ISIS: Religion and Racism in the wake of ISIS' decapitation of American journalists, massacre of Christians, Iraqi Troops and Others

GENESIS WITH A PAGE FROM MY LIFE'S STORY

Two incidents happened in my life. One was when I was a student at London, UK. I was getting out from one of those magnificent Victorian Underground railway stations at Leicester Square locals call the Tube that made me vowed never to spit anywhere in the public. As I was stepping out of an elevator, I had an urge to spit sputum that had filled my mouth literally to the brim one gray winter morning. Least did I notice that there was a commuter below me as I had ‘hared’ way ahead on the top of an escalator. Then I spitted as often happened with players on the football pitches during the World Cup or other soccer tournaments. A ghost of wind blew so hard on my face and instead of my sputum falling on the ground before me it was taken by the wind current backwards. As if flying on an invisible straight track, it landed on a face of a gentleman behind me. The man, who was dressed to kill, bore the brunt of my streaky spittle on the bridge of his nose and his eyes. He quickly removed a handkerchief from his pocket, cleaned his face and proceeded as briskly as nothing has happened. My apprehension was that he would strike me in wrath, I apologetically spluttered. He did not bother but proceeded as fast as his legs could take him and vanished in the throng of commuters. My heart palpitated for five minutes. I felt cold sweat and guilt that I had transgressed. From that day, I vowed never ever to spit no matter its urgency in the public. Henceforth, I cultivated the habit of ever traveling with a white handkerchief in my pocket. You are asking the purpose of my narrative and its connection with the caption.

Picture: Removed.

The decapitation of the second US journalist, James Foley two days ago by the infamous 'Jihadi John' subsequently identified as Mohammed Emwazi, a looser from Kuwait who studied computing in West London University, London, UK. Public grief across America upon the news was too much to bear.

I will relate to you another incident that is contrary to the one aforementioned. This time I was now on a train travelling home from college and reading a local gutter press, the Sun News Paper to kill time. The carriage was packed full and there was no seat available but there was space for strap-handlers. A passenger entrained and upon seeing me reading the newspaper started hurling at me avalanche of vituperation. He carried on that I was a bureaucrat and that the money from the paper I bought was used to keep us backward in the third world. Instinct told me to ignore him. He came too close to my face and was barely two inches from the tip of my nose.  If I were easily agitated, it could have resulted in blowing him to smithereens for attacking me. I remained taciturn. At the next train station, he detrained as he had bused talking gibberish. We continued on our next leg of our journey and there and then the passengers who witnessed the episode but were reticent, turned round to me and praised me for excellent behavior. I had used my head and not my animalistic heart.

A WORD OF CAUTION

What are the purposes of my stories? There are a couple of cardinal things in the contemporary world that civilized peoples have to tackle if they want to leave this world a better place for the future generations. If these tasks are to be executed, they must use their heads and not their hearts or brutish instincts as in the case of Don Quixote to examine them. The first gentlemen left the train station a better haven, as he used his head instead of his heart. He had the right to persecute me for my spitting on him in the open to start with but he opted not to.

One does not shower one’s self with encomiums but I deserve one when the huge man verbally singled me out on the train carriage with 80 passengers for his vociferous abuses for reading a daily. My feelings were hurt. I was dark-skinned and he was white in an all-inclusive white carriage and I considered it racism. If not why did he not attack one of his kinds as many of us were reading assorted dailies? My taciturnity paid and I did not live to regret as he could have ended my life if I had defended myself.

The first point is the thriving religious wars, and the second is the sticky racism. The world can solve them now at an international peace table or bank them for the future generations. If there was an international forum by Europeans to see how best they could divide Africa and the world at large called the Berlin Conference convened by King Leopold of Belgium (in 1884-1885) so as not to get at each other’s throat, there could be one called up to resolve once and for all how global beliefs shall operate in peace and not in the present pieces we are witnessing. If the latter option is taken that would be a disaster in making for lack of reasoning will dominate the world that is governed by some principles that are archaic, démodé extracted from books written in the past by some men whom we are told were suffering from nervous diseases. If the doctrines they compounded based on the old tradition had to be accepted in the 21 century, there is an urgent need to upgrade every syllabus in its content. Sorting  them now at the peace table would be cheaper than to leave it to be sorted out on the battle fields as soon we will be battling it out with ISIS and their associates who have been literally interpreting the Quran verbatim and force-feeding it on their gullible disciples.

Picture removed. 

The beheading the American journalist Steven Joel Sotloff by a supposed South London accented British somewhere in Syria in spite of pleas to save his life.

Under some circumstances mankind resolve his grievances in the battle fields and we are no strangers to wars of grand proportions. The First and Second World wars are still fresh in our memories, unless we want to accentuate them with nuclear wars as Vladimir Putin the President of Russia flashes before our faces. Then the last world wars would be children’s play as it would be touch-button warfare. It would be short lived and there could be neither winners nor the vanquished.

CAUSES: DIFFERENCES IN VARIED ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS

It is true that the world has advanced so much for good within the last 200 years. We attribute much to the European positive and not negative advances; let us summarily call it the spread of capitalism and democracy, the age of positive reasoning. On the positive side, their successes have engendered jealousy among those whose aims or purposes of life had been different from those who were at the forefront of capitalism, the Westerners. The former group fall among the Caucasians groups particularly domiciling in Europe and the later the dark skinned or peoples who principally people the tropics and the Middle East.  The main reason is climatic. Where conditions did not need heavy works for productivity, there was little or no remarkable inventions. The inhabitants of such zones were docile and innovations technologies were not generally necessary. In consequence most inventions that flood the world emanate from the northern hemisphere with the Americans and Europeans leading.

The opposite was true of people who lived in areas where there were harsher climatic conditions, the presence of snow where food production had to be fast and the right quantity had to be ensured for the survival of man. The outcome could mean surviving the winter conditions or giving up the ghost. Many had to adopt and adapt to the conditions that prevailed. One of the ways was to be inventive and survival was ascertained. Whereas in the tropical zones where much labor was not necessarily exerted to have the food required, man did not invent lots of things that could accelerate his productivity.

Having made these remarks, it did not mean that the man of the tropic was less of a man than the one in the temperate lands or lands where climatic conditions were harsher. There was a time when those who lived in the temperate could not and they needed the helping hand from other communities they considered inferior by virtue of their colors or derrieres or nasal or buccal shapes. The helping hand was either coerced or bought. The former was needed and that led to what we now call the despicable slavery and slave trade that left an indelible stain in the history of the world. Vestiges of this still remain and occasionally surface due to naivety of those who have refused to learnt to learn the scientific truth or deliberation.

Shrewder groups that were not necessarily European Caucasians were fast to learn that if they copied those Europeans, they could make advances in their industries. They followed what the Europeans had done in the past, copying from others what could ameliorate their lives. Among these were the Japanese I earlier mentioned in my former chapter. Rather than fight the Europeans who were at the forefront of technological advancement, they buried their hatchets after their first failure and team up with them or copied their ways of life to foster their technological advances. Others emulated and have never advanced for they had not opened their doors widely to receptivity of what were Europeans’. Some had instead remained stagnant for they had refused to let go their obfuscating traditional values, many call religious beliefs. We are thinking here of Muslims and pockets of African traditions south of the Sahara and among the Indians in America, the first nation peoples and sizable groups in SE Asia. These form what we learned in the old geography of the past as primitive communities. Let us call it at this stage modernization paradigm. Others became jealous and confronted the Europeans in apparently interminable wars as the Europeans had fought them too in the past. Methinks the Europeans have progressed since the Industrial Revolution owing to peace that prevailed even though it was punctuated by intermittent skirmishes.

On the whole, there were some doctrines that helped them to progress, the pursuit of the Holy Bible that some young generations are questioning. Slavery too is mentioned and slaves were supposed to obey their earthly fathers as a paragon. The modern Christian church iron that out as there is no overt slavery and slave trade as was the case in the past and in the Old Testament. Although some persons may look at it as archaic philosophies being followed, it would be seen that most of the Western laws that have been responsible for peace in the world have been buttressed by the Holy Scriptures, the Holy Bible. These laws play cardinal roles in peace in most civilized and democratic societies in the world.

