BLASPHEMY: TIME TO END THIS PSYCHOSIS!

Christiana Oluwatoyin Oluwasesin, Florence Chukwu, Abdullahi Umaru, Methodus Chimaije Emmanuel, Bridget Agbaheme and Eunice Elisha all have one thing in common: they were gruesomely murdered in cold blood by religious fanatics acting on the disguise of impulsive cerebral dysfunction termed blasphemy. 

For Christiana, a mother of two and teacher at the Government Secondary School in Gombe, all that was needed to end her life was the allegation that she touched the bag of her student which contained a Quran, and such an act is interpreted as a direct defiling of the Holy Book. She was dragged out of her classroom by ‘Allahu Akbar’-chanting students and beaten to death. 

In a similar fate, Florence, a Christian teacher in Bauchi State, met the wrath of her students when she confiscated a copy of the Quran from a student who was reading it during an English class. She did not only pay with her life but for that single act, twenty other Christians in the school were also executed by the students. 

While Abdullahi was beheaded in Kebbi for his alleged provocative utterances against Prophet Muhammad, Methodus Emmanuel’s post on Facebook cost him his life. Can we forget in a hurry, the recent story of Mrs. Bridget, whose only sin was advising a customer to move forward a bit from the entrance of her shop before performing the Ablution? Bridget was lynched to death by fanatic mob while her husband watched helplessly. 

Mrs. Eunice was hacked to death by errant mob in the Federal Capital Territory who felt uncomfortable with her early morning sermon about her faith. To them, such disturbance is unforgivable and the adequate reward is nothing but death. 

What about the undocumented eight students who lost their lives over a mere argument at the Audu Gusau Polytechnic in Zamfara? 

The unabated summary execution of Nigerians under the guise of defending a religious belief remains one of the most disgusting failures of government in protecting the sacredness of humanity. It is most shocking that perpetrators of these horrendous acts are not only unchecked but armed by section 204 of Nigeria’s Criminal Code. As a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the legalization of blasphemy by our Criminal Code contradicts Articles 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, 18 and 19 of that declaration on which basis Section 38 and 39 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) were written.

A dissect of the aforementioned Criminal Code shows clearly wide lacunae. The section states:

“Any person who does an act which any class of persons consider as a public insult on their religion, with the intention that they should consider the act such an insult, and any person who does an unlawful act with the knowledge that any class of persons will consider it such an insult, is guilty of a misdemeanor, and is liable to imprisonment for two years.”

The section fails to provide answers to some fundamental questions on which premises fanatics have continue to operate. By failing to describe the act(s) which constitute an insult to religion, the law offers a get-out-of-jail-free-card to disgruntled elements who are at liberty to determine what is an insult or what is not. As in cases aforementioned, touching of a bag containing the Quran, posting on social media amongst others may be viewed as an insult. 

The phrase ‘any class of persons’ is erroneous as it indicates that any individual, either with in-depth knowledge of the religion or not, can determine what blasphemy is. What this interprets to is that what it takes to arrest or kill (as in most cases) is a baseless accusation by someone without adequate knowledge of the supposed crime. 

I believe it is merely intellectual laziness that our country still concerns itself with religion when making laws. While the argument is that laws are product of Custom, the neglect of native religions in the formation of the constitution erodes this argument. For Nigeria, imbibing Christianity and Islam as the basis of customary law contradicts Africanism which itself is the basic law. Enacting a law on the premises of these two religions constitute a direct infringement on equity which the likes of Ogun, Sango, Obatala, Amadioha, Bori, Alledjenu amongst others should enjoy. Religion is wide, hence should be considered as an individual belief practiced by faith and not made a subject of national embracement. Imagine, if like Christianity and Islam, other religions are also protected by the law, hardly would anyone remain if people were killed for ‘insulting’ Esu (a Yoruba god, [in]appropriately  referred to as a devil). 

Finally, the basis of any religion is love, tolerance and humanity. If there is a G(g)od that requires its followers to take lives in other to prove its might then such G(g)od deserves no worship. If there is a G(g)od that sees death as the only punishment for abuse or insult against itself, then worshipping such G(g)od is a waste of time. If our G(g)od is one that demands intolerance of other people’s beliefs, then such G(g)od should be discarded. There is no reason whatsoever for anybody to take the life of another person. 

