My Reaction to President Barack Obama’s Speech in
Egypt, Africa: Revisited a
after his Third Presidential Debate in Florida.
“Religion is not the enemy of progress for
she teaches the true conditions of progress work, economy, justice and charity.
Can there be progress without work or social happiness without justice and
charity. The Church loves science and real liberty; she never ceased to war
against ignorance and slavery. We priests have the welfare of the people at
heart. All useful reforms please us, and especially material welfare of our
charge. All opposed to this, hunger, sickness, overwork, unsanitary conditions,
we will put aside. This is the true doctrine of the gospel and history of the
Catholic Church an uninterrupted succession of merciful dealing. If the people
suffer, must we curse God, and His Church, because she has been stunted in her
just demands?
Venerable Leo Dehon, SCJ as cited by Rev.
John Emonts, SCJ in a work yet to be published by this author in 2013.
The open hand of
amity by the leader of the Western World, President Barack Obama to the Arab
and Muslim world of 1.5 billion is not a wooden horse that the Trojans brought
to the Greeks. It is a genuine hand of parley he had promised to extend to the
Arab and the Muslims during his 2008 electoral campaign. Whatever this talk is,
it is gesture, a long journey that must be begun and should be followed closely.
It should not be dismissed as another political gimmick that is not backed with
actions. There was no apposite location for his talk to be trumpeted around the
world than in the advancing Middle East Arab/African nation state, Egypt
Analogies
Once in a while
an opportunity arises out of the blue and sometimes we ignore it perhaps
because we had encountered similar situations in the past that had turned out
to be frustrating, negative to our lives or mirages. Oftentimes we are born in
a system and we stoically believe to be incomparably supreme to others we think
or feel we know and we do not know. This could be in the domain of politics,
philosophy, ethics, economics or religious beliefs. It may turn out to be like the
foods our parents gave us when we were infants. We sincerely believe that they
are the best foods as compared to foods eaten by other persons who are not of
our communities, families or geographical regions. We sometimes turn round to
laugh at those who do not eat our foods as if they were doing something awry.
We forget that we relish the foods we are eating now because they were the only
foods our parents could afford or could grow in their localities and not
necessarily what they could have chosen if given opportunities or living in
other climatic conditions. When we relish their foods, be they high in food
nutrients or poor, we think they are the best and would defend what we eat or
do even to the point of giving up our lives. We are sometimes using our hidden animistic instincts when we throw rationality out of our windows and dabble
in chaffs. We forget that if our parents were in the tropics, they could have
been relishing Dacryodes edulis,
plums and Ogoja yams instead of meat as in Australia, and if they found
themselves in Europe, they could have been enjoy bacon, hogs, and if in
Argentina, they could have been enjoying lamp chop or relishing potatoes every
day in assorted forms. With this knowledge, do we have a platform to stand on
and castigate others when we see those eating dogs, cats, snakes, hogs and fish
which we cannot touch even at the point of starving or doing things that to us
are cultural shocks?
I am going to
switch my analogy now to religious beliefs and you will see that we believe
what is preached in our locality when we are growing up. We are not given a
choice to decide for ourselves what we would like to be when growing up as we
do not see anything wrong with the tradition we grow in or the status quo. We
may waiver but we just switch and follow the crowd with the conviction of vox populi vox Dei. We may be influenced
by our shrewd, well-intentioned but badly informed and persuasive local leaders
or mentors and they are not necessarily preaching the gospel truth which in
some circumstances is hard to define. The system or paradigm we may be born in
may be the better for us when viewed with our naive or untutored eyes. But is
that true? In the following write-up I
will demonstrate that we are sometimes born in a deadly paradigm and the only
way forward for us is to change, call it a revolution.
The ablative
better, as truth to me is relative and may be subtractive. Apparently the
status quo or paradigm is superlative for us because we have never even been
exposed to others that may be better or even allowed to cross-compare. The ones
over there we do not know are made to be seen as formidable monstrous succubus that kill people who are not of their kinds on mere sight. Is that true? As a
Christian, I unflinchingly follow Christianity for it was established by Jesus
Christ, the Son of God as the only true religion on earth; if not in the
universe we aspire to people. It does
not mean that I will eschew or look down upon non-Christian beliefs. However, I
will voice out without fear or favor wherever I glean destructive patterns in
other beliefs or philosophies particularly when they are dangerously off beam.
I am not an ombudsman but it is my prerogative to right the wronged and some of
my rationales are outlined here.
The same
comparison could be made from the use of drugs. The one we are familiar with is
the best for us but there is one out there that is better than ours. Owing to
what we have been used to or had acquired taste, we may reject the new one
offered to us that may be the only drug to keep us alive and that may signal
our extinction. Many of us will relate to this in other disciplines or
experiences in our lives and not necessarily in health matters. We may not even
see their goodness because we have been brainwashed and anything that is not
naturally from our locale is bad. Is that a right way of reasoning? No. I met an
African student who studied in France for six years and upon his return to
Africa vowed that he would never talk to any French man nor speak French till
he would breathe his last. He was badly treated while as a student over there
and what he experienced did not necessarily mean that all other Africans were
to have similar experiences. Therefore, his decision should be learned but it
should not necessarily make us draw the same conclusion that all French men
were or are bad. With me, I was laid a red carpet. It could have been a unique
case. Consequently, I disproved of this erstwhile African scholar and it does
not necessarily mean that I am accurate.
