Boko Haram: Adamu Adamu Replied Soyinka

[Ashafa Abdullahi]

Professor Wole Soyinka, who appears totally ignorant of the most burning issue in international current affairs, betrays an unacceptable level of illiteracy on a related issue at home. On the issue of culpability for the origin of Boko Haram, Mahmud Jega says of Soyinka that he thinks he knows; Sam Nda-Isaiah says he doesn’t, and is hopelessly dead wrong; Mohammed Haruna says he only peddles pure rubbish. All the three are right, but the truth really is that he doesn’t even understand—and probably never will.

This is because the tunnel vision with which he sees the country has been conditioned by three factors—an unfounded cultural superiority complex, a hubristic pagan worldview and an experience in which he saw the man died.

The issue of Boko Haram merely gave him another opportunity to take on his imagined old adversary—the Northern Establishment, which he now holds responsible for the creation of Boko Haram. This is simplistic and laughable; but it saves this unready analyst the trouble of having to know the background to the situation, engage in serious analysis of the issues involved, draw the necessary conclusions and find a way forward for society.

Certainly, a knowledge of the varieties of groups on the Islamic revival scene, which no one on the international scene should today be without, the fact that Boko Haram predated the Jonathan administration, and is confined to a corner of the country that is held by one of the opposition parties, and is opposed to all constituted authority including that to be wielded by the Northern leaders that were supposed to have founded it, would make Soyinka’s simplistic explanation all too obvious—and it might have been made to draw attention away from suspected US involvement.

No doubt, Soyinka suffers from tribal hubris of which he needs to be cured. Going by the themes of his literary output, he seems to believe that his race is the greatest and the most cultured—and therefore, by implication, his pronouncements must be the best and the final word the world is waiting for.

But what is this Yoruba culture in which people like Soyinka take so much pride? No doubt, his people love their language and love singing in it; they love their bodies and love waltzing them into a variety of dance forms. They love their lives and are always impulsively proud to say that they love the culture that has come to define the way they see themselves and view others.

However, what Soyinka holds aloft is not culture: it is paganism; though it must be admitted that it is quite elaborate. But the possession of a pagan past is no accomplishment; it is a fact of history and every tribe has had one; and after the advent of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, there is nothing more to glory in animistic heathenism: it is there at the centre and origin of every type of primitiveness. The issue therefore should not be the promotion of the pagan culture of a distant past, but the cultivation of culturedness in present conduct.

The proof and relevance of culture should be in its attitudinal pudding, measured by its practical moral utility in setting the standard of what is acceptable in human conduct; and not in the elaborateness of ancient idolatrous rituals.

For us, it represented the sub-humanness of our primordial cultural history; and we are not proud of it, and nor are we any more captivated by its elaborateness or by the depth of meaning and the symbolism of its meta-paganism. Of course that is not to say that cultural mores are without meaning. Not at all. They may often in fact be too pregnant with a variety of meanings capable of interpretations; but their import is for a world that is past and gone—and better forgotten.

Man’s cultural and social development have today passed the ignorance and obscurantism that paganism has to offer and the superficialities of the animus of those whose antipathy to divine values today finds expression in the cultivation and promotion of this new international pagan culture.

But there is no superiority in paganism: there was nothing in Yoruba native forest theology that was more diabolical than the heathenism of the Savannah, where, in the Benue valley, there is magic that is blacker than Sanponno; and in Niger valley, a Satanism that is darker than Esu’s; and among the Maguzawa there are totems that, though benign, are no less occultist.

The rituals of Tsumburbura were every inch as complex and elaborate as the possessed incantations of Ogun or the thunders of Sango, and no less diabolical. The Satanology of Santolo would beat every mumbo jumbo of Ifa Orisa divinations. The rites of Mai Barhaza would any day be more picturesque than the dance of the Egungun masquerade; and Babule and Dan Galadima more demonic than Ogboni totemism, and of women just as chauvinistic.

In lasciviousness and pure voluptuary the Gelede Festival pales in comparison to the Dala Dance of unclothedness. In number, in hideousness of Satanism and in the comprehensiveness of misguidance Obatala’s 4,000-odd Orisas would prove no match for the fetishism and atheistic devilry of the numberless Iskoki of pre-Islamic Bahaushe. Or of the pre-Christian Tiv man, for instance. But all these are facts of which no one is today proud, or on account of which cultural superiority is assumed over others.

Perhaps Soyinka’s—and Nigeria’s—problem lies in the fact that the Nobel Laureate considers himself an intellectual whose word the world looks forward to. And he is not. True intellectualism is not the mere fact of having been to school or teaching in one. It is all about being conscious, sensitive and aware of the circumstance and of one’s role in it and one’s readiness to sacrifice and suffer to make it better.