At a time when even the lives of animals are now sacred, the best we can do for humanity is to protect human lives with everything we have got. Nothing is worth killing anyone over, definitely not religion! 

By Adekoya Boladale

You can follow Boladale on Twitter @Adekoyabee.

WHY I AM CONVINCED THAT GOD DOES NOT SPEAK TO PASTOR ADEBOYE -By Dr. Ijabla Raymon

Last week was quite interesting on Nigeria's social media space. It started with a video of Pastor Adeboye telling his followers not to marry a woman that can neither cook nor pray for one straight hour. The question that has been on my mind is: does that mean God is deaf? What parent makes their child beg (for one hour) for something they know the child needs? The truth is that prayers, besides making the believer to feel good about themselves, are an absolute waste of time. They do not grow the economy or an amputated limb. Youth unemployment is at an all time high despite our regular night vigils, prayers and supplications - it is evident that a God who is interested in human welfare does not exist. If He did, malaria and cancers will not kill millions of children whilst He preoccupies Himself with consensual sex between homosexual couples.

In our country, pastors are marriage counsellors, psychotherapists, psychiatrists and financial advisers all at once even though they are not appropriately trained for these roles. They tell women to go back to their violent husbands because, according to them, divorce is a sin against God. Many a woman has lost her life because of this advice. People like Adeboye are so influential anything they say is taken as the literal truth. Sadly, his comments portray a man who is out of touch with the realities of modern family life. More and more women are now in employment and some of them are the main providers for their families. Marriage is now regarded as a partnership rather than as a master-servant relationship. Some of the most celebrated chefs in western cultures are men - what is wrong with teaching our boys and young men to cook for themselves? Adeboye has similarly instructed his female followers not to marry men without jobs. But what happens when a man loses his job - should his wife divorce him? 

I feel sorry for the people who think God speaks through this man or through any man at all.

If you want incontrovertible evidence that religion cannot reform the world, then consider the degree of theft and corruption in Nigeria. These problems have become endemic even though practically every Nigerian is a practising Muslim or Christian.

Nigerian pastors have acquired a taste for private jets - ostensibly to reach the parts of the world that need the gospel of Jesus, except that they avoid such places as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq. Charity begins at home - it is senseless to run off to put out the fire in your neighbour's house when your own house is up in flames.

Nigerians and their country are in dire need of salvation from endemic corruption. It is evident that religion cannot tranform our nation because as our religious devotions have increased, so have our corrupt ways.

Pastor Adeboye and his other pastopreneur friends need to sell off their jets, repent of their lies, stop robbing their church members through emotional blackmail, and give back what they have stolen. Their message has failed.

Adeboye's gaffes were followed by the news that the Nigerian government is going to subsidise pilgrimage to Mecca by granting Muslims concessionary exchange rate.

That is almost N8 billion for an exercise that does not benefit our economy. Many businesses are failing, parents are struggling to send their children to school, our hospitals are poorly resourced but that is how our government chooses to spend N8 billion. And believers wonder why we cannot stop talking about religion. There would be no use to criticise religion if it is removed from public space and kept as a private matter. It is wrong for the government to use tax payer's money to subsidise religious rituals.

The week ended with the RCCG convention where Adeboye makes his usual wild claims but says nothing of consequence about our nation. Our Vice President and a professor of law, Yemi Osibanjo, who also happens to be a pastor in the Redeemed Church watched on as Adeboye went to town with his preposterous claims. For a man who claims to have resurrected dead people, cured all kinds of diseases and driven a car without feel, you would think Adeboye would have told Vice President Osibanjo by now where to locate the abducted Chibok girls, right? But no, another RCCG convention has ended and not a word about their whereabout. When Adeboye claims that his car drives without fuel or that he has resurrected dead people and there's a medical doctor, engineer, architect, research fellow, PhD holder or a professor in the congregation who believes this fantasy then I feel grief and have great concern for the education system that has nurtured such people.

