MUCH ADO ABOUT ISLAMOPHOBIA

What is it with Muslims that they and their backward pseudo-religion are usually in the news for the wrong reasons? Wetin dey worry dem sef ? Hardly a week goes by without some disturbing news from the Islamic world.

When Sunnis and Shiites are not bombing and killing each other in Iraq, Iran or Pakistan; some irate Muslim man is slitting his daughter's throat to maintain a warped notion of family “honor”. Or some morally depraved, sexual pervert is trying to emulate their paedophile prophet by marrying a child bride.

Because of Muslims international air travel has become a dangerous terrorist risk with tiresome security checks and severe restrictions on carry-on luggage. Mothers have to taste their baby's milk before airport security, lest it be mistaken for liquid explosives. We now have to be virtually stripped naked by the all-revealing full-body scans. Where these scans are not available, security agents may have to “pat” our genitals to exclude underwear explosives.

Because of Muslims several Western nations have had to roll back some of their civil liberties with draconian legislations like America's Patriot Act (2001) and Britain's Terrorism Act (2006).

Because of Muslims and their nonsensical conspiracy theories about “American” & “Jewish” vaccines, we can't eradicate polio here in Nigeria's Islamist North. The resurgence of polio in some African countries that had hitherto eradicated it, has been traced to virus strains from our Muslim north.

Since 9/11 there have been over 10,000 jihadist terror attacks throughout the world, and interestingly Muslims are the major victims, although attacks on we infidels are often more sensational. A UN report in 2006 estimated up to 5000 honor killings annually, most of which occur in the Islamic world.

Instead of these endless barrage of disturbing reports serving as a wake-up call for Muslims to reform their retrogressive pseudo-religion to conform with modernity, Muslim propagandists prefer to chase shadows - demonizing as Islamophobes the Western media that report these troubling atrocities; and we informed critics who reject their Taqiyya “misunderstanding Islam” obfuscations, but instead point out the Islamic basis of these crimes.

Muslims are unable to explain why Western media should pick on them but not on Hindus, Buddhists or we “pagan” African traditionalists. If anything, the Western media obsessed with political correctness often deliberately obscures obvious Islamic basis of Jihadi atrocities. America's dhimmi president, Barack Obama has taken this absurd PC to the ridiculous extreme of prohibiting the mention of “Jihad” or “Islam” in America's official discourse of terrorism.

In any case even Muslim media like the Qatar based Al-Jazeera, Pakistani Dawn News and our own Daily Trust up here in Nigeria's Islamist North often report these distressing stories.

False accusations of Islamophobia are part of the Jihadi “war is deceit” strategy to blackmail we non-Muslims against responding robustly and decisively to the obvious Islamist threat, lest we are branded intolerant and “racists”.

Other Muslims resort to violent intimidation to gag critics. Last year Muslim leaders under the auspices of OIC attempted to criminalize criticism of Islam by getting the UNHRC (UN human rights council) to pass a resolution against “defamation of religions”. The only religion mentioned in the non-binding resolution was Islam.

It is quite telling that Muslim nations which have some of the worst human rights abuses should spearhead a UN Human Rights resolution against “defamation of religion”, as much of their human right violations are grounded in Islam.

Such Islamic human rights violations include institutionalised discrimination and violence against women/non-Muslims, cruel & inhuman punishments, paedophilic child abuse, intellectual repression, persecution and even killing of ex-Muslims etc.

The pea-brained Muslim leaders who are trying to gag critics, fail to realise that criticism with its associated intellectual freedom, is the major reason why the non-Muslim world is far ahead of the Islamic world in all aspects of positive human endeavour - science, technology, democracy, human rights. Never mind the fallacious Quranic claim that Muslims are the best humans (Quran 3:110).

Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and other non-Muslims don't go berserk on a violent rampage when their religion is criticised, hence their societies are for the most part more dynamic and progressive; unlike the Muslim Umma who are stuck in barbarism of Mohammed's 7th century Arabia. Criticism is the litmus test as to the soundness of any idea or dogma. Muslims know Islam cannot pass this test hence they resort to violently silence critics.

