frail pensioners and assassinating babies and toddlers?
Is it courageous to rape women, strap explosives to them and then send them into crowded urban centres as suicide bombers? Is it heroic to steal little girls like our Chibok sisters and daughters from their parents in the dead of night?
By the way, I hope that those who have hitherto found it convenient to depict Buhari as an Islamic bigot will now see that he is as hated by Boko as Jonathan is.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/01/why-3/#sthash.soExjHYe.dpuf
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