You are either born an intellectual or you are not: it is an attitude that cannot be learnt; because education and experience only help to refine and sharpen an already existing predisposition—being analytical, being objective and being truly concerned. While some intellectuals choose only to expose a bad situation, others, in addition, fight to change it; and of these, those that succeed are those unencumbered by prejudice of the kind that Soyinka has always exhibited.

It is not a quality that the receipt of an international prize—not even a Nobel—can confer on one; and a literary career based solely on the exploration of themes in Yoruba paganism is insufficient a social platform for someone like Soyinka, who is really not fully intellectualised, to articulate usefully on any of the many contentious national issues. That is why Soyinka is never known to have offered a solution that works; or that, when looked at closely, makes any sense. Of issues even within their areas of primary interest, they have no real knowledge—only fancy and conjecture and an overarching desire to belong to the cultural metropolis from which they unconsciously take their cue in spite of all the parroting of authentic Ogun-ness.

Nigeria has changed from the closed society of 1964, but those unable to see, or are averse to seeing, healthy change in the nation have decided to cling to the uncreative fiction of the Wetie. And the fact that he is not understood—in his literature and in his analyses—and is therefore not generally effective shouldn’t mean that he doesn’t belong to that distinguished class of tribal jingoists and sectional propagandists; because even if his analysis is not clear—and is probably not even an analysis—his objective is always only too obvious, not least because, as far as the North is concerned, what he bandies about as analysis of its condition and role has remained unchanging over all these years.

Three decades and someone has still not grown culturally or developed intellectually; and what a coincidence that Boko Haram also originated in Bo-ro-no State! Someone like him who has chosen the narrowness of a pagan worldview and eschewed the universalism of divine guidance or even that offered by objective secular multiculturalism will never taste the sweetness of true intellectualism. With a mind fixated on hatred and all muddled up with an incurable anti-Northern animus, it has become permanently set and is now a part of character, but too superficial and too ossified to be of any intellectual use.

In our situation, it is not those who do not know who are lost, it is those who do not want to learn who are; and all those pretentiously bookish creatures whose knowledge is only from books are in reality ignorant even of them. Of this and of Boko Haram, Soyinka doesn’t really understand—and probably never will

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Wallahi!

Why does Adamu Adamu have to take on the whole Yoruba Cultural Establishment, because of one Yoruba Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature? To symbolically fix a wedge between the North and the West, come the next Nigerian Presidential Elections? Is that what it’s all about? It’s not Christmas yet, Jesus’ birthday. There are far too many people dying in this cruel April. Nothing to celebrate here., not even on April Fool’s Day.

Boy o boy!

 If words could kill!

Sheiki Sheki Adamu Adamu going out of his way with this extended fit of foaming at the mouth and the vitriol he has expressed, throwing down the gauntlet like that, he is purposefully looking for trouble. What we don’t yet know is whether or not Brer Soyinka is going to rise to this public occasion and put Adamu in his place – Soyinka, undoubtedly being verbally the stronger of the two men, we don’t know yet whether Soyinka will  literally annihilate his interlocutor or if Mr. Soyinka the gentle man will snub him, disdainfully refuse to “dignify” his opponent with any kind of response whatsoever. For all we know he might as well say like his clown Lakunle,

“For that, what is a jewel to pigs? If now I am

 misunderstood by you and your race of savages, I rise

above the taunts and remain unruffled"

 But Lakunle is hardly like Wole, so why hurry or worry?  No stress. If the word is still free, Wole could prolong Adamu Adamu’s anxiety and shuffering by delaying his response – let Adamu Adamu stew in his own juice or allow him to continue to wallow in his own saliva.

As a former Minister of Education, shouldn’t Adamu Adamu know better?

On Radio Rivers 2 FM Stereo, broadcasting from Port Harcourt in the early 1980s, there used to be a jingle, laced with the wisdom of Solomon and it went something like this (excuse my version of the Broken):

Fiamp fiamp you dey go waka about dae say bad tings about another person? Palaver yu go get am!

Man, wey put him hand inside wata where Crocodile dey feast? Wahala ee go get am!

That’s why I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this diatribe which you may safely presume to be infected by the coronavirus on the rampage in this area of cyberspace, dead upon arrival, as someone said it only survives briefly, once it leaves the human body. Like faeces…  

 You remember Robert De Niro, in Taxi Driver asking the question, “You talking to me? “

Now I’m not impersonating Wole Soyinka the man described as “the Shakespeare of Africa”, asking that Robert De Niro question, “You talking to me?”  -  because, whether or not suffering or shuffering from mental and verbal diarrhoea, Adamu Adamu is obviously talking to me too and to all of us, in this his long disastrous lamentation, pointing a perfumed plastic finger at Wole Soyinka, hoping to reach someone’s sympathetic ear, believing in “No sympathy for the devil”  - but who is the devil? Wole, Me or Boko Haram?

