The golden rule is the one constant you find in every culture throughout human civilization whether ancient, modern or postmodern. Yes.
I took quite some flak from people I did not know and who did not know me over the opinions I shared in my column a fortnight ago, “What the thunder said”. My opinions are of course just my opinions, and inasmuch as I am entitled to my opinions, I must emphasise that I recognise the rights of others to disagree with me, and also declare that I do not hold it against anyone who disagrees with me. I understand that the fact that someone disagrees with me does not make them bad people with bad principles. They are just people who are being people and I am no better than people who are being people just the same way I am being myself.
What I will do however is strongly condemn myself. Reading some of those texts was horrifying because it once again showed me what I really am for I am just as human as the senders. I condemn myself, because I know that for a fact, this ugliness has reared its head more than once, twice… it has happened and most times.
The contention for the most part was my argument that we do need deal fairly with our northern Christian brethren. We treat them at best as second class citizens and at worse and this happens to be the case a lot – as subhuman, a treatment that triggered a profound revolt on February 25. Whoever would have believed that there is a universe in which Peter Obi can beat Kwankwaso in Kebbi? Every other day, from all corners of the globe you hear Muslims eating their hearts out over how the Western/Christian world is an existential enemy of Islam because Muslims are treated as second class citizens of the world at best and at worse profiled as bloodthirsty terrorists by default.
The Hausa have this apt colloquialism to illustrate this karmic outcome, “kama tadeenu tadaanu” – as you have done, so shall it be done unto you. If we carry on as we do at home with the Christian minorities who are politically powerless against us, then we would have lost the moral grounds to bellyache about what the Christian West does to us because we are no match for its geopolitical might. If we are ever interested in changing this dynamic, if we ever want to claim the right to point accusing fingers at the Western world for its malign activities in the Middle East, we must cease ours in the Middle Belt!
We must understand that, as we have been told and told and told, the idea of Jihad is overwhelmingly internal. I personally believe that the human heart is the Satan we are told to be wary of, because he is to us an obvious enemy. Without doubt, we are our own greatest enemy. The war called Jihad must be fought and won in our hearts, we must blot and block and bile and poison in our blood, the fuel to our emotions and the foundation of all convenient metaphors. At every point, you must be ready to confront yourself, call yourself the enemy, accept that you are very likely the wrong party.
Beloved, you must know that the name God is “Adl” – just justice! Make no mistake, should you wrong the devil himself or any of his earthly surrogates, this God named Adl WILL convict you, and He might even punish you with extra severity for wronging Satan, the king of all evil.
It boggles the mind how and why we can actually still feel superior when we consider underhand means to selfish ends acceptable as long as the person on the receiving end is an infidel, or is the devil. God, Allah, is pure and shall accept nothing less than pious purity. It does not matter if your victim is the Imam of the Holy shrines in Makkah and Medina, or my Christian friend from Bauchi, Yusuf, or the king of evil himself, Satan the damned. Evil shall always beget evil, and good will never route itself through the valley of the shadow of evil death. Good will go direct, DIRECT to the throne of God, the almighty.
The noble Qur’an said, “Oh humankind! We created you from a single pair of a male and female, and made you into nations, so that you may know each other…”
This is a divine commandment. And how the hell do you think, you can obey this commandment, if your interaction with a nation different to yours is from the standpoint of hostility, contempt and malice? If you are not willing to open your hearts to these “nations” then you are not interested in knowing them. And that means you are in open rebellion against the truth of God.
We use ugly words in reference to Christians whether from the North or South, because they wouldn’t shill for what they consider an unnatural perversion same way we consider what they believe an apparent perversion. We practically want them to abandon their hearts and their convictions to stand with you as false men would. We are so full of spite and contempt today as we pronounce them infidels… but then tomorrow we shall condemn them for being vacuous fake men, should they abandon those convictions to stand with you. You either want true or false men.
You make up your mind – and when that mind is assaulted by the perverse downside of the convenient compromises you made, you live with it and don’t blame anyone. And if you must blame anyone then blame yourself for being a hypocrite. You either choose right and deal with its very bitter consequences, the heavy prices of standing with good against a bloodthirsty marauding darkness that WILL inflict great pain and suffering, and ceaselessly wanting to entice you with the lure of respite and succour from that pain if you defect to the dark side of the force. We are being hacked by evil mind you, and it is slowly winning and becoming us.
Never ever compromise your conscience, anything short of that is a transaction with the devil for your soul… and the devil always comes for his due.
And that is the thunder talking again.