We use only what
we have as a measuring yardstick ignoring any coming from outside our confined
society and for that reason we do not make good use of our full potential on
earth. We end up in shenanigans and
wasting time on trivialities owing to our false foreknowledge earlier defined
as ill-informed, inculcated by our society. We care and want to reach the apex
and achieve the maximum. We do not know the reason why we do not progress in
whatever we want to do because we have confined ourselves in that restricted
space called our tradition, our wrong religion, what is led down by peoples we
do not even know. We assume that they know us better when they are pseudo
scientists. The space we are confined in is governed by fear instilled in us by
our manipulative and sometimes crooked and ill-schooled men in our society.
They may not be crooked having inherited what they have been made to believe
was right when it was/is incorrect. Hitherto there are some tribes in Africa
that fervently believe that no sickness is natural. To them they are caused by
neighbors or members of the same family. Are they right? To many in the West
who know bacteria as the cause of diseases, the belief of these Africans is
fantastic, unfounded. It should be recalled that prior to the discovery of
bacteria, many Westerners had the same belief like Africans. Let us not to go
far. There are still some people today who believe that the moon is a holy
satellite and no person will or can ever set his or her foot there. Is that
true? On traditional beliefs or philosophies considered above, it was right to
those individuals we may call primitive for they have never ever been allowed
to compare what they had at infancy with any other elsewhere. We do not see its faults for we have been
taught to see it as a straight line even though it is all dangerously skewed.
We dare not cross the Rubicund or what had been instilled in our hearts as paragons;
else we will be ostracized by our society as bad pennies. Even when we cross
others still fear us and then we wonder if we should have risked our lives to
enter the dens of wolves who only like us as their food or providers of food.
Heart of the Matter
When we are not
careful we turn to use our naivety that has no bases to hate, apathy,
discrimination those are not inherently our values. For instance, other may say
that Christianity or any other religion they grow up having in their society is
the best and see no reason why they should rub shoulders with Jews or Hindus or
Buddhists or Islamist whom they have been told by their chaperons are
infidels, kaffirs? [Are Christians
exonerated? If a believer started that planets revolve around the Sun, he or
she was ostracized from the church. The erroneous belief was that they revolve
around the Earth]. They are furthermore told that they will contradict their
elders or regulators, their strong will and their God. Is that true? You have
not asked why you are a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim or any other believer. It
is because you were born in that religion or philosophy. You were not allowed
to make your choice or explore other religions or beliefs. Well, the idea of
allowing children to make their choice of anything in life when they have not
been exposed to a variety of choices is frightening and dilemmatic. You do not
allow a child to choose what he would like to eat. He would prefer marshmallow
and other sweets that are harmful to his teeth and not of high nutritional
values. Leave the naive child among caterpillars or serpents and it would turn
round to eat them in spite of the harm they may inflect on it. You might even have been following nothing if
you were allowed to grow up not inculcated with any of these beliefs. Then the
tradition is what a parent inculcated in his or her siblings. It is a custom
parents or a society feel is the best for their siblings. I have never seen a
parent who would in his or right frame of mind offers his siblings a lump of
excrement instead of nutritious food. I have seen some who were ready to die so
that their children could live. I know of one, who rather went to prison than
to allow her daughter to be expelled from the college because he could not pay
her tuition fees. This is my godfather who is my role model. He went to prison
so that her beloved daughter, Evelyn Takwa could be educated. He had borrowed money from a neighbor to pay
at a stipulated time but was unable to pay back this money and was sent to
prison. In the past days of darkness, he could have been sold into slavery. The
attention of my reader is drawn to the classic story of Merchants of Venice by William Shakespeare below in Shylock the
Jewish money lender and Antonio the trader and lack of mercy. I have heard a
respected Briton said that she was prepared to die and give her body as food to
her siblings if that was what was necessary to keep them alive.
Appropriately, do you have a true platform on
which you could stand to say that Islam is a religion of violent; do you have
any to stand on to say that Christianity is a religion of infidels and so on?
On violence, we do not mince our words for we see wanton destruction of lives
among the Muslim believers, tit for tat, and endless cycles of vendetta falsely
pivoted on God. God is an embodiment of
love and love does not kill or hurts but intertwines broken hearts. To my
dear Muslims who might have lost their reasoning, the God that we know will
defend himself and will not allow men to defend his faith for Him. With this
point of view I am making not to have any praises or to be paid for by anyone
on earth, if a Muslim kills his neighbor, be he or she a non-believer or a
believer of any faith, he is killing him or her for himself and not for God. This
God gave us all and never told man to fight for Him for whatever reason. He
told us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Therefore, it will be reiterated
that he who fights his brother in the
name of God is fighting for himself and not for God. To loosely schooled
Muslims, the Christians, Jews and Westerners are generalized as infidels and
they, Muslims could die to impose their religion on non-Muslims they call
unbelievers. Contrariwise, a true Christian does not call a Muslim a pagan. He
calls him a non-Christian believer. He therefore respects his ‘belief’ or
philosophy. He expects the Muslim to respect his Christianity and he should not
use force to recruit a Christian to come to his mosque and vice versa. Having advanced this point, there is no
compulsion in the recruitment of people to Christianity. Christians that I know
recruit through examples. By coming to the doorstep of Islam to offer his
friendship, President Obama is showing the Christian ways of making
friends. A Turkish Muslim who was my
neighbor was desperately in need of a medical doctors and I ushered him to some
who cured his son. One day, he came to my home with cake and a chunk of meat as
my presents. Therefore, where is the fighting and vowing to eliminate neighbors
when what I saw in this Turkish man and his family was friendship? Why on earth
would I ever wish him evil or want to kill him as some Muslim want to wipe out
the Jewish State from the face of the earth and Westerners?