Disagree with me I will point out to you pockets of upheavals in the world and you will see that those societies are pivoted on Islamism. The irony is that Islam and Christianity emanate from desert areas but the former tend to be askew in the eyes of many not necessarily Christians but other followers of other religious beliefs.

Certain economic woes or general backwardness of others are attributed to religious beliefs. Often, instead of looking at the root causes of their economic predicaments, they sincerely believe that the way forward is to engage in quixotic fights against those outside their beliefs. The seasoned Islamic believers associate this to radical young believers. This begs for a question, viz, who initiate the children into Islam and if there are no catechisms handed by their mullahs that had to be followed by those to be initiated? A guiding principle assures uniformity of purpose and avoids discrepancies and infighting that had been going on in the Islamic faith where one faction believes that his version is the best and should not be question or denied.  Some of them truly believe that if they were to eliminate or destroy those who would not accept their doctrine, all their economic and divine woes would be solved. That is dogmatism that even Al-Mahdi Mohammed Ahmed was unable to enforce in the 19 century Sudan. No amount of preaching or explication enlightens them as they block their reasoning faculties. The outsider is looked upon as a pagan or untouchable. That cannot be allowed in the modern world. Therefore, as they are anchored in the past, they keep on warring as in the banana republics called Somalia, Northern Nigeria, Mali, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Malaysia, and you can fill in the gabs.

They the fanatical Muslims murder the sleep of civilized people around the world with their uncouth behavior in the name of fostering the work of God, Allah. That makes reasoning outsiders look at their philosophy or god as a worldly creation for epicurean living. Thus their heaven ends on earth as there is no God in the entire universe who would sanction the killing of one person for not accepting his ways. If there were such a god, we would christen him Lucifer, devil.

Most European states, USA and Canada do not sleep when an Islamic fundamentalist is near their doors as behind closed doors some Islamist followers call Christians and other religious believers other than theirs, infidels. Others do not hide their feelings and often burst out that they will retaliate. ...what they see as Israeli and Western intervention in their affairs. Yet if given chance most will come to live in London, New York and Canberra. Why? It is the freedom and Westernism that they love.  Their youths and others are brainwashed to follow their Quran stoically and literally accept where it is stated that if you behead an infidel, a Christian, Hindi, Buddhist, non-believer of any religion, you are doing the work of Allah and your remuneration would be going to heaven and be given twelve virgins as your wives to sir your children with them. Consequently, they do not care to die for their unjust cause, as they have been conditioned not to learn to learn to reason and be agreed and concluded.

Then there are many who have accepted these grudgingly and given opportunity they could part with them. Their alternatives are not necessarily democratic but draconian and demonic. There are many who rather than follow what others had in the past and even in the present succeeded turn round to butcher it in the belief that what others are doing decadence is. Given opportunity they would turn all mankind to follow archaic system of a tooth for a tat, an eye for an eye in their judgement as we read every day where there is Sharia laws being practiced. We learn in school that it was the Hammurabi law and today we have a version of it that emanate from the Middle East called the Sharia law. This follows the archaic rules of the past as laid down in the Quran that is followed by some 1.7 billion persons on earth. That is spine-chilling for such persons if they lay hands on weapons of mass destruction, they will destroy the entire world in the name of Islam.

I am not an alarmist but what people who can kill innocent American journalists, James Foley and Steven Joel Sotloff and threaten to kill a British journalist just to get the thrill out of it or make their point. They have the audacity to provocatively dazzle their decapitated heads and torsos to the whole world. It tells you that given opportunity their nuclear bomb and perfected Ebola virus could be unleashed on Time Square, Kurfuerstendamm Strasse, Oxford Street, Champs Elysees and you can finish the rest at your leisure.

·       They view non-believers of their faith as pagans and should be coerced to be followers as stipulated in their holy book, Quran. Is that true? Where is one's liberty or human right?

·       They view women as inferior creatures that had to be used for man’s pleasure and producers of children.

·       They therefore deny women education for fear that if they are educated they could rebel and ask for their liberty or become Amazons and turn round to rule them as Western Women

·       They proclaim fatwa on persons as Salman Rushdie who questioned even in the work of fiction their beliefs. You can castigate Christianity, you could debate but the Christians will not hang you as ISIS is presently hanging Christians in their caliphate.  

The point is that they could be allowed to do their things the way they like as their liberty, freedom that Westerners know.  Many of them still believe that the Moon that is a satellite of the Earth is a holy place and no one in living memory has ever been there and will ever land there. The achievement of the first American astronauts to land there is to many of them a work of fiction to befuddle their believers.

Then the world is far more sophisticated, more civilized and advanced than what it used to be and has in a way evolved from the days of darkness. It is no longer a ‘dark world’ but a bright blue world with a brighter future if all is done in a civilized way. Then how do we convince a people that there is civilization when all that we do to them is considered appalling paganism? When it is normal to behead journalists for simply reporting the truth about their ways, decapitate Christians as in Tunisia, Libya, Syria and homosexuals, as their way of retaliating to the USA, Westerners and their allies for saying to them that if is wrong to destroy a country that is democratic when they want to form their so-called Islamic State of Iraqi and Syria. (ISIS)? [We will see that after dictatorship come deadly chaos as witnessed by many in Africa and the Middle East. What is the lesson we learn from the support of dictators all over the world because they give us oil?]

They cannot accept justice because it was written in some old book or followed in the past by a group of person that the woman should ever be subordinate to a man and never be allowed to progress in life as man else she had all liberties of life and sundry. They had to wear head to toe garbs called Chador as a way to not make men kinky thus avoiding fornication. Women are never to be allowed to show their skin in the public. Women are not to venture out of their homes if not accompanied by relatives of the spouse. They have to accept sex at any time or place their men want even on the back of camels.  No persons are to watch televisions, not bloody Western music, not pictures or carvings of any sort to depict sceneries or other living things and so on. On Facebook their women are not allowed to show their faces. Those who do are violating their doctrine or trying to be unpitying.  To these, they would be killing our culture and creativity they even depend on. Do we deign with such folks?

In my other treatise, I underlined that to educate a woman is to educate the world. If the reverse was done, the world was being under-educated and under developed. Therefore, most Muslim world of 1.7 billion would be more backward in the future than in the world of other believers, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and so on where women are denied basic education, suppressed and oppressed. If half of 1.7 billion Muslims in the world are women and most of them are being denied access to basic education, imagine what would happen to the world if this despicable wedge was taken away from their route of life. Imagine what he multiplier effect would be. Education should not only be limited to reading their holy book, the Quran. It should not only be limited to Arabic but to all known languages in the world. If women are educated, the scientific progress of the entire world is ascertained and the leap of knowledge of mankind would be phenomenal for the mutual benefits of all and sundry.

A TRAVESTY OF CIVILIZATION

In the traditional Islamic societies, a religion of flesh, it was normal to give children and servants corporal punishment. It is still where Sharia law prevails. It was in vogue to beat women if they did not do what their masters wanted them to do, accepted dalliance wherever and whenever they wanted as we saw above. It was accepted to punish slaves severely as captives so that hell was taken out of them. It was normal to punish animals that even helped us in our drudgeries so severely that some died as men from our punishment as in the days of slavery. Those were days of barbarism when there was nothing called civilization in the world that we know of today. For this sort of behavior to continue in the modern world is preposterous and a travesty of civilization. In the Islamic societies that is still happening after attending mosque worship on Fridays. Hands of thieves are cut off for using them in stealing as put in the Quran and defaulters are stoned to death or decapitated as stated in their holy book. To Muslims, Westerners are not civilized and thanks to the Western laws that we have accepted and the fact that we all are accepting democracy where reasoning prevails and not using our hearts to dish out punishment when in fact we would have let go the culprit.

