Category: International Relations

Rev Canon Hassan John, Jos, Nigeria 

Part 2 – The Key to Countering Terrorism

Reflecting on the Brussels bomb blast and indeed the attacks in Europe by the Islamic state, there is this worry about the seeming daunting task of nipping these attacks in the bud.

The challenges are however very clear. Whether it is the analogue approach of the Nigerian security agencies’ method of addressing the challenges or the swift high tech effective manner in which the western world is able to curtail hundreds of these attacks and only these relatively few slip through, the challenges of dealing with Islamic insurgencies are the same.

I believe that the best people to help fight the radical Islamists are Islam Muslims. Now this is a sensitive issue but let me attempt to walk the thin line.

Soon after each bomb attack in Nigeria (pictured), most of them against churches, there are deadly reprisals that follow. Muslims have been attacked by youths who felt frustrated by the incessant attacks and mass murders that have preceded these attacks. The Islamaphobia had increased with each incident.

As long as there are Islamic extremist who attack and kill so also will there be people who are Islamaphobic. It is the sad reality playing out. We need to jointly fight this phobia.

The fact is that very few people and families who are directly or indirectly involved and traumatized by any of this attacks will have any positive feeling towards Islam especially if they are from a different ethnic or religious backgrounds. Every attack creates terror and generates fear. It disrupts peoples’ routine and some permanently. Each attack impacts and changes our social landscape no matter how minimal. Many people will definitely not like that and we really shouldn’t. But I believe that we must focus, despite our different backgrounds and beliefs, we must unite to fight this evil.

It seems that the burden will be much more on Muslims all over the world to be the vanguard and the flag bearers of standing up with their fellow Muslims to fight radical Islamism. I think it is not enough to play safe and try to distant Islam from the radicals. It is not enough to claim Islam is a peaceful religion and Muslims are peaceful people and the radical Islamist are simply distorting Islam.

It is not enough to wait for the west and non-Muslims to fight the radical Islamists while other Muslims hope that the world will see the difference between the radical and non-radical Muslims. Calling those who cannot seem to see the difference Islamaphobic is not going to help the situation. Many societies are already divided on this.

This terrorism is a war against Islam as it is a war against civilization and it behoves Muslims, as everyone else, to be fully part of and engage in this war against terrorism. The war on extremism can mostly be won on intelligence gathered. To a large degree, I think, the Muslim community can work at providing this from their mosques and madrassas, schools and even homes as they begin to notice signs from those who are out to destroy Islam by radicalizing the followers.

To help counter the radicalization in Europe and all over the world, Muslims must be seen and heard supporting the war against terrorism, especially the ones they agree with which is currently against ISIL in Syria. To keep quiet gives the impression of a western aggressor against Islam.

The Umma and the Muslin clerics must find the courage to declare the Fatwa on those of its members who are out to kill and destroy those against their own ideology.

Now I do admit that this is not as easy because the truth is that Muslims all over the world do not all agree on what is radical Islam and what is not.

The fact also is that the fundamentalists, the extremists and the liberal Muslims hold onto and use the same Quran and Hadiths. While ‘peaceful’ Muslims in Europe will condemn the attacks in Paris and Brussels, we know that ‘peaceful’ Muslims in northern Nigeria until very recently, supported Boko Haram and some still sympathize with the terrorists. Others had supported and mourn Osama Bin Laden, as the Pew Research Centre on global attitude showed in 2010.

It is possible that western interventions in Libya and Syria have catalysed the attacks in Europe, according to some experts, but is Islam really ready to transform itself and can it do some house cleaning and house keeping?

An African proverb says ‘a lame man can not complain that the man carrying him smells of sweat, even if indeed he does.’ The Muslims should therefore not expect the world to be politically correct all the time and should not cry ‘Islamaphobia’ when certain truths are presented.

Each time I travel, as a Nigerian with a green passport, the passport and border control in airports will take their time to scrutinize me much more than they will do many nationals. I do not and will never hold a grudge because the past activities of Nigerians with drugs and fake documents have necessitated that they be more thorough. No security officer has the capability to look at me and see a saint. It is part of their job to find out, that means being called out. That can be described as profiling, well is there a better way? Maybe, maybe not but I think what needs to be done has to be done. That how I see it. It is therefore important that we do not assume that people should know that all Muslims are peaceful. We must work together. It is not ‘us’ and ‘them’ our young men and women must see us all united in ‘we’.