Governor Mitt
Romney and President Barack Obama during the 2012 presidential election.
I have seen many
former Muslims who have become apostates and if they were to return to their
homes of origin they might be stoned to dead for having changed their faith.
There are Christian apostates who had turned to Islam as one I am editing his
book but Christians would never ever stone him for being an apostate or
choosing a philosophy of the flesh alien to his society of birth. Why should
they when they know that God gave a free will to every normal person to do what
they like. Why should they do things out of fear? Who had never transgressed
before turning round to cast the first stone on an assumed sinner? To many a
Muslims there is a false belief that a civilized Westerner is barbaric and son
of a Lucifer and that is not called for. From that perspective, the Muslims are
stoic and generally naive as witnessed by flares and rioting after viewing a
film produced by an obscure US Citizen, Nakoula Baseley Nakoula (2012) formerly
known as Mark Basseley Youssef in 2002. That film as many others handy works of
Americans was not even sanctioned by the US government and they go on rampage
and burn some flags of Western governments and kill a whole plenipotentiary, US
Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other US diplomats in Benghazi, Libya
for blasphemy against Prophet Mohammed. By the way, the film that spurred the
rioting President Obama’s grand desire is to tone them down to reason. How can
he do this as Christian? It can be through moral persuasion and that is all
that is asked of every Christian. The idea of quixotic intimidation of
apparently belligerent nations is not democratic and civilized but
inflammatory, unnecessarily provocative and counterproductive in the 21st
century. Do not imposed but let others follow your good examples and love of
brothers and sisters. You must love and love without even being loved till you
die without reciprocation. The question is how this could be possible when our
values are diametrically different. Will our softly approach be interpreted as
a weakness? Parley outlined below is
the way forward.
A contradictor is not a provocateur
Where are the differences? You will see it in the following secrets
revealed. In Islam, the woman has her
place. She is not supposed to sit in front of a car with a stranger. She is not
allowed to go to the market. She must not be seen out without an equerry who is
related to the husband. She may not even attend formal schooling. When Miss
Malala of Pakistan is shot (Oct., 2012) by a Taliban for her avocation of
female education, it is not the work
of God but that of a demented man and must deplored. A woman must not refuse to
attend to her conjugal obligations peremptorily. She could be thrashed if she
did so. Denying her basic rights, which
most Arabs and Moslem believers generally consider as Western decadence and
abuse of human right, are utterly wrong and outrageous. I do stand to challenge
this as not progressive in a world that is becoming more and more book learned
and human and economic rights of all and sundry are respected. You may have
your reasons embedded in the questioned sharia
laws as the Taliban, Al-Shabab, Al-Qaeda or Boko Haram of northern Nigeria to
challenge me but I am talking from my life history. He who contradicts
rationally is not a provocateur and it should not be insinuated that he is
sable rattling. Reply by reasoning it out or debating it without a shred of
tantrum in your heart else it mars your objective reasoning and you ostracize
yourself.
To educate a woman is to educate the world. When you look at the pockets
of inferiority and areas of poor economic developments in the world, you will
find that dictatorship and the suppression of women as being one of the raisons
d’être. Africa, the Middle East and
some areas of South East Asia and Latin America are economically backwards
because the men in these areas still feel that the place of the woman is in the
farm, kitchen and their role is to make children and should neither be seen nor
heard. We need not go to Haiti, Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone
where men avenge their enemies by raping their women to substantiate our
argument. Women are still bought and sold and denigrated to third class
citizens and are still beaten by men whom they had to slavishly obey without
questioning. Their sole purpose in life
is to produce men who will turn round to use them as door mats. Not in the 21st
century when slavery was stamped out in 1807 in the British
Empire . Are they right? Are we right to turn a blind eye to these
evils against women with our spurious reason pivoted on our religions or
philosophies?
The Burnt down St Paul ’s
Church in Alymer , QC , Canada
Europeans had
long passed that stage and that is why they are relatively far advanced than the
rest of us. I know that many are going to go back to history to dig into other
facts. I live now and the problem of women’s rights abuse in the field of
economy and education had to be addressed. If the Arabs and their Moslems’
cohorts were to address this suppression or oppression of the woman, the
standard of living in the world would improve in leaps and bounds. If there are 1.5 billion Muslims in the
world and half are women, it means that half of that productive manpower is
denied besides their basic rights, their contributions in the economic growth
of the world, simply because they are viewed by these men as only good for
conjugal gratification. They employ philosophical beliefs as smokescreen.
No loving God will allow any of His creatures to be under such darkness because
of Him. The perpetrators do not have a clue of God they purport to be worshiping I know that they will rhetorically ask me if I know God. God is
light and he who brings darkness over man distances himself from God.
Still on this
aspect, I have a concrete example of the fact that to educate a woman is to
educate the world. My mother, Ancella Ngenger educated six of us
single-handedly plus five of her grandchildren before I took over from her. She
laid that foundation without which I would not have been able to sit and share
this story of President Barack Obama’s strive to living amicably with the Arabs
and Muslim world with you. Of the six of her children, five became university
graduates and the rest had basic education and are enjoying a relatively better
standard of living than their age mates who had no such opportunity. By virtue
of this, I am a proponent of educating women even more than men who denigrate
women for spurious religious reasons.