For those who may think that this is some kind of lightning and thunder that usually precedes a tropical thunderstorm, maybe it’s another effete display of the old tribal antagonism – Chronic disease – everlasting sickness  fuelled by the kind of pent-up frustration that’s usually released in an orgasm of aggression.

As Abiodun Oyewole, Alafía Pudím and Omar Ben Hassen of The Last Poets put it,

 “Niggers try to act like Malcolm

And when the white man doesn't react toward them like he did Malcolm

Niggers want to act violently”

But that could not have been the genesis of Boko Haram, or of the Boko haram apologists and sympathisers

What has Soyinka said that should merit such a volatile response from Adamu- Adamu?

Africa’s Shakespeare could shrug the whole episode off, dismiss Adamu Adamu as

“a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

Shameful. All is vanity?

 

 

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

What was the point of posting this embarrassing Adamu Adamu piece which was written way back in 2012?  There’s so much that Adamu Adamu got so completely wrong! About everything. It was pathetic. Making himself a laughing stock  It’s the sort of thing that causes racism and Islamophobia as if some people don’t understand what’s proudly celebrated as culture and what Civilisation means, thereby giving substance to e. g. all the bs in Samuel P. Huntington “The Clash of Civilisations”

Since then the Boko Haram situation has only got progressively worse.

On Fri, 3 Apr 2020 at 20:54, Ashafa Abdullahi <abas...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

The writer of this trash must be the most incorrigible monotheistic FOOL ever born.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

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From: Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelberg...@gmail.com>

Date: 04/04/2020 10:26 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Boko Haram: Adamu Adamu Replied Soyinka

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What was the point of posting this embarrassing Adamu Adamu piece which was written way back in 2012?  There’s so much that Adamu Adamu got so completely wrong! About everything. It was pathetic. Making himself a laughing stock  It’s the sort of thing that causes racism and Islamophobia as if some people don’t understand what’s proudly celebrated as culture and what Civilisation means, thereby giving substance to e. g. all the bs in Samuel P. Huntington “The Clash of Civilisations”

Since then the Boko Haram situation has only got progressively worse.

On Fri, 3 Apr 2020 at 20:54, Ashafa Abdullahi <abas...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Lord Olayinka Agbetuyi ,

Doesn’t Adamu Adamu know that more than half of the wonderful Yoruba people are either Muslims or Christians? Does he know nothing about Olodumare ?

I’m sorry. I thought that it was a fresh attack on Bro Soyinka and not one that was made as far back as February 2012. The question remains, what could Soyinka have said about Boko Haram in 2012, to have warranted that kind of bad blood flowing from Adamu Adamu , Brer Buhari’s minister of Education at the time?  Even if he was in such a great rage, he could have stepped back for a second before publishing such a nauseating diatribe. I suppose that Buhari sacked him on the spot?

Anyway, this was a satisfactory response by Nafata Bamaguje

Boko Haram terrorism has been uniformly condemned by all the world’s preeminent religious leaders and just recently, consistently by the now deposed Emir of Kano and here he is:

Muhammadu Sanusi II on Boko Haram.

Has Adamu Adamu seen it fit to respond to the learned Emir’s views on what’s happening?

 In my view, at the very beginning of this fight against the Coronavirus, I strongly believe that Borno State should be isolated. Sealed.  We don’t want any Boko Haram people without anything like a social conscience and with that their special kind of suicide-bomber mentality running amok within the general Nigerian population, as carriers and wilful transmitters of the virus. Loonta.

 In  2002 the Miss World Beauty Pageant  due to be held in Port Harcourt is cancelled due to fanatical Muslim riots leaving more than 100 people dead, all because a Nigerian journalist mused that if someone like the Prophet of Islam ( s.a.w.)  had been around in Nigeria at the time, he could have possibly considered marrying one of the beauty queens…. I daresay that King Solomon ( “the wisest man that ever lived “)  would have certainly considered marrying a few of them, if he had been around…

As the saying goes, “By their fruits shall ye know them”. In Christian parlance, according to St. Paul, “the fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; against such things, there is no law.”

The whole point is that Adamu Adamu  your ”The writer of this trash” fancied himself as a big gun intellectual cannon specially chosen by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to take on and take out a non-Muslim of the stature of Wole Soyinka, ostensibly because of what he understood Brer Soyinka to have said about his terrorist brothers-in-Islam, popularly known as Boko Haram who without pause, are doing as much as they can and “in the name of Allah” still busy in the terrorist business, sowing the seeds of terror, death and destruction, everywhere.  

