THE ARROGANCE OF THE CATHOLIC BISHOPS AND THE FREEDOM OF MUSLIM STUDENTS

Of all the reactions of the human repertoire given to the arrogance of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference’s statement last week, surprise was not part of mine. I was never surprised because it is an emblem of their intolerance towards dissent to their faith, doctrines, decisions and held beliefs. It is deeply entrenched in their belief that everything must conform to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Pope Leo XIII (1903) stated succinctly  in Libertas:  "It is not lawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought or speech, or writing, or religion, as if these were so many rights given by nature to man."     And it has run through from the dim recesses of history.  This intolerance of theirs mostly was towards an entrenched truth which they were vehemently against.

In the year 1517, Martin Luther, A German Friar and Professor of Theology came out with his Ninety-five theses to protest against the established abuses in the Catholic Church which included nepotism, usury, sale of church offices and roles (also known as Simony), pluralism and the sale of indulgences (practice of making sinners purchase the freedom from God’s punishment with money). This incurred the wrath of the Catholic Church and in a characteristic style and fashion he was excommunicated by the Pope and condemned as an outlaw by the emperor.

Notable among such cases was the case of the man who had to spend the last nine years of his life under house arrest after being handed life imprisonment just because he stated a truth denied by the Catholic Church. In the year 1614, Galileo Galilee was vilified, insulted and all sorts of vituperations heaped on him by the Catholic Church which later led to his condemnation as a heretic  because he argued in favor of the Copernicus Heliocentric theory that the sun was at the center of the universe. The illogical notion held at that time was that the earth was rather at the center of the universe (a notion that is as backward as the minds that held it).

Parnili was killed for stating that blood run through the veins. A truth that took the Catholic Church centuries to accept.

Rebecca A. Sexton, a member of a group known as Former Catholics for Christ writes, “Anyone who opposes Roman Catholicism is immediately labeled as a bigot, intolerant of other religions or a hate-monger.” And that is the absolute truth and nothing else.

In the not too distant past, Hans Kung, a Catholic Theologian, had to go through untold suffering because his works went against the teachings of the Catholic Church. He had his works catching dust on the shelves of libraries and silenced stemming from his rejection of the doctrine of the infallibility of the pope.

This intolerance reared its head strongly on our local scene last week when the Catholic Bishops issued a statement threatening the President of the land whose ‘offence’ was his reiteration of what the laws of our land state.  The Preamble of their acerbic statement reads:

       “We, the members of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference have followed with grave concern the recent developments in our dear nation with respect to calls for unregulated religious practices in our schools. We note in particular, the unwarranted threats of sanction coming from Government circles. Needless, we are stating that no citizen in Ghana should allow him/herself to be cowed down by any intimidation or threat of sanction from any individuals.”  The statement is if not foolish, stupid. If not disturbing, infantile and must be condemned as such. As part of the Catholic DNA, they just do not understand why others should be given their constitutional freedom.

 We Muslims are citizens of the land also and will not allow ourselves to be cowed or wavered by any intimidation from any misguided group   such as the Bishops’ conference. The call by the President in his State of the Nation Address is not something absurd or weird. Neither is it a call to anything illegal or unconstitutional. Rather, it is a call to sanity, a call to parity and a call to equity which will make all citizens uphold the spirit and letter of the 1992 constitution, a call to peaceful and harmonious living and a massive wavelength of civility.  Muslims in this country have been tolerant enough. We have stomached all sorts of illegal discrimination and undemocratic oppression in our schools for too long.  

I attended O’Reilly Senior High School. During my three years stay on campus, I had to compulsorily sing hymns I do not believe in at every morning assembly and sometimes made to jump to catch a spirit I never caught.  Sometimes, it was the then headmistress, Miss Janet Chinebuah who came down to lead in the hymnals under the scorching sun. I had to endure my freedom whittle away just because a group of people have blinded their eye to the constitutional provision that no one should be subjected to a faith he does not subscribe to. 

I remember the unfortunate day the headmistress in a derogatory manner said during a school gathering “I was calling them and they were still washing their noses” in reference to an ablution exercise she witnessed. This sent the whole school into a state of hilarity.  I wished the earth swallowed me up that day.

 There is this particular insensitive teacher called Rev. Kathleen Parker Allotey. This woman had on countless number of times showed her strong antipathy towards Muslims in the full glare of the public. Once upon a time, she asked a class why they allowed the Class Prefect and his assistant to be Muslims. She asked non-challantly “How”?

