Tuesday 10 February 2015

Adamu: Cole, Islam and threat to peace (2)

  • Tuesday, 09 December 2014 00:00
  • Written by Adamu Adamu



ELSEWHERE, Cole was wondering why all the wars currently going on in the world except the one in Ukraine involved Muslims as defenders; and was desperately trying to blame the victim in his unstudied and ill-understood global geopolitical theatre. Whether it was because the truly Muslim mind could not be easily controlled, or because the Muslim World had a multiplicity of critical natural resources needed by the West, or because the Muslim religion had the capacity to resist and battle Western hegemony better than Communism ever could, the Muslim World had to become the new theatre of new wars waged directly, by proxy or by subterfuge by those who would prefer that a clash of civilisations became inevitable in the world today. And with such simplistic analysis, Cole forgot that he could easily have also blamed even the Ukrainian conflict on Muslims – because Crimean Tatars live in Ukraine and they are Muslim.

   But there were times when almost all the wars and insurgencies in the world were waged by Christian groups operating in the name of religion or for its sake – from the Irish Republican Army to Gustavo Gutierrez’s Catholic liberation theologians in the countries of South and Latin America. Muslims have never accused the religion of Christianity for being warlike or violence-friendly on account of these. Nor did Muslims ever say the bloody exploits of the IRA was an accurate representation of what might be regarded as Protestant Christian republicanism. 

   And, above all, Muslims have never accused Christianity for all the violence, deaths, cultural disruption and pillage of colonialism, which covered not just the North East of Nigeria but the entirety of the non-European world, even though everybody knew that the colonial Maxim gun was the scimitar that softened the ground for Christian missionary activity throughout the Muslim World. 

  But Muslims have not allowed this or images and memories of genocidal Catholic Spanish Inquisition or the imposed Crusades against their world – an invasion blessed by all three contemporaneous reigning Pontiffs and led by all the crown heads of Cole’s darling West, or the extreme barbarity of the Pope Alexander VI’s Inter Caetera Papal-Bull-approved Conquistadores of the New World, or the papal-sanctioned ethnic cleansing this spawned, or even what Muslims consider doctrinal Pauline grafts onto Christianity to blind them to the pure message of monotheistic spirituality and love brought to the world by Jesus Christ [AS]. No, even if Western powers claim Christ [AS], he is innocent of the excesses they commit in the world today.

   Nor have Muslims considered the David Koreish’s Branch Dravidians of the Waco that Cole mentioned, or the suicidal apostolic socialism of Jimmy Jone’s People’s Temple of Georgetown, or the bloody exploits and the extreme brutality of Joseph Koney’s United Holy Salvation Army’s Lord’s Resistance Army as representative of the true teachings of Christ [AS]. This is in spite of the stated goal of the Lord’s Resistance Army of establishing a Christian state and applying the Ten Commandments over Uganda and the swathes of territory occupied in Central Africa Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, where its self-styled Uganda Christian Army has been guilty of all the atrocities for which Boko Haram is accused here – murder, kidnappings, child-sex slavery – all of which it does in the name of Christ [AS].

   And colonial soldiers did believe they were doing their conquests in the name of Christ [AS], as could be seen as late as 1917 in the declaration of General Edmund Allenby at the conquest of Jerusalem. As he entered the city on December 11 of that year after its conquest, which was taken as ‘a Christmas present for the British people,’ General Allenby said, “The wars of the crusaders are now complete.” And wasn’t it quite instructive that as he fired the first salvo in the new Western battle to retake the Middle East, U.S. President George W. Bush gave the indication that he was now reopening the Crusades, which he indeed called as such.

   Christianity might not have been spread by the sword: the English didn’t have swords; they had the Maxim gun; but this was a fact Muslims took no delight in stating because they never recognised colonial soldiery or global West as representative of the teachings of Christ. And this is one simple courtesy, as evidenced in Cole’s article, that Christians throughout the ages have been unable to equal. 

   Today, two choices face the commentator on Islam –either to keep on waiting for so-called Western experts for the continued, and now very much clichéd, condemnation of this religion, or to try to make the effort to know – and, hopefully, even understand – a reality that, for many such a commentator, lives right by his side. But for Cole, that may be a tall order, because it is always easier – safer, duller and more laughable – to repeat the other cliché that Islam is violent, and then beat his chest as if that amounts to making a fresh discovery in quantum mechanics.

   It has not been apparent before, whether in his writings, sayings or in his associations, that Cole entertains such grave misgivings about Islam, and harbours such unspeakable animosity against Muslims, but he should have marshalled facts, not his mere say-so, to back up his prejudices. And if he really knows nothing of Islam except its stereotypical representation by the West or if his acquaintance with it is only by way of the current confrontation with its unrepresentative unorthodox manifestation in Boko Haram; or, if the only chorus he can sing is that of the song composed for you by the Western choir or by the Ngbati press, he should have saved us the torture that is reading that piece. It was unwarranted and totally uncalled for at this or any time, especially considering that previous attempts by smatter schemers, more erudite and original pens possessed of greater malice and spewing greater venom had come to grief. 