We all are in a war. Radical Islamists and terrorists will not spare anyone who does not agree with their ideology. We therefore all must come together, in love and truth and sincerity, fight this war otherwise we will be with it for a long time.

The attacks in Brussels have stirred up quite some emotions for me and possibly for so many who have experienced these attacks at some point; security agents and the medics who have to go through the scenes, soldiers, police and families. The impact can be very present if you have had any experience at all with this terror. May we ever be united against evil, where ever it is and in whichever format it appears.

“Part 1 – The Horrors of Terrorism” was be posted on Wednesday 30th March

Canon Hassan John

The Reverend Canon Hassan John is Vicar of St Christopher’s Anglican Church, Rayfield in Jos, Nigeria.   Following a career in the media he is also the Information officer of the Anglican Diocese of Jos.  Hassan is the founder and coordinator of the Rayfield Peace Project that brings together Christian and Muslim women and youths in a peace building initiative that builds trust and rapport between the Christian and Muslims in Jos.  He is currently on sabbatical studying Christian Apologetics at the Centre for Christian Apologetics in Oxford.

The Revd Canon Hassan John, Jos, Nigeria

PART 1 – The Horror of Terrorism

As the news broke out on the media Tuesday morning 22^nd March of the Brussels bomb attacks, and the tragic events unfolded, I felt the tightening fear in my heart and the deep sense of tragedy because the reality of the desperate determination of Islamic extremists to destroy what they do not agree with anywhere in the world sank in even deeper for me. It is like reliving past experiences again.

I come from Jos, Nigeria, where Boko Haram cut its teeth in the spade of bomb blasts that have become the hallmark of the terrorist group since 2010 when they detonated the first bomb on that Christmas Eve in Jos.

Boko Haram is a terrorist Islamic group that has the Wahhabi Islamic ideology and set its goal first to destroy the church and Christianity, then anything that is western especially education, which they see as corrupting Islam, and then any Muslim who does not agree with their interpretation of the Quran. Since their emergence in 2009 in North-eastern Nigeria, they have killed more than 7, 000 people and displace about a million for the region. The Global Terrorists Index, in 2015, declared Boko Haram the most deadly terrorist group surpassing ISIS.

I have been a witness to the aftermath of some bomb attacks in Jos and have been very close to three of the bomb blasts; the Christmas day bomb blast in Jos in 2011, at the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church, the bomb attack at the Church Of Christ In Nations (COCIN) headquarters compound church on the 26^th February 2012 (pictured) and the St Finbars Catholic church bomb blast on the 12^th of March 2012.

As I watched the breaking news of the Brussels attacks, instinctively I asked myself what I would be doing if I were at Brussels at that moment, assuming I survived and I am uninjured. Well Europe is completely a different context. Almost all support structures and agencies are available to rise up to the challenges as we see in the news.

Back in Nigeria the situation can be very chaotic.

On the Christmas day bomb attack in 2011, I came out of my house, not far from the church, and was thinking of where I would buy some milk when there was a loud explosion, the ground shook and there was a large smoke rising just ahead of me. I was startled and at first did not know what to make of the blast that shook the ground under my feet. But it soon dawned on me that it was Christmas morning and this was certainly a bomb blast. I ran to the scene, and there were people covered in dust, women and children screaming and one of the first casualties emerged from the dust, a man covered in blood. There was a stampede as people ran off in different directions and then a car crash as the drivers desperately tried to flee the scene. Many more people arrived at this time and we did what ever we could to help the injured. The military and police came and cordoned off the area as we were all cleared from the scene.

The bomb blasts at the Church of Christ in Nations, (COCIN) headquarters in the town centre and the blast at St Finbar’s Catholic church in Rayfield, Jos, will always remain indelible in my mind. Both had similar characteristics. They were both cars with suicide bombers. Both came with their handlers who, the church security said, waited about a minute outside the church gates until the vehicle gained access and came within a close proximity to where many people were before detonating the bombs.

