Zimpapers Logo

Opinion Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
THE French and the Belgian governments have deployed military forces to beef up their civilian security personnel following the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine’s staff members by radical Islamic activists in Paris recently. Media reports indicate that Germany is also actively strengthening its internal security by picking up for questioning suspected Islamic adherents in various towns.

Both France and Belgium have large Jewish populations who are known to be likely targets of Islamic fundamentalists. Jews in the Diaspora are found virtually all over the world but mostly in Western Europe where they are referred to as Sephardic Jews and in Eastern Europe where they are called the Ashkenazim.

In Africa, Islamic fundamentalism has shaken the foundations of Nigeria, and seriously threatened the security of Cameroon, Niger and Chad. Boko Haram is playing havoc with people’s lives in those countries, and is posing a serious security threat to the entire region whose countries are members of the Economic Community of West African states, Ecowas.

In Central Africa, the Central African Republic, CAR, has been aflame for several years, and there does not seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel in which Christians and Moslems are at one another’s throats. The Sudan was split into two states two-and-a- half years ago, Southern Sudan with Juba as its capital, seceding from Sudan whose administrative headquarters are Khartoum, a predominantly Moslemic region.

Southern Sudan is largely Christian and traditionalist. The separation came after a long civil war in which hundreds of thousands of people died, some as a result of the actual armed conflict, some because of starvation and exposure, and some as a result of diseases.

In North Africa, Libya has virtually two administrations, one claiming to be more Islamic than the other.

In Egypt, a Moslem Brotherhood government, democratically elected, was ousted in 2013 by mass demonstrations and a military autocracy took over.

Somalia in East Africa has been in a mess for a pretty long time, and has become the centre of a violently radical Moslem terror group called Al Shebaab, an off shoot of Al Qaeda. It has been repeatedly sending armed raiders into Kenya where they have killed unarmed, innocent shoppers, travellers, worshippers as well as tourists.

Across the sea in the Middle East, Iraq has been torn apart by an Islamic army whose aim is to turn the whole region into a radical state under a caliph. Syria has been at war against itself for a number of years.

All these areas where there is armed conflict, fundamental Islam features either as an agent of revenge against usually the West or against an enemy of Islam, real or imagined, or to impose an Islamic state as is the case in Iraq, Syria and Nigeria.

Historically, Islam was propagated by force of arms from Mecca to Kazakhstan in the north, to Spain in the west, to the Indus River in the east, and to the Niger in the west.

What Boko Haram is trying to do in the Ecowas region, and other Moslem fundamentalists are attempting in Iraq and Syria is exactly how Islam was spread throughout the then known world shortly after Prophet Mohammed’s death in the seventh century of our era.

What is new in the current wave of terror is that the main targets seem to be the western European nations minus the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Germany and a couple of other vocally pro-Israel states are obviously in the firing line of the Islamic fundamentalists.

The attack on shoppers in a Parisian Jewish kosher supermarket was an ethnic aspect of this international tragedy that has its roots in the remote biblical times long before little but highly courageous David vanquished the gigantic Goliath by means of a sling and a pebble.

Another pro-Hebraic legend highlighting the traditional enmity between the Jews (Hebrews) and the Arabs (Philistines) is that whose prominent actors were two, a woman called Delilah representing the Hebrews and Samson as a Philistinian hero. The story is well known to every Bible reader.

In our day and age, we are witnessing clashes between Israel and all Arabs and the bone of contention is really not Arabic crude oil but the Palestinian issue.

Would there still be so much tension, terror and fear all over the western European, American, parts of the Asian and African world if the Palestinian-Israel conflict had never been initiated by sheer human greed?

As far as the Arabs are concerned, Israel is a glaring piece of injustice against their Palestinian brethren, and to blame are the United States, British, French, Belgian and other governments that are supporters of the creation of Israel.

It is very important to note that countries such as Romania, Russia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Ukraine and other East European states do not appear to have any terrorists problems associated with Islamic fundamentalism.

The most likely reason for that is that they have Arab-Israel policies based on sound moral and just principles, and not on the notorious Balfour Declaration on whose tenets the Jewish State was founded at the expense of the interests of the Palestinians (Philistines.)

That an equitable solution should be found in this decade rather than be left for later and later is obvious.

Meanwhile, it is important, for those whose faith is based on the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed to accept that some people believe in the teachings of other religious leaders who were as God-blessed as was Mohammed by Allah. Imposition of one’s faith on others by force is a very serious crime.

In the modern world, freedom of worship is an internationally recognized inalienable right of everybody irrespective of their gender, social status or political beliefs. Talking about political beliefs brings us to another extremely important modern social tenet which is that one’s religious beliefs do not have to be intricately tied to one’s political persuasion.

If there is no separation between the two, that is the church or the mosque and the political arena, the matter should be left to the people to decide through the ballot box and certainly not through the bullet.

Should our Islamic fundamentalists continue to reject this basic humane principle as they are doing currently in Iraq and Syria and also in Nigeria, then the solution is either a physical separation of two cultural systems symbolized by the Cross and the Crescent, the group keeping within their respective defined geographical limits, or the physical subjugation of one by the other.

The other solution lies in amicable co-existence based on tolerance and mutual respect of one another’s cultural, traditional, moral sentiments and practices. The African continent had better wake up from its inexcusable slumber and vigorously tackle the several security crises facing it or else it will lose the initiative to forces of darkness.

Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired Bulawayo based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734328136 or through [email protected]