True Muslims and Christians must stand together to defeat the menace

Boko Haram:

By Abs Umar, London

The problem with most Muslims is where to draw the line between the peaceful virtues of Islam and Arab cultures. Only in the Western part of Nigeria has it been well and sensibly done in practice, at least, well intertwined within many family units.
Islam is a religion, people who profess Islam are called Muslims and there is Only One God. Islamic doctrines are well documented in the Holy Quran but how many people (read Muslims) actually read it, and truly understood what they were reading? Most would instead accept the wordings and preaching of 'illiterate scholars' that lack not only the honesty but the intelligence to understand it.

Instead of embracing the deeper meaning of Quranic texts, their mundane tribal bigots become the “gospel of truth of Islam” fed on Fridays to ill-mannered youths. Such is the astounding stupidity of religion preachers in all places of worshiping God today, Churches not excluded.

I am still looking for where in the Holy Quran says innocent persons can be killed, but instead, saw that one cannot be a Muslim without believing in Isah A.S (Jesus) (Quran, sura 19 Maryam, ayat 30-33). The belief in Jesus (and all other messengers of God) is required in Islam, and a requirement of being a Muslim.

The Quran mentions Jesus twenty-five times, more often, by name, than Muhammad, (SAW) four times. It states that Jesus was born as the result of a miraculous event which occurred by the decree of God. It states that Islam is for the benefit of mankind and commands Muslims to make no distinction. "...it (the Quran 10:37) is a confirmation of (revelations) that went before it, and a fuller explanation of the Book - wherein there is no doubt - from The Lord of the Worlds."

Similarly Quran 46:12 states "...And before this, was the book of Moses, as a guide and a mercy. And this Book confirms (it)...", while the Quran 2:136 commands the believers of Islam to say: "we believe in God and that which is revealed unto us, and that which was revealed unto Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and that which Moses and Jesus received, and which the prophets received from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and unto Him we have surrendered."

(Surrendered to the will of God….and accept Isah A.S (Jesus) and all that He “received from the Lord” so why would Muslims hate Christians; killing and maiming innocent people with bombs, as Boko Haram and other terrorists make us believe, how can anyone justify bombing Churches in the name of Islam?)

And for those who refer to Boko Haram as my people, in my opinion, are only displaying their own self-worth, witlessness and inanity in public. My name should NOT be seen that I share any ideology with terrorist nor did I proclaim to anyone that Abs Umar is a card carrying member of such groups. I have equal rights and equal opportunities, like every good citizen of the world, to see that darkness does not dominate light in any part of the globe. I don’t fight God’s war too, God is mighty enough to do His own battle, the reason He built Hell with Fire, so stop telling me to go and face a senseless group, when you sit on your butts! Everyone would carry their own cross on Judgment Day, and be judged according to their deeds, not by tongue, name or tribe, but by good and evil, sin and innocence.

However, it is well documented in the Holy Book Quran; one must read to understand it all and take in the whole context, not pick and distort what it really means, if one does not want to offend God, the Omnipotent & Omnipresent.

Christians, in my humble opinion have done themselves a disservice to world peace for their lack of understanding of the true meaning of Islam. How many actually want to, as much as, hear a word from the Holy Quran, at least for the sake of knowledge, after all, there are many English versions in the market today. I often laugh at many improbable quotations out of context to justify deeds done by some ungodly humans in the name of Islam.

However, violence in that manner, in the name of Islam is synonymous to abominations done in the name of Christianity too, only an ignorant person would argue the opposite. We absolutely have to understand the philosophy of the superficial. It is however, absurd to divide people into good or bad by the religion they follow. It is an emotion that is unbecoming of Nigerians to make unnecessary things our necessities today.

We have good and bad people in all walks of life, but the mask that each one of us wears, when it comes to religion, reflects our own habits and acquired bigoted vile behaviors; devaluing ourselves rather than being above it, resting on true reality that lies behind the mask; that, one to one, we all get along as good human beings; the more one analyzes people, the more all reasons and doubts for analysis disappear.

It is quite demoralizing that Boko Haram, a terrorist group of no importance, whose ideology is grotesque and contradictory to Islam, has become the acceptable face for Islam, by ignorant dogmatists. An organization that disdains education in all forms, whereas the world owes a great debt to Islamic scholars for preserving and transmitting to posterity the classics of Greek mathematics. Their work was chiefly that of transmission; they developed considerable ingenuity in algebra and showed some genius in their work in trigonometry. (Simplifying its practical application to calculate the phases of the moon), advances in optics, and advances in astronomy.

In Medicine, Islamic scholars translated their voluminous writings from Greek into Arabic and then produced new medical knowledge based on those texts; making the Greek tradition more accessible, understandable, and teachable. Islamic scholars ordered and made more systematic the vast and sometimes inconsistent Greco-Roman medical knowledge by writing encyclopedias and summaries; and many contributions in many other fields for the advancement of humanity, while Boko Haram avowedly despises knowledge in all forms.

The Boko Haram as a group, is cocksure and the intelligent among us all are full of doubts. Today the terrorist merely requires a certain amount of repugnant terrorism and that triggers our own certain lack of imaginative thoughts, and a certain low passion for unity of our country.

We, forgetting that evil people always look for alliance and the opportunity to divide sound minds, instead throw all our dignities, our respectability, values and standards out of the window and become vulgar, common and vicious in our own views. We have degenerated to a low sense of moral responsibility of the terrorist, instead of us to be steadfast in our values and join hands as good people to condemn darkness and havoc raining on us all as a people of light and integrity.

Religion and respect for others is always unjustly handled by the few among us. It is like throwing petrol on fire just to enrage everyone else, and then hide under the umbrella of freedom of speech. Doesn’t freedom of speech involve respect for others too? The uncultured elements in this world do not understand the virtues of religion, all they do is destroy everything the human race has ever built; releasing uncontrollable resentment and bitterness in the society, while innocents who had nothing whatsoever to do with it pay with their lives in the crossfire.

Those who take pleasure according to the vulgar standard of hurting and insulting others' religion just to provoke us all must not be encouraged. Sad that we live in the age where the least intelligent among us wants to be noticed; a world full of criminals-with-noble-faces, poor odd types of humanity in hideous masks, who feed people lies and shock them to fame as a writer - that is all. But our values and standards must console us always rather than become so gullible and absolutely imprudent with our comments.
What should be interesting about people in a good society is optimism for a better life and good future NOT religious war!