WHAT THE MEDIA AND CHRISTIANS SHOULD KNOW

By

Mubaarak Olayemi Ismail

The facebook page of Sahara reporters posted a news about a man who claimed that Kadaria should be killed for her alleged conversion to Christianity; it was said that the man based his thought on the shariah law that an apostate should be killed. This claims called for many toxic comments in the comment box as many who could be judged to be Christians by there names were calling Islam all sort of horrific names and naming the Muslims bloodsuckers. It was saddening as those actions were not expected from positive humans. 

Firstly, we should know that both Islam and Christianity are guilty of monopolizing salvation to themselves ( see Q:3 v 85 and John 14:16) but both religions allow peaceful coexistence in a secular society like Nigeria. The Islamic law of killing apostate was only made to be implemented in an Islamic State, not in a secular state. And I don't think Islam is the only religion with such law, history recorded how The church would execute people with strange or non Christian belief, an example was that of a Christian scholar, William Wycliffe who didn't change his religion till he died but he was declared heretic by the council of constance after his death; do you know what they did to him? 

For him not to escape the punishment of being heretic, even after death, The Council decreed that Wycliffe's works should be burned and his bodily remains removed from consecrated ground. This order, confirmed by Pope Martin V , was carried out in 1428. Wycliffe's corpse was exhumed and burned and the ashes cast into the River. Is that cruel?! 

Do you think Islam can be such a blood sucking religion as media depicts it and still has more than 1.7 billion adherents? 

It is high time we neglect any wrong knowledge or news about Islam from the westerners and the media who were known to be sworn enemies of Islam, it is like reading the pre colonization era of Africa from white writers, they depicted the Africans of those days as baboons even though our ancestors had a well established system of government before their arrival; Please it is time you learn Islam from Islam, not from her enemy - it is only through this you can have the true message of Islam, even till today, many of those who speak toxic of Islam later become staunch Islamist after they have realised the truth about Islam.

Secondly, After the New Zealand shooting, a Nigerian Christian also called for mass shooting in at the National Mosque, Abuja and I'm yet to see the news on any media outlets in Nigeria, but the news of the man who called for Kadaria's killing was reported twice on Sahara reporters facebook page yesterday, Is that not a clear hypocrisy?!

The media should understand that it is hypocritical of them to exaggerate a misconduct of anyone to achieve either religious or political goal, both religions have both good and  toxic people (An Imam once saved 300 people while a Christian once went for mass shooting in a mosque), the good ones should be appreciated and the toxic ones should be punished, equally! Regardless of their religious background. 

Both the media and people commenting hate speech about Islam might be thinking that they can defame or hurt Islam by their actions, but it is a lie, like kamal Saleh would say, their actions were like that of a man trying to spit at the moon, the spit won't get to the moon, not to talk of affecting it's brightness, the spit would only come back to his face. 

The same way the spit doesn't affect the brightness of the moon, likewise your toxic actions can't affect the development of Islam, you can take the development of Islam in Europe as a case of study. 

We all owe the next generation a peaceful Nigeria, and the peace can't be achieve when we don't tolerate one another, gone are the days when the Muslims will make their call to prayer at dawn in loud speakers, Churches do their vigils in loud speakers and evangelist ring their bells, children of both religions run to watch the performance of egungun masquerade until we allowed the oversabi elites, who their aims was to snatch away our peace by first taking away the tolerance - the Christian elites called that the Adhan of the Muslims are disturbing and the government stopped them from making it in loud speakers, the Muslims also retaliated by calling against the loud vigil services and that was called off also and thus we begin to harbour hatred against one another and these hatred is being used to preach terrorism to shallow minded fanatics by people who do not love peace and humanity but were only set to achieve their self desire. 

Truly, every religion adherent owed his belief some amount of evangelism, yet, our evangelism can be spread without toxic defamation of our counterparts, not even in a society like where such do leads to terrorism incitement. We must stop those hate speeches now. 

We should all know that terrorism is like a blind monster that knows no one, no even his parent. Boko Haram killed both Muslims and Christians and even Muhammed Yusuf that started it. Let's all embrace tolerance, for tolerance calls for peace, and with peace, terrorism will die a natural death. 

We pray for peace.