A lady remarked
the other day that men were just parasites in the world and that the true
earthlings were women. Come to ponder
upon that statement, it bore a shred of truth. That is why some neurotic Arabs
and Islamic men makes them fear women holding the reign of power. The
Arabic and Islamic women know of this but are cowed to be subservient to the
man as they have no choice. Somberly, these women are programmed at infancy to
glamorize their slavery, never to question it, to view Westerners, Jews and
Christians as infidels and that is unacceptable in our global village where we
want everyone to progress. Why? It is because their heads had ever been hooded
by randy men. It is erroneously believed that if women do not close their
sensuous parts, lips, noses, ears, nicks, legs and so on men would be aroused
to think of fornicating with them and sex outside marriage is a sin that could
throw the entire world into chaos. If woman arouse men with any bear part of
their bodies, do men also consider that their exposed bodies can arouse women or
do they insinuate that their “inferior” women do not have feelings? According
to them they do not as they are substandard creatures and not equal to them. It
should be recalled that it was not long ago man walk about in his birthday
suit. Women were not raped. Men respected women and they lived amicably. Why is
the reverse true when man decided that it was in vogue to go about clothed? Furthermore, women had to be officiously
obedient to their men who could beat them if they refuse to give in to their conjugal
needs at any time when they are not menstruating even on horses and camels’
saddles. Is it not appropriate that women ask Muslim men to wear hooded gowns
or whatever so as not to arouse women who in turn sin? I do not think that it
is comfortable being under the kabhuka,
the hooded coarse gown, juju under scorching sun year in year out. Let a man
wear that schizophrenia for one hour and he would see the hell he had put his
woman into under the pretext of preserving her sanctity according to the Quran.
Others go to the extent of crudely carving out clitoris and sutures of the
women’s genitals as their form of sanctity belts. Arab and Muslim men, this is
cruelty. Reason as civilized people and not uttering fatwa intoned then by
Ayathola Khomeini of Iran
I am calling on
you to free these goddesses (darkened hooded women in harems) from the shackles
you have put on them. I am calling on
you to do it as President Ronald Reagan called on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear
down that despicable Berlin Wall. It was torn down and some children will
grow up to only read in history text books of the tribulation in what was
called the East and West Berlin caused by a concrete wall, the last bastion of moribund communism fortified by a
corridor of mine fields. Will you allow your women to remove the hoods, attend
school, and go to work, shop, drive vehicles, have to choose their spouses,
travel where they want and when they want and to stop suppressing them as
slaves in the 21st century? You infringe on their freedom everyone
is born with irrespective of his or her gender or creed. If you men owe your existence to women, why
do you make their lives a living hell for spurious reasons? Are they not your
goddesses?
We got to halt
and look at new vistas of thoughts from a different perspective other than that
we already know. This proposition is difficult for some inherent ways are hard
to be changed as a matured tree is difficult to be bent. If we adopt this
reasoning we may find out that the animals in the bush we had been taught to
believe is dangerous to us may be the friendliest of all the animals that exist
in the world. What Jews and Arabs run away from may turn out to be the
friendliest. Jews are cousins not only of the Arabs but Africans where their
original homes were. All of them have demonized love in the name of God and
that is out of all proportion for God who is an embodiment of love that knows
no bounds, color, creed and location.
Before the
Second World War (1939-1945, the Soviet Union looked as Westerners with
malicious eyes and given opportunities they could have wiped them out from the
face of the earth for not adopting another hood of communism. Their passion was
to propagate communism they fervently believed was the best system for the
world. Was it? Time and experience proved them woefully wrong. When the Nazidom
crossed its bounds and attacked Russia on June 22, 1941 with the tacit support
of Mussolini who had molested Africans and occupied Abyssinia; guess who turned
to help the Russians? It was Britain
and the USA UK America
Parley without Delay is a stitch on time
The Russians had their homeland. The Jews were a roving state within
European nation states and it was deemed fitting to have a permanent home for
them. The consequences of the Second World War, poverty and the implantation of
a homeland for the Jews in Palestine are some of the remote causes of these
interminable retributions of the Jews, Westerners and the Muslim world. To the
Arab and some Moslems, Israel
had to be annihilated to have the grandeur of Palestine Sierra
Leone , Darfur ,
Rwanda Negev desert
ready for action, but you will recall history that military superiority does
not necessarily mean success. If that were the case, the Huns, Teutonic race
under Nazidom could have been ruling the world now. There is no reason to
threaten President Obama instead of applauding him for his initiative to bring
elusive peace in the Middle East. It should not be viewed by his political
opponents as political strategy to keep him in the White House.
Today’s Enemies, Tomorrow’s Friends
What I am outlining is that your enemy today could be
your friend tomorrow. So we got to ratiocinate
before we do things as we have to account for them sooner or later and no stone
will be left un-turned. Do we still
recall the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa USA , Israel and Europe ,
it was a terrorist organization. What is that organization today? The Russians
were victorious after the Second World War owing to the unflinching support by
the British Prime Minister Wilson Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt
(1882-1945) of the USA Union
of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Africans who also died fighting the
Germans under General Montgomery, General Charles de Gaul, General Eisenhower,
with the gallant Desert Rats …in the
deserts of the then French North Africa, Libya, the Middle East where Hitler
thought he could inflict heavy casualties on the Allied forces got nothing.
Other Africans who fought the Japanese in the jungles of Burma for the allied
forces got nothing. Have Africans ever targeted the Westerners or Arabs who
once upon a time enslaved them? No!