KLEPTOMANIA IS A DISEASE

In some tooth-for-tat societies, a man may be killed or lynched because he has stolen from his neighbor a bag of rice or a purse from a lady. To an outsider, the thief is a thief and deserves to save his imprisonment no matter what is happening to him. Nevertheless, to a reasoning man who uses his head, psychology, the person you call a thief might have been suffering from disease call kleptomania. Therefore instead of killing him or cutting off his limbs as in Sharia society (of the Sudan, Somalia, Chad, Central African Republic, some states in Northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Mali and Mauritania above all), as is the case in some hitherto barbaric societies that follow archaic system of law call the Sharia, he should have been taken to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. When treated, the man could come out to be so useful in his society and his family. To ISIS fanatics and their sympathizers, such persons deserve to be killed. To them, the man who poked his nose on me on the London Underground deserves to have been pistol-whipped. Similarly, my inadvertent spitting on a man’s face would have made them to whip me before a cheering crowd after their mosque services on Friday. Reasoning was presidential and no one was hurt in both instances. The quixotic attitude in that society has not ending. It is for that reason if ISIS is attacked, anyone from the attackers’ innocent citizens becomes their enemies. In that case they justify the killing of innocent Western journalists as their way of revenging the bombing of their ragtag army by the US Marine.

RACISM AS A RECRUITING POINT

Our second sticky point is racism many never want to admit exists.  If some Caucasians are to insist that they are the chosen race, and that all have to follow them it is then and then that dark-skinned peoples could leave the doors of their vengeance open and go in for the barbaric philosophies that they the dark skinned peoples had condemned in the past. To many of them, the Israeli bombing the Gaza strip in August 2014 as their way to redress the adopting and killing of three Jewish boys is seen from the racists view point. To them, the Jews are white and the Arabs are dark-skinned. To me, there are no differences between a Jew and an Arab as they are closer cousins who ever disagree to agree. You will see that the name Israeli is Arabic and not Amharic. You can see the closeness of these even culturally and linguistically. I am the dark skinned type and there was a time when West Africa or Africa at large was a harvesting jungle where both Arabs and Europeans unanimously hunted dark skinned Africans and transformed them into slaves, a lucrative trade that brought them huge wealth. [This statement is now for our history record and is not meant to foment interminable hatred as what surfaces in southern USA and other places.]

With what is taking place many questioning the purpose of human rights that Westerners talk about when it comes to dark skinned peoples, it became a restricted area. That is when the enemy may be in the house. The enemy this time could be even the Caucasians who will sympathize with the dark skinned and the Muslim and that is when there will be more darkness in the 1.7 million Muslims in the world than it had ever been and they would have more and more overt recruiting grounds.

When another incident as the killing of Michael Brown at Ferguson in Missouri by a White policeman last month will happen again, that will be a perfect opportunity to lure in more and more dark skinned peoples to Islamic extremists’ groups. They will see as have been seen glaringly racism in the killing of what they call an innocent African American youth which they said that no civilized person could accept. The reasoning is that if the Caucasian Police Officer who shot Michael Brown saw that he were white he would not have been so scared to the extent of pumping ten bullets into his body. Where is the solution? To make all white, to recruit more African Americans to patrol regions that are predominantly African American or to have a proportional mixture of African American and Caucasian police officers working in tandem. With what happened to Brown, most African Americans tend to see Caucasian police officers as racists, bad guys and that makes the work of an objective Caucasian police officer more difficult as not all of them are racists.

RECRUITMENT VACUUM CREATED

The knife welding British accented killer of American journalist in Syria appears to be from Brixton or Tooting-Bec South London and may still have his Muslim parents and close friends and relatives there [post note: identified as Jihadi John was a computer operation trained in East London]. These would be committing felony if they do not come forward to reveal this savage killer to the British authorities. What does your gut feelings tell you he is from? The knifing of a Briton army officer on the street of Woolwich, South London on 22 July 2005 could have been an alarm. The two killers spoke the with south London accent and had Nigeria connection. What were the findings of Mi5? The bitterness of jihadists towards the British government had been simmering there for the last twenty years. Many youths who were Rastafarian or Christians as their fore parents were prior to coming to England decided to be converted to Islam.  But what accelerated the spread of Islam in the Greater London some twenty years ago? One may suggest the high rate of unemployment among middle east immigrants and West Indians often attributed to racism. Then the Mullahs had a fertile vacuum where they felt they could fill in. Their proposition as that of Malcom X was that if all were Muslims that did not discriminate based on color, the dark skinned British, Pakistanis, Indian, Middle Easterners and Africans who were ever at the forefront of racism, jobs would have gone round and there would not have been unemployment problems. At close quarters’ study, these descendants of recent emigrants had to keep their homes in order. They fail to ask why immigrants like Chinese and East Europeans do not fall into this category. This is shelved for a future essay.

The once discriminated discriminates. Furthermore, the open-door policy of the UK government of allowing in more and more economic immigrants brought in more Muslims than any other group apart from Turks in Germany and Muslims from North Africa. When you visit today South London, or Tottenham in northern London you have the impression that you are in some part of the Middle East or SE Asia where eight out of ten persons walking along the streets are Asians and only two are Caucasians. The reverse was true 25 years ago. If these people set up industries they only employed people from their countries of origin and the language of work was and is still that of their country of origin. That is a different story of economic discrimination but is still related to the host country having to fear those they had opened their arms to embrace when they turn to hate them to the extent of planting bombs underground and along their streets and stabbing their army men going about their daily chores. Was it wrong that they brought in foreigners?

It was not all that simplistic. African British who had come in from the West Indies at the invitation of the British government as their rewards for assisting them during the Second War needed to do more to be integrated in the British Society. Many needed to be educated the proper way, to speak proper English instead of patois and to be assertive. Those of the second and third generations who passed through those processes benefited and made monumental leap in the society to the envy of some whites. Then there were others who rebelled and formed their cells as in Brixton and South and North London. They saw the police and the authorities as enemies and openly talked against them particularly if a black were killed by a white on the street and the white killer was not found and apprehended. The situation was exacerbated when out of thousands of London Metropolitan Police; there were literally no African British recruited. [Sorry most prefer to be called BLACKS as to them Africans are inferior as they could be polygamous and that to them is backwardness.  They consider themselves more civilized than the once upon a time un-enslaved Africans or continental Africans but they could sire children with mistresses or have mistresses. What is the difference? That is a different topic for another essay.] In the 1980s I met the first African British police man. He talked of racism he faced when he was patrolling the streets. He eventually left and joined a law firm. He was to me a maverick as he was to other whites he was policing. A black who joined the police force was considered by other blacks a sell-out. Then that eventually faltered and in the 1990s more and more joined the Metropolitan Police Force and the equation is gradually balancing unlike say in deep south USA.

EMPHASIS ON RAISON D’ETRE

With jobs not being found and only signing off the ‘dole’ as it was called many who attempted and were qualified could not get jobs as their white counterparts. Then it was an ideal situation for the Mullahs who were born and bred in London of Pakistani and Arabic or Bangladeshi descent to come it. They cajoled the brotherhood of man in the perpetually rioting Briton, and other Southern wards of London that Islam was the right religion for them that did not discriminate based on color. As in the USA, some African Americans were tempted to believe that Islam was more an African religion than Christianity. Let me tell them that Christianity is more African than Islam but all Middle East beliefs have their roots in Africa. The Old Testament tell you that the Jews were African and what is happening in traditional beliefs in West Africa will tell you who reads the Old Testament that it is taken verbatim from Africa. Many forget the Crossover Passage and why the Jews had to leave Africa for the Promised Land.  With fertile ground, the Mullahs recruited some Africans as you will see for those of you who have read the life story of Malcolm X. They recruited Africans and gave them food and they felt loved as never in some Anglican churches and the scenario and equation changed. The children who were born and bred as British turned round to hate their Christian nation and attribute the suffering of the Arabs in the Middle East to their mother country and Europe. Had they a point?

In the 1980s you could not identify a Muslim from their garbs on Oxford Street but in the 1990s they became vociferous and if one visited the Speakers Corners one got in contact with Islamic firebrands. They started forcing their women to clad in dark garbs that were used in Algeria by the women to smuggle arms to those fighting their enemies the French soldiers or colons. If one questioned why it was necessary to wear such under the scorching summer heat, one retorted to me:

“Why do you want to see the legs and faces of our women?”

I asked them why they see the faces and feet of our liberated women, yet they left their open for air and concealed their women as if they had leprosy.

“Why do you want to live here when it is not accepted to treat women as inferior second hand creatures?” I replied with a question.