Religion has caused more harm than it has done good to African societies. Without a doubt, Adeboye and his fellow pastopreneurs have been responsible for the corruption in the way a generation of Nigerians think. But judging by the reactions to his sermon on social media, I think it is safe to say that the scales are starting to fall off the eyes of believers. I believe that pastor Adeboye will think twice now before re-telling his favourite story of how his car drives without fuel. I am thankful for the Internet and how it has placed knowledge at the fingertips (literally) of ordinary people. I pay tribute to fellow secularists for their unrelenting effort to liberate the minds of our people from the shackles of religion. Despite my grief, I feel hopeful about the future.

Ijabla is a medical doctor. He writes from the UK and can be contacted at: ijabijay@me.com

REVEALED: CHRISTIANITY IS A COMPLETE FRAUD: PASTOR E. A. ADEBOYE

Some of us have been shouting that religion is a total scam and fraud aimed at the gullible, vulnerable, and desperate miracle hunters who can do anything at the mention of God or Jesus name. And those who call themselves men of God are nothing but self accredited con Men and scam artists under the cover of God, and graciously the statement accredited to the General Overseer of Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) now serve as a credible vindication.

Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye is one of the most successful Private Jet Generation of Pastors in Nigeria, with his church branches scattered all over the world. He is equally engaged in building a three kilometer Church Auditorium worth Billions of Naira all to the glory of God. His sermons and preaching are always coated and garnished with prosperity, healing and deliverance. And to showcase his absolute closeness to God, he gave a testimony claiming that during a time of fuel scarcity that he drove from Ore to Lagos on empty fuel tank, which received a thunderous applause from his gullible members who usually call him Daddy. The distance from Ore to Lagos is more than 250 km and that is how mighty Pastor Adeboye’s God can be at the time of need.

According to Sam Eyoboka and Olayinka Latona of Vanguard Newspaper reported on the 1st day of August 2016 Pastor Adeboye admonished all the Pastors taking care of his numerous branches not to grow beards. Adeboye said that " I dont want to see any of my Pastors looking like fellows from the training camps of Al-Qaeda" He also decreed that anybody who brings tribalism into the church should either LEAVE the church immediately or will soon die like Annanais and Sapphira. 

This categorical statement that the Pastors must leave the Church if they disobey him shows that the Pastors are not really called to work for God but as ordinary employees of Adeboye helping him to defraud more people to maintain his private jets and his off the scale vanity lifestyle. And as such Adeboye can hire and fire Pastors who are generally considered to be working for God not man.

The 74-year General Overseer also "enjoined all pastors in the church to regularly do a MEDICAL CHECK UP to avoid UNNECESSARY AND SUDDEN DEATHS that can be avoided if the proper thing is done". 

This is the very statement that will make it very clear to all his deluded followers that they have been wasting their time and money for nothing. This is a Church known for its miracle peddling stories, healing and other irrational nonsense. Any time this Church want to organize crusade or other church programmes they will print their banners showing cripples that usually throwaway their wheelchairs, mad people that regained their senses, and even HIV positive patients showing their new negative medical results after being miraculously healed by God through the Pastors. 

And if these miracles are real, the question that must be answered is this, are the Pastors exempted from the miracles? How can Pastors be going for regular medical checkup when they are the people directing God to perform the miracles for their gullible church members? 

It is obvious that the Pastors rely on the tithe, offerings and donations from desperate miracle seekers to survive, and the implication of this is that the poor church members will converge and give money to the Church so that the Pastors can use part of it for their Medical checkup, while the gullible members will go home with their bad health condition thinking that they have received miracles. I cant imagine the number of people that are dying every day because they go to church to seek for miracles instead of going to hospitals for proper medication.

 Most people even go to hospital when they are half dead after wasting their time in the churches thereby preventing early detection and eventual treatment. Since Adeboye is advising his Pastors to go for regular medical checkup is he also making fund available for other indigent Church members who cannot afford the money for medical checkup to do so? It can be inferred that only members of Adeboye's family, Pastors and  friends that rely on the Medical experts for regular checkup while the rest must come to the Church for miracles. And i dont need to be a Prophet to know that Adeboye is equally going for his regular medical checkup. Why are they deceiving people about miracles?

Pastor Adeboye also gave marriage advice to members of his church “don’t ever marry outside the church and YOU HAVE NO REASON TO MARRY OUTSIDE RCCG. The reason is that if you are both from the same church even when trouble comes it is easier for the pastors to handle it! 