In the COCIN church attack, I was driving just past the church that morning and I felt the blast in the car and the dust that rose behind the car as I looked into the mirror and with the St Finbar’s Church blast, I was in another building, a few metres away when the roof of the building vibrated, the window glasses rattled and cracked and the ground shook.

The blood, the body parts and mutilated bodies are too graphic to describe here. The injuries were massive. Buildings near the church buildings showed cracks from the explosion. The car carrying the bomb was a mangled piece leaving a crater where the car used to be. People quickly moved in to help and those who had cars desperately grabbed who ever was injured and rushed off in the direction of whichever hospital they felt was closest. The National Emergency Management Agency the only organization empowered to meet these types of challenges and the Red Cross arrived sometime later to take the injured and the dead. We do not have paramedic and Ambulance services except the very few owned by few hospitals. The police and military also arrived shortly but were insulted by the crowd out of frustration and anger. The soldiers and the police were forced to retreat from the the scene of the COCIN church bomb blast, but at the St Finbar’s church incident, the soldiers, either out of fear or for show of power, shot at the crowd injuring many more people. A bullet hit a man who was standing beside me shattering his shinbone. We all ran for cover and came out later when the shooting stopped. We quickly pleaded with someone who took the man to a hospital.

 

In both incidences, in swift reprisals, frustrated youths went on rampage on the street (pictured)  attacking anyone that looked like the ‘enemy’, in other words a Muslim and to some extent any soldier who they see as ‘complacent’ in all the attacks that plagued Jos for over 5 years. A lot of people were attacked and injured in these reprisals.

Tragedy loomed in the town of Jos for weeks after each of the so many bomb attacks it has experienced. Families went through traumatic experiences and the enmity between Christians and Muslims deepened.

At incidences like this in Nigeria, there are no large street memorial services for the dead. The police and soldiers have phobia for any large gatherings, which can be potential targets. People and families are left to find their dead and bury them and if they don’t, the government will take the dead to a mass grave and bury them. The hospitals have no adequate facilities to cope with the hundreds of deaths from these attacks.

The churches will conduct funeral services for their individual members. We would go from one family we know to the other, to console them and pray with them. We then help in any way we can with funeral arrangements while for the injured we assist with whatever amount we can to cover some of the bills. Relatives would take those that were not Christians back home or to their villages for burial. The matter usually ends there and people simply hope that the next one is not as deadly or people hope and pray that they do not become victims the next time. This is the life in the Boko Haram insurgencies in Nigeria.

This is what made me very sad and anxious at the Brussels attack last Tuesday. But the situation in Europe is different. People are united in the massive condemnation and the paramedics and security organizations know what to do.

In the Nigerian tragedies, the police and military are usually there to secure the scene for the anti bomb squad, to retrieve what is left of the device, if ever it is found amidst the hundreds of people that invade the scenes. They try to keep people away and search for any other unexploded devices while they wait until a high-ranking officer both of the police and military visit the scene and a politician come to make a statement.

Very little is known of the counter terrorism efforts of the Nigerian security agencies, either out of bad information management or lack of the capacity to handle these insurgencies. Committees are sometimes set up and ‘on going investigations’ declared after each incident but the public is rarely is kept abreast of any developments. In the wake of some of these attacks, the security agencies are reported to have discovered bomb making factories and various types of IEDs that Boko Haram uses. They are said to have arrested unwilling suicide bombers; little girls as young as 10 years old used by Boko haram and have arrested people with weapons. But these are always too little too late.

In general the frequency of these attacks in Nigeria give the impression that the security agencies are overwhelmed and frustrated. They do not seem to have answers to these challenges or are ill trained and ill equipped to deal with terrorism.

Families are left to mourn and bury their dead. Some are not able to find their relatives because the remains of those blown to pieces are collected and mass buried. Those that have not been able to find their dead, empty coffins are placed in their memory and buried.

Many who are not critically injured, go to pharmacies on the streets to treat themselves while many others go away with their wounds to care and pay their own bills and to live with the trauma and scars for the rest of their lives. Sometimes, to score political points, politicians offset some of the hospital bills.

