WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-04-06 Time: 09:00:02 Posted By: News Poster
By Muhammad Al-Ghazali
If we required further proof that Nigeria is becoming hopelessly polarized along ethnic and religious lines, two events removed all doubts last week. The first was the near tragedy involving a private vehicle driven by a clearly demented citizen who drove his vehicle into a packed plane belonging to Arik Air on the tarmac of the Calabar Airport.
The second was the widely reported visit of three Islamic clerics to ailing president Umar Musa Yar’adua. It was the first publicly acknowledged sighting of the President since he disappeared into a Saudi hospital nearly four months ago.
Apparently, in the first incident, the driver of the projectile – which, in this instance, happened to be a rickety vehicle, drove into the undercarriage of the plane shouting “Jesus is the redeemer! Everyone should repent and follow him, because I will come back and complete the attack!”
From the content of the messages I received, the attack qualified be classified as a terrorist act, and I couldn’t agree more since the lives of approximately 200 passengers and crew were clearly at risk, for the duration of the lunatic act. And I should know a thing or two, about terrorism.
Long before 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden came to define the subject matter, I took a course on ‘International terrorism’ as a ‘free elective’ in 1982 as an undergraduate. At that time the Venezuelan, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, also known as ‘Carlos the Jackal’ laid the benchmark for international terrorists. Not even the Black September, which was allied to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization, Italy’s Red Brigade, or Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Group, came close in terms of notoriety.
And Carlos, now serving a life sentence at the La Sante Prison in Paris, was born a Christian. The fact, obviously, never prevented him from championing the cause of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an organization dominated by people living in occupied land who happened to be Muslims!
He earned his name after the attack on the OPEC headquarters in Viena in which three people died but not before he had taken a posse of Oil Ministers led by the Saudi Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani hostage. Carlo’s father, a rich lawyer, could afford to train his son in the best schools abroad, but his son still opted for the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. He was expelled in 1970 and quickly joined the guerilla training camp run by the PFLP.
Today, the menace of Carlos, the Red Brigades, Baader-Meinhof Group, and even the IRA may have declined, but their contribution to the subject matter is not lost to humanity. Long before 9/11 and its immediate aftermath, when the reaction of right-wing elements in Washington equated terrorism with Islamic fundametalism, terrorists were also driven by ideological and political considerations.
The foot soldiers of the Irish Republic Army (IRA) were Christians. They fought a cause that was political in nature and were regarded as terrorists by the British establishment a mutual agreement was reached to end the terror campaigns that killed Lord Mountbatten and almost claimed Margaret Thatcher. If we stretch the matter further, even George Washington, and the earliest American nationalists that resisted English colonial rule, was also a terrorist. Before Israel was carved out of Palestine, its leaders waged a merciless terror campaign against the British occupying powers, and the people whose land it summarily occupied after three successive wars.
Therefore, the definition of terrorism, like beauty, truly resides in the eyes of the beholder, or the people or groups most likely to lose or benefit from its aftermath. That explains why I was unwilling to share in the surprise expressed by the vigilant folks who inundated me with text messages expressing regret over the scant media coverage of the terror attack on the Arik Air plane by a Christian zealot.
I am not surprised the attack has not negated anything close to the type of media frenzy created by the Mutallab affair. It all conforms with a clear pattern we experienced after the killings in Jos, months ago, in which Christians were clearly the perpetrators, compared to saturated media coverage experienced a few weeks ago, when Muslims apparently retaliated.
Even the brutal slaughter of defenceless Nigerians broadcast on Al-Jazeera television network failed to attract commensurate outrage and condemnation in the local media apparently because of the identity of the victims.
Expectedly, the same tendency seems to be at play over the reported visit of Muslim clerics to the ailing President Umar Yar’adua over the weekend. Against the views expressed in media the past few days, I refuse to see how the visit could possibly destabilize Nigeria expect those expressing the fears know something the rest of us don’t know.
I refuse to concur with the CNPP and Afenifere who concluded that the visit was capable of destabilizing Nigeria. Unless there is conclusive proof that the President turned down a similar visit from the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), which I doubt, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to suggest that the visit was anything other than a spiritual visit.
In any case, would they have reacted the same the same way if the ailing President were Christian? My bet is that if Jonathan was the sick President, the visiting clerics would have hailed from his particular church, and not even the CAN headquarters and nobody would have raised an eyebrow.
But we live in extra-ordinary times, obviously. People grasp at straws for political capital. There is no hint anywhere that the Imam of the National Mosque Ustaz Musa Mohammed, or the two individuals that accompanied him, have tainted themselves with politics.
Yar’adua is a Muslim, after all. Even healthy Nigerians require prayers from time to time, never mind the President of an entire nation who had been ill for several months! From what the clerics said, they visited the president merely to pray for his quick recovery, like so many hypocrites continue to claim they do on a daily basis. They only expressed surprise at the state of his recovery. What is wrong with that? Is anyone wishing the president dead?
The next logical question, of course, is why the media is perpetually skewed against one particular religion, or part of the country on issues of such national importance. I reflected on the same issue a few weeks ago when I felt the media should shoulder part of the blame for our rabid under-development. The past few weeks have sadly confirmed my views.
Today, with each passing day, in Nigeria, it is not only obvious that the pen is mightier than the sword, those who pay the piper are apparently dictating the tune, with gusto. The critical issue, so glaring to behold, is the matter of ownership, both of the media, and the mindset of its practitioners. They continue to contribute to our underdevelopment by suffocating the truth.
I cannot escape my cosmopolitan outlook to life being an essential part of my early education, but I am becoming increasing frustrated by the antics of so-called intellectuals who have failed to liberate their minds from village mentality.
The way I see it, this nation can only develop if our so-called intellectuals and elites purge themselves of their primitive impulses and begin to see the entire nation as their constituency. Anything otherwise will only achieve temporary gain and permanent misery for all. There is no reason why Nigeria cannot be like Malaysia, whose leaders routed underdevelopment despite their religious and ethnic diversity.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 5 April 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201004060176.html?viewall=1