“Don’t marry a girl simply because she can sing! In the choir there are some people that can sing but they are fallen angels! Marry a prayer warrior! If A GIRL CANNOT PRAY FOR ONE HOUR, DON’T MARRY HER".

“Don’t marry a girl who is lazy! DON’T MARRY A GIRL WHO CANNOT COOK, she needs to know how to do chores and cook because you cannot afford to be eating out all the time" All these are divine instructions and marriage advice from God as revealed by Pastor Adeboye. What baffles me is how people can take this rubbish from self appointed parasites who claim to be working for God.

Finally, the General Overseer also announced the establishment of an Investigation Committee to assist the mission on issues bordering on security". This is laughable because if the Church of God can have security problems to the point of setting up a committee i wonder why they keep telling people that God will protect them in their various families when the church of God itself is not secured. I think it is very reasonable to conclude that Christianity is a total fraud and scam, all for the benefit of the clergy, to the glory of God and to the horrible disadvantage of the gullible followers. Religion will always be a force for evil and until we abolish it, we will never know peace till "Jesus" returns!

CHASING HEAVEN: FROM JESUS TO JUNO

While some of us are sure of the number of gates to heaven and the kind of visa needed to get in, some scientists are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to locate the 9th planet. Those who have mastered the layouts of heaven, including the postal code of their mansions, are waiting for death to come and take them there. Well, not really. Most of them are not in a hurry to make the journey. It is, however, slightly different for scientists. For scientists, they are willing and are working to send spacecraft on a journey of over 2.8 billion kilometers in search of the 9th planet.

When most of us were in school, the 9th planet was Pluto. It used to stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Venus and Saturn. In 1992, questions were raised about its status as a planet, following the discovery of several other objects of its size within the area called the Kuiper belt. In 2005, an object called Eris was discovered. It has mass that is 27% more than Pluto. So in 2006, Pluto was demoted from a planet to a mere dwarf planet for failing to clear the objects around its orbit. On July 14, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft tapping the gravity of Jupiter flew by Pluto accurately measuring it and providing conclusive proof that it wasn’t a planet.

Scientists have since found out that there are thousands of such objects found beyond Neptune. Some of the objects orbit the sun at 140 billion miles away. Some, like Sedna, orbit the sun every 19, 000 years. It means that if the last time it came around was the year Jesus was born, the next time it will come around will be the year 21,016. Definitely, nobody who will live on this earth then will remember that anyone who lived in our time ever existed, including Albert Einstein and Bill Gates. Their accomplishment would have become so miniscule then that encyclopedia of the time will be very generous to give them one paragraph or a sentence. They will be like the great people who lived on this earth some 20,000 years ago. Yeah, there were great people then though we have no idea who they were.

Pluto's demotion left a lot of holes in our understanding of how the planetary system works. Every model of our solar system suggests that there is a 9th planet. The gravitational pull and the orbit structure around our sun clearly indicated that something is pulling something from a distance and is keeping everything in place. Scientists could accept by faith that the thing pulling is the 9th planet. But they are not. They are looking for it with bigger and bigger telescopes.  They are also sending space probes to travel billions of miles to find it. Looking at gravitational pull around the area beyond Neptune, Prof. Brown and other scientists at Caltech concluded that there is an unknown source of gravity at play.

Several hypotheses have been thrown out. Using computer models, some theories have been established. One of the most fascinating one is the possibility that 4.5 billion years ago, our sun stole a planet from another solar system. This planet is the 9th planet that is orbiting billions of miles away from our sun.

If that is true, it makes that 9th planet one that is exoplanet- that is a planet in our system that came from another planetary system, which makes it an exciting possibility. Finding the 9th planet and possibly exploring it will give us insight into what is happening in places far deep in the universe that our technological prowess may not take us to in the next 100 years.

Such prospect is so exciting that our scientists are already on the case. The first sign that it would be possible to go there and find the 9th planet came with the successful arrival of Juno to the orbits of Jupiter on July 4th after a five-year journey that started on August 5, 2011.

