The news from Northern Nigeria this past was weekend was grim: an innocent woman, beheaded in the streets by Islamic fundamentalist psychopaths. Her crime? Blasphemy. Mrs. Bridget Patience Agbaheme, it has been suggested, insulted the prophet of Islam and for that, she was brutally slaughtered. You can read more about this horrific crime here.
In response, Mubarak Bala has written his thoughts. He grew up in Kano, in the North of Nigeria, where sharia law is often enforced. This is something he knows quite intimately, as you may recall he, himself, was locked up in a mental institution after being beaten and drugged by his family for admitting he no longer believed in God. His story hit worldwide news outlets, from the BBC and The Guardian to Vice News, CNN and the Huffington Post. He has guest blogged here a few times before. This is his response to the murder of Mrs. Bridget Agbaheme. Please be sure to follow Mubarak, a brave humanist activist, now free in the south of Nigeria, here: @MubarakBala.
The Murder of Mrs Bridget Agba is Islamic Terrorism
Sad as it is, Nigerians have found themselves latched-up, in a moment in history, where they are held in a trance, in a state of mind that diminishes the reasoning faculty of our brains, largely due to ignorance, intolerance, and blackmail by ancient, mythical, and imaginary monsters called gods. In this modern world, our people would try to kill their own children, to please these nonexistent mythical beings and make it to Valhalla, where they imagine, they can engage in a ever-happening sex, with imaginary virgins.
They are victims of a perpetual system of terror and barbaric culture, and would never notice how it turns them into terrorist-lovers, helpers, and enablers. Sadly, we cannot help them, because their slavery is not physical, it is mental, and they have decided to perpetuate themselves in it, locking up their brains from ever absorbing modernity or real education. Further, they try hard to shove it down on their children, and the innocent, to spread its reach, just as viruses perpetuate, and takeover a healthy body.
We, northerners, conveniently avoiding the argument that Islam is inherently violent, evil, and politically stagnant, unable and unwilling to evolve, and adapt to social norms of today’s globalized, informed world. Islam, in it’s purest form, with all the child molestation, slavery, kidnapping, booty-taking, armed robbing, blood-spilling, continues to drag the civilized world back to the bronze-age, where it was forged.
All of the above, and more, were what early Muslims of the 7th century spread, in the name of a God that never knew what mankind used as a tool of thinking, confusing the functions of the brain with that of the heart, never knowing the real size of the moon, the sun, the stars, and the shape of the planet. A God that never foresaw, the spread of the religion to lands where the sun never sets for months, funny enough dictating that fasting period should go on, from the appearance of the sun, to when it sets. Luckily, Muslims have ways of adjusting to new knowledge, that favors the religion, and regrettably, never adjusting to the ones that would allow people to see the religion as it is, ignorant, backward, bullying, misogynist, dehumanizing, Chibok-enslaving, Qurayza-enslaving religion, as it is.
We are wasting our kids and our future, yet we claim to be superior tribally in Nigeria, grooming a beggar generation, or may be future recruits for a new Islamic terror organization, because it will happen again. All the ingredients that led to this one, are tightly in place, especially unregulated preaching and parentless wandering children.
Muslims, the vast majority of those in northern Nigeria, keep ringing the chorus that Boko Haram, or any other terrorist that affects their lives personally, as non-Muslims, but teach to their children, how heroic the Prophet’s jihadists were, in beheading infidels, sacking castles and looting them dry, taking their wives and children, as sex slaves, and sharing their cattle. They recite the very verses of the book that commands such, in hundreds of pages, and we know that was what happened to banu-Qurayza in Medina, Hunayn, and many many other Chiboks in Arabia. Sad how pitiable our state of mind has become, to pray to the same God to release ours of today, from jihadists, when in reality, he never stopped the last, rather, in fact, asked for it to be carried out, or so the Prophet said he heard in the voices in his head.
There are no demons, nor angels, nor gods, no devils, no paradise nor hell, all we have is this single life, and it ends the moment the neurons of the last human stops firing electric and chemical signals. We all go back to the earth, from whence we came, whose atoms, elements, and compounds forged us, and whose environment nourish us, and in whose bosom, we would all end up, decomposed.
The Nigerian lady, as it appears, may not have even blasphemed the Saudi Arab, in whose name today, Nigerians kill Nigerians, in whose name, Arabs are still destroying their cities, and their lives, only because his body language acted Sunni when he had no heir to his blood-forged empire, and later, when an heir emerged, the body-language quickly switched on to Shi’ism, ultimately tempting his friends to betray his will, by saying God forgave them for what they did in the past, and what they would do in the future, he could not know what they would after him, a coup.
