Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan

The barbaric kidnapping of school girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria has been condemned by Muslims, including those in Nigeria and North America, who see the brutality as flouting the teachings of Islam. It is particularly painful because the criminals responsible for perpetrating this horror are posing as Muslims and claim to be  acting under Islam’s mantle.



Boko Haram has been rebellious for years and has killed thousands of innocent Christians and Muslims. Its main demands violate Islamic principles. Its opposition to girls’ education defies the Islamic injunction to all Muslims to seek knowledge. Boko Haram’s call for Shariah rule violates Islamic teachings because Nigerians follow Islam, Christianity and other faiths and Islam tells its adherents to respect other people’s beliefs. The Holy Qur’an forbids compulsion in religion.



Moreover, the tactics Boko Haram uses in pursuit of its demands - killing innocent civilians, kidnapping people, destroying property, and rebelling against its own government for no legitimate reason - also violate Islamic teachings. It is clear that Boko Haram neither understands nor follows Islam. But in a country where more than 90 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day and, where corruption governs all aspects of life and funnels the country’s oil wealth to the elite and deprives the masses, it is unfortunate but understandable that demagogues are able to sway the masses and lead them to darkness.



Nor is Boko Haram the only culprit. News from some Muslim countries remains depressing. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights states that more than 150,000 people have been killed in Syria. Over 2.4 million registered Syrian refugees are huddled in sordid conditions in neighboring countries, 5.5 million children are traumatized and 9.3 million within Syria need humanitarian assistance according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.



In Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Libya, bomb blasts and attacks on civilians kill and maim innocent people. In several countries, the masses suffer while the rich enjoy luxuries.



Of course violence and injustices also govern non-Muslim countries too. In Canada people are still shocked over the senseless killing of five innocent people in Calgary in April. The son of a police officer has been charged with fatally stabbing five fellow students.



In the United States gruesome murders are common and merit only passing attention. In a shooting spree, also in April, three people were killed at a Jewish community center near Kansas City. The media did not mention the religion of the accused. Had they been Muslim, their religion, and perhaps Muslims in general, would have been maligned.



But North Americans are discovering that criminals and killers hail from all religions and that Islam and Muslims are not responsible for the crimes of deranged minds. A United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes study, released in April, listed the countries that in 2012 had the highest rates of murder. The most dangerous places for ordinary people were in the Americas and Africa. Not one Muslim country was in the top 20 such countries.



Canada was among the safer, with a murder rate of 1.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to the global average of 6.2 victims. Five Muslim countries, however, were among the safest with the lowest rates of murder - Kuwait 0.4, Bahrain 0.5, Indonesia 0.6, Algeria 0.7 and Saudi Arabia 0.8.



A Christian priest, a rabbi and I were recently invited to speak at Carleton University in Ottawa on the basic teachings of our religions. We did so and all of us stated that our religions emphasize compassion, justice, forgiveness, truth, honesty, respect and view mankind as an extended family.



In the question and answer period, a Muslim asked me why there is so much violence and injustice in some Muslim countries even though Islam teaches its followers to do just the opposite. I answered that horrible though the situation is in some Muslim countries, the record of the followers of some other faiths was far worse.



I said that the 100-year war in Europe, the genocide of the Aboriginal people, the kidnapping of people from Africa for slavery, the colonialism that ravaged much of the world, the two world wars, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the manufacture and use of chemical, biological and other weapons, the Holocaust, illegal attacks on countries, occupation and ethnic cleansing, and the manufacture and selling of billions of dollars of destructive weapons that cause wars, deaths and destruction but provide jobs to workers in industrialized countries have not been the work of Muslim countries.



True, some Muslim countries are riddled by violence, cruelty, corruption and oppression. But followers of some other religions have a worse record. So let us look at the facts. Do not blame Islam or any other religion. Lay the responsibility where it belongs - on human nature.

 

— Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan is a retired Canadian journalist, civil servant and refugee judge.