They did not take my Socratic reply lightly and if we were in Iraq they could have set ISIS eliminators or cultural police on me and other standbys. Thank Jove the Speakers’ Corners was ever packed with uniformed and plain-clothed British Bobbies. I left the ranting crowd wondering what the future was to be like with those who were bent on converting all Anglicans to Muslims. I pondered hard when I attended St. Patrick church at Euston Square that used to be packed on Sundays with congregants of all ages and found but a handful of feeble aged. The Christian youths were praying for pounds, dollars and adoring their computers. The fall in attendance of some churches were sold and converted to residences and others were converted to mosques and that was frightening. Now you can start extrapolating your full picture of Islam in the West.

In London of the past some did not even bear their Muslim names and had two sets of names or eponyms. They would have Christian names they used in their shops or industries. Among their believers and friends, they had their true Muslim names. England was an epitome of civilization and political tolerance. One only saw that there was a sizable community of Muslims in London after the Friday prayers when they had left Regent Park mosque where most of them were being indoctrinated. Then with time other mosques were built in suburbia like Brixton and that opened more room for more recruits of African British particularly of West India origin. However many still dressed in the Western ways and there was no outward flamboyant display of desert gaudy gowns, chador in Arabic. They were not a threat even though a farsighted man would have previewed trouble when there used to be Tottenham and Brixton rioting but things opened when many were emboldened by 911. The banks and health services were that in the past were run by the Caucasian British were now in the hands of descendants of immigrants many of whom bore Arabic and Pakistani names. They had money that could support friends and relatives back home and could sponsor many to come and stay in the UK. That was new-found liberty and power as never had before.

WESTERNERS EXCEPTIONALLY TOLERANT

The British or the Church of England or the Catholics were open-minded and allowed these Muslims to build near their holy of holiest shrines or places of worship as described in my previous reports on this blog, whereas in Mecca Christians were not even allowed to visit. I was fast to conclude that the Westerners were too tolerant, docile because they were begging for Arabic oil and that when the oil would be finished one day, their colors would be shown. Others are reluctant to call ISIS sympathizers dreadful Muslims. Other Western leaders who are begging for votes and cash from those killers of innocent people are ready to kowtow to their dreadful mores, such as covering their faces to stand before judges, wearing gaudy clothes where bombs might be concealed as part of their religious garbs. The French allowed that to happen in Algeria during the colonial days and they turned out to be vessels of bombs, bullets and guns. 

I was appalled when I learn that some of the prestigious vintage homes in the West End of London, UK were already sold to Arabs and recently to strikingly rich Eastern Europeans and Russians who established before the noses of the Britons obscure cells. Native English were running away to the suburbia or countryside as the cost of living was astronomically high in London that many were unable to maintain the homes they had inherited from their parents. The situation was comparable in the USA to where when African Americans came in to the business district center (BDC) of cities the Whites moved to suburbs. Some housing agents ensured that African Americans did not settle where there were Whites in the suburbs by deliberately inflating housing prices when African Americans showed up as perspective buyers or falsely stating that the homes have been bought. As such economic factors drove away the Blacks and ensured that racists were kept apart in some parts of the USA. Blacks had no cash or collateral securities to buy cars that were necessary if they were to commute from the suburbs to the city centers where there were jobs. They had no choice but had to live in the city centers occupying homes, occasionally derelict that were once owned by Whites. This is the same scenario in downtown Johannesburg after apartheid (1994) in South Africa where some shopping centers are still exclusively for Africans. Whites went to the suburbs where Africans for lack of transport were unable to go there to do their shopping. This also happened in Harare, Zimbabwe as in the Cabbage Patch where only the rich Africans and Northerners could afford to shop there and African rank and file, indigenous Africans could not for they could not afford the luxury of driving to the suburbia. Frustrated Africans particularly those who had had Islamic influence prior to emigrating to the USA, Canada and Europe and Middle East immigrants who face unemployment and racism are tempted to be attracted by ISIS that is alleged to practice no overt racism as in some Western enclaves, That is a sad reality that we must endeavor to address. 

The thing is as clear, the winning of ISIS Islamic extremists in their brutish inculcation of Islam (Isis paganism the right term for it) is provisional. If they had emerged as a unifying force to amalgamate Syria and Iraq and if possible Jordan and Lebanon as they were in the Ottoman Empire before the Turks were defeated during the First World War, the West could have welcome it as some avenue for peace in the perpetually turbulent Middle East. Nevertheless,  no sensible person would accept this senseless killing or imposition of draconian Qur’anic laws or the idea of enforcing fanatical Islamic regime, the mistake of decapitation Westerners, Christians, massacring the surrendered Iraqi troops (17,000 of them) , their kinds who would not side with; the barefacedly parading the beheaded ghastly on the Internet and other media . In a way they have emboldened the ever cautious US President Barack Obama to galvanize the Westerners and moderate Arabs state to see to it that ISIS and their associates are destroyed with impunity wherever they are. They had not learned a lesson form Saddam Hussein’s regime.

COULD THERE BE PEACE

Finally, the Arabs never learn as when they would not let go the English in Sudan, then Mahdi Empire, Mahdi’s grave  that was a gathering point in the West bank of the Nile was dug up, and Mahdi their religious hero was taken and the skeleton vanished into the Nile. Mahdi’s people had decapitated the British Governor of British Sudan, Charles George Gordon on January 26, 1885. With Gordon were killed 10,000 civilians and members of the British garrison The English had to revenge and put a halt to the Arab madness. If combined Western forces will not defeat the Arabs ISIS with impunity the fanatics will always contemplate that they could shake a super power as USA to its core and the killing seen now will be just the tip of the iceberg.

Some stated that they join the forces because of the bombing of Israel of the Gaza strip in Palestine. The ISIS by fighting the Arabs, whether Christians, Sunnites  are taking away the pressure of Arabs who could have joined forces to solve local issues, poverty, lack of education, and how to live amicably with their cousins the Jews.

Charles George Gordon, The British Governor in Khartoum who was beheaded by Mahdi’s men, (Arabs) in Sudan 26 Jan., 1885. With him Mahdi and his men slaughtered 10,000 civilians and members of the garrison.

The Arabs retaliate the bombing by the American of ISIS by decapitating, journalists, Christians, Arabs of other Muslim denomination, women, children and many in line we are unable to authenticate. The Arabs who never see the flow of blood as appalling are likely to face the brunt of the British, American, and even the French troops and the other Arabs. They could be taught a lesson they deserve. If President Barack Obama were George Bush senior, the heads of the American would be restored back to their torsos in a matter of days. The ISIS who are the inheritors of Al Qaeda like Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria and Al Sabaab in Somalia bring their message through lightening fright and that is short lived and a sure way to kill Islam. They do not have a steady supply of arms they get from Turkey, confiscated Americans arms the Americans left in Iraq. They are being funded by some Arab states or individuals in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, even in Europe and North America. The point is those funding them could be tracked down and their businesses closed or impounded or money confiscated form the banks. They may have fighters and they may kill with impunity as is normal with the Arabs, they always like to see the flow of blood when they kill unlike the Americans or Westerners who want to kill it clean.

Now there is a crucial question we would like to pose. Do you see that each year the pilgrims congregate in Mecca and the Saudis who benefit enormously from this annual tourism is ever quiet whenever there are Muslim fanatics killing Christians and innocent people? The Saudis are in a stronger position to even excommunicate those who are trouble makers as ISIS but they chose not to do so. By insinuation they are participants in these atrocities. If there were a group of Anglicans or Catholic Christians murdering people in the present, the Bishop of Rome Pope Francis would make a statement denouncing them. We have the Al Sabaab in Somalia, the infamous Hamas, Taliban, and Al Qaeda in the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and we now have ISIS, Hamas and Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria. Other cells are still lurking in the horizon. Can we count how many times these have been shooed down by the Saudi Authorities? Do the Islamic authorities know that they look despicable as Ebola patients each time they appear gaudily dressed before civilized people because of their doctrine of doing Satanic works euphemistically calling it the work of Allah? Instead of their intellectuals in the West and elsewhere attempting to give rationale for their horrendous acts that could cause a major world war, they should head straight to Mecca, Saudi Arabia as a matter of urgency and convene an inclusive forum to bring out a new commonly acceptable 21st century catechism of Islam that must be followed; summarily banning fanaticism from all Islamic sects and faiths. 

