Last week’s attack by Islamic fundamentalists on media workers at the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo in Paris, was clearly a wake-up call for all of the peoples of the world. And quite aptly, the incident has since attracted global umbrage with leaders, commentators and activists united in their disgust over the fiendish and atrocious acts of the murderers.
In Nigeria, which has for five years running being at the sustained end of the Boko Haram insurgency, it was yet a grim reminder that the darts of fundamentalism have truly eaten deep. The local angle was to be further exarcebated at the weekend when yet another bloody strike was carried out by the insurgents on the much-besieged town of Baga almost at the same time that a strappling 10-year old girl blew herself and no less than ten others up, at a market in Maiduguri.
For a world that has been at the receiving end of the insurgents’ onslaught, the easy thing to do in response to this continuing tale of ‘sorrow, tears and blood’ is to ask what the insurgents want and to hang their troubles on that. But it is not that simple. This is because the fundamentalists who are canvassing a new ‘world order’ in which the Islamic religion, ideology and worldview is the only accepted norm, are in a generic sense aligned to the global Islamic idea of how humans should live, worship and revere their creator. And to put the icing on the cake, there reside in the earth today, an estimated 1.8 billion muslims, accounting for about 25 per cent of all of humanity.
While it is clear that not every muslim in the earth today is a sword-wielding or bomb-strapped terrorist going out on the streets looking for targets to die with, there are very many non-muslims who think that not enough has been done to separate the wheat from the chaff. What has been done this far is to rhetorically ostracise the fundamentalists from mainstream muslims and to therefore view them as an extreme bunch who do not represent the worldview and aspirations of mainstream Islam. But is that all that can and must be done at a time when the evidence on ground is that the extremists have presently gone gaga and the sceptre of Islamic fundamentalism is assuming clearly very worrying dimensions the world over?
This writer understands the burden that the fundamentalists are heaping on Islam as a religion but then the next question has to be asked. Per chance the fundamentalists do succeed; what would be the outcome? Clearly, an-all Islamic world! Hence moderate muslims need to do more to reassure non-muslims that, at heart, they really do not mind living in a world where Islam contends with other faiths as alternative options and where individuals retain the ‘right to freedom of (spiritual) expression. Indeed there is a feeling amongst several troubled non-muslims that many ‘moderate muslims’ are only ‘sleeper-fundamentalists’ that time and circumstance would fully reveal. This conclusion may very well be wrong but that is what they can see.
Put in clearer perspective, there is also a sense in which Nigeria’s present confrontation with militant Islam must be better situated. In doing this, it is most appropriate to note that Islam had made its entry into the Nigerian landmass since the 9th Century as part of the trans-Sahara trade route. So there is indeed a sense in which Islam has come to stake a claim to at least part of the territory of Nigeria today.
And when we talk particularly of Islamic fundamentalism, it is also to be remembered that the jihad of Uthman dan Fodio was not a tea-drinking session. It was undergirded by a sturdy and militant act of Islamic propagation that could in many respects be described as fundamentalist. Of course since then, there have been latter-day fundamentalist activities including those of Mohammed Marwa, aka Maitatsine, and now Boko Haram.
So what is to be done now? Again we return to history. For the average fundamentalist crusader, the inspiration dates back to the medieval era of the Ottoman empire when parts of Western Europe, the Middle East and North Africa were ensconsced within that empire. It is that empire which Al-Gaeda, ISIS, Al-Shabab, Boko Haram and the rest of the fundamentalist crew are feverishly trying to re-enact. And it is in an appreciation of this reality that we can then begin to chart the way forward.