The murder of this innocent mother is one of many. No such cases ever got the attention of authorities, this is the very first. The guilty ones, over the murder of one Gideon in Kano, in the 1990s are allegedly, reigning in the palaces of power. Just before this incident, in another state of North Nigeria, hoodlums killed a blasphemer, a 24-year-old guy, along with some 15 people, looting their property as booty. Nigerian media covered it less.
Just in December, our military killed hundreds of our sons, over an Iranian delusion. No matter how hard we try, no matter how many people die, Ali will never come back to life to rule the Islamic caliphate, (this is a feat only for Jon Snow, by the Lord of light), nor will his son, Hussein, or any other bloodline of the Prophet, the highest that could happen, is such a person, could claim rulership of a section of the Muslim community, even as large chunks are breaking away, as education and reasoning disillusion the young against the fraud imposed upon us via indoctrination in our most vulnerable years of childhood.
This lady, of Igbo extraction, apparently, lost her life because she did not want worshipers to block her business, as the rows of prayer reach her shop and inconvenience her every day, and her would-be customers. The Nigerian Police could not protect her, her husband watched helplessly as she was wickedly murdered, by people young enough to be her grandchildren, in the name of a long-dead Arab that never knew Kano would exist. Thankfully, our brothers in the other faiths did not act as stupid as those that murdered her.
The measures taken, are to date, satisfactory, to quell further anarchy, and assure our brothers in the ethnic divide not to attack anyone else oblivious to this development, we are lucky Nigerians are getting more tolerant, two decades ago, and 15 years ago, this single incidence, would culminate into a circle violence that would end up killing much much more, thanks to Prince Thor. Nigerians, both Muslim and Christian, should rise above hate, above bigotry, and above dogma.
The faiths of the religions do not respect nonmembers, the holy books are anything but holy, as long as there can be found, in their content, even one word that urges a human being to end another person’s life, with reasons such as ‘the land is ours’, ‘they’re nonbelievers’, ‘they’re najs’, impure/dirty, or that ‘they are guilty of not accepting the faith’, or leaving after disillusionment. These are many, in these books, and no apologist sheikh can delete it, yet.
The President should urge the world to reform Islam, or at least urge the Muslim world, to admit, that indeed, terrorists of today, the vast majority of them, have access to only one doctrine. Hard to say, that they all misunderstood it as a religion of peace. If misunderstood, this religion, should not result in bloodshed but should produce fanatics that forcibly kiss and hug people on the streets, not kill and explode people.
The statement by the Islamic body, MURIC is also a welcome development, although we both know it is not factual to say the act was un-Islamic. This happens in Bangladesh, in Turkey, in Yemen, in Pakistan, in Syria, in Iran, in Iraq, in Arabia, and in Somalia. What connects these distant lands, if not the religion of peace!?
Right now, personally, Muslims insult and blaspheme my main-man, Darwin, and my imaginary-Satan, I cannot ask them to stop. They blaspheme against Jesus, that he is not the sired Prince of imaginary YahWeh, and no Christian bats an eye. Christian blasphemy against ‘holy’ evolution, with lies about fictional Adam and Eve, do we wage jihad over it? No. Blasphemy by Muslims against Richard Dawkins, that he is not a Prophet of the imaginary Gene-god, I feel personally insulted! Blasphemy, against the facts of the solar system, whenever anyone recites or teaches flat-earth theory as his religion mistook it to be, we don’t ask for an apology. In some quarters, it even is an incitement, to attack or kill freethinkers, but the government does not take proactive measures, only statements that will not give back victims their lives.
So please, understand, Mr. President, no one needs respect anyone else’s faith and beliefs, no matter how ridiculous, especially if they teach children to become future bombers. We must, however, respect one’s personal choice of belief, even if it is in a talking-tomato-deity. Humanists do, we try to, everyday, in this crazy chaos. However, Mr. President, if you must, please help the north, and Nigeria, and end the almajiri system, it is child slavery, enact laws as those of governor Elrufai’s anti-preaching and sermon regulation, nationwide, defend everyone’s right to free speech, and protect those obviously targeted by terrorists.
How I wish, Madam Bridget is right now, in her shop, selling her wares, among sane people, who would help her cross the road, and fetch her water when she needed some. I would, many other Muslims in Kano, will. We used to be better than this. We, Nigerian Humanists, will hope to act to make our society better, already, we are in the last lapse of organizing, right from Kano to other states, through humanism, reason and love for humanity.
This was a guest post by Mubarak Bala, a Nigerian, a humanist, and an advocate for social justice. (sms +2348032880989, @MubarakBala, mubarakbala@yahoo.com)
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