Finally, could the Arabs or 1.7 billion Muslim believers around the world pledge that they will never kill non-believers or Christians or Buddhists or Hindus or whoever, as it is all wrong as I did vow never to spit in the open when I noticed that I had mistakenly spit my sputum on an English gentleman’s face? I yearn to kneel down before that man and sincerely apologize but will never ever meet him. He might have forgotten that dreadful but inadvertent act that had stocked on me hitherto like an incurable gangrene.

PS: Please, dear readers,  share this essay for the sake of peace. You do not require my permission for its academic review but it should be acknowledged. Addendum as from 1/2/2016: Read this and you will see how my prediction is coming true: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/somali-al-shabaab-militants-use-donald-trump-in-recruiting-film/ar-BBo7KFi?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignoutmd

EBOLA UP-DATE: WEST POINT TENSION, KISS OF THE DEATH, WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN LIBERIA

News about Ebola deadly virus has been trumpeted by most TV stations and other mass media in Europe, Asia and North America around the world. The French and Belgian Governments that have more interaction with African states have been leading so far in their briefing and sensitizing of their citizens. Médecins sans frontiers /Doctors without borders from France have been working relentlessly in Guinean, Sierra Leone and Liberia, particularly in the city of Monrovia with 1.3 million inhabitants. They are looking after some 150 patients in that city.

Frightened West Point District residents of Monrovia threatening to break out of the quarantined areas explain their apprehension.

Ebola and West Point District of Monrovia:

Outbreaks were predominantly in rural areas but have recently surfaced in urban areas. It is now in West Point Ward of Monrovia the capital city of Liberia. 

 Police Constable D. F. Forleh explaining why West Point Citizens had to be quarantined

West Point is a vast ghetto upon sea that was quarantined by the Liberian police this week because several cases were reported there. The inhabitants got agitated and many wanted to break out having food and water. Many expressed their anger that there were no food and adequate water ‘A hungry man is an angry man,’ some were shouting. According to a senior Liberian police officer, D. F. Forleh commander of the police force, the young agitators who did not adhere to the quarantine broke out and nearly overtook the police. Warning shots were fired in the air and in panic three were fatally injured as they fled by fences, chairs and other obstacles on their way.  It will be recalled that it was at the run-down West Point where tents housing some Ebola patients were ransacked by looters and contaminated materials stolen. The Liberian health Ministry thought that that was to cause more spread of the deadly virus and took drastic measures to contain this by quarantining the area.

More Help on the Way:

The good news is that some international help is coming into Africa to join others that had been working in makeshift laboratories as the Médecins sans frontiers, a French medical charity. These brave men and women at the forefront in the fight against Ebola put themselves at harm’s way. As local nurses, some foreign workers have been victims of Ebola virus. The US health workers Dr. Kent Brantly and his colleague Nancy Writebol who caught the virus was a cause for concern. They were flown back to the US, and treated with ZMAPP experimental drugs at Emory Hospital in Georgia. These recovered and were discharged on 21 August 2014. 

The US Food and Drug Administration have been carrying out clinical trial of vaccine using animal and some successful results have been had. There might be a glimmer of hope from this experimental drug, ZMAPP yet to have clinical trial that was administered to Dr. Brantly and Writebol pictured below. If the success of this is pursued, how fast could this be produced and shipped to Africa to stamp out this dreadful virus?

Dr Kent Brantly and co-worker Nancy Writebol survived the deadly Ebola virus.

Apart from this, other help is coming from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Government of President Joseph Kabilla that had had six cases of outbreaks of Ebola since this virus surfaced in his country. DRC Government that has had more experiences in handling it than any other Government in Africa sent some of their experts to help President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia Ideally. It is hoped that the Ugandan Government that had had Ebola outbreaks in the past and knew how to handle it would be giving a helping hand.

The Russian Government experts in epidemiology, bacteriology, and virology from Novosibirsk and Saratov also left for the Republic of Guinea on August 21, 2014. They will set up mobile laboratory camps where they will carry out quick scientific studies and tests of this deadly virus on the spot [www.rt.com/news/18864-russian-virologists-Ebola-laboratory. Russians are alleged to already have a vaccine against Ebola. If it were to be suggested, it should be a golden opportunity where   Russians, Americans and Europeans scientist could put their concerted efforts and team up to work together instead of duplicating services. It should not be left to be coordinated single-handedly by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Anxious West Point citizens explaining to a Government official why quarantine and curfew should be lifted.

Difficulties

It should be remarked that difficulties are having laboratory tests to determine if patients have actually contracted Ebola. Where patients are in the rural areas, where there had been reported cases of outbreak of Ebola, it meant that samples had to be taken to towns where there are laboratories before the results are ferried back to the location of the patients. Communication and bad roads’ difficulties make the work more difficult and before some are reached, it is too late. It should be recalled that if a patient is not treated immediately from the time he contracted this deadly virus, he or she has approximately 10 days after to survive if not attended to by experts. Fatality is so high that 7 out of 10 die and this has instilled extreme anxiety in many throughout West Africa, India and even around the world.  [Some areas literally take the no travel dictum seriously to the extent that there are no travels. The negative effect in the economies yet to be computed is still phenomenal]. If 7 out of 10 attacked die, the survival rate is only 30%.

In some cases, Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins sans frontiers had to ship samples from Liberia to Guinea before the results are returned to Liberia. Time wasted is a matter of life or death. It is for this reason that the coming of the Russians scientists with mobile laboratories is anxiously awaited too by the Liberian officials. On Friday 22, August, 2014 this organization was nursing 150 patients in Monrovia and that is a lot. Is Liberia the only country in West Africa having outbreaks of this hemorrhagic fever, Ebola?

Liberia is one out of many. Outbreaks were reported by the WHO in Guinea, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, and Uganda  in 2000.  The death so far this year is as follows:

Guinea 396,

Sierra Leone 374,

Nigeria 4,

 and Liberia 576.

The total number for West Africa affected is 2473.

This virus could be contained if people in the affected areas follow led down hygienic guides by health authorities. It is crucial to always wash hands with soap using boiled water where possible and refrains from habits that are likely to lead to contact with bodily fluids of affected persons or any person you have not know for a good while.. since March of 2014. 

Women, Children and Ebola.

Women have been the ones getting most of the brunt of this deadly virus. The second hardest hit are children. There are think tanks who have been questioning if that has got something to do with their immunity. Children and women’s immunity has nothing to do with it. It may be attributed to some of the factors outlined below:

·       It is due to the fact that in the African set up most of the women are naturally caretakers or nurses. A good number of them do the shopping, travel where they mingle with other peoples that are not necessarily related to them.

·       Apart from this most are house wives who receive their families when they return home from various duties during the day. Some embrace and kiss and that is the embrace or kiss of death. If their family members are ill they are the first to attend to them or nurse them and it is when the sicknesses are getting more serious that their family members are taken to the hospitals. It is ever late for most of them before they realize that they are also ill.

·       Most are not as educated as men. Remember that in some African milieus families prefer to send boys to school than girls, the consequences of this are manifested among adult population. We have learned of the case in the Islamized communities in the past in West Africa where girls were not even sent to school. This phenomenon is recently being accentuated by the infamous Boko Haram, Islamic fundamentalists who frighten the hell out of people by their brutal killing and merciless inflicting of punishment to non Muslims and those who would not conform to their archaic Hammurabi's draconian rules just as ISIS in the Middle East. How were the deprived women to learn of basic hygiene to even read that severe fatigue was a sign of Ebola coming and they had to seek medical attention.

·       Often these women are forbidden from interacting with non-family members and if these members are not informed they too remain uninformed. If they are forbidding interacting with foreigners, simply dialing of a phone to talk to a national nurse of the Ministry of health where they could get help from a hotline is restricted. You will now start piece together how some women’s hands are tied in the face of danger.

·       As for children, they are rank among the least informed and are likely to forget basic hygienic principles taught them at home or at school. Also, they are the first to meet and play with other children where they touch each other on playgrounds, market places and schools thereby contacting this virus. Accepting simple gifts from strangers is what most Western children would not do but in some of these societies, it is considered a sign of hospitality to offer gifts even to strangers. There are professional beggars in urban areas and what they receive may turn out to be what carries Ebola virus. So how should the health authorities tackle this? How could they prepare the society for a second coming of Ebola? Remember that it has surfaced and resurfaced in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Many still believe that they could get away with it and that what killed their relative has not similarities with Ebola disease virus. Before long they are affected. Thorough inculcation of hygiene and sensitization of the masses must be carried out at all cost. 