In his broad sweep, he extended the taking on of Wole Soyinka to include a stupid, incoherent, malicious attack on the whole of the Yoruba nation, Yoruba culture, Yoruba religion and religiosity, philosophy, morals, arts, all of Yoruba pride and achievements. As we the Saro people would say, “ee  noh fraid God” and the same phrase occurs in the Hebrew Bible with reference to Amalek , “he did not fear God “

Does Boko Haram, “fear God”?

What does Adamu Adamu the loose cannon/ “big gun intellectual Northern Muslim” have to say about these other big guns that have also weighed in on his brethren in Boko Haram:

Kwame Anthony Appiah

Cornel West

Lewis Gordon

Fact is, Adamu Adamu’s bigotry  cannot be said to be representing or appointed to represent any Muslim Civilisation of Northern Nigeria.  With regard to Islamic Civilisation, there’s something known as Adab / good manners and public figures are those who should be the good examples.  

These are explicit instructions from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala : Surah An-Nahl 125-128

The Quran gives this explicit advice about debating (and I have watched a few exemplary debates and presentations with Ahmed Deedat  ( he won all his debates)  Dr. Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al-Mansour and Yusuf Hamza.  Yusuf Islam (the former Cat Stevens) is an extraordinarily good teacher. Many years ago, I attended his Ramadan lectures at 146 Park Road, in London…

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[segun ogungbemi]

Some of us responded to it when it first appeared on this platform. I wonder why it is repeated again. I don't know who is behind this heinous crime. 

Segun Ogungbemi. 

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Dear Professor Ogungbemi,

Thanks for reminding us that some responses to Adamu Adamu’s dumbass diatribe ( a heinous crime) was posted to this forum earlier on.  I liked your robust opening salvo on behalf of Brer Soyinka and the Yoruba nation, indeed you pounced on Sheikh Adamu like a Tiger and up to now he has not answered your two examination questions:

 “I want to know how many people in Abba's family or tribe have won any form of awards in academia? And how many of them in his family and tribe have won a Nobel prize?”

 You got him there., because his honest answer will probably be a short “Zero and Zilch! “

 One can only pity the illiterate philistine , the dimwit called “ Abba”  - the one who has no respect for Literature or pride in his countryman Wole Soyinka  being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986 .

 For his edification, here’s a list of those awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 1901 – 2019 ( the world’s most prestigious literary award )  

He could take special note of Naguib Mahfouz ( 1988)  -  his Children of Gebelaawi

“Abba”’s attitude is not shameful, it’s sad.  According to anti-Islam propaganda, the Library of Alexandria was burnt down by Muslims – according to the vile propaganda, the Muslims asked, “What’s that? “

 They were told, “It’s a library!”

They asked, “What’s in there? “

 There were told: Books - - ilm - knowledge!

 They said, “But we have the Quran - everything’s there – everything that we need to know!!

 So – according to the evil anti-Islam propaganda, they then burned down the Library of Alexandria

 But, really,  Who burned the Library of Alexandria?

The Burning of the Library of Alexandria

 Unfortunately, in  today’s in Nigeria, it’s the same propaganda war being waged against Boko Haram - that they see a Western Library as a threat to their Islamic future, but “Abba” himself should think again and answer this more simple question: where is the science and technology going to be learned?  There is no harm in “Abba” simultaneously sharing  Patrick Wilmot’s perception  - back in 1981 – in his article in the Nigerian Guardian, in which he advocated that Nigeria should be learning to dance “ “Mathematical rhythms”  - and then he wasn’t referring to the mathematical designs that I associate with  the music of Johann Sebastian Bach – or Bob Marley  or the rhythms of Osita Osadebe, no Sir,  Professor Patrick Wilmot was referring to Mathematics as the language of science and technology.

 The  hadith that the prophet of Islam salallahu alaihi wa salaam , said “ Seek knowledge even if you have to travel to China “ – is said to be a weak hadith  - Boko Haram will probably reject it as weak

Anyway, those of us who have read the Quran know that the very first word of the Quranic Revelation is, IQRA! Read!

I rest my case… 

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[segun ogungbemi]

Dear Rabbi Cornelius,

Thanks for taking time to get my response to the above issue.

 Yes, people like Boko Haram insurgents, if given the opportunity,  would not hesitate, to burn down the Libraries in all the universities in the South and all the art works in the museums including the palaces of Yoruba Obas because they harbor pagan objects.