At the cost of $1.1 billion, Juno will study the magnetic and gravitational structure of Jupiter as well as the composition of the largest planet in our sun. Jupiter is 1000 times the size of the earth and is the planet that spins the fastest. For the last 150 years, a storm called the Great Red Spot has been raging in Jupiter. The temperature near the Jovian core of Jupiter is estimated to be over 20,000 Celsius, which is three times hotter than the surface of the sun.

Jupiter is the third shiniest object in space after the moon and Venus. Long before Jesus came, ancient Romans named it after the king of Roman gods, Jupiter. Jupiter has 67 moons out of which four, discovered by Galileo Galilee in 1610, are very prominent: Europa, Lo, Ganymede and Calisto. Jupiter completes an orbit in 11.96 years but it rotates around its axis in less than 10 hours.

Nobody knows what is inside Jupiter. Some believe that Jupiter is the storage site of all the gasses that came out when the universe was formed. Juno will study the surface of Jupiter and help scientists understand how the planets came together 4.5 billion years ago.

The theories around Jupiter are interesting. It is believed to be the planet that kicked Uranus and Neptune to the outskirt of our planetary system. Some have theorized that it was Jupiter that hurled the asteroids that landed on earth and delivered water to earth upon which life started. In the last 40 years, eight spacecraft have visited Jupiter but there are still a lot that we do not know because cloud of gasses covers the surface.

In the course of the mission, Juno will go round Jupiter 37 times. At some point it will be as close as 2,600 miles. It is currently orbiting Jupiter at one orbit every 53 days. On October 23, it will change course and move into an orbit that will loop around Jupiter every 14 days. All these are happening at a distance of 2.8 billion kilometers from Earth.

The scientists’ next target is to send another spacecraft to Jupiter’s moon Europa. The craft will fly by Europa. On June of 2022, a European craft called Juice will leave the earth and in 2030 arrive at Jupiter to study the moons and fly over the largest called Ganymede. These moons are covered in ice and believed to have water buried in them. Scientists believe that there are forms of life in these moons. It is the reason they are making sure that Juno does not crash into any of them. They do not want the unsterilized Juno to transfer Earth microbes that followed it to space and contaminate these moons.

If the writer of the book of Revelation were to do so today, he will definitely update it with knowledge from the pictures Juno and other spacecraft have been sending back to us from space. His allegory on the struggle between good and evil as represented by the beast with seven heads and a great dragon would have been less bombastic and vague, and would have reflected the order we now know exists up in the heavens. The locusts wearing a human face and hair and having lion’s teeth would have borrowed a few gadgets from Juno for a long journey across space and time where stars are collapsing and rivers are turning into blood.

Nevertheless, in February 2018, Juno will commit suicide. It will do so by plunging into the magnetic field laden surface of Jupiter for its final scientific mission. It will do so, just for us. It will not be painful for we take comfort in knowing that our scientists are already working on more superior spacecraft as replacement. These are spacecraft that will be sent to watch out for silence in heaven as they do greater exploration for us in a continuing chase for heaven.

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Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo is the author of "This American Life Sef." He can be reached at okonkwo@gmail.com

SOLVED! HOW NOAH POPULATED THE ARK.

I've been trying to work out how the Noah family collected all the animals for ark in seven days. I think I've figured it out.

They divided the world up by continents. There are seven continents counting North and South America separately. My guess is Japheth took Australia/Oceana and his wife took Asia; Shem took Africa and his wife did Europe; Ham and his wife took North and South America respectively. That leaves the continent with the fewest animals, Antarctica for 600 year-old Noah himself--it's a smaller job and, at his age, he probably wouldn't feel the cold too much.

Noah's wife, Naamah, probably worked point from the ark to control everything. To get the job done in time, she would have needed to employ satellite imaging to find the animals and IsatPhones to communicate worldwide with her collection teams.

Naamah would have direct access to a master database of animals and would check them off as they were collected. This was a precision operation--if she missed one animal, it would be lost forever--God was out of the creation business!

Obviously, having the animals leg it back to the ark was a non-starter; they must have used transport. In fact, transport would have been the biggest problem, with vast distances to cover, huge loads and very little time.

These vehicles must have been enormous. There would be no time for multiple collect-and-return-to-base trips. To get an idea of size, think in terms of 75 railroad stock cars for each vehicle.

