Shiite-Army Clash:
Can Muslims Really Stand a Pluralist State
Last
weekend was another sad day in our national life. The army clashed with Shiites
in Zaria and the outcome was catastrophic and gruesome. To this moment, the
number of dead is yet to be precisely declared: while it has been reported that
about ninety corpses have been deposited at the ABU Teaching Hospital morgue,
the Shiite sect is claiming that well over a thousand of its members have been
killed. They have found a mouthpiece in the Iranian state medium, Press TV.
No
doubt, human rights groups are already blaring from rooftops over what is
clearly heavy-handedness by the army in response to the impudence to the
Nigerian state and the flagrant disregard for the right of space of fellow
Nigerians as exhibited by the Shiites to the nation’s Chief of Army Staff
(COAS), Gen Tukur Buratai, who was on official assignment in Zaria on that
fateful Saturday. Given the level casualty, both human and property, inflicted
on the group, one finds it hard to reason that it was impossible for the army
to have responded in the proportion they did.
Clearly,
what the Shiites did was an act of provocation, and one dares to say, against
the Nigerian state. This was not the first time. They did the same thing to the
former governor of Kaduna State, Dr Ramallan Yero earlier this year: maybe
because it was electioneering period, he thought it wiser not to assert his
executive might and, therefore, chaos was averted. They did it last year to a
Commander of one of the army formations in Zaria, when they came out to
demonstrate in solidarity with the Palestinians that July, and it ended it the
death of a few of their members including three children of their leader in
Nigeria, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky.
The
fact is that anyone that has lived in Zaria in the last thirty-five or so odd
years knows that the sect has constituted itself into a state unto itself, with
El-Zakzaky as its leader. Whenever they want to do anything, it never matters
if any other Nigerian citizen is there or not, they pretty much go ahead and do
it without recourse to the Nigerian state and the laid down procedure of doing
such things. They will never seek any pass from the police to embark on a rally
or a procession. They will never even require police protection for such event
– the presence of which would have resolved this initial impasse with the COAS
– because they have their own policing and military systems. At such times, any
area they will be using or passing through will literally be under fierce, if
not vicious, lockdown to other citizens by their security arm.
To
non-Muslims, as a result of exasperation with such state of affairs, it would
appear that Muslims cannot just be comfortable in a plural and secular society
without agitating to have it only their way, the Shariah way. For non-Muslims,
the fact that such agitations arise from a sect of Islam, usually fringe,
ceases to matter, especially when sects of different Islamic persuasions have
at one time or the other agitated for similar conditions, one way or the other.
The
first religious group to run a parallel state in Nigeria since independence was
the Maitatsine sect, which operated from the 1960s until the early 1980s when
it was subdued and routed finally – hopefully – by the Shagari regime. It was a
bloody experience. Maitatsine was from a Sunni background and he was out to
establish an Islamic state of his vision.
The second
group was the Shiites – now on the front-burner – under the name Islamic
Movement of Nigeria and the leadership of El-Zakzaky, since the 1980s. One
remembers one’s earliest encounters with them in skirmishes spilling into
neighbourhoods from the Kaduna Polytechnic.
The
third group to defy the Nigerian state and establish a parallel government is
of course the Jama’atul Ahlus Sunna Lidda’awati wal Jihad, popularly known as
Boko Haram, since the turn of the millennium. They are of the Sunni background,
with the same vision of establishing a state based on Shariah. Nigeria is still
at war with this group which has proven very determined and never relenting in
their means.
Aside
from these occurrences, non-Muslims bear in mind the agitation for Shariah by Muslims
at the beginning of the fourth republic which resulted in bloodletting across
northern Nigeria and has put in jeopardy the prospects of forging a veritable
nation-state that is plural and happy. Add to all that, events outside Nigeria
by sects of different persuasions in Islam in same directions, such as
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, Yemen and so on, contribute to foster such
suspicious thoughts among non-Muslims, regardless of what anyone may offer as root
causes.
Muslims
have risen very strongly against what they consider Islamophobia, but events
such as we have seen in Nigeria, and elsewhere, executed in the name of Islam
with “Allahu Akbar” on the lips have not helped Muslims and Islam.
Other
Nigerians cannot be blamed for wondering if Muslims can live with them in a
plural society as citizens and equals.
BLUEPRINT Newspaper; Thur Dec. 17, 2015