 Adamu Adamu has forgotten that Yoruba region is not paganism any more than Islam is. The stone that the tribe of Prophet Muhammad was worshipping,  l was told,  a pillar is erected over it in Mecca. The Stone is surreptitiously and indirectly being venerated yearly by Muslim faithfuls. It is like worshipping at the shrine of Ogun deity in Yorubaland. 

The Yoruba have refused to do away entirely with their traditional culture even when many of them embrace foreign religions. The Muslims in the North have become more 'Arabs' than the Arabs in the Middle East apart from accepting Arab religion but also their culture.  

The Maguzawa people who refused to accept Islam and its way of life are often being harassed, intimidated and killed by Muslims fanatics in the North. 

We remember how some Muslim zealots went to burn down the oldest library in West Africa university in Timbuktu some years ago. 

The destruction of Alexandria university library by Muslims is a valuable academic treasure we shall continue to feel bitter about.  

The tribal slur of Adamu Adamu has no basis because the Yoruba are not Wole Soyinka but The Nobel Laurel winner is a Yoruba. 

Adamu Adamu should retrace his steps and desist from insidious behavior. 

Segun Ogungbemi. 

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Unfortunately the ignorant writer equates monotheism wirh progress and what he refers to as paganism with retrogression.

He forgot that Christianity in Germany underwrote Nazism.

He forgot that Islam blessed enslavement of non converts.

He forgot that early Christianity incorporated 'pagan' rituals like the trinity.

He forgot that the most populous two thirds of the world today (India and China) are 'pagan' and that the monotheists are in the minority.

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Dear Proifessor Segun Ogungbemi : Shalom!

At the height of the Crusades  part of the Christian propaganda that was calculated to inflame the onward Christian soldiers was the evil story that the Muslims who had seized the Holy Land, were infidels who worshipped an unholy trinity which comprised (astaghfirullah),  Satan, Muhammad and the Black Stone in Mecca.

So, first of all, let me kindly disabuse you  of any vile, anti-Islamic  missionary propaganda about al-Ḥajaru al-Aswad, otherwise known as the Black Stone in Mecca – it  is not an object of worship.  According to the Islamic tradition it was the foundation stone laid by Sheikh Ibrahim ( alaihi salaam)  when the Kaaba was  erected in Mecca, as a place for the worship of the Almighty.

True, the original purpose of the monotheist worship that was started in  Mecca eventually fell into desuetude and  for a while polytheism took over, until monotheism was again restored to its original glory, and the Shia Muslims, in particular, take pride in that restoration and  relish the story of Imam Ali (alaihi salaam) standing on the shoulders of the Prophet of Islam ( sallallahu alaihi wa salaam) as he demolished the idols which in time had come to be lodged in the Kaaba, thus desecrating what was supposed to be the holiness of that site.  

 You must understand that which all the Yoruba Muslims understand: that Islamic Monotheism, properly known as Tawhid  is as uncompromising in its understanding of God’s unique oneness  as expressed in the Shema., the quintessential prayer In Judaism.

Of course a  mischievous missionary agent such as Rushdie  when pitting the forces of evil against other forces in his phantasmagoria “ The Satanic Verses” also tried to pollute the purity of Islamic monotheism by introjecting some polytheism into the history of Islam’s evolution to what is now the final product ( )  but he did not succeed : Surah Al-Ma'idah , ayat 3

“This day are those who disbelieve in despair of (ever harming) your religion; so, fear them not, fear Me! This day have I perfected your religion for you and completed My favour unto you, and have chosen for you as religion al-Islam.”

The fatwa on Rushdie’s head (an extreme form of literary criticism) caused him to go into hiding, and the fatwa was enough to ensure that he would never in his lifetime ever engage in that kind of nonsense adventure again., certainly not now and not in the near future either.

I don’t think that we should conflate Adamu Adamu with the foot soldiers in Boko Haram.  Is he their inspiration and their ideologue? I wouldn’t think so. Nor should you underestimate a true Muslim either  - not just that as per the  Letter to An African Muslim, “a Muslim is by definition an intellectual”. Tin the Quran itself the word aql  ( intellect)  occurs seventy-seven times.

 Having said that I should like to explain that when I accuse your good friend of being an illiterate philistine, I am not using the term illiterate in the vulgar Nigerian sense,  what I actually have in mind is cultural literacy – which in our current global consciousness, still varies  - very much – from culture to culture ( I was delighted with  Dr. Ugorji Okechukwu Ugorji’s reading of She is Eternal – I thought that all the cues were excellent  - poets reading their works usually cause me a lot of discomfiture, but not this one

 The connotation/s that adhere to the word “illiterate” ) also varies from culture to culture:  for example  the prophet of Islam (sallallahu alaihi wa salaam) took great pride in referring to himself as “ummi”  which has variously been translated as “ illiterate”  - which diverse scholars disagree with and suggest that ummi in the contexts  could only have mean “ not acquainted with the Hebrew Scriptures.  We should also bear in mind that at the time historical moment when the Prophet of Islam sallallahu alaihi wa salaam appeared, the Arabs were among the greatest if not the greatest lovers and of poetry in that most eloquent Arabic tongue.