I'm guessing they used hyperdrivemobiles, with anti-gravity fields capable of hovering above land and sea. At the enormous multi-mach speeds necessary to achieve this task human control would have been impossible. Here I'm thinking GPS systems, directly linked to Naamah's database with radar and ultrasonic collision avoidance for day and night operation.

A suitable power source must have been a real headache. Nothing short of a fusion reactor would have the capacity and power for the job. So that's it. Job done.

This is one in the eye for naysayers who bleat that this job was impossible. All the technology necessary is ALREADY IN USE TODAY (or will be soon), so it is completely feasible. And, if humans can invent these things, they would be trivial for God.

All you need is a little faith.

By Bill Flavell

BEFORE THE NEXT BLASPHEMY KILLING

Last week Thursday, a mob of self-appointed God avengers lynched a woman to death for 'blasphemy' in Kano. A lot of outrage has followed that act of terror. But to mourn Bridget Agbaheme properly would be to address the context that empowered her murderers to make her the latest of the many casualties of precipitate indignation against 'blasphemy': To grieve over her meaningfully requires the transformation of the tragedy of her violent execution into a platform for a secular, nationwide campaign for the decriminalization of ‘blasphemy’ in Nigeria.

Governor of Kano state, Abdullahi Ganduje, reportedly condemned the killing and "promised to unmask the perpetrators of the dastardly act." That’s a deceptive gesture of lip service. He didn’t mean a word of that vow. Ganduje celebrated a blanket death sentence handed down in another case of ‘blasphemy’ one year ago. He "expressed satisfaction" when an Upper Sharia Court sentenced nine people to death for ''blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad (SAW).''

The so-called blasphemers were Muslims. They were followers of the Tijaniya sect. They were alleged to have insinuated that the Senegalese founder of their denomination, Sheikh Ibrahim Niasse, "was bigger than Prophet Muhammad."

The notoriously excitable Kano mob didn’t even judge the ‘infidels’ worthy of the protocol of a Sharia court trial. They lusted and angled to kill the sinners extrajudicially. The fanatics were so desperate they burnt down a section of the court building in a failed attempt to retrieve their pet peeves for street execution. The judges were faced with a fait accompli. They hurriedly condemned ‘the blasphemers’ to death.

It was this crowd of jungle justice agitators that Ganduje sought to ingratiate himself with when he said that he ‘’appreciates the patience and calmness with which the general public allowed the law to take its course despite the unwarranted provocation.’’

He would even proceed to warn that "this will serve as a deterrent to those who feel they can come and cause a breach of the peace…" and to promise that he would request the state house of assembly to pass a law authorizing the policing of religious preaching in Kano State.

The folks who hacked Bridget to death were the same bloodthirsty set of people that Ganduje hailed as peacemakers for trying to kill 'blasphemy' suspects last year.

To be fair, though, Kano has a history of ‘blasphemy’ holocaust that dates back twenty years.

In December 1995, a Kano mob beheaded Gideon Akaluka, an Igbo trader, and paraded his head on a spike throughout the streets. The police had arrested and imprisoned Akaluka following allegations that his wife had used the pages of the Koran as toilet paper for her baby. Muslims broke into his cell, killed him there, and escaped with the trophy of his blood-dripping head!

In August 2008, a Kano mob besieged the house of a 50 year old Muslim man in Sheka Aci Lafiaya quarters and beat him to death for allegedly ‘blaspheming’ the Prophet.

In November 2012, in Bichi, 30 kilometers from Kano,  a mob capitalized on a literal slip of tongue to steal and kill. A Christian tailor, who was obviously yet to attain conversational level of proficiency in Hausa language, mispronounced the name of a dress while chatting with his Muslim neighbor, and uttered words that transliterated to, ‘’the Prophet has come to the market.’’ The mob punished that error with the looting of shops and the killing of four people!

Kano is Nigeria's capital of 'blasphemy' killing. But it has some competitors.

A week before Bridget’s murder, some Muslim fanatics killed Methodus Emmanuel, a 24 year old trader based in Padongari, Niger state, for ‘blasphemy’. They also killed three officials of the National Security and Civil Defence Corps. The Civil Defence men earned damnation for attempting to stop the soi-disant defenders of the faith from executing judgment on ‘God’s behalf.’