Somehow you get the feeling that as soon as one incident is over, there seem to be an anticipation and a waiting for the next to happen and the circle to be repeated again. The efforts of the Joint Task Forces in Jos and in the north east are so covered in controversies, accusations and allegations that many people have resigned themselves to personal protection while the soldiers simply become the security presence in check points on the roads in the country.

In the North Eastern part of Nigeria where Boko Haram is fully operational and has militants in the villages, the YouTube social media is perhaps the place to find some of the tales. Brave soldiers and policemen have died and many injured in this campaign. They must be acknowledged. But many more senior officers and politicians have struck goldmines also in these campaigns. Boko Haram still seems to have the upper hand for now. Perhaps the foreign interventions now will make a difference. These are some of the few differences between the terrorist attacks in Nigeria and the ones in Europe.

“Part 2 – The Key to Countering Terrorism” will be posted on Friday morning at 0900

Canon Hassan John

The Reverend Canon Hassan John is Vicar of St Christopher’s Anglican Church, Rayfield in Jos, Nigeria.   Following a career in the media he is also the Information officer of the Anglican Diocese of Jos.  Hassan is the founder and coordinator of the Rayfield Peace Project that brings together Christian and Muslim women and youths in a peace building initiative that builds trust and rapport between the Christian and Muslims in Jos.  He is currently on sabbatical studying Christian Apologetics at the Centre for Christian Apologetics in Oxford.

 

 

“So what would you do, Jayne, would you shoot or not?”

I remember the silence as everyone paused from their conversations and looked at me, waiting for my reply.  We were sitting by a stream in the heart of the Armenian countryside, not a road or a building in sight – a scene of idyllic beauty with the midday sun blazing down on us, and Caroline’s eyes boring into me.  It was our first major argument, which is rare for friends who have been travelling together for weeks – especially given one of her favorite sayings is “fish and friends both smell after 3 days!”

Accompanying the Baroness Cox of Queensbury in Armenia is such an enormous privilege – anyone who has been fortunate enough to do so will know it’s akin to travelling with the Queen.  She is their national treasure.  A courageous heroine who most Armenians regard as their only true Western ally given her bravery in flying in aid and medical supplies during the 1990s war over Nargorno-Karabakh (no, I hadn’t been aware of it either).

We were sitting with an Armenian Orthodox priest who Caroline had known for years.  He had defended the holy city of Gandzasar (pictured) – Armenia’s equivalent to Canterbury – against the Azeris.  Women, children, the wounded and infirm were all walled up in the fortress city – and there he had stood, alone, with an AK-22 riffle against the troops.

I had asserted that I thought it was wrong to kill – citing like any good evangelical a range of bible verses against this.  I had of course majored on the sixth commandment, and backed up my argument by saying that I thought that God would always provide a way out.

“So would you shoot?”

The question rang round my head.  My text book evangelical response was “no”, and yet I knew deep down in my heart that, yes, of course I would have open fired.  At least I hoped I would have – there were too many innocent lives at stake, and it needed a courageous leader to take on a fierce enemy hell bent on destroying them all with no signs of any mercy.  Which is what this priest had of course done, and in so doing had saved hundreds of lives – as well as sending a strong signal of defiance to the invading forces.

My innocence was lost.  War was no longer so black and white – there was no zero sum game, only one where the most vulnerable get hurt unless people stand up for them.

We would do well to remember this when weighing the options of whether we should go to war with Syria or not.  There is a cost to acting and a cost to not acting – the challenge is to work out which has the higher price, and who is most likely to pay it.

The horrendous acts of violence which we witnessed in Paris on Friday night are a salutary reminder of what happens when religion is hijacked by zealous fanatics who are consumed by adhering to the letter rather than the spirit of their Religious Law.

The Western World now stands united in grief, anger and righteous condemnation of what can only be called acts of Pure Evil.  One does not need to be a believer or an adherent to any particular faith to share in this feeling of moral outrage.  There is a line that the vast majority of us know has been overstepped.  Politicians talk of our “shared values”, but really what I believe we hold in common is our shared respect for the sanctity of life, it is this that sets us apart from the rest of creation.  It is what makes us human – and for those of us of faith, it is what connects us with the Divine.

