Motives of Zakzaky apologists

…also published in Daily Trust  

Since the 2015 Army-Shiite bloody confrontation in Zaria, and the detention of the Shiites’ leader, Ibrahim Zakzaky; he has attracted many unsolicited apologists who portray him as a victim of systematic persecution at the hands of successive federal and various state governments in Nigeria over the past forty years.

This, however, isn’t particularly interesting; after all, a controversial person would always attract unsolicited apologists among the attention-seeking and other equally controversial individuals and groups.

The interesting thing instead is how his most enthusiastic apologists are individuals and groups whose interests and his mission are inherently irreconcilable and indeed mutually exclusive. Many of them, for instance, are unrepentant anti-Muslim individuals and groups who have always been particularly notorious for peddling Islamophobic propaganda including the unfounded narrative of an Islamization agenda clandestinely pursued by northern Nigerian political establishment purportedly to Islamize Nigeria. His other apologists are equally notorious for advocating the breakaway of their regions from Nigeria or getting rid of the north to end the country’s corporate existence.

Yet, even though Zakzaky has never disguised his purported “Islamic” agenda through which he seeks to turn Nigeria into an “Islamic” state in an Iran-inspired revolution, his anti-Muslim apologists not only pretend to ignore this fact, but in fact, they insist that he has always been peaceful in pursuit of his mission, insisting also that he is never motivated by any subversive political agenda.

They dominate mainstream and social media with propaganda on why he should not only be released unconditionally but should also be allowed to carry on his activities. They peddle a grossly distorted narrative on the history of his activities to portray him as a law-abiding and peace-loving religious leader, ignoring the miserable experiences the people of northern Nigeria have endured for decades at his hands. Obviously, not only grossly hypocritical, this inconsistency reveals much more sinister motives on the part of those anti-Muslim Zakzaky apologists.

To figure out the apparent motive behind this inconsistency, it’s important to note that having apparently realized the fact that Zakzaky actually never poses any strategic threat to non-Muslim interests in the country, and that he is, in reality, out to subjugate and subject Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria to the control of the so-called Waliyyul-Faqeeh in Tehran, with him (i.e. Zakzaky) as his resident representative, of course, his anti-Muslim apologists capitalize on the situation to indirectly support his subversive activities to further undermine the region, render it irreversibly destabilized, and indeed leave it to the mercy of  others to decide its fate in the federation or the fate of the federation as a whole for that matter. 

Likewise, many “secularist Muslims” who, though have always advocated the complete elimination of Islamic sanctions and injunctions from worldly affairs have suddenly turned unsolicited Zakzaky apologists, pretending to ignore his “Islamic” revolutionary agenda. Even the self-proclaimed human right activists among them including the so-called humanists and feminists sound as though they never know how Zakzaky has over the decades perpetrated gross human right violations against the general public including his followers who he has subjected to slavery-like exploitation to satisfy his ego. Besides, though instances of such violations are pervasive in his activities, his “secularist Muslims” unsolicited apologists hardly cite, let alone condemn any instance in their writings and speeches.

To understand the underlying motive behind this contradiction, it should be looked at in its right context. Obviously, most of the “secularist Muslims” in Nigeria never disguise their extreme hatred towards the wholehearted Muslims, otherwise known as the Salafists, who believe in the universality and perpetual applicability of all Islamic teachings as contained in the Qur’an and the authentic Sunnah according to the perception of the Salaf i.e. the Sahaba and those who stuck to their way among the succeeding generations.

This hatred is particularly manifested on social media where such “secularist Muslims” oppose almost everything Islamic, ridicule Islamic teachings, mock Islamic scholars, peddle the orientalist interpretations of Islamic teachings to suit their worldly desires and confuse Muslim laypersons. They perpetrate all these to bully the Islamic scholars into abandoning their mission of preaching against moral decadence, which the “secularist Muslims” regard as a direct threat to the survival of their relevance in an increasingly religious society that loses respect for unrepentant morally corrupt public figures and potential leaders.

Those “secularist Muslims” have therefore turned Zakzaky apologists only to spite the Salafists for being been particularly enthusiastic in preaching against moral decadence, which the secularists are hell-bent on promoting in Muslim communities. Besides, even when a public commentator among those “secularist Muslims” acknowledges some instances of Zakzaky’s transgression against the constituted authorities and the general public, as some of them reluctantly albeit quite subtly do sometimes when confronted with superior arguments, he would still somehow drag in the Salafists to apportion a portion, if not most, of the blame on them.  

Similarly, many Sufi public commentators have turned Zakzaky apologists to equally spite the Salafists for being particularly vigorous in refuting Sufist, and of course Shiite, heretical ideologies and ritual practices that have been developed over the centuries to undermine Islamic religion.