·       Lack of education, poverty and many more factors space does not allow us to elaborate here account for female patients in AIDS/HIV and Ebola affected areas outnumbering men. The case of immunity of persons based on gender is immaterial.

Dr. Viban Viban Ngo, Ph.D.

THE UGLY FACES OF EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE RISING AGAIN IN AFRICA

[Key words: Ebola Virus disease, HIV/AIDS, Africa, spread, halting, pandemic, customs, hygiene, traits, symptoms, media, WHO, history, cultural clashes, emigration, border closures, suggested remedies] 

The world belongs to all of us no matter wherever we are and it should be our responsibility to make it a healthier place for all and sundry, now and in the future. With the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) epidemic in West Africa, it should be our concern. We should not be apathetic in the belief that it would never affect us living thousands of miles away. Together we could move mountains and even stamp it out as never before. We have done it in the past and still could do even better today. We could volunteer, contribute financially to NGOs or Governments affected or just by sensitizing others as we are doing in this treatise. Remember that being isolated or living in distant lands does no guarantee our protection from it as was a long time ago when there was little intercontinental human interaction. It will take less than ten hours with our modern transport network and the whole world is agitated because of our being uninterested over what is happening in some remote corners of the world. 

 My simple bill board for stopping the Ebola virus spread campaign

There are others who are being fooled that Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) is a hoax or some invention of Westerners. This is malicious and unsubstantiated information we are familiar with that must be dismissed outright by all level-headed persons. The World Health Organisation (WHO) reported today (Wednesday, August-20-2014) of 1400 having been killed in Western Africa. Some unconfirmed sources talk of 2473 affected persons. Liberia accounts for some 450 deaths where some persons still believe that it is a hoax. On false dissemination of information concerning pandemic diseases, was that not the same doctrine that was preached by false prophets in Southern, Eastern and West Africa when HIV/AIDS was still at its inchoate stage in the world? The perpetrators misled the gullible public and the pandemic disease got out of all proportion. Many are languishing because of that misinformation. The doctrine is where in doubt leave it out as good journalese does. 

We still recalled the President Thabo Mvuyewa Mbeki of South Africa Republic (1999-2008) even bought it and that undue hesitating caused the death of many in the Republic of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Uganda earlier on. Many naïve persons lent their ears to this unscientific doctrine and before long it became pandemic. The leak that could have been patched to save a mighty dam from bursting out was ignored and before long the dam gave way and the deluge caused untold mayhem, irreparable damages. Those who adhered to this doctrine perished in droves in the morning of their lives. Some person stated that if one was a real person, one should face the brunt of it and did not survive. Hamlets, homesteads, and even villages and townships lost vibrant economic men and women. When you visit those ghost settlements you see but older folks or children looking after children, a sad scene as one after a war where men have all been killed and buried.

This false doctrine was fanned by bogus medicine men, herbalists who are often considered as savants in some communities who sprung up and purported to have discovered cures or supported the false doctrine that all were European chicaneries to cut down the burgeoning African population and replace it with theirs as had been their tradition. The very traditional medicine men had been a wedge towards westernization of many in the developing world as the infamous Boko Haram. They had not stopped poisoning the hearts of many and befuddling them for their financial and other gains. The interpretation by others was that it was whites' boldfaced racism. As prophets, many listened to them and were victimized. Many preached that the only cure was to have dalliance with infants or virgins and we had unheard-of rapes of infants in Southern Africa and the spread of the diseases (STDs) as never before. We wonder if the authorities learned lessons from these allegations.

The remaining folk rather than stay when their off spring had perished decided to leave their settlements as was the case in gone by days when pandemic diseases as small pox, tuberculosis, influenza or Spanish flu struck some African communities. The interpretation in those days was that the gods had not accepted them where they were settled or that the soil was spoiled. The only remedy was to emigrate or migrate. Tribes thus left for fertile and healthier climes in distant countries abandoning all they had worked for since time immemorial. This was one factor that triggered emigration and migration in the past. Vestiges of this attitude still lingers in some primitive communities. It is sad that some gullible persons in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and even Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa still believe in this doctrine of diseases brought into their communities by Westerners. It does not tally as it benefits neither Africans nor Westerners but helps in slowing down the fragile economic progress of these states.

In the aforementioned countries, there are some men of God, pastors who are of the opinion that Ebola as AIDS/HIV related diseases are a curse from God for the civil wars that had plagued those states in Africa. If they know that God loves all, He cannot punish by inflicting punishment in the form of pandemic diseases to wipe out those He truly loves. Remember he said that He came to Earth for sinners and He equally loves them. Also falling on the list is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where Ebola first showed its ugly face in 1975, in Uganda in 2012,  Ivory Coast, and Gabon. It might not have been the first time in the D.R.C. As far back as the 1930s a plague was reported along the banks of the tributary of  the River Congo, called River Ebola from which stems the name EBOLA, then known as the Belgian Congo or Congo Leopoldville. A priest had come and the villagers who had evacuated a village because all the subjects were dying as flies were glad to offer him a hut in that village for his accommodation. The reason was everyone in the village had died from a mysterious virus and the villagers who did not entertain the White man's intrusion (they did not like forced labor of the Whites Belgians and hash punishment dished out when the right quarters of rubber and tusks were not collected by the locals and handed to the Belgian colons gratis) believed that this Priest of the Sacred Heart Mission was to perish in a matter of days. Surprisingly he survived to write his report. 

My above interpretation cited on my blog article 'Plants' Intelligence' was from the geographical perspective which was as the consequences of destruction of the rain-forest and putting off balance of its natural ecosystem. The rampant killing of wild animals for food made easier now with the availability of modern fire power that was never in those communities in the past may also contribute. However, the present case started from Guinea Conakry before being taken to Liberia and Sierra Leone. If Guinea Conakry had known what the Congolese who were used to it were doing to stamp it out, it could have been contained. In the Congo (DRC), it had been known by the locals that Ebola patients were not to be touched and that in the event of their dying, their bodies were buried on the spot and their huts and belongings were summarily burnt. Those traditional measures help and have been helping but other countries had not had a clue as what to do.  In the case of Guinea Conakry where it started, it is conjectured that a hunter might have brought in a dead primate from his hunting field that was not well prepared by those who consumed it. The virus then got to man who could not handle it as bats or the primates. Therefore, should all the bats and primates be eliminated to ensure that there is never such a thing in the future? What was done with the dreaded small pox by the World Health Organisation (WHO)?

The initial hosts of Ebola virus disease are thought of to be bats that fed on the blood of primates and in the process transmit the deadly virus. It is also conjectured that it is transmitted from primates to primates by mosquitoes or through their bodily fluids. How does man get it? 

The primates and bats even including the vampire bats are caught and eaten by man. If not properly prepared, the virus is then passed onto man whose system cannot handle it as the bat the primary incubator. Furthermore, the virus that had animals as its host upon the destruction of their hosts had no other option but to look for an alternative and man is the next best host. How can this cycle be solved?  In some communities where primates are not slaughtered for 'bush meat' and soup preparation as in Zimbabwe, Mozambique... cases of this had never been reported. The communities believe that primates are their relatives and dare not be eaten. 

Other pastors or local missionaries attribute the spread of this hemorrhagic fever to the predicaments and atrocities of men’s inability to forgive each other, raping of women, lynching of children during internecine civil wars, using them as child soldiers, coveting of common minerals, the natural gifts of God by the use of arms that were supposed to be shared equally among their inhabitants. If this allegation could be true then most of Africa are still awaiting their turn!