In spite of the
help given by the Americans to bolster the Russian economic, ironically they
started building nuclear bombs targeting Western cities and all nearly spiraled
out of all proportion. [It might be for that reason that Governor Romney
hitherto viewed them as enemies of the west during the last US presidential
debate (October 22, 2012) at Lynne University in Boca Raton, Florida]. They secluded themselves from the rest of the
world in the hope that Communism was the panacea and they were deluded. All
their state machinery was going towards the preparation of wars against the
West. Their obsessed people were suppressed and oppressed and they were living
in a hell on earth under successive tyrants. Their peoples were never allowed
to think of parliamentary democracy.
Then came in a
farsighted man called President Mikhail Gorbachev who preached to them the only
way out of their economic mess was perestroika. [See his book Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country
and the World, 1987]. They adopted it and they are able to flex their
economic muscles with the Westerners today as the Chinese who are gradually
opening up. The Westerners are even friendlier with Russians of today than they
are to some Africans states. I will elucidate this. Behind closed doors, some
Westerners ignore how their forefathers screwed Africans with slavery,
colonialism and through asinine head of states and they use the backwardness
their parents created way back to assault Africans and African Americans of
today. That is not right and will never
be. As earlier stated, Africans also took part in the great European wars (WW).
Did they benefited from the Marshall Plan the American dished out to the
affected countries after the 2nd WW including those who killed
Americans during that war like the Italians, Japanese, and Germans come to
Africa? No! What did Africans learn from that? Was it due to racism of the
Americans or they simply forgot Africans? It could not be blind racism as it a
fact that all mankind on earth, no matter where he lives emanated from Africa.
‘There's no art
to find the mind's construction
in the face,’ William Shakespeare
There are more
revelations yet to come. At the height of the cold war, I told a friend in London
Some extreme
white racists or anti-Semitic persons do not care a damn if their enemies are
whites, Jews or blue-black Africans or East or West Indians. Some religious
fundamentalists who are human timed-bombs do not care how you look when they
want to carry out their dastardly acts. Timothy McVeigh who set the
fertilizer/oil bomb at the federal building that took the lives of 168 innocent
blacks and whites on April 19, 1995 did not care a damn what color the
earthlings were. Those hunting for right wingers who are a big threat to the
national security of say the USA
should be careful not to focus all their attention in the hunt for a skinhead
Caucasians or Middle East looking chaps. Are
Boko Haram followers who kill Christians mercilessly not blue black Africans?
In my old London Afghanistan ,
Pakistan and Somalia
Reverting to the
train, I knew the bad guy might have been the Russian professor and the
predominantly Caucasian commuters did not know. This Moscow
university professor might have been in London
on a spying mission but the burning question he posed to me was why the degrees
Africans students had from Patrice Lumumba’s University in Moscow
So you can see
that the handshake of peace starts from the citizens and not the governments.
What efforts are you making to talk with your Arab and Jewish neighbor? Can a
Jew fall in love and marry an Arab? I
once posed this question if a Boer from South Africa South Africa
at the height of
apartheid (1981) walking hand in hand in the streets of London, UK. Their
explanation was that they rather went into exile and be in love than to remain
in their country of birth and aimed guns and daggers at each other. I applauded
their efforts.
The Western
world is leaning over the fence to have a parley with the 1.5 billion Muslims
in the world and there is apprehension. Some
Westerners, particularly the extreme right-wingers are looking at President
Obama as sell out. We earlier on referred to the fact that some Israeli
youths were against President Barack Obama imploring the Arabs and Muslim world
to bury the hatchet and to sit down and seriously look for peace with the
Jewish state. If they were angry, then you will know that even if Obama were to
mince himself and give some people as food, they would still not be
satisfied. Some people are perpetually
disgruntled. All of us know that the
route to the kingdom of peace is painful, hazardous but it must be trudged.
With such individuals, if they pray for peace they could get it. They have
never had a place in their hearts for fear and apathy. I do not think that President Obama is a
sellout. If it is wealth, Obama could have been complaisant. What I believe he
is sincerely doing is for our children and posterity.
Nations do Change: China
partnering with the Republic of the USA
Of what good is
it for us building an ivory tower that will be destroyed the moment we die?
North and South Vietnam
There was a time the Americans were advising Africans
not to venture go to China. They even used a propaganda book, An African Student in China. It was a
story of the bad treatment of an African student in China. They gave this free
to Africans as their attempt to tell Africans not to have anything to do with
China. I want to ask you at this juncture who the friends of America are. Where
do you have the highest US investment in the world today? Is it in Africa or in
China? It is in China. Who are threats to American interests in the world
today? Africans or Chinese? Chinese? Who lend Americans most of its hard
currency in today’s global economy? The
Chinese! How much of the American investment is attracted to Africa vis à vis the rest of the continents of
the world? Minuscule! Why? China is suddenly become the darling, the
manufacturing and lending house of the USA and not the Arab or the Muslim world
that had not been subjugated.
What we have
learned is that in politics, countries do change their colors like chameleon to
blend with their new milieus. It was not long before China Africa
for good. They are not coming to colonize as Europeans did and look down on
Africans as inferior and exploitable noble savages as was erroneously the case
with Europeans of the past. They are coming to naturalize and be Africanized.
Many are already settled and could live in homes called theirs for the first
time in their lives. They openly say that Africa
is the continent of the future. That is something they could never have dreamed of in China or even in Western Europe until they were shading tears and blood
from their brows. They do that with ease and a hard working Chinese with a
restaurant in Lagos, Abidjan, etc. soon gets enough cash to build or buy a home
and run fleets of luxury cars he could not have got had he remained in China.
What do we learn from William Shakespeare?