Sir, please beware of your zeal:  Nota bene:  It was not Muslims that destroyed the Library at Alexandria! (Adamu Adamu would like to challenge the lion of Ife to some jihad on that one.

 I should like to point out one last thing and that is the way that Islam – and indeed Judaism looks upon idolatry. Judaism for instance forbids certain forms of representative art, sculptures, and from that point of view, there are those who would be prone to viewing the statues  and graven images in churches as idols representing certain deities.

 According to Islam, the one sin that the Almighty does not forgive is Shirk, and from that point of view, I suppose that Muslims must view with horror anything remotely approaching what from their pint of view  could look like idol worship.

 Nuff said.

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAB0J%2BvqkAXBVc%3D0wpg5giXSEsnCkFpUbQSa0%3DDAYt5uAfs%2BWWQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[segun ogungbemi]

Dear Rabbi Cornelius,

Thanks for your overview on the destruction the Great Library in Alexandria. Its destruction was in stages. The quotation below does not exonerate Muslims.  

"The final individual to get blamed for the destruction is the Moslem Caliph Omar. In 640 AD the Moslems took the city of Alexandria. Upon learning of "a great library containing all the knowledge of the world" the conquering general supposedly asked Caliph Omar for instructions. The Caliph has been quoted as saying of the Library's holdings, "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous." So, allegedly, all the texts were destroyed by using them as tinder for the bathhouses of the city. Even then it was said to have taken six months to burn all the documents. But these details, from the Caliph's quote to the incredulous six months it supposedly took to burn all the books, weren't written down until 300 years after the fact. These facts condemning Omar were written by Bishop Gregory Bar Hebræus, a Christian who spent a great deal of time writing about Moslem atrocities without much historical documentation."

Segun. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAC50OP_1_Xkvbikq4iVr_G3v30u1z4C%2BcUw-NvUy%2Bq7yE%3DJEpw%40mail.gmail.com.

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Vandals, vandals; philistinic vandals all!

I can see the context in which the Bishop wrote: the serial Crusades, leading to the reconquista...

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: segun ogungbemi <segun...@gmail.com>

Date: 06/04/2020 10:12 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Boko Haram: Adamu Adamu Replied Soyinka

This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (segun...@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info

Dear Rabbi Cornelius,

Thanks for your overview on the destruction the Great Library in Alexandria. Its destruction was in stages. The quotation below does not exonerate Muslims.  

"The final individual to get blamed for the destruction is the Moslem Caliph Omar. In 640 AD the Moslems took the city of Alexandria. Upon learning of "a great library containing all the knowledge of the world" the conquering general supposedly asked Caliph Omar for instructions. The Caliph has been quoted as saying of the Library's holdings, "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous." So, allegedly, all the texts were destroyed by using them as tinder for the bathhouses of the city. Even then it was said to have taken six months to burn all the documents. But these details, from the Caliph's quote to the incredulous six months it supposedly took to burn all the books, weren't written down until 300 years after the fact. These facts condemning Omar were written by Bishop Gregory Bar Hebræus, a Christian who spent a great deal of time writing about Moslem atrocities without much historical documentation."

Segun. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAC50OP_1_Xkvbikq4iVr_G3v30u1z4C%2BcUw-NvUy%2Bq7yE%3DJEpw%40mail.gmail.com.

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Shalom, Dear Professor Segun Ogungbemi !

As stated in the Quran: “In their hearts is a disease and Allah increaseth their disease. A painful doom is theirs because they lie.” (al-Baqarah , ayat 10)

I should, therefore, like to caution you that throughout the ages, the Christian missionary’s prejudice and hostility towards the great religion of Islam should not be trusted, nor should some of their sources, such as this little extract which you quote as a rebuttal of a historically certified fact that it was not the Muslims that burned down the library of Alexandria. Such fabrications are but a continuation of some of the vile and influential crusader propaganda that never died and is flourishing up till today, unfortunately, now being propagated unwittingly, by someone like you.

We should also take note that when the Caliph Umar Ibn Khattab took Jerusalem in 638, he did not burn down any libraries there either.

