Professor Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate has called for the removal from office of Prof Ibrahim Maqari, the Deputy Chief Imam of Abuja’s National Mosque, Abuja. Reason: He supported the murder of Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a Christian student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto State, by her colleagues.
Soyinka said this when he delivered an address at the launching of the memorial publication on the late General Ibrahim Attahiru at Ladi Kwale Hall, Abuja on Saturday, May 21, 2022.
After the lynching of Deborah, Maqari tweeted with the gusto of a sadist, “It should be known to everyone that we the Muslims have some redlines beyond which MUST NOT be crossed. The dignity of the Prophet (PBUH) is at the forefront of the redlines.
“If our grievances are not properly addressed, then we should not be criticised for addressing them ourselves.”
However, Soyinka said it is time for all group interests to draw their lines, to decide where they intersect with others, where they run parallel, and where they diverge and/or snarl into a chaotic maze.
If Professor Grand Imam Maqari can draw a line in blood, the rest of the community of equal rights must, as Soyinka put it, proceed to draw their own, but they will do so in less primitive, bloodthirsty mode, in full respect of human dignity.
Soyinka went further: “That apostate of the creed of humanity, Professor Maqari, must be removed from office. It is no longer sufficient for all to declaim that Islam is this and that, that the Sharia is thus and thus, that Prophet Mohammed set this or that example and made this or that humanistic pronouncement.
“We have gone beyond theocratic rhetoric that merely pays lip service to civilized norms. Let all pietistic denunciations be backed by affirmative action.
“The Grand Seer of Abuja mosque should be hounded from office. He should be tried under any existing laws that approximate hate rhetoric, incitement to murder and abuse of office.
“The nation is confronted with just two propositions: One, that the Sultan of Sokoto is right, a position that is daily reinforced by voices stretching from even Zamfara in the north to the to the southern voice of the Chief Imam of the Yoruba.
“The alternative position is that Prof. Ibrahim Maqari is the acknowledged Oracle of Islamic Ethics. Between the two, a choice must be made, a choice that is both moral and constitutional.
“Both the Sultan and Prof. Maqafi cannot be right. And that choice does not belong to any esoteric domain. It is not grounded in privileged, hermetic caucuses of religious doctrine and interior revelations.
“It is not subject to spiritual pietism. It is straightforward: either murder is criminal and abhorrent, or it is a legitimate pastime, to be indulged at whim and by any.
“What exactly is “blasphemy” in a polity of religious pluralism? Presumably, the twenty-four heroic lawyers who have sprung to the defence of the accused killers will also take up that question and enlighten us along the exposition of their briefs.
“Until then, however, the protocols of association, known as the constitution, remain the sole arbiter.
“We, on this side of humanity, must draw our defining line, and that line reads simply: do not extend your religious predisposition beyond the realms of constitutional legitimacy. Do not flout the protocols of association. Else, pack your private baggage of homicidal precepts and depart for the purist wilderness of blind Submission.
“We have already paid, and are still paying too high a price for the culture of Appeasement and Impunity. Let it end now, in Affirmative Action.
“That a new generation should also be programmed to aspire to brutish existence below the Lowest Common Denominators of what constitutes “human”?
“Surely that is where any self-respecting nation should draw its defining, unbreakable line!”