Of course, Kaduna gave us the mad Miss World riots of 2012. A 21 year old Thisday fashion journalist, Isioma Daniel, had written what she thought was a punch-line that could amuse Muslims who were against Nigeria's hosting of the global beauty pageant. Her innocuous wisecrack was construed as ‘blasphemy.’ A sitting deputy governor went on air and urged any Muslim who sees her to kill her. 58 churches were destroyed. 215 people were slaughtered.

President Muhammadu Buhari condemned the killing of Bridget and prayed God to grant her husband Pastor Mike and her family ''the fortitude to bear the loss.'' That's a condolence message too balmy to pass for a presidential response. It was too evasive for a cowardly crime that could have sparked a combustible mix of religious and ethnic wars.

President Buhari skirted the heart of the matter. The problem -it's the elephant in the room! - is the presence of 'blasphemy' laws in Nigerian jurisprudence and the popular perception that those laws license Muslims to function as volunteer jury and executioners when there is news of violation in their neighborhood. Nigerian laws enables this continuing pattern of 'blasphemy' killings.

The two parallel legal codes that the Nigerian justice system stand on criminalize ‘blasphemy’ even though the Nigerian constitution guarantees all Nigerians the freedom of thought, conscience and religion and the right to freedom of speech. This contradiction means that a supposedly secular Nigerian state approves religious xenophobia and provides for your prosecution and punishment if some other person invents a charge of "insult to religion" against you.

In some parts of the North where the Saudi import of Wahabbism has taken root and reconfigured the people's concept of the Prophet's teaching and tradition, the accusation of 'blasphemy' leads to instant murder ...as surely as night follows the day. This makes everyone a fair game. All you need to be killed in cold blood is to have the misfortune of having a drunk fellow mutter ‘blasphemy’, like a holophrastic child, while pointing at you. A mob of demons will coalesce around you in no time and savage you until you become an ugly log of meat!

One of the prevailing orthodoxies in that region is that a ‘blasphemy’ alarm obligates all pious Muslims within earshot to rally and kill 'the accused'. Nobody is required the substantiate the particulars of the so-called 'blasphemy.' The claim of 'blasphemy' is its own evidence. And when the mob appears, they have to kill the suspect like a black snake: With so much fervor and fury!

To prove the point: what Bridget said that made Kano apoplectic remains unknown days after her murder. Nigerian newspapers reported conjectures as the precursor to her killing. This suggests that she was probably lied against and wasted.

It’s possible that that wife of a Deeper Life pastor was as peaceable and quiet as serious members of Nigeria's foremost ultra-purist, otherworldly church. She may have been an unlucky victim of envy or hate. A rival trader may have invoked that charge to eliminate her.

'Blasphemy' killing is a dumb atrocity. It is a man taking a putative transgression against God personally. It is a mortal appropriating God's prerogative to judge in eternity. It is  human being answering a misdemeanor with an infinitely greater iniquity.

‘Blasphemy’ laws make killings like Bridget's legal. In a multi-religious society like ours, they make persecution permissible and acceptable. They energize bullies who consider themselves practitioners of the stronger religion to plead that one 'blasphemy' provoked them.

'Blasphemy' laws vest in some adherents the luxury of affecting offense when they experience a persuasion that differs from or contradicts their own scripture. They incentivize people to instrumentalize violence in asserting their monopoly of faith. They sanction the use of coercion in forcing religious uniformity.

Moreover, ‘blasphemy’ is a vague, ambiguous word. It is a fluid, elusive notion. Like beauty in the eyes of the beholder, it is fraught with potential for countless interpretations. Any hearer is at liberty to decide or define the reality or otherwise of his encounter with it.

For example, if this son of a pastor verbalizes one of the elementals of his faith, he can be held as guilty of ‘blasphemy.’ If I declaim, in Sokoto, that Jesus Christ is the son of God, a Muslim might take offense if he is intolerant of or ignorant about Christianity. If he is instinctively violent, he might rush for a machete because he heard an allusion to 'the trinity', a trite theological construct in Christendom, but one that is at variance with the Koran's characterization of Allah.