Where I am
leading you to? The Muslim cannot stick to their belief and say that they are
not going to change and adapt to what Westerners look at decadent barbaric
ways; we mean modernize, educate their women, be democratic and stamp out
outmoded attitude for the good and unity of the entire world. They are deluded
when they think that they are cut off from the rest of the world and should
infringe on others’ economic and civil rights and will not be questioned or
touched. The ephemeral riches and wealth from the oil that is made possible by
Westerners will one day finish and the skyscrapers that are mushrooming in the Middle East could stand as mirages. So it is important to
invest in friendship when the oil wells are not yet dry. Money from oil that
fuel war machinery could be curtailed. If the Americans were to withdraw now
from Iraq and Afghanistan Israel Middle East . The balance now is in favor of Israel South Africa Middle East to
adopt.
To the Jews,
they should not be Shylocks in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice wanting the pound of flesh all the time and
showing no mercy. Don’t ask on what
compulsion must you as Shylock asked by Portia to show mercy on Antonio and
spear his life as in this excerpt from Act IV of this play. Portia had the
following to say in the hope of convincing Shylock a Jew to forgive and be
agreed but it did not help:
.
The quality of
mercy is not strain’d
It droppeth as
the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place
beneath: it is twice bless’d:
It blesseth him
that gives, and him that takes
“Tis mightiest
in the mightiest, it becomes
The throne
monarch better than his crown:
His scepter
shows the force of temporal power.
The attribute to
awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit
the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is
above this scepter sway,
It is an attribute
to God himself,
And earthly
power doeth then show likest God’s,
When mercy
seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice
be thy pleas, consider this, -
That in the
course of justice none of us
Should see
salvation: we do pray for mercy.
And that same
prayer doeth teach us all to render
The deeps of
mercy. I have spoke thus much,
To mitigate the
justice of thy plea,
Which if thou
follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give
sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.
In the end, the
currish Shylock could not win as it was impossible to have the stipulated
quantity, a pound of flesh cut off nearest the heart of Antonio his debtor who
owed him three thousand ducats, mentioned in the bond without spilling blood
thus exceeding the agreed amount. If he were to spill any blood there were
consequences, namely, all in Shylock’s estate in Venice
Again the
defendant Portia had this to say:
Tarry a little:
there is something else,-
This bond doth
give thee here no jot of blood;
The words
expressly are, a pound of flesh;
Take then thy
bond, take though thy pound of flesh;
But, in the
cutting it, if though dost shed
One drop of
Christian blood, thy lands and goods,
Are, by the laws
of Venice
Unto they state
of Venice
Do no say that
you are not bound to please the world with your action or answers. Remember
that we are striving now to build ‘inclusionary’ governance where no nation
will govern another and all of us could have one government. That is why what
you do thousands of miles away in the Middle East affect North Americans,
Africans, Australians, Argentinians and many more. Do not look at it from the
oil revenue point of view. Look at it as a perfect fearer of God who
understands that all are his or her neighbors no matter where they live and
what they do and how they pray or remorsefully do not pray to God. It is
through that neighborly love that Disraeli and his British cohorts suggested
the creation of the homeland for the Jews. Perchance if they had foreseen this
interminable antagonism hitherto, they might not have suggested the historic land of Palestine South Africa ; the Pearl of Africa, Uganda and even Madagascar
Again to the
Jews, do not say that you have not exceeded the pound of flesh for you are
grapping more lands that belong to the Palestinians and you cannot win as Shylock
under this circumstance. It should be remembered that it is the winged termite
that leaves the termites’ nest and not the nest. We are winged termites. We
have to prepare these lands for the next generations by attempting to cut only
that pound of flesh or not to negotiate our deals with a pound of flesh as we
can never get our flesh without spilling blood or exceeding the amount
stipulated by the law. That is impossible. We will be tempted to look for
bizarre ways to do it and we would be accused of being hawkish and ostracized.
We must adhere to this warning, that in the end we usually stand at a poor
man’s estate to look at the ruins of a rich powerful man’s castles.
Hope for a Positive Change
I am not all
that pessimistic. Did I not say at the very beginning that nations do change
their temperaments for the good of others and peace of the world. We once called Mahmoud Ahmedi-Muammar Ghadaffi-nejad,
the President of Libya a terrorist after the Lockerby, Scotland fatal plane crash and his sponsor of
terrorist group, Hamas in the Middle East . We
bombed some of his towns in attempt to capture him alive or dead. Today he is
our friend and we imbibe tea with him in his desert tents. He invites African
kings and chiefs in an attempt to foster African unity. He has changed.
[Irrespective of this change, he was toppled and killed by his own people in
2011 during the “Arab Spring”]. President Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel who was
once feared as being too hawkish can change too. At the time of writing, (Sunday,
June 14, 2009) he made one of the strongest and welcomed statements of his
life. He promised to accept a Palestinian
State
The silhouette of the smoldering St.
Paul Church , Aylmer , QC ,
Canada
fact that Israel Israel
There was a time
the Jewish state was classed as racist with the apartheid South Africa
The world is not
static. Africans cannot be enslaved by the Arabs, Turks and Europeans today as
in the 15th century. Why? In the same vein Arabs will like to talk
with the Jews not because they are the strongest militarily, but by reasoning.