  It is so obvious that it is no ordinary ignorance that is required to write such a jaundiced article that ends up making no beneficial, correct or worthwhile point besides listing a confused jumble of prejudices. Indeed, in the profundity of its ignorance, the level of subjectivity of its analysis, its shallowness, it will put to shame the analysis of the anti-Islamic Oriental scholars of medieval Christendom in their pre-9/11   Islamophobia. But in all this, what is regrettable and unfortunate is that these are the views of a compatriot who has in the very recent past represented Nigeria as ambassador in the leading nation of South America and has occupied the office of a presidential adviser on international relations.

   At a point, Cole would lament his inability to get the views of Muslims on their religion. “But my pain is that I cannot really discuss any of these matters with my Islamic friends:” he said. “I am certain they do not discuss them among themselves.” And he was wrong on both counts. 

   While Cole will not count me among his friends, my acquaintance with him, which developed as a result of our mutual closeness to the late General Shehu Yar’Adua and the late Dr. Stanley Macebuh and Cole’s visits to PTF where I was a director and special assistant to the chairman, created a relationship based on mutual respect. 

• Concluded
• Adamu wrote from Abuja.

 

ELSEWHERE, Cole was wondering why all the wars currently going on in the world except the one in Ukraine involved Muslims as defenders; and was desperately trying to blame the victim in his unstudied and ill-understood global geopolitical theatre. Whether it was because the truly Muslim mind could not be easily controlled, or because the Muslim World had a multiplicity of critical natural resources needed by the West, or because the Muslim religion had the capacity to resist and battle Western hegemony better than Communism ever could, the Muslim World had to become the new theatre of new wars waged directly, by proxy or by subterfuge by those who would prefer that a clash of civilisations became inevitable in the world today. And with such simplistic analysis, Cole forgot that he could easily have also blamed even the Ukrainian conflict on Muslims – because Crimean Tatars live in Ukraine and they are Muslim.
   But there were times when almost all the wars and insurgencies in the world were waged by Christian groups operating in the name of religion or for its sake – from the Irish Republican Army to Gustavo Gutierrez’s Catholic liberation theologians in the countries of South and Latin America. Muslims have never accused the religion of Christianity for being warlike or violence-friendly on account of these. Nor did Muslims ever say the bloody exploits of the IRA was an accurate representation of what might be regarded as Protestant Christian republicanism. 
   And, above all, Muslims have never accused Christianity for all the violence, deaths, cultural disruption and pillage of colonialism, which covered not just the North East of Nigeria but the entirety of the non-European world, even though everybody knew that the colonial Maxim gun was the scimitar that softened the ground for Christian missionary activity throughout the Muslim World. 
  But Muslims have not allowed this or images and memories of genocidal Catholic Spanish Inquisition or the imposed Crusades against their world – an invasion blessed by all three contemporaneous reigning Pontiffs and led by all the crown heads of Cole’s darling West, or the extreme barbarity of the Pope Alexander VI’s Inter Caetera Papal-Bull-approved Conquistadores of the New World, or the papal-sanctioned ethnic cleansing this spawned, or even what Muslims consider doctrinal Pauline grafts onto Christianity to blind them to the pure message of monotheistic spirituality and love brought to the world by Jesus Christ [AS]. No, even if Western powers claim Christ [AS], he is innocent of the excesses they commit in the world today.
   Nor have Muslims considered the David Koreish’s Branch Dravidians of the Waco that Cole mentioned, or the suicidal apostolic socialism of Jimmy Jone’s People’s Temple of Georgetown, or the bloody exploits and the extreme brutality of Joseph Koney’s United Holy Salvation Army’s Lord’s Resistance Army as representative of the true teachings of Christ [AS]. This is in spite of the stated goal of the Lord’s Resistance Army of establishing a Christian state and applying the Ten Commandments over Uganda and the swathes of territory occupied in Central Africa Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, where its self-styled Uganda Christian Army has been guilty of all the atrocities for which Boko Haram is accused here – murder, kidnappings, child-sex slavery – all of which it does in the name of Christ [AS].
   And colonial soldiers did believe they were doing their conquests in the name of Christ [AS], as could be seen as late as 1917 in the declaration of General Edmund Allenby at the conquest of Jerusalem. As he entered the city on December 11 of that year after its conquest, which was taken as ‘a Christmas present for the British people,’ General Allenby said, “The wars of the crusaders are now complete.” And wasn’t it quite instructive that as he fired the first salvo in the new Western battle to retake the Middle East, U.S. President George W. Bush gave the indication that he was now reopening the Crusades, which he indeed called as such.
   Christianity might not have been spread by the sword: the English didn’t have swords; they had the Maxim gun; but this was a fact Muslims took no delight in stating because they never recognised colonial soldiery or global West as representative of the teachings of Christ. And this is one simple courtesy, as evidenced in Cole’s article, that Christians throughout the ages have been unable to equal. 