History unfortunately shows us that the world has not been short of despots, who have had scant regard for this precious gift of life – from Nero to Hitler, and Pol Pot to Idi Amin.  However it is when these tyrannical regimes take on a religious dimension – such as with the Spanish Inquisition or more recently with Al Qaeda – that we start to encounter a zeal that is impossible to rationalise with, and is deaf to any form of meaningful dialogue.  As my dear friend, Canon Andrew White, who you may know better as the “Vicar of Baghdad” and with whom I set up the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East, has said recently about the terror group Isis:

“You can’t negotiate with them…I have never said that about another group of people.  These are really so different, so extreme, so evil…the only answer is to radically destroy them.  It is a terrible thing to say as a priest, it really hurts.  I will do anything to save life and bring about tranquillity, and here I am forced by death and destruction to say there should be war.”

So I wonder where your line in the sand lies?  At what point do you say – enough is enough?  What is the moral or indeed religious code that you apply to these situations, which touch on the fabric of humanity and our very right to exist?

It’s easy when the choices are clearly black and white – when we’re presented with such stark horrors as we were on Friday night.  But it’s far more difficult in the grey.

As a Christian, my moral code is summed up by the Two Great Commandments to firstly “Love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul and mind” and secondly to “love my neighbour as myself”.   It sounds so simple – a Law of Love – a Law of kindness, of gentleness, of goodness, patience and self-control.  A Law that requires giving and sacrifice.  Simple, yes – easy, no.

The crunch comes when we believe that one stops us from doing the other – when we fear that we cannot be loving God with all our heart, soul and mind (the greatest commandment) if we are seen to love our neighbour for doing something we believe God would find abhorrent (the second commandment).

This has been the premise for so many religious wars over the years – the touch stone behind the vast majority of church conflicts from the Reformation to the present day issues over human sexuality.  Some have tried to devise neat ways round it all – such as the unhelpful evangelical phrase (and I speak as an evangelical) that we should “Love the sinner and hate the sin”.  But ultimately it’s about where we choose to “draw the line” – who is my neighbour and who is not?  Who is within the fold, and who is an abomination and therefore should be kept without?

I believe that this is what Richard Hooker, one of the Founding Fathers of the Church of England, was directly addressing when he reputedly prayed:

‘I pray that none will be offended if I seek to make the Christian religion an inn where all are received joyously, rather than a cottage where some few friends of the family are to be received.’ 

I love this picture – and I’m afraid I am going to show my Tolkien colours now, and say how much it reminds me of that scene in The Fellowship of the Ring, when Frodo and his friends having bravely left the Shire, arrive at the Inn of the Prancing Pony in order they hope to meet Gandalf.  Surrounded by men twice their size, from every part of this strange new land they have entered, they find a warm welcome from the Inn Keeper who gives them a room – echoes of another Inn story perhaps?

All are welcome – none are turned away, a place to rest is found and strength given for the journey.

It is this same vision that the Prophet Isaiah shared in the Old Testament reading we heard – which I like to think of as our foundational birth-right as Gentiles.  I think Eugene Peterson’s version in The Message puts this over incredibly powerfully:

“Make sure no outsider who now follows God ever has occasion to say “God put me in second-class, I don’t really belong.”  And make sure no physically mutilated person is ever made to think “I’m damaged goods, I don’t really belong”….And as for the outsiders who now follow me, working for me, loving my name and wanting to be my servants – all who keep the Sabbath and don’t defile it, holding fast to my covenant – I’ll bring them to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.  They’ll be welcome to worship the same as the “insiders”, to bring burnt offerings and sacrifices to my altar.  Oh yes, my house of worship will be known as a house of prayer for ALL people.”

It’s hard to overstate how radical this statement would have been for Isaiah at this crucial time of serious moral and spiritual decline in Judah.  Of course, it was punishable by death for foreigners, eunuchs or those with a disability to enter the House of God and to make sacrifices.  But God had and has s a different vision, made possible through the death of his Son, where anyone who loves Him is welcome.

I fear that instead of being seen as an Inn, however, which accommodates and welcomes all pilgrims on life’s journey, we the Church have become not just a cottage – but an Ivory Tower.  A fortified castle – accessible it seems to only a few who like the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, have become wedded to the letter rather than the spirit of the law.  We have placed heavy burdens on people’s backs – such as who they can and cannot marry – and weighed them down with guilt and shame.

