Since the criminal attacks of the dreaded cultist group (Boko Haram) on the nation started, certain salesmen of hate have been hawking their credo: Islam is violent; religion in general produces extremists; religion is dangerous, and so on, to the public.

One of such persons is Leo Igwe, an ardent Islamophobe whose schizophrenic ranting was published in the Guardian newspaper of 29 January, 2012 under the title “Boko Haram and the Threat of Political Islam”. Leo Igwe stated in his letter to the editor that “Nigerians must begin to acknowledge the jihadist agenda of Boko Haram and try to find out how the teachings of Islam particularly as contained in the Koran or the Hadith were propagated or twisted to breed this terrible monster.” He further states that “Boko Haram is the Nigerian version of al Qaeda. The militants are not bombing police stations, UN building and churches for the sake of it. They are not agitating for sharia law for the fun of it. The Boko Haram militants are fighting a holy war.

They are prosecuting a jihad for which they expect to be rewarded abundantly in the hereafter with some virgins. That is why the group has not run out of suicide bombers. That is why they have their operational base in the muslim majority states.”

This is obviously a clever ploy to inject the poisonous myth of a blood-thirsty Islam that inspires its adherent to commit indiscriminate acts of violence into the hearts and minds of the reading public. Yet the author failed miserably to provide a single reference from the Quran or the Hadiths to support his absurd position. For clarity sake, God forbids the killing of any innocent person in the Qur’an, and to violently damage any building is wrong. That respected places of worship, faith and spirituality were attacked by Boko Haram during a time of religious festivity makes the crime even more heinous. Also Islam commands Muslims to revere Jesus Christ and his mother (AS). We believe in his miraculous birth, his miracles and the stories of and about Jesus Christ (AS) in the Islamic tradition are probably much larger than the entire New Testament.

Also, an entire Quranic chapter is named after Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ (AS), as God proclaims her to be the best woman amongst all humanity, whom He chose above all other women due to her piety and devotion (Qur’an 3:42-43), and an example to follow (Qur’an 66:12).  For the Muslims therefore, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are but three forms of one religion, which, in its original purity, was the religion of Abraham (AS).

It is simply easy to see that the author wrote in a bad taste not to expose our common threat, but to mischaracterize Islam in a way that de-humanizes Muslims. I readily accept that there are bad eggs within the Islamic community. In fact, it is possible to find them in almost all walks of life. Sadly, people who commit evil in the name of Islam, or as Muslims, engage in unethical and immoral actions, may be our neighbours or co-workers; but so are evil, unethical and immoral people present in every religion, nationality, race or ideology. Such people are on every street and all professions. It is therefore a human, rather than a religious thing. Anyone who disputes this has simply failed to take important lessons from history. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, who collectively killed well over fifty million people, and the movements they led were all atheists like himself. Similarly, the intellectual foundations of fascist thought have very little to do with traditional religion, while owing much to secular or outright atheist philosophers. Mr Igwe’s Panglossian summary of the Boko Haram saga and what he calls political Islam is therefore antithetical to the self-evident facts: that vast majority of Muslims live peacefully with their neighbours; they respect the law and make important contributions to our daily life and national security.