John Cardinal Onaiyekan
— May 30, 2014
Terrorism has no place in Islam….We
must rise up as always, with one voice
to condemn all acts of terrorism,
condemn those terrorists wherever they
are and try our best as Muslims to
ensure peace reigns in our community.”
— Sultan Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III
This is the core of the message of the
Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad
Abubakar III, and President-General of
Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic
Affairs (NSCIA) during a special prayer
session last weekend organised by the
same NSCIA at the Abuja National
Mosque, an event that was widely
covered by the Nigerian media. It was
also given very wide and positive media
coverage here in Rome, starting from the
Vatican Radio. I congratulate the Sultan
for his bold statement. This has given
me the courage to voice out, with all
good intention, a reflection that has
been going through my own mind for
some time now.
For a long time, we used to pride
ourselves as Nigerians for the generally
good relations between our two major
religious communities. We described
ourselves as “the greatest Islamo-
Christian nation in the world”. This is to
highlight the fact that there is no nation
in the world with so many Christians
and so many Muslims living together in
almost equal numbers and largely
peacefully.We saw cases of “inter-
religious” conflicts with loss of life and
property. But we tended to dismiss them
as anomalies occurring a few days in
the year. We attributed this anomaly to
the actions and utterances of a small
group of extremists on both ends of the
religious divide. At other times, we
blame the manipulation, misuse and
abuse of religion by people with other
aims and objectives, political, ethnic
and social. Often, all these factors
merge.
But we soon began to wonder at the
chronic repetition of such “anomalous”
incidents. The role of religion became
ever more evident, whether directly or
indirectly. Most of the violent religious
conflicts featured Muslim extremists
targeting Christian objectives. It has
also been largely a Northern affair. The
records on this are clear.All this has
become drastically exacerbated with the
emergence of the Boko Haram. They
have raised the level of destruction and
ruthlessness to inhuman dimensions.
They have also been carrying out their
murderous activities calling the name of
“Allah” and giving Islam a bad name.
We do not know how many they are, but
they are enough to constitute a major
danger to the entire nation. Like poison,
you need only a little portion to kill
many people. They have also become a
cause of concern for the international
community, having now acquired the
dubious merit of a mention at the
United Nations’ Security Council.
How do we get out of “this very serious
situation” as the Sultan rightly
describes our present predicament? The
abduction of the over 250 schoolgirls is
no doubt very serious, and we pray that
our daughters will return home soon.
But it is only a tragic symptom of the
wider issue of terrorism, which needs to
be addressed from the roots. The
complexity of the problem calls for
many-sided approaches, military, yes,
but also political and economic. Beyond
all this, the religious dimension is what I
particularly want to draw attention to in
this reflection. The government must key
this dimension into its strategies for a
lasting solution to the problem.
Government should abandon its
tendency to close its eyes to the
religious issues. Too little effort is being
made in this direction.
The Muslim community has come out
several times in the past to condemn
the Boko Haram. That is commendable
but not enough. It is also certainly not
helpful to maintain that the terrorists
are not Muslims because they are doing
things that are clearly contrary to what
the majority of Muslims hold. If there is
ever to be any channels of dialogue and
peace-making with the group, it will
necessarily involve Muslim elements
with access to them, people they respect
and will listen to. We see here the
wisdom and importance of the call of
the Sultan.
To go beyond mere condemnation, it
seems to me that there is an urgent
need for an in-house dialogue within the
Nigerian Muslim community. Such a
dialogue would make it possible to
courageously and sincerely deal with
currents and movements that create the
kind of religious climate and atmosphere
in which Boko Haram and similar
groups emerge and thrive. It is not
enough to condemn market bombing,
killing in villages and places of worship
and abduction of innocent schoolgirls.
All this is expected of any right thinking
person. But it is also necessary to
condemn extreme and intolerant
religious positions and attitudes, which
make peace with others impossible. It is
not enough to merely tolerate people of
other faiths, considered perhaps as
undesirable. It is also necessary to
respect the religious convictions of
everyone and accept the reality of our
multi-religious nation as being in the
plan of the One God whom we all
worship.
Our freedom of religion has to do with
freedom to speak the truth of our faiths.
It cannot be license to insult and
denigrate others, less still to foment
violence and hatred. It is surely the duty
of the state to enforce and ensure good
order and deal firmly with all
troublemakers. But it is the greater duty
of religious authorities to promote peace
and harmony among God’s children in
our nation.Every effort in this direction
deserves the encouragement of the
entire nation, starting with government.
The Christian community too should
welcome and support such efforts, with
a view to “close ranks as Nigerians”, as
the Sultan has wisely suggested. In this
regard, we must say that this is hardly
the time for the Nigerian Inter-religious
Council, (NIREC) to go into a slumber.
We should all wake up to salvage our
nation, before it becomes too late.
Cardinal Onaiyekan is the Roman
Catholic Archbishop of Abuja and Co-
Chair, World Council for Religious
Leaders (WCRL). This piece is the fourth
in the series of his “Letters from Rome.”
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