Sadly I fear, we have lost sight of who Christ is, of what He came and comes to do – how He brings life, and life in all its fullness.  How He longs to know us, to love us, to support and care for us, to walk with us through every dark valley and mountain top experience.  He IS love – as the Apostle John (the Beloved Disciple) himself assures us “love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God”.

One of the most important passages of the Bible that I clung to as I was trying to come to terms with my faith and my sexuality is in the Psalm we had this evening.  Psalm 139 speaks such truth about how God is constantly with us, through everything that this life can try to throw at us.  But perhaps more critically it affirms that He knows everything there possibly is to know about us:

“You formed me in my inward parts: You covered me in my mother’s womb.  I will praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made….My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret and skilfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.  Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.  And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me.” 

God does not make mistakes.  We are each fearfully and wonderfully made!

I recently gave a Bible to a Vietnamese friend of mine for her birthday.  I’d been teasing her that despite being one of the leading Eisenhower Fellows of her time, and indeed one of the best read women I know, she had not as yet read the most influential book in the World.  Coming from a Communist nation, she did perhaps have an excuse – it was obviously not a book easily available.  But on receipt she asked me to read to her my favourite passage, and so I read this Psalm.

Later that very same day she had what she has since described to me as one of the closest shaves with death she has ever had.  Although she normally has a chauffeur, she had chosen to take her scooter to get her quickly to a high level meeting at one of the embassies.  Hitting a pot hole in the pouring rain, she hit the ground at speed and then felt the wheels of a bus literally shave the top of her head.  Lying on the ground she said that the first thing she recalled was that morning’s reading – “you hedged me in behind and before – you are familiar with all my ways”.  She has absolutely no doubt that God saved her life that day, and as a result she has called together all the other Eisenhower Fellows in the region and told them that they too should prioritise reading the Bible with her.  She rang me later that day to say that this had been one of the most profound and moving incidents in her life, and that something very significant had happened to her.  Good fruit – born of an act of love.

There are those in the Church who believe that as a gay woman who is keen (God-willing one day) to be married to another woman, that I am an abomination and that allowing me a place within the Church would cross a line that they feel God has clearly drawn.  They try and love me whilst hating my sin, not realising that in doing so they are in affect hating and rejecting the core essence of what makes me me.

So am I their neighbour – indeed are they mine?  How can we love each other whilst professing to love God with all our heart, soul and mind – which in turn leads us to fundamentally disagree on what we believe He says about how I should live my life?  I believe they have become Pharisaic in their understanding of scripture, and they believe that I am wilfully disregarding what they see as God’s clear moral code.

I could point them to the passage in Luke we heard this evening, where Jesus encourages his disciples to judge a tree by its fruit: “men do not gather figs from thorns nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush”.  Sadly I fear they do not want to see or hear the evidence either of the fruit of loving committed same-sex relationships or the damage of their teaching on lives torn apart by guilt and shame.

So what is the answer?  How does the Church ensure it is a House of Prayer for all peoples, a warm and welcoming Inn for those who are on life’s journey?

How do we break down our Ivory Towers and storm the castle defences to ensure that all can find a place of refuge within the Body of Christ, the Church?

The answer is simple, but it is certainly not easy.

It is to love, and to continue to love.  Even our perceived enemies – when they despise and yes, reject us.  Because love never fails – it bears all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things and endures all things.

For me, loving the Lord my God with all my heart, soul and mind means that I need to love each and every single person He puts my way – including those with whom I vehemently disagree – as I need to love the Christ that lives within each of them.

Do I have a line?  Oh Yes.

There are those who have no love in them at all, who are full of pure hatred and evil- as we see with Isis – and against whom we need to take a stand.  But they are few and far between, and known by the horror of their putrid fruit.

The coming years will see the Church debate where it feels it should draw its lines on issues to do with love, sex and marriage.  I pray that we do so in such a way that we all find ourselves on the side of Love.  That we become once again an Inn of loving hospitality for a nation that desperately needs to know the love of Christ, rather than a Cottage – or indeed an Ivory Tower – which is for the selected few.