   Today, two choices face the commentator on Islam –either to keep on waiting for so-called Western experts for the continued, and now very much clichéd, condemnation of this religion, or to try to make the effort to know – and, hopefully, even understand – a reality that, for many such a commentator, lives right by his side. But for Cole, that may be a tall order, because it is always easier – safer, duller and more laughable – to repeat the other cliché that Islam is violent, and then beat his chest as if that amounts to making a fresh discovery in quantum mechanics.
   It has not been apparent before, whether in his writings, sayings or in his associations, that Cole entertains such grave misgivings about Islam, and harbours such unspeakable animosity against Muslims, but he should have marshalled facts, not his mere say-so, to back up his prejudices. And if he really knows nothing of Islam except its stereotypical representation by the West or if his acquaintance with it is only by way of the current confrontation with its unrepresentative unorthodox manifestation in Boko Haram; or, if the only chorus he can sing is that of the song composed for you by the Western choir or by the Ngbati press, he should have saved us the torture that is reading that piece. It was unwarranted and totally uncalled for at this or any time, especially considering that previous attempts by smatter schemers, more erudite and original pens possessed of greater malice and spewing greater venom had come to grief. 
  It is so obvious that it is no ordinary ignorance that is required to write such a jaundiced article that ends up making no beneficial, correct or worthwhile point besides listing a confused jumble of prejudices. Indeed, in the profundity of its ignorance, the level of subjectivity of its analysis, its shallowness, it will put to shame the analysis of the anti-Islamic Oriental scholars of medieval Christendom in their pre-9/11   Islamophobia. But in all this, what is regrettable and unfortunate is that these are the views of a compatriot who has in the very recent past represented Nigeria as ambassador in the leading nation of South America and has occupied the office of a presidential adviser on international relations.
   At a point, Cole would lament his inability to get the views of Muslims on their religion. “But my pain is that I cannot really discuss any of these matters with my Islamic friends:” he said. “I am certain they do not discuss them among themselves.” And he was wrong on both counts. 
   While Cole will not count me among his friends, my acquaintance with him, which developed as a result of our mutual closeness to the late General Shehu Yar’Adua and the late Dr. Stanley Macebuh and Cole’s visits to PTF where I was a director and special assistant to the chairman, created a relationship based on mutual respect. 
• Concluded
• Adamu wrote from Abuja.
- See more at: http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/editorial-opinion/columnist/189568-adamu-cole-islam-and-threat-to-peace-2#sthash.EWwzHS2b.dpuf
ELSEWHERE, Cole was wondering why all the wars currently going on in the world except the one in Ukraine involved Muslims as defenders; and was desperately trying to blame the victim in his unstudied and ill-understood global geopolitical theatre. Whether it was because the truly Muslim mind could not be easily controlled, or because the Muslim World had a multiplicity of critical natural resources needed by the West, or because the Muslim religion had the capacity to resist and battle Western hegemony better than Communism ever could, the Muslim World had to become the new theatre of new wars waged directly, by proxy or by subterfuge by those who would prefer that a clash of civilisations became inevitable in the world today. And with such simplistic analysis, Cole forgot that he could easily have also blamed even the Ukrainian conflict on Muslims – because Crimean Tatars live in Ukraine and they are Muslim.
   But there were times when almost all the wars and insurgencies in the world were waged by Christian groups operating in the name of religion or for its sake – from the Irish Republican Army to Gustavo Gutierrez’s Catholic liberation theologians in the countries of South and Latin America. Muslims have never accused the religion of Christianity for being warlike or violence-friendly on account of these. Nor did Muslims ever say the bloody exploits of the IRA was an accurate representation of what might be regarded as Protestant Christian republicanism. 
   And, above all, Muslims have never accused Christianity for all the violence, deaths, cultural disruption and pillage of colonialism, which covered not just the North East of Nigeria but the entirety of the non-European world, even though everybody knew that the colonial Maxim gun was the scimitar that softened the ground for Christian missionary activity throughout the Muslim World. 
  But Muslims have not allowed this or images and memories of genocidal Catholic Spanish Inquisition or the imposed Crusades against their world – an invasion blessed by all three contemporaneous reigning Pontiffs and led by all the crown heads of Cole’s darling West, or the extreme barbarity of the Pope Alexander VI’s Inter Caetera Papal-Bull-approved Conquistadores of the New World, or the papal-sanctioned ethnic cleansing this spawned, or even what Muslims consider doctrinal Pauline grafts onto Christianity to blind them to the pure message of monotheistic spirituality and love brought to the world by Jesus Christ [AS]. No, even if Western powers claim Christ [AS], he is innocent of the excesses they commit in the world today.
