Justice for Nazeef

Also published in Daily Trust

Ever since the arrest of Dr Muhammad Nazeef Yunus of Kogi State University a couple of weeks ago by the State Security Service (SSS) operatives, over alleged link to the Boko Haram terror gang, many Muslim scholars and a couple of Islamic organizations, including Jama’atu Nasrul-Islam (JNI) have rightly dismissed the charge against him, affirmed his innocence and called for his immediate release.

The purported evidence given by the SSS for his arrest was utterly ridiculous, to say the least. According to the SSS he was implicated by some suspected members of the terror group, who allegedly claimed that they were his disciples.

Interestingly enough, in a time when it takes exceptional courage to openly challenge Boko Haram’s religious misconceptions, and in a time when only a few Muslim scholars have the courage to publically condemn that ideology apparently for fear of their lives, Dr Nazeef has always been particularly firm on his stand against it. He also maintains the same stand in his PhD thesis, as translated from Arabic to English for Weekly Trust by Dr Muhammad Mansur Sokoto last Saturday.

Some Muslim scholars lost their lives for their stand against Boko Haram, because they rightly believed that, unless the militants are intellectually engaged by qualified Muslim scholars, who can counter their religious misconceptions with better and superior theological and jurisprudential arguments, the crisis would remain difficult, if not impossible, to tackle, no matter how much force is used. For instance, the circumstances surrounding the assassination of late Sheikh Ja’afar Mahmoud Adam, who was particularly critical against them, bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram militants.

Nevertheless and though quite aware of this risk, Dr Nazeef lives up to his moral and religious responsibility by warning against that ideology anyway. Yet, this unfortunately could not save him from the recklessness of the unintelligent Nigeria’s security intelligence service and indeed the whole government, which instead of encouraging him chose to effectively undermine his efforts. Though I never expected the government to encourage him in his efforts, having realized its lack of seriousness and focus, yet I never suspected that it would go to the extent of victimizing him, either.

Meanwhile, the unjustified and shameful silence of human right activists and organizations in the country, and their failure to live up to their moral responsibilities over Dr Nazeef’s ordeal has further exposed their hypocrisy. Muslim activists among them are particularly guilty in this regard, for they apparently fear that, due to the nature of the charges against him they may unnecessarily expose themselves to the suspicion of being somehow involved or at least sympathetic to the course of religious extremism and terrorism.

Besides, being largely secular-minded, the majority of such Muslim human right activists are actually too timid to rise up in defence of victimized Muslims on issues of this nature, in the first place. Therefore, being not only a Muslim scholar but also a dedicated Da’awah activist with a particular interest in reviving the core Islamic ideological values and teaching as contained in noble Qur’an and the authentic Prophetic Sunnah, as understood by earlier Muslim generations, Dr Nazeef is not the kind of person whose rights matter to the majority of Nigerian human right activists.

Besides, they probably assume that, working in defence of people like Dr Nazeef may undermine their “reliability” in the eyes of their European and American-based counterparts and sponsors, hence it may affect the amount of financial and other forms of support they get from them.

Ironically however, many a time, these European and American-based organizations are even more objective in their approach to the plight of persecuted Muslims. For instance, despite the concerted and systematic campaign of calumny against Islam and the victimization of millions of innocent Muslims all over the world particularly over the last fourteen years or so, there have been many instances when some European and American-based human right organizations indentified several cases of Muslim victimization, mobilized huge public sympathy for them and/or successfully engaged governments in legal actions that ended, or at least substantially eased their ordeals.

In any case, I am sure if Dr Nazeef were an opportunistic politician who has lost out in power struggle and pretended to turn into a fraudulent anti-corruption activist, the media would have been saturated with condemnation from various human right organizations and activists calling for his immediate and unconditional release. The public would have also resonated accordingly.

Similarly if he were one of those imposters who disguise as human right activists just to climb the ladder to social relevance or cling to their already ill-gotten socio-political recognition, his ordeal would have attracted the condemnation of the like-minded opportunists across the country, and would have equally attracted enough public sympathy to push for his release.

I therefore suppose that the largely self-acclaimed human activists in Nigeria are now waiting for their principals in Europe and America to take note of Dr Nazeef’s ordeal and begin to call for his release before they also follow suit.

Government should note that, while this kind of injustice renders the victims soft targets for extremists to easily take advantage of their acute frustration to indoctrinate and radicalize them, it also discourages those likely to play important roles in addressing the crisis from making any effort in this regard. Dr Nazeef should therefore be immediately and unconditionally released.