Hopefully, the Boko Haram debacle will soon be a thing of the past
Cornelius Hamelberg
Although a great number of Africa's intellectuals are currently living in the West, there is an equal number still batting in Africa and facing the daily challenges there, producing new knowledge there, educating the masses there, farming there, healing the sick and saving lives there, composing their great symphonies, singing and dancing there...
To be more concrete a nation of nations, there in Nigeria.
The Boko Haram menace is an an example of an area where our Muslim intellectuals are duty-bound to play a meaningful role. After all aql (intellect, the faculty of reasoning) occurs in the Qur'an seventy-seven (77) times and as Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi asserts in the very first paragraph of his Letter to An African Muslim, ”a Muslim is by definition an intellectual”
Up to now one has not heard a universal Nigerian Muslim condemnation of Boko Haram atrocities from the nimbar, to the extent that one would have thought normal – on the contrary between bouts of silence in some quarters, there have been explanations of why the Boko is on the rampage , sometime sounding dangerously close to sympathy and justification from other quarters
But ”a Muslim is by definition an intellectual” and in this respect, it is to be expected that the newly crowned Emir of Kano, His Highness Mallam Muhammad Sanusi II who by all definitions I can think of is an intellectual (in all senses of the word in both Arabic and English) will be playing a definitive role in addressing the Boko Haram phenomenon in Nigeria by also addressing the issue on an ideological level (since I don't know to what extent the Emir's role is supposed to be political. Dismantling the ideological concept of Western Education is “bad” -. or “fake” is easily done when the economic and social issues that are the main contributing causes to the existence of Boko Haram are simultaneously addressed along with relief from the poverty of underdevelopment and the marginalisation which is the main factor producing that kind of discontent which many studies have shown create a good breeding ground for terrorism as an outlet for that kind of pent up frustration, over many decades of neglect...
I came to this conclusion as late as last night when I followed BBC Hardtalk in the introduction to which program Boko Haram was mentioned. Giandomenico Picco argues that Saudi Arabia, the bastion of Sunni Orthodoxy should step in to dialogue with Islamic State which he believes is now taking Islam on a suicide mission – just as Iran was able to exert the much needed influence on Lebanon's Hezbollah in getting Western hostages released. In the early 1990s...
When it comes to Nigeria and Boko Haram, there are other cultural and social factors impinging on the problem and this suggests that the understandings of more local religious authorities are better equipped to address local issues.
We do not yet know to what extent the Boko Haram – Federal Govt./ Nigerian Army ceasefire brokered with the help of Cameroon and Chad , is holding. Hopefully, the much trumpeted ceasefire will hold up to and well beyond the Nigerian Presidential elections in February next year – otherwise there can be no voting in the Borno areas - sovereign Federal Nigerian property, currently under the military jurisdiction of the Boko Haram Caliphate...
A successful ceasefire may signal the end of terrorism and the beginning of progress. If only all those concerned could also declare a ceasefire when it comes to mismanagement and corruption! At least General Buhari is not the kind of guy who would declare a ceasefire during an ongoing war against corruption. Some other commanders-in-chief have yet to declare a war to the finish against corruption. True or false?