The best way for Muslims to silence us critics is not by violent intimidation or feigned indignation about Islamophobia, but by simply behaving themselves in accordance with 21st century modernity. It is the repeated Muslim crimes in Allah's name that has spawned scrutiny of their murderous hate cult.

Another favourite response of Muslims to the stream of ugly news from Dar ul-Islam is weird conspiracy theories, and Jews are often central to these fabrications. Hence Jews were responsible for 9/11 even after Bin Laden and his able Lieutenant, Khalil Sheik Mohammed severally admitted responsibility. Perhaps Bin Laden was in cahoots with Jews to besmear Islam!!

Similarly, the November 2008 Mumbai attack was the handwork of “Hindu Zionists” – whatever that means. Then there was the idiotic description of our NAPTIP (National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons) as “agents of Jews” by a spokesman of Nigeria's Supreme Council for Sharia, because the agency grilled pedophille Muslim senator Yerima about his 13 year old imported child bride from Egypt.

Since Islam teaches hatred and violence against non-Muslims (Quran 9:5, 9:123, 9:29, 5:51) and Muslims are accordingly indoctrinated; many Muslims automatically assume non-Muslims are similarly out to get them. In other words, Muslims sometimes project their religious hatred on non-Muslims, hence the paranoid Muslim conspiracy theories in which Muslims are innocent victims.

Other absurd Muslim conspiracy theories are motivated by the desire to exonerate Islam from heinous crimes perpetrated by Muslims at the behest of their violent quasi-religion. Hence CNN's Fareed Zakaria's observation that most Pakistanis (including supposedly educated ones) believe Americans and Zionists were behind last year's series of bombings in their country, even though Taliban and other Islamists repeatedly claimed responsibility.

Similarly here in Nigeria's Islamic north, idiotic conspiracy theories about some sinister American plot have emerged to rationalize AbdulMutallab's abortive Christmas day terror attack.

The not-so-intelligent Muslim intelligentsia who should know better have not helped matters. They seem more interested in perpetuating the mental enslavement of one billion Muslims, rather than enlighten their less educated co-religionists out of the morass the Islamic world finds itself. Some of these quasi-intellectuals are the brains behind the asinine Muslim conspiracy theories.

And one isn't just talking of well known Taqiyya propagandists like Zakir Naik or Yusuf Estes who deceptively whitewash Islam, but also intellectual Lilliputians and sophists like our own Adamu Adamu and Mohammed Ghazali here in Nigeria's Islamist north.

Ghazali it was who sometime ago penned a revolting piece in that Northern Islamist rag - Daily Trust, justifying the continued ban of non-Muslim places of worship in Saudi Arabia, even though Muslims are free to build mosques and propagate their obnoxious dogma in non-Muslim countries.

In a public letter to Obama published in the same Daily Trust last year, Adamu Adamu boasted that only Muslims can stand up to the secular democracy which America represents. He is obviously oblivious of the fact that it is precisely because Muslims reject the progressive values of secular democracy, which America and the West have come to be noted for - that the Islamic world remains backward relative to we infidels in all aspects of positive human endeavour.

In another piece of hogwash several weeks later to mark 20th anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's death, he glorified Iran's Islamic theocracy which has despatched tens of thousands of Iranians to untimely death since its inception in 1979. Just a few days later, as if to debunk Adamu's drivel, Iranians took to the streets massively revolting against the murderous Mullah tyranny, thereby puncturing the deceptive façade of “Islamic democracy” – an oxymoron if you ask me.

Despite violent repressions, Iran's June 12 protest movement continues to grow.

Instead of futile whining about Islamophobia, Muslims should endeavour to reform their barbaric retrogressive hate-cult and stop constituting themselves a nuisance to humanity.

Nafata Bamaguje

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Articles by Nafata Bamaguje