Here’s the source from which you quote: The Burning of the Library of Alexandria

The paragraph immediately after the one which you quoted, mentions a certain “ Bishop Gregory (who was particularly anti-Moslem, blamed Omar) all had an axe to grind and consequently must be seen as biased. “

About trusting what’s on any printed page, the Shia and Shia historians have always hated the 2^nd Caliph Umar Ibn-Khattab and never had anything good to say about him. I daresay that the Jews, Jewish historians and indeed Jewish and Christian missionary propaganda has no reason to love Sunni Islam’s second “rightly-guided Caliph “ either, since he’s the one who rode on his donkey into Jerusalem as the mighty Muslim Conqueror and today, Article Eleven of the Hamas Covenant is based on that event.

In making his historic accusation, that “ Professor Wole Soyinka, who appears totally ignorant of the most burning issue in international current affairs, betrays an unacceptable level of illiteracy on a related issue at home.” , Adamu Adamu strikes me as merely being word-drunk. I say “ his historic accusation” because he made that accusation such a long time ago ( 2012) and for all we know, he has repented and changed his mind since then. Whether or not he has changed his mind ( or had a change of heart) until the coronavirus took over, it was Global Islamic terrorism that was at the forefront and the permanent background, always busy disturbing what could be world peace and daily bringing into question the credentials of The Religion of Peace

Some circumstances and the kinds of choices that I have had to make have changed all that, but Circa January 1970, my ambition was in theatre and the performing arts, ultimately to be Wole Soyinka's right-hand man, as an undisputed professor of Yoruba Theatre in Ife , by the year 1980; so that’s the background I bring with me, with regard to Oga Adamu Adamu's regrettable attitude towards Yoruba culture, Yoruba Music, Yoruba Literature, Yoruba theatre, Yoruba film, Yoruba Art and Yoruba sculpture ( which is what actually got me interested in religion per se. ) 

I agree with you that the terror savages in Boko Haram, with no regard for High culture, as you say, “would not hesitate, to burn down the Libraries in all the universities in the South and all the art works in the museums including the palaces of Yoruba Obas because they harbor “pagan” objects.”

And so indeed they would ( God forbid) exactly as their brethren of the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddha Statue in Afghanistan and their brothers-in-arms, the Islamic State's destruction of people's  cultural heritage in places like Palmyra

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAB0J%2BvpvidnePv8s%2BsJ8OQpi1qwddMhax7GSv0vtoNquuPXBzg%40mail.gmail.com.

[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

I think in the context of the conquest its highly unlikely any other forces other than the Muslim forces could be held responsible for the burning of the Library at Alexandria.

Of course the Christian crusaders took their revenge in the subsequent episodes of the Crusades till the twelfth century.

The motivation for the conquering hordes would be that there would be only one version of 'the undisputed truth' about the nature of God.  The traces of evolution of monotheism from 'paganism'i as preserved in the library it was hoped would be wiped out for good, so as it is said (religious)history becomes the version of the conquerors.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Cornelius Hamelberg <hamelberg...@gmail.com>

Date: 06/04/2020 18:03 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Boko Haram: Adamu Adamu Replied Soyinka

This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (hamelberg...@gmail.com) Add cleanup rule | More info

Shalom, Dear Professor Segun Ogungbemi !

As stated in the Quran: “In their hearts is a disease and Allah increaseth their disease. A painful doom is theirs because they lie.” (al-Baqarah , ayat 10)

I should, therefore, like to caution you that throughout the ages, the Christian missionary’s prejudice and hostility towards the great religion of Islam should not be trusted, nor should some of their sources, such as this little extract which you quote as a rebuttal of a historically certified fact that it was not the Muslims that burned down the library of Alexandria. Such fabrications are but a continuation of some of the vile and influential crusader propaganda that never died and is flourishing up till today, unfortunately, now being propagated unwittingly, by someone like you.

We should also take note that when the Caliph Umar Ibn Khattab took Jerusalem in 638, he did not burn down any libraries there either.

Here’s the source from which you quote: The Burning of the Library of Alexandria

The paragraph immediately after the one which you quoted, mentions a certain “ Bishop Gregory (who was particularly anti-Moslem, blamed Omar) all had an axe to grind and consequently must be seen as biased. “

About trusting what’s on any printed page, the Shia and Shia historians have always hated the 2^nd Caliph Umar Ibn-Khattab and never had anything good to say about him. I daresay that the Jews, Jewish historians and indeed Jewish and Christian missionary propaganda has no reason to love Sunni Islam’s second “rightly-guided Caliph “ either, since he’s the one who rode on his donkey into Jerusalem as the mighty Muslim Conqueror and today, Article Eleven of the Hamas Covenant is based on that event.