From my personal perspective, all these theories as to their causes and courses by men of God are intangible and we have to be scientific. Time is against us and there is no room for speculations. Why?  One, people know that they could live with people who are HIV/AIDS infected and be scotch free from them and their related diseases. For example, the saying in some communities is that ‘you could die from having dalliance but no one has ever died from its abstention.’ That is complete sexual abstinence. Another is that if partners are completely faithful to their spouses or sex partners and those partners are in return faithful to them there would not be sexually transmitted diseases (STDS)in their communities. Many ensure that they stick to this by letting themselves be scanned before marriages or cohabiting. The orders and prevention guides that are being sensitized in all assemblies in third world countries highlighting that there are no bodily fluids exchanged if we are to stop the spread of Ebola virus:

·       No kissing whereby bodily fluid could be exchanged,

·       No exchange of saliva or sputum by eating or drinking from common eating utensils or spiting in the public. in most African societies, it is believed to be the accepted hospitality if all members or the family eat from a common dish with their hands. The exchange of saliva is a certain thing under this circumstance and diseases are bound to be spread. Furthermore, the cleanliness of hands where there are often shortages of water or clean water is questioned.

·       No sharing of utensils

·       No sharing of needles

·  No breastfeeding by Ebola patients whatever the circumstances,

·       No exchange of blood, blood transfusion,

·       No exchange or touching of faeces,

·       No exchange of sweats,

·       No exchange of semen,

·       No engaging in sexual acts likely to endanger lives or leading to exchange of bodily fluids.

In brief no contact with secretion of the patient with Ebola virus or AIDS/HIV as the case may be. Then the point is most of the patients are not aware that they are sick unless there are manifestations and the only way to know initially is to be clinically tested. Do the impoverished communities have the necessary scientific facilities for testing. We will examine this in our next article.

The moment many got to know of this and followed it rigidly, there was a slowdown in the spread of AIDS/HIV related diseases. Some resolved to abstinence, wearing of condoms were imperative or sticking to one partner.

My poster for dedicated health officials in the fields. This could be translated into French, Portuguese and Arabic, the common languages in Western Africa.

A BRIEF HISTORY: The knowledge that diseases could be transmitted by contact had long been known by man for long to the extent that in some communities shaking of hands or touching of parts of the bodies was not allowed particularly of those of strangers. Having said this, it took so long and even hitherto for some Africans to believe in the existence of viruses or germs. To many, sicknesses were caused by your enemies through witchcraft and you could be cured by mending fences with your enemies, paying the witch doctor to give you a counteracting portion, gri-gris to protect you or iron out your grievances by some other ways. Europeans fell into this trap too until viruses were discovered and we thank scientists like Louis Pasteur of France.

There was a time if Europeans came to Africa for leisure or businesses, the greeting of their stakeholders were only twice. The first was when they arrived and the last was when they were saying adieu to their hosts, which was leaving the country after the end of their duties. In the colonial days, natives were supposed to give way when they were passing, genuflect and even remove their hats or caps as a sign of respect. There was no question of shaking hands. Many locals who were naïve over Western cultures concluded that that the White-man was snobbish or racist. It was because in most African societies one greeted and shock hands each time one meet somebody along the way throughout the day. The fact that travelling is still by foot make this possible unlike in the West and other communities where motorized vehicles have literally taken over and men rarely have such close contacts unless in churches, bazaars, theaters, shopping centers or stadia. Even then, one greeted those who were close to one and not anyone in the crowd. 

The case of a White man not greeting Africans was cultural clash. In the West for most of the time, friends rarely shock hands after they had got to know each other unless they were away or where returning to their original base. Another time when one was being greeted with the shaking of the hands was when one was being congratulated on having struck an attitude, that is, did something extraordinarily wonderful in his society and was being awarded. Then in the case of a different culture where one greeted each time one meets someone, it was hard to get familiar with that sort of culture. 

One realized that many Africans had bad hygienic manner, putting of fingers in the nostrils, blowing the nostrils with bare hands and many more. Others had no toilets or toilet rolls taken for granted in the West and if toilets were used hands were not necessarily washed with soap and clean water. The safest way to mingle in such a society was not to shake hands no matter the consequences. In those days, there were no bottled waters and expatriates were even advised to drink beer or boil water before drinking. Many drank their teas and survived. Then, if you were a business person, you might loss customers because of your apathy was misinterpreted as racism, an aspect many Africans do not take lightly when in contact with white persons. Meanwhile to you it was for hygienic reasons. You believed that your health came first and there was no question of philandering with it so as to have a good name in the society where your life could be in jeopardy.

There are isolated cases where other Africans were not allowed to shake hands with whoever came across them. This is still common with the cases of chief-priests, grandees, lords, and kings of a good number of tribes. In some tribal set ups in say the Grassfields of the Cameroons, ‘thou shall not shake hands of the king, supreme or paramount chiefs or chief priests or queens.’ There are bitter feelings engendered when this role is broken by some government officials of some countries who neglect or do not want to respect tribal norms. Apart from that, chiefs who cross the line for financial emoluments from governments are sanctioned in ways we need not discuss here by tribal regulators. When the young Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and the Commonwealth visited Lagos in 1956, the King of Nsoland in British Southern Cameroons would not shake hands with Her Majesty as it contradicted the tradition of his kingdom for their kings to shake hands with women. He entered his Land Rover and headed home from Lagos, a long way from home. If one ever shocked the king’s hand it was considered as undermining his authority and the defaulter could be punished by death or sold into slavery.  In some cases, ‘thou shall not call the personal name of the king or chief.’ If you did that you dethroned the king. The only time a king’s name was called was when he died of naturally causes.

Let us not digress. By the king not shaking hands with anybody no matter their caliber, he was not likely to catch any of the diseases that were transmitted through human contacts. You will observe that if the Queen of UK and Northern Ireland and the Commonwealth of Nations were greeting patrons, she wore gloves, although for fashion reasons, in a way, she was hygienically protected. For the local dignitaries, they, in a way lived longer than their subjects. This equally implied to the case of his royal majesty’s queen or queens in some African tribes. They dare not have coitus with any other person but the king. They did not shake hands too. If there were infringement of this bylaw, they could be eliminated or sold into slavery in days prior to westernization of their communities. The adulterer that is the person who had dalliance with the queen (woman of the palace) was eliminated by the regulators of the society or exiled. This theme is explicated in my old work Shadows of Fire for those who have patience to read it between the lines. The protagonist fell in love with the queen before being given to the king in marriage and that was felony. It sounds barbaric but it still happens in some societies, not only in Africa.

Most of us still extant recall the bitter feelings among some royalties when Princess Diana Spencer left Prince Charles the heir to the Crown Throne for the son of an Arab guru’s Doti al-Fayed. That was the biggest gamble of the century. However, in our case, it was a matter of life or death and the subject rather is killed than the ruler of the kingdom who was supposed to hold the kingdom together. He was a religious leader and even called the Sun King, for he was the sun without which the kingdom was in darkness. He was all powerful as we heard of the case of one of the Zulu kings who tested the obedience of his soldiers in Kwa Zulu (Zululand) before the arrival of Europeans. He ordered 2000 of them to march strength into the India Ocean and they did it all without questioning his order and drowned. How many of us could obey the Queen of England or listen to Her Majesty’s orders transmitted by Governor General of Canada? There are still many who would do that as if a third World War were to start and orders were given by the Queen, many would die for her. They had done so for the British Royalties during the last two world wars and many are still prepared to give their lives for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II if need arises. So the cases of African sovereigns are not idiosyncratic.

The crucial question is how could this Spartan obedience help in the halting of the spread of Ebola and also AIDS/HIV related diseases? Talking to a group of Africans, a year ago, one of them told me that only very stupid persons got AIDS/HIV.  He meant the less intelligent who would not obey the authorities, regulations or adhere to their basic hygienic principles being recommended. In the case of Ebola and AIDS/HIV mentioned above, there is basic hygiene if strictly followed people could not be put in harms’ way:

1.    It is a known fact that Ebola comes from eating meat. The question posed must people eat meat to get their protein particularly when not well prepared or stored after preparation? If the animals eat grass or other animals to survive, why must it be necessary that man should eat meat to survive? People have lived for long by only eating vegetables and cereals or other root crops, why could all not revert to cereals and vegetable and leave meat completely if that is the only remedy for their not being affected by Ebola? The thing is as clear. Locals do not have enough fuel to prepare their meat and often they eat some raw. Also where prepared over firewood, they do not even have refrigerators to store the remaining food. Flies that had landed on contaminated raw meat with Ebola virus could and still land on cooked (bush) meat that is not well stored. The end result is getting the diseases from next door, our primates to the healthy body, voila!