We saw that if it were the question of military might, no European country
could have stood near the Germans, Huns. There was no European power that was
prepared militarily than Germany Germany
We create no monsters and Dr. Bernard Fonlon’s Counsel
With the parley
that President Obama is offering now, a lot of positive development could take
place and Islam could grow as it had been burgeoning in North America and
Europe without the use of threat or diatribe and acidic animosity that come
from certain Arab countries particularly from Palestine
and Iran
I have my
reasons for underlining the aforementioned points particularly the vital
importance of Christianity. It had not puzzled me and given me sleepless nights
alone but others before me as in this citation:
If you put the question today …to a group of young lads, just what
those things are that this country needs for its development, the answers would
come quick and clear: money, schools and colleges, good government, and (I will
add) religion. These things are so important to the progress of a country that,
where even one of them lacked, that progress would be greatly marred, though
there were an overabundance of the others.
The thing is clear: without money, you cannot run a school; you
cannot run a government; you cannot run a church. Without education, neither
commerce nor government, nor religion can thrive. Without a strong government,
every man will do just what he likes; and no man will be safe. Without
religion, man being what he is (creature with a high potential for doing bad
things) money-making, government and education
are bound to go wrong, are bound to frustrate the very things that they
were intended to foster: traders will become thieves, statesmen will become
wolves, and teachers will poison the souls of the youngsters entrusted in their
care.
Thus, to my mind, it stands, and stands out, clearly, and stands out
from the very nature of things, that wealth and government and education and
religion are things without which no country can even so much as exist, not to
talk of advancing (Dr. Bernard N. Fonlon, 1971, As I see It. p. 36).
I read on a
moral at a school at Yaoundé that was being constructed at Obili ward the
following: “Education not pivoted on Christianity is the training of devils.” You
may see the reason in why communism petered out from Russia.
Are our houses in order?
Why did
Communism crumble? It was because the Communists expurgated God from their
midst. If Westerners want to experiment and replace God with Dollars, it is
their free choice but it is will not be gratis as their younger generation
feel. The attendance of mainstream
traditional churches is getting sparser and sparser in the West. Boys and girls are worshipping money and
accumulation of wealth instead of praying and not thinking of life after this
one. Physical interpersonal communication is dying as smart phones are doing
the talking for them even in school grounds. Many are misled to believe that
there is no life after this one. Is that true? It is the older persons who go
to the church. A good number of children go to night clubs where their holy
communion is cocaine and their frankincense is smoke from hashish and their
aspersion is alcohol. As soon as they reach that age of 19, they are just as
freer than the wind that blows outside.
Where do we go?
On whose rostrum will some Westerners stand on to attack the Taliban, Arab and
Moslem extremists, Al Qaeda (Qaida) and Al-Shabab? Are some not persecuting God
and throwing Him away from their midst? Is He not the magnetic power of Islam
that is often badly used? Many will tell me that I am too critical and hawkish.
Instead, I am dovish for if I am given the sanction to reveal all the secrets I
know, many will plead with their governments to adopt a four-day week so as to
give them room to use one full day per week to pray to God and change to a new
leaf. This may apply to us Christians, Moslems, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, other
non-Christian believers looking at other regions or beliefs through the only
spectacle we had ever known, the blurry one we were born with. It is for this
reason that we hope many of us, of all beliefs or philosophies will look at
life and others by wearing different spectacles.
President
Obama's is setting precedence and should be taken seriously by all earthlings.
As said, he is doing what President Ronald Reagan did to pull down the Berlin
Wall. I saw that wall in 1984 and lamented over it as it was dividing my people
in Africa . I prayed over it with a Berliner
called Gorge Boris…and it was not long before it was pulled down without a
single bullet fired. It is how I pray that the Moslems will pull the hood away
from the faces of their women and stop defending their torture by falsely
citing the Koran and open the doors of modernization to them for the sake of
peace in the world and growth of our civilization. Do we not pray for the Wall
of Jerusalem to be pulled down? Do we not pray for the Jews and
Palestinians? We once prayed for the
wall of Jericho to fall down and it did. Are we tired of praying today? How
many walls of Jerusalem does man want to see before he can accept that it is
the center of the world open to all? Do we still recall the etymology of
“orientation”?
The freedom of
the Arab and Muslim women no matter where they are in the world will not only
benefit the Westerners but all of us, no matter our creed and political
inclinations. When abolitionists were fighting to stamp out slavery, proponents
of it were looking at it lopsidedly or one-sidedly. It was not long before they
saw that it was beneficial not only to Africans but to Caucasians, Arabs,
Persians and Turks who were also slave dealers.
It is in peace
that we can move forward in many fields including globalization and political
progress. Consequently, peace is due to our countries talking to each other,
rapprochement and being realistic. It is for this reason that talking with the
Arabs or the Muslim world is the right thing for the Leader of the Western
World to do. As mentioned above some right wingers have started castigating
President Barack Obama the 44th President of the USA as a sellout.
There are some persons who voiced out over my conservative radio 580 CFRA
(Ottawa) that there should not be any talking with the Muslims and Arabs but
they should be defeated in the battle field for that will demonstrated to them
that Westerners are still the strongest in the world. Where is the Teutonic
world that once demonstrated that they were the best in the world? We do not
dismiss parley with a weaker people because we are superior. Remember that if
Giant Goliath spoke with David, Goliath would not have been killed by a single
sling shot. It is just a civilized way
of doing things and that is accepted even in the animistic world. Obama once
joke that he had been sent to rescue the world from collapsing and his open
hand of friendship is the right thing to do. It is true that some mistakes were
made by our forefathers, by our leaders; the fact is we have to look forward
and try hard to give in for the sake of the present day peace and that to
come. Let us assume that there was no
other place on earth for the diasporantic Jews, would the Arabs and Moslems not
offer them land to settle for free? If their answer is naught, I would ask who
gave them the land they presently occupy. They are going to tell me that it was
Allah, God. If God gave them life, land and their cousins the Jews, to which
God do they pray to that would allow one of His creatures in the cold and admit
another into His warm house?
