Aliyu عَلِيُّ

I resisted the urge to engage with this disturbing post, but it kept appearing on my feed, and each time, it bothered me even more. These are supposed to be the finest among us: a trained medical doctor dispensing such crude reasoning that you would mistake him for a practising Boko Haram ideologue. A man known for preaching religious tolerance and peace was assassinated for simply disagreeing with certain people’s sectarian views, and you claim he posed a greater danger to Islam than the terrorists and bandits butchering people across the North. What sort of moral reasoning leads an educated person to such a conclusion? I do not disagree that we, as a nation and as a region, are badly governed, and that the historical disparities are well documented. But there is a reason why, despite our shared dysfunction, the South has fared better than we have. We cannot build a peaceful society while harbouring this dangerous ideology, this disease of rejoicing over the murder of another human being just because you consider his religious convictions incompatible with yours. There is something profoundly disturbing about a society in which even the educated can rationalise such barbarism, and where sectarian intolerance has so completely corrupted our moral judgement that we can no longer recognise the humanity of those with whom we disagree. You do not have to agree with a man’s interpretation of religion to defend his right to live. And if your understanding of faith leaves you more outraged by theological disagreement than by the slaughter of innocent human beings, perhaps it is your understanding of faith that deserves the closest scrutiny.