   Nor have Muslims considered the David Koreish’s Branch Dravidians of the Waco that Cole mentioned, or the suicidal apostolic socialism of Jimmy Jone’s People’s Temple of Georgetown, or the bloody exploits and the extreme brutality of Joseph Koney’s United Holy Salvation Army’s Lord’s Resistance Army as representative of the true teachings of Christ [AS]. This is in spite of the stated goal of the Lord’s Resistance Army of establishing a Christian state and applying the Ten Commandments over Uganda and the swathes of territory occupied in Central Africa Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, where its self-styled Uganda Christian Army has been guilty of all the atrocities for which Boko Haram is accused here – murder, kidnappings, child-sex slavery – all of which it does in the name of Christ [AS].
   And colonial soldiers did believe they were doing their conquests in the name of Christ [AS], as could be seen as late as 1917 in the declaration of General Edmund Allenby at the conquest of Jerusalem. As he entered the city on December 11 of that year after its conquest, which was taken as ‘a Christmas present for the British people,’ General Allenby said, “The wars of the crusaders are now complete.” And wasn’t it quite instructive that as he fired the first salvo in the new Western battle to retake the Middle East, U.S. President George W. Bush gave the indication that he was now reopening the Crusades, which he indeed called as such.
   Christianity might not have been spread by the sword: the English didn’t have swords; they had the Maxim gun; but this was a fact Muslims took no delight in stating because they never recognised colonial soldiery or global West as representative of the teachings of Christ. And this is one simple courtesy, as evidenced in Cole’s article, that Christians throughout the ages have been unable to equal. 
   Today, two choices face the commentator on Islam –either to keep on waiting for so-called Western experts for the continued, and now very much clichéd, condemnation of this religion, or to try to make the effort to know – and, hopefully, even understand – a reality that, for many such a commentator, lives right by his side. But for Cole, that may be a tall order, because it is always easier – safer, duller and more laughable – to repeat the other cliché that Islam is violent, and then beat his chest as if that amounts to making a fresh discovery in quantum mechanics.
   It has not been apparent before, whether in his writings, sayings or in his associations, that Cole entertains such grave misgivings about Islam, and harbours such unspeakable animosity against Muslims, but he should have marshalled facts, not his mere say-so, to back up his prejudices. And if he really knows nothing of Islam except its stereotypical representation by the West or if his acquaintance with it is only by way of the current confrontation with its unrepresentative unorthodox manifestation in Boko Haram; or, if the only chorus he can sing is that of the song composed for you by the Western choir or by the Ngbati press, he should have saved us the torture that is reading that piece. It was unwarranted and totally uncalled for at this or any time, especially considering that previous attempts by smatter schemers, more erudite and original pens possessed of greater malice and spewing greater venom had come to grief. 
  It is so obvious that it is no ordinary ignorance that is required to write such a jaundiced article that ends up making no beneficial, correct or worthwhile point besides listing a confused jumble of prejudices. Indeed, in the profundity of its ignorance, the level of subjectivity of its analysis, its shallowness, it will put to shame the analysis of the anti-Islamic Oriental scholars of medieval Christendom in their pre-9/11   Islamophobia. But in all this, what is regrettable and unfortunate is that these are the views of a compatriot who has in the very recent past represented Nigeria as ambassador in the leading nation of South America and has occupied the office of a presidential adviser on international relations.
   At a point, Cole would lament his inability to get the views of Muslims on their religion. “But my pain is that I cannot really discuss any of these matters with my Islamic friends:” he said. “I am certain they do not discuss them among themselves.” And he was wrong on both counts. 
   While Cole will not count me among his friends, my acquaintance with him, which developed as a result of our mutual closeness to the late General Shehu Yar’Adua and the late Dr. Stanley Macebuh and Cole’s visits to PTF where I was a director and special assistant to the chairman, created a relationship based on mutual respect. 
• Concluded
• Adamu wrote from Abuja.
- See more at: http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/editorial-opinion/columnist/189568-adamu-cole-islam-and-threat-to-peace-2#sthash.EWwzHS2b.dpuf

Adamu: Cole, Islam and threat to peace (2)

  • Written by Adamu Adamu
- See more at: http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/editorial-opinion/columnist/189568-adamu-cole-islam-and-threat-to-peace-2#sthash.EWwzHS2b.dpuf

Adamu: Cole, Islam and threat to peace (2)

  • Written by Adamu Adamu
- See more at: http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/editorial-opinion/columnist/189568-adamu-cole-islam-and-threat-to-peace-2#sthash.EWwzHS2b.dpuf

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