Muslims should be grateful to Westerners and should
reciprocate by opening up
If the Muslims
could turn like those in Egypt Egypt and Tunisia
The
skeleton of the burnt down St. Paul ’s Catholic
Church, Aylmer
Muslims and
Arabs ought to be realistic and overt and halt addressing Christians,
Westerners as infidels. Christians are human and in fact Muslims owe a lot to
them. It should be Christians who should call Arabs and Muslims infidels. I
will tell you why: Is it not the Christians who allow the Muslims to build
mosques in their midst? Go to Regent’s Park in London, once the capital of
Westernization, Parliamentary Democracy and you will see the Mosque there whose
doors are opened every Friday for thousands and thousands of Muslims to come
and worship; visit Geneva and go to Grand Seconni Ward and you will see the
Mosque occupying the most prestigious location, Come to Ottawa, Paris, New
York, Rome the Eternal City and capital of Christendom; go to Berlin, and other
Western capital cities and you will see land sold to the Muslims to worship
there in peace. Go to the Muslim land of Saudi Arabia and ask for a pocket handkerchief-size plot to be
given to build a modest Christian chapel where they can also worship and you
will see people sable-rattling before your face. Some will not only pray that
you are hidden away from the face of the earth but be decapitated or stoned to
dead after prayers on Friday with murderers and adulterers. Their
interpretation will be that you are offering your head to be decapitated as
that of the British Governor of The Sudan, Governor Gordon who was decapitated
by Mahdi and his cohorts. Let us not go far. Was the US Plenipotentiary not
killed in Libya in October 2012 on his mission to make Libya a democratic state
after the fall of its dictator Gadhafi for 42 years? It will be as if you have
threatened Mohammed himself.
Why is there not
a single Christian church in Mecca whereas there are Mosques in nearly all
Western big cities and villages where Muslims want to build their mosques in
predominantly Christian countries? It is because Westerners are weak? It is
because Westerners believe their Islam is better than Christianity? By denying the Christians what they have
given you, are you Muslims being fair? Who are fairer and humanistic towards
you, the Christians or you? Or are you still considering them in the 21st
century as infidels and their gesture of good will cannot be reciprocated?
There are intellectuals among the Muslims all over the world and I would like
them to reply to my reaction to President Barack H.Obama’s appeal to you to
reason with the Westerners.
We are all God’s
children and I believe that there is no other better way of saying prayers to
God other than extending the warm hand of amity to your neighbors and brothers
and sisters as President Obama did on June 4, 2009 at the Cairo University. He
was not stirring hornets’ nests but being realistic and those he was referring
to should not sit back and say that he had to backup his talk with action.
Action had to start from all of us. We have to say that we do not have any
intention of wiping out Israel Israel
St. Patrick used the Shamrock; can I use River Niger
I am talking
from the experience I want to share with you. I am a Christian and my two
sisters are Muslims who have paid their pilgrimage to Mecca as expected of
every Muslims When we meet before our parents who are Christians we leave our
faiths at the threshold of our country home. We try to bypass each other by the
way we behave towards each other. Our parents know where we stand and accept:
Peace be with thee and the mercy of Allah/God and the benedictions, Assalamu-Allaikum Warahmatullahi
Wabarakaatuhu and ‘God bless you,’ Nyuy
servi wo, Lauder Jesus Christu with a broad smile. When it comes to praying
we head to our Church and my sisters go to their mosque. Never had we ever
crossed swords with them. Our meeting is like that of the Rivers Niger and
Benue after meeting at the confluence of Lokoja in Nigeria. At the embouchure
of these Great Rivers that are now one, as they flow by the city of Onitsha , you cannot in a billion years tell the
differences and that is how God expects us to live as one and we all will be
allowed to flow into the Atlantic Ocean ,
heaven in this case, as these great rivers. You cannot say that the water from
Benue is different from that from Niger Niger Niger reaching the Gulf of Guinea
Finale
Arabs, let your
women go to schools and colleges, open their hoods, smash the barriers
separating you and westerners by the adoption of parliamentary democracy and if
you could accept that Israel
Democracy… is not based on violence or terrorism, but on reason, on
fair play, on freedom, on respecting other people’s rights as well as their
ambitions. Democracy is no harlot to be picked up in the street by a man with a
Tommy gun. (Winston S. Churchill, 2003, Never
Give In!, p. 369)
If they insist
that the decision will be through the barrel of the gun, the Westerners could
even give those nuclear weapons and other ammunition as ruses. If they make
the mistake of ever using them, for inability to accept the Jewish state,
Westerners or other archaic philosophies that have no place in the modern age
of enlightenment, that may signal a decisive battle whose outcome I dare not
say. Experience has shown that the Moslems are ready to die as they have proved
and the Christians and Jews are not ready to die. That is bogus, as the two
world wars showed that many could absorb bullets and fight back when they know
that it was their last fight. Nevertheless, should I die to prove my point
before someone I cannot convince to be just through moral persuasion? Our Arab
and Islamic neighbors have to reason and should not masquerade under religious
sentiments to advance their political agenda or defend outmoded values. We do
not want to revert to the days of the crusaders and jihads. This is the 21st
century and we are in the space age.
Viban Ngo, PhD, FRGS
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
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