And if I was raised to be touchy and defensive of my faith, I would take umbrage when a Muslim jokes that Jesus was entirely human, that He had a high libido, and impregnated the prettiest of his female disciples. I may hasten to reply that trivialization of God with an action that matches the gravity of that 'blasphemy.'

We must collectively discredit terrorism in all its guises. That Kano mob killed Bridget as cruelly and gleefully as Boko Haram or Daesh would have killed her. And it's a shame that we count as citizens individuals who are capable of such  inhumanity!

God is not an endangered species. He doesn't need 'blasphemy' laws or killings to survive . 'Blasphemy' does not impact or diminish Him. The word actually means nothing. Those who kill in defense of God, those who project Him as a petty, peevish, puny Being, are terrorists with an excuse!

 By Emmanuel Uchenna Ugwu 

immaugwu@gmail.com
@EmmaUgwuTheMan

BACK TO THE TRENCHES AGAINST RELIGION OF INSANITY

I cant really control my tears writing this especially after going through the write up by Declan. And any time i try so hard to wrap my head around any religion so that people will like me, the more i see reasons not even to shake hands with a religious person. Religion is so full of evil that we suppose to avoid any religious person like a plague. And when i say religion i mean also that your own version of Christianity, or whatever nonsense you may call it. When our late Brother Ikechukwu Anigbo was killed because of 10 Naira most you people prayed thus: God we need your intervention! Did He intervene? We pray against untimely death! Is that prayer working? God save your children! Is it working? What happened to all these over recycled prayers everyday? Because we are wasting our time talking to a God that is not even thinking about us and that is why He is so imaginary. And now we are facing again an untimely death of a beautiful man full of hope for grater survival, all because of a grand delusion called Islam (The Religion of Peace) Remember that the people that killed him are not Boko Haram, they are moderate Muslims who are very peaceful and they just reacted peacefully because somebody insulted their Mohammed (Nonsense Peace Be Upon Him NPBUH). And if you think they are just doing it because they are Muslims go and read your Bible, the two books was copied from the same source and Christians now claim to be peaceful just because we have decided not to take the Bible seriously. In Matthew 5:17 Jesus said ""Don't misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose. So, no mater how foolish you are don't tell me that is old testament. In Deuteronomy 13:12 If you go to any City and they are worshiping other god, kill everybody in that city and burn all their properties and the Town should remain ruined forever. Also in Det 13:6 if your own brother, sister, daughter, wife tells you about any other God kill them with your own hands. Imagine what the world will be like if we listen to this kind of instruction coming from a Holly Book. Our sense of morality predates any religion, i am not doing good because of i am afraid of hell or to go to heaven, i do good for the sake of humanity. Even when the supposed Jesus Christ told His disciples that they should eat His flesh and drink His blood. His disciples started running away from Him because that is an insult to humanity. In John 6 51 "I’m the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he’ll live forever. And the bread I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 52 Then the Jewish leaders debated angrily with each other, asking, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” ...And in John 6: 66 "As a result, many of his disciples turned back and no longer associated with him. I have gone through the wall post of Blessing Emmanuel, Our late Brother Chimaije called her and asked her to pray for him, which she did and also asked him to pray. What happened to those prayers? Is our own Almighty God playing the victim? The name Chimaije means God knows my movement, is our own God not aware that Chimaijem was targeted by people who claim to be protecting their own version of God? The whole religion is totally nonsense and we will continue to waste time calling on the imaginary God again to do something when it is already late, but then we can always foolishly console ourselves by saying that God will keep Chimaije in heaven which i also pray for. But if such God exists this is the moment He supposed to show that He is God, and unfortunately He was on sabbatical leave as always! As i say Goodbye to a Brother with tears, feeling what he must have felt when the enemy was so close to him and imagining the kind of prayers he must prayed to God frantically with tears and cry begging God to show His power and save his life, Asking the Mighty Man in Battle to prove His worth, shouting for the God that aswereth by fire to show His face,but our so called loving God is so wicked by abandoning His own follower to die in this circumstance. And please preach whatever nonsense you have to yourself and swallow your foolish claims in your numb skulls to protect your God. I am very happy living happily without Him or Her. ‪#‎ReligionIsSoFullOfShit‬

Odoh Nwaobodagu