Obama’s Quran burning apology: Matters arising

When on February 21, 2012 some copies of the Quran and other religious materials were removed from a detainee facility at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan for disposal, they were inadvertently burnt by United States soldiers.

The Qurans were included for disposal because they had “extremist inscriptions” on them, which aroused the fear that they were being used to fertilize extremist communications. John Allen, commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, said that the decision to burn them was not because they were religious materials, nor because it had to do with the faith of Islam. He said it was done in error and when they discovered the documents, they immediately stopped and intervened. This singular action sparked off violence of immense magnitude in Afghanistan. President Obama had apologized to Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, promising to hold his subjects accountable – an apology that the rebels dismissed as “mere slogans” and some Americans saw as unnecessary.
In 1988 when the British novelist, Ahmed Salman Rushdie, published The Satanic Verses (a collection of some verses in the Quran alleged to allow intercessory prayers to be made to three Meccan goddesses), Muslims said it made a mockery of their religion which resulted in fatwa (Islamic death sentence) by the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini on February 14, 1989. Then, in July 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi was stabbed to death for translating the book into Japanese.

In 2004, Theo Van Gogh released his documentary film, “Submission”, which documented violence against women in the Muslim world. This cost him his life as Mohammed Bouyeri, an Islamic extremist, murdered him in broad daylight. And even as you read this, a Dutch member of parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who worked with Van Gogh to produce the film, is under twenty-four-hour protection. Bouyeri, the murderer, was convicted to a life sentence without parole. In a courtroom during his trial, Mohammed Bouyeri told his mother that he felt no sympathy for her because she was an unbeliever.

In 2006, a Danish cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, published a cartoon of Mohammed wearing a bomb. A Somalian fundamentalist broke into his house nearly four years after the publication with the intent to murder him but for the timely intervention of the police. The cartoon was the most controversial of the twelve Jyllands-Posten cartoons of the time.

In 2007 at Unity High School in Sudan, Gillian Gibbons, an English schoolteacher, was arrested, humiliated, prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned, and later deported. And what was her offence? “Blasphemy!” The children in her class named a teddy bear Mohammed. And so, Sara Khawad, an office assistant, filed the complaint and was a key witness in the prosecution. Not even the testimony of one of the school children named Mohammed that the teddy bear was named after him could save the situation.

The catalogue is endless. Everywhere and at all times, the Muslim world is inflamed. In Nigeria, the story is not different. The country had at various times experienced and still experiences carnage of enormous magnitude occasioned by the abuse of the sacred name of the Almighty. Whoever doubts that Prophet Mohammed is an envoy of God cannot be helped. Someday, he will have this truth forced upon him – and perhaps, with considerable pressure too.

But man has shaped, reshaped and twisted divine messages to suit his purpose and convenience, dimming the purity and distorting what meaning that ever was in the “word” to satisfy his ego. This warped view of religion is not only incompatible with the moral code but also contradicts the laws of evidence.

Much as we cannot reduce the import of burning a sacred book, we cannot also rationalize killings in the name of God. When was it ever heard that it is man’s duty to fight for God? When was it man’s place to accept or reject apologies for crimes committed against the Almighty? If we claim to be true servants of God, it must be through a demonstration of true humanity and not otherwise. But at these times, this particular attitude of mankind, of playing contrived roles of divinity, is the most astonishing thing in our time.

Man is held accountable for his actions and inactions through the immutable laws of nature, whether he wills it or not. And so, if a man wakes up and gives to his dog the names of all the gods at once, why should the worshippers at the shrine of those gods lose sleep on the development? At a time in history, the late M.K.O. Abiola ordered the sinking of three million copies of the Bible in the high sea. The container load of the holy book was bound for Nigeria when he used his influence to seize and destroy them. The Christian world did not bat an eyelid. When on August 22, 2011 the Iranian authorities intercepted six thousand five hundred copies of the New Testament Bible and burnt three hundred of them “in order not to deviate [their] youth”, the Papacy did not raise eyebrows and the Christian community did not flare up.

These many deaths and persecutions brought about in the name of Him who is life and peace, to say the least, robs man of his dignity. A rational thinking person would easily see through the falsehood and sham of self-centred truth and must recognize the only truth which is in God and which is God. Intolerance to religious practices is unjustifiable and pictures man’s image worse than he is. At the root of all authentic religious beliefs and practices, love is fundamental – the greatest of all virtues. It conquers all and holds the key to the salvation of man both in this life and in the hereafter. It is man’s duty to pursue peace at all costs and make the world a better place irrespective of creed.