2.    Basic Hygiene: How many wash their hands before they eat and after they have eaten? How many stoically want to eat with their hands and share from one dish as a way of socializing as their parents did in the past thereby spreading the virus and many preventable diseases? Many do not have the right or clean restaurants you see in Western countries. In most beer parlors food being sold is prepared at home and transported in huge flasks in battered taxis shared by all Toms, Dicks and Harries. The food does not stay hot all day long and gets cold and that is an invitation for bacteria and other problems space does not allow us to discuss here. Where they have sufficient fuel, they may not have clean water for cooking or washing dishes and if the dish washer is ill, or any of the patrons is ill, all other clients are likely to be ill. So where is the remedy?

3.    We read of stupid cases in Liberia where the isolation wards in which Ebola patients were housed were ransacked by bandits who have ignore warming of the spread of Ebola and claimed that it was a Western ruse to cheat Africans. They stole blankets, buckets, mattresses, bed sheets and many more already used by living and dead Ebola victims. Therefore how do we help those poor fellows? In an ideal case the mattresses and all other bedding would have been incinerated. How could thieves helped in the distribution of Ebola virus inadvertently and that was cause for concern among the once war ravaged Liberia that was striving to recover.

4.    Thou shall not shake hands with the victims or with anybody no matter how close or dear they were to you or their sufferings. Let it be known that by not touching a patient because one is not qualified, does not mean that one is not concerned. It should be trumped out loudly that Ebola virus disease knows no borders, brothers, sisters, relatives or enemies, religion, gender, age or color of a person. The virus wants hosts at all cost and man provides the best option in the absence of bats, monkeys and other animals in the forest or wilderness in the case of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). We have adumbrated this point above.

5.    Solution? We heard the other day that there were some Parisians who would not entertain rats that are infesting the beautiful streets of Paris being killed or poisoned as being an infringement on their animal rights. Funny as rats caused bubonic plague that killed millions in Europe in the 1720s. The chief carriers were fleas from rats as was the case with Black Death in 1348. [The Australian farmers will tell you what it means to fight rats in the farms. Africans and Indians will tell you how much havoc and cost they have to pay to fight against rats and mice]. So pandemic diseases are not new and we attribute many to the poor hygiene of man particularly after he had focused his attention on wars as the case of countries outlined in the Western and Central Africa. For man not to have learned from those incidents go to substantiate our African’s friends saying that ‘only a stupid man dies form Aids/HIV related diseases.’ Who told those lovers of rats in Paris that rats of today do not carry fleas that could trigger another bubonic plague? Ebola is just the tip of the iceberg. Other diseases are still in the horizon that could come to tell us that Ebola was a child’s play. Is there a long term solution? If bats are the sole incubators of Ebola virus, should it be appropriate that all bats be eliminated? Then it will sanction the increase of mosquitoes. We take bats flying around at dusk for granted but they sweep the air of billions of mosquitoes that kill man more than Ebola. More patients have died from malaria than Ebola since it became pandemic in West Africa but we do not even have statistics as it is not mass killing that spread the way Ebola virus does. How do we go about it?

6.    The funeral tradition might have to be altered. There is what is known as the wake-keeping where the deceased is kept and people congregate to cry over it all night long, engorging and washing it down with alcohol. When maddened or having Dutch courage many would touch the dead body, or kiss it as their way of respect for the family of the deceased. They do not know what on earth killed him or her and that is why funeral celebrations are cardinal distribution points in some untutored communities in Africa. The medical knowledge of many is mediocre or totally absent and the only option is to change the burial tradition and call off wake-keeping all together. Let the dead even be buried immediately by well protected specialists. Funeral halls got to be established and life insurances promoted or subsidized by governments where possible. They exit in some big African cities but are rare and far-between in bucolic areas where literally thousands come together to pay their last respect. Let funeral celebration not be like weddings for merriment and excessive eating and socializing. Again let specialists do the job.

7.    . Some patients have been stigmatized and shunned by the society to the extent that when quarantined as the case of Monrovia, Liberia, they escape and mingle with the healthy people so as not to feel isolated. In Brazil of the past there were lepers’ colonies as there are still in many countries where normal citizens did not mix with patients. It does not mean that such patients are being ostracized deliberately. For those who disobey the health authorities and might even have been helped, they help in the distribution of the diseases. It should be trumpeted out using all available media that the sick should seek consultation and as a way of saving themselves and others. The authorities should protect them and if recovered, they could be housed at different addresses where they would not be disdained. There should be no shame about it, as lucky quarantined patients may have the experimental drugs, ZMAPP and other treatments that may make them survive Ebola. There are persons in Uganda and Kenya, East Africa and even the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in central Africa who survived Ebola where their bodily fluids were replenished. The US Dr. Brantly and his partner survived and there is a glimmer of hope. 

8.    The escape from quarantines should be dissuaded and if one is apprehended they should be protected by medics using moral persuasion. Force or intimidation should not be used. There is no question of being in denial as this flesh eating virus is fast in its manifestation.

How do you know that you have Ebola Virus Disease (EVD)? There are simple signs that could indicate that you have contacted it:

• You could be vomiting not only ordinary liquid but blood
• Bleeding
• Blood in faeces
• Have stomach pains
• Rashes on your body
• Red eyes
• Others could have simple sore throat
• Having no appetite
• Fever
• General body aches,
• Diarrhea
• Headache
• Shortness in breathe
• Extreme fatigue
• Some of these symptoms may mimic those of malaria or flu if one happens to be in those affected zones. There are many others we do not have technical facilities or leverage to inform you here. The best thing to do is to seek the help of health authorities in your country. Do not try to hide it as if you deliberately contracted it. 

Should you have any of these symptoms, be advised to rush to the right authorities. Do not wait to have it blossomed before you get panicky. Do not be afraid that by being quarantined it means immediate catastrophe. You rashes or fever could be a simply cold. The best option is to be tested and ascertained before being discharged. Again if quarantined, do not jump into conclusions that it is the end. Many have survived and many will and some years in the history of man, it would be looked upon as we do malaria when there was no known cure in the 1880s and contacting it meant a sure death for individuals not being in malaria’s zones of the world.

Finally, this basic message should not be hoarded but should be made available to all using all media available not only in West Africa but around the world. With our modern interconnection, thanks to the aviation industry, this could be in developed nations the next day. It knows not borders and blocking them is just a short term solution that may not work with the porous African borders that divided consanguineous communities in Africa that are not respecters of borders.  Smart phone providers may allocate some units for these messages to be broadcast to all citizens. There should be a hotline for people to phone. The authorities should make this free. It is a matter of life-and-death. Radio station, Internets, Extranet, TV stations and particularly bill posting [as the author’s alluded to above] at strategic highways and locations may be made as the disposal of the authorities concerned to sensitize people of the dangers of Ebola virus. Often places of worships and market places are ideal in most African states for the dissemination of information of this nature. If there are football or soccer matches, this could be put on the electronic bill boards in stadia. The CNN, TV5, CTV, Al-geciras TV, BBC and Deutsch Welle (DV) that are beamed freely to Africa should also play their role in educating the masses. The world belongs to all of us no matter wherever we are and it should be our responsibility to make it a healthier place for all and sundry.  It should not be ignored that it is an exclusively African problem and all it needs it one patient to set foot in Paris, London, New York, Cairo, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, Mumbai, Johannesburg and the picture is changed. Once more, true borders could be closed but those in Africa are porous. Even the built ones as the one between Gaza Strip and Israel have recently been indicated to be superficial. Tunnels could be dug to criss-cross frontiers, and enemies could even fire viruses across them as weapons of mass destruction.

Addendum: Some materials badly required by health officials when dealing with Ebola virus disease patients:

• Gloves-latex, nitrite, industrial type
• Clorox and antibacterial soap
• Disposable thermometers
• Gowns
• Cotton balls
• Hand Sanitizers
• Surgical masks
• Eye Goggles
• Shoe covers
• Anti microbial hand-wash
• Hair covers or caps
• Bio-hazard bags
• Disposable Stethoscope
• Environmental surface wipes
• Respirator masks
• Plastic bins
• Sharp containers
• Chlorine Tablets
• Surgical tapes
• Gauze

PS: Please share this article. Do not keep it to yourself. 

Dr. Viban Viban Ngo, Ph.D