In making his historic accusation, that “ Professor Wole Soyinka, who appears totally ignorant of the most burning issue in international current affairs, betrays an unacceptable level of illiteracy on a related issue at home.” , Adamu Adamu strikes me as merely being word-drunk. I say “ his historic accusation” because he made that accusation such a long time ago ( 2012) and for all we know, he has repented and changed his mind since then. Whether or not he has changed his mind ( or had a change of heart) until the coronavirus took over, it was Global Islamic terrorism that was at the forefront and the permanent background, always busy disturbing what could be world peace and daily bringing into question the credentials of The Religion of Peace

Some circumstances and the kinds of choices that I have had to make have changed all that, but Circa January 1970, my ambition was in theatre and the performing arts, ultimately to be Wole Soyinka's right-hand man, as an undisputed professor of Yoruba Theatre in Ife , by the year 1980; so that’s the background I bring with me, with regard to Oga Adamu Adamu's regrettable attitude towards Yoruba culture, Yoruba Music, Yoruba Literature, Yoruba theatre, Yoruba film, Yoruba Art and Yoruba sculpture ( which is what actually got me interested in religion per se. ) 

I agree with you that the terror savages in Boko Haram, with no regard for High culture, as you say, “would not hesitate, to burn down the Libraries in all the universities in the South and all the art works in the museums including the palaces of Yoruba Obas because they harbor “pagan” objects.”

And so indeed they would ( God forbid) exactly as their brethren of the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddha Statue in Afghanistan and their brothers-in-arms, the Islamic State's destruction of people's  cultural heritage in places like Palmyra

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAB0J%2BvpvidnePv8s%2BsJ8OQpi1qwddMhax7GSv0vtoNquuPXBzg%40mail.gmail.com.

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Lord Agbetuyi,

I spent two months in Alexandria, March 15 – May 15, 1991, spent some time in Tanta  and then  took off to Cairo  where  I spent another two months. (Later on, when my mission in Egypt was accomplished, I was on my way to Occupied Gaza, through the Rafah crossing, but that’s another story)

Lest we forget whilst foaming at the mouth with all manner of false accusations, that this is  verified history:  Arabic transmissions of the Greek Classics and how Arab scholars help preserve the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome

 Here’s a much neglected subject of study, even in Nigeria’s Islamic North: Modern Arabic Poetry

Please don’t believe what Islamophobia peddles as the “Gospel truth “about who destroyed the Library of Alexandria. Nor should anyone start bearing false witness against Umar Ibn Khattab in the name of Islamophobia or in the name of the Christian missionary zeal of the slave traders and their revisionist agents who re-write history only to distort it and then proclaim to their slaves, “ And the truth shall set you free!”

 The Library of Alexandria was destroyed by Julius Caesar in 48 B.C.  

Islam’s 2^nd Caliph Umar was born over six hundred years later, in the year 584 AD, in Mecca which is in today’s Saudi Arabia. So how could Umar be held responsible for something that was done before he was born? The fake news, fake history people will say that Mighty Caesar didn’t finish off the destruction, nor did any of the others who arrived in Alexandria, after Mr. Caesar and also stand accused of the same dastardly crime but that it was Islam’s Caliph Umar who completed the destruction. It must have been a very big library for it to take more than 780 years to burn it down….

I was listening to our dearly departed Bill Withers yesterday, listened to his hit song Harlem, you know the verse that goes

“Sunday morning here in Harlem

Now every body's all dressed up.

The heathen folk just getting home from the party

And the good folk just got up.

Our crooked delegation

Wants a donation

To send the preacher to the holy land

Hey hey lord honey don't give your money

To that lying, cheating man.”

I notice that you are now bending over backwards ( Yoruba solidarity ?) to support our Yoruba brother in his not so philosophical certainties about what could have been the vagaries of history (I should like to hear a considered opinion from e.g. from John Edward Philips about this matter.

BTW,  it’s possible  that Prof Ogungbemi ‘s nightmare would come true if, as he says, “Yes, people like Boko Haram insurgents, if given the opportunity,  would not hesitate, to burn down the Libraries in all the universities in the South and all the art works in the museums including the palaces of Yoruba Obas because they harbor “pagan” objects.”

But can you imagine if the combined forces of Boko Haram, al Qaeda, Daesh, Islamic State were to conquer the West and finally enter e.g. the British Museum where the Benin bronzes are laid to rest/ resting in state, and what they would do if they were to lay hands on some of the treasures in the Cairo Museum, The Metropolitan in New York, and my dear, once near friend ( from way back in Ghana)  the pain they would cause to George Nelson Preston’s art collection, not to mention the damage they would gladly do the sculptures and portraits at  the  Vatican Museums …

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DB6PR04MB2982FD2A895203CEA323B015A6C20%40DB6PR04MB2982.eurprd04.prod.outlook.com.