In another instance, a former Assistant headmaster of the school, Mr. Danquah, once came into the Science class when the class was in total disarray. The first statement he made was “I know it is the Muslims in you that are making the noise. Because if they are praying, you can never tell who is speaking and who is quiet.”  And this was a class of about 60 students with about six Muslims. What warrants this if not the intolerance and insensitivity towards the rights and feelings of Muslim students?

The most grueling one I will never forget is one that had to do with prayers. We used to pray where the pipes that drain the fecal and urinal substances of teachers were connected and we had to cope with that because our hands were tied. There was this day when a wicked Christian teacher came ordering us to stop praying. Steadfastness was a cardinal aspect of the Muslim prayer so we did not heed to her call.  Surprisingly, she came with a cane and started lashing the Imam and the congregants. These were just a fraction of the unjust practices we had to go through.

You just cannot fault Muslims if we have woken up after a long slumber of negligence. To continue with the status quo in our schools is a violation of the supreme law of the land. With that the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from Muslims. The current practice is undemocratic; it is an odious system of theocratic tendencies and a deliberate, corporate strangulation of Muslims in educational institutions.

The Constitution of the land states unequivocally in Article 21, “(1)   All persons shall have the right to- (a)   freedom of speech and expression, which shall include freedom of the press and other media; (b)   freedom of thought, conscience and belief, which shall include academic freedom;
(c)   freedom to practice any religion and to manifest such practice; (d)   freedom of assembly including freedom to take part in processions and demonstrations.  (e)   freedom of association, which shall include freedom to form or join trade unions or other associations, national and international, for the protection of their interest; ……….  “

Therefore, we must not place the freedom of Muslims beneath heel of religious bullies.

It is of consequence that this issue came up in the run up to our 58 Independence anniversary celebration.  In  1957, Martin Luther King Jnr, the civil rights activist delivered a sermon at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church after he witnessed the Declaration of Independence in Ghana. The speech was titled. “The Birth of a New Nation.”  He stated:

   “There seems to be a throbbing desire, there seems to be an internal desire for freedom within the soul of every man. And it’s there—it might not break forth in the beginning, but eventually it breaks out Men realize that freedom is something basic, and to rob a man of his freedom is to take from him the essential basis of his manhood. To take from him his freedom is to rob him of something of God’s image. To paraphrase the words of Shakespeare’s Othello: Who steals my purse steals trash; ‘tis something, nothing; twas mine, ‘tis his, has been the slave of thousands; but he who filches from me my freedom robs me of that which not enriches him, but makes me poor indeed.”

Inusah Mohammed

NB: The writer is a National Service Person with the Graphic Communications Group Limited.

A TRIBUTE TO THE MUSICAL LEGEND, BOB MARLEY

If there is any particular saying that rubbishes the statement that “Life begins at 40” then it is the short wise-saying in Ola Rotimi’s The gods are not to blame that “The struggle of man begins at birth.” If there is any real life negation of the “Life begins at 40” notion, then it is the life of this tiny man who grew up in a tiny corner of the world yet shook the very foundation of human existence and achievement to the core that long after his death, the mention of his name increases with energized momentum as the days unfold.
For his album Legend released in 1984 to remain the bestselling Reggae album ever (10 times platinum in the US) with sales of more than 20 Million Copies, and Exodus album voted album of the century by the times magazine , his One Love song voted as the Song of the Millennium by the BBC,  Jamaica's third highest honor, the Jamaican Order of Merit and other awards, accolades and recognition that continue to rise with increasing crescendo with each passing day, show the unquantifiable amount of life in the short and transient thirty-six years he lived on mother earth.
This tiny man was born in the wee hours of the night at around 2 am on Wednesday, 6 February, 1945 in Nine Mile, Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica, to Norval Sinclair Marley, a Sexagenarian  White Jamaican  and a then seventeen-year old ‘foolish’ girl named  Cedella Booker.  Named Robert Nesta Marley, weighing 7 pounds and 4 ounces with his afterbirth buried at the foot of one of his grandfather’s coconut trees, he became the person that projected and made popular the image of the Caribbean (a region that consists of about  700 islands, reefs and cays), became a global icon of peace to the world, a symbolic demi-god to some people of West Africa, a Redeemer to the Maoris of New Zealand a figure that completes the Rastafarian triumvirate with Emperor Haile Selassie and Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jnr, the man who preached Black Consciousness to the world earlier. To other nations of Asiatic origin, Bob Marley is next to God.

If music is supposed to carry a message, then Bob Marley is the greatest musician the world has ever seen.  Greater than the prolific Mozart, legendary Bob Dylan and the visually-impaired yet musically super-gifted Stevie Wonder. He remains the most quoted musician ever in history and even surpasses most of the famous philosophers and academics of legendary status. With a musical theme that transcended every topic of social relevance profoundly highlighting Biblical themes that permeates down the consciousness of the listener.

As a Pan Africanist, he reechoed what Africa needs by asking in a Biblical style and fashion “How good and how pleasant it will be before God and Man, to see the unification of all Africans. As it’s been said already, let it be done.”
In a humanistic style and fashion, he touched on the subject of weapons of destruction that have caught the world in frenzy with nations embroiled in the manufacturing of it. “In this age of technological humanity, scientific atrocity Atomic mis-philosophy, nuclear mis-energy, it’s a world that forces lifelong insecurity.”

Politically, he was a unifier who identified with the ‘sufferahs’ which included the homeless, destitute, marginalized, poor and other categories of people viewed as the flotsam and jetsam of his society. He exhibited that profoundly when he succeeded in making two politically-sworn enemies join him on stage to shake hands together with him. The proceeds of the concert were meant for the provision of sanitary facilities to ‘sufferahs.’ That was a very small fraction of what this Legend stood for.

On that fateful day of his internment, the then Jamaican Prime Minister, Edward Seaga, delivered a perfect eulogy. He did not mince words when he hinted
"His message was a protest against injustice, a comfort for the oppressed. He stood there, performed there, his message reached there and everywhere. Today's funeral service is an international right of a native son. He was born in a humble cottage nine miles from Alexandria in the parish of St. Ann. He lived in the western section of Kingston as a boy where he joined in the struggle of the ghetto. He learned the message of survival in his boyhood days in Kingston's west end. But it was his raw talent, unswerving discipline and sheer perseverance that transported him from just another victim of the ghetto to the top ranking superstar in the entertainment industry of the third world."

As we celebrate Bob Marley’s 70^th birth Anniversary today, I have no other option than to reecho what the  I’ Threes, the three women that backed Marley with their fruity and stentorian voices said concerning Bob Birhaani Selassie Kwabena Marley.

“We recognize Bob as David. Just as, how David had his harp, Bob had his guitar.  The songs of Bob are Psalms now put to music.” Rita Marley

“We should all try to live the life he sang about and I am hoping that entertainers like myself will maintain the standard that he has left, so that Bob in his spiritual realms will see that his work was not in vain.”  Judy Mowart.

“He came for a purpose and set a foundation for all of us and we can only use that to make ourselves better.” Marcia Griffiths.

Inusah Mohammed

NB: The writer is a National Service Person at the Graphic Communications Group Limited.

CHARLIE HEBDO AND THE HYPOCRISY OF THE WEST THROUGH SALMAN RUSHDIE

If there is any incident in recent times that has gotten my head throbbing and spinning like a ball, then it is this Charlie Hebdo issue. The rotational motion of my head has less to do with the incident itself and more to do with the concomitant issue of free-speech and the glaring hypocrisy in addressing it.
One of the interesting comments made on this whole Charlie Hebdo issue was by Salman Rushdie. In a speech delivered at the University of Vermont, he hinted that “the moment somebody says, ‘Yes I believe in free speech, but’ — I stop listening. ‘I believe in free speech, but people should behave themselves. I believe in free speech, but we shouldn’t upset anybody. I believe in free speech, but let’s not go too far.’ The moment you limit free speech, it’s not free speech,” he said. “You can dislike Charlie Hebdo, you know, not all their drawings were funny. But the fact that you dislike them has nothing to do with their right to speak. The fact that you dislike them certainly doesn’t in any way excuse their murder.”

Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay in the year 1947. For twenty seven years he lived in a fit of tranquility with his people in his country and beyond peacefully until his freedom of speech affected someone else’s freedom to breathe fresh air. He wrote a book in the year 1988, The Satanic Verses, tarnishing and maligning the glorious image of Prophet Mohammed. Muslims worldwide showed outright condemnation to the book by venting their spleens on the streets through massive protest marches. The Spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, declared a fatwa on him; which means he should not be allowed to breathe the next second when seen. Out of spite of the resentment shown by the Muslim world to his repugnant work of art, the Western world in their characteristic hypocritical style and fashion quickly backed him, garnished and embellished him with colorful awards and rewards.
Notable amongst these were the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement in Cultural Humanism by the Harvard University, his appointment as Commandeur de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999 and Knighthood for his services to literature by Queen Elizabeth.
Interestingly, in 2003, a mystery - detective book was released. The book, The Da Vinci code written by novelist Dan Brown highlights the love affair between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene which lead to present day Merovingian Kings of France tracing their genealogical bloodline from that relationship. It also highlights how the entire morphology of Christianity was shaped and formed by the Council of Nicaea courting paganistic underpinnings.
The book ruffled the nerves of the West and more specifically the Christian world. Moreso when the author stated that “all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”
The reaction to the book was if not interesting, intriguing.
This is what Jimmy Wales’ Wikipedia states about the statements made about the book: “Stephen Fry has referred to Brown's writings as "complete loose stool-water" and "arse gravy of the worst kind". Stephen King likened Dan Brown's work to "Jokes for the John", calling such literature the "intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese". The New York Times, while reviewing the movie based on the book, called the book "Dan Brown's best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence”. The New Yorker reviewer Anthony Lane refers to it as "unmitigated junk" and decries "the crumbling coarseness of the style". Linguist Geoffrey Pullum and others posted several entries critical of Dan Brown's writing, at Language Log, calling Brown one of the "worst prose stylists in the history of literature" and saying Brown's "writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad". Roger Ebert described it as a "potboiler written with little grace and style", although he said it did "supply an intriguing plot". In his review of the film National Treasure , whose plot also involves ancient conspiracies and treasure hunts, he wrote: "I should read a potboiler like The Da Vinci Code every once in a while, just to remind myself that life is too short to read books like The Da Vinci Code.”
The one that baffled me the most was from no other than the hypocrite called Salman Rushdie. Salman Rushdie said during a lecture, "Do not start me on 'The Da Vinci Code'. A novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name." What rank hypocrisy! What is so bad about the Novel? Is it because it is against the Christian world and not the Muslim World? Against Islam, “freedom of speech is absolute”, against Christianity, “bad novel.”
As a surrogate of the West, he is just exhibiting the innate character enmeshed in their skins. Hypocrisy! It is this Hypocrisy that makes the West justify the Charlie Hebdo cartoons yet condemn the movie Passion of Christ. It is this same hypocrisy that saw the wrongful termination of Maurice Sine (a former Cartoonist of Charlie Hebdo) for what they term Anti-Semitic publications yet shower all sorts of adorations on other cartoonists who pick on Muslims as their victims. This same hypocrisy saw the courts banning all Public gatherings to see the French Comedian Dieudonné M'bala M'bala’s show just because of his views on Jews and the Holocaust he describes as “memorial pornography.” The ban was spearheaded by the French Interior Minister Manuel Valls.
The world will never be safe if such double-standardness continue. The world seems to have forgotten Reverend Jim Jones. Jim-Jones single-handedly led a nine hundred plus people to their deaths in the name of Christianity in what is now known as the Guyana: Crime of the century.
My Facebook post on 20th January, 2015 at exactly 7:52 quoting Dr. Is-haq Akintola bears it all.

“HYPOCRISY OF THE WEST: “To the West, Menachem Begin who later became Israeli Prime Minister was a notorious terrorist in Britain. George Washington, father of American Independence, was a saint even though he led Americans to ambush British soldiers in the struggle for independence in1776. Americans were heroes for raiding Tripoli in 1986. Israel was God-sent when it attacked Iraqi nuclear reactors in 1981. The annulment of election results in Algeria in 1991 was 'democracy at its best."

Inusah Mohammed

NB: The writer is a National Service Person at the Graphic Communications Group Ltd.

ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAAZI OKORO, A WAVELENGTH OF CIVILIZATION TO THE YOUTH OF NIMA AND BEYOND.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”…….Martin Luther king Jr.

Whenever a society is faced with a myriad of problems, whenever a society is sunk into the bottomless pit of underdevelopment, whenever a society finds itself in the doldrums of absolute despondency, whenever a society has no clear cut policy and direction, the only salvation to this society is its new generation. The youth of such a society must make the painstaking effort to take its destiny in their own hands.

A classic example to this effect is when our beloved nation was plunged into the bondage of colonialism and imprisoned in the shackles of imperialism, several efforts to save it and give it a taste of freedom and independence proved downright futile. It took a man with fresh ideas to bring the long awaited dream (freedom) into reality. And this quest was highly successful due to the strong support and concerted effort of the youth to help him. The man was Kwame Nkrumah and the youth was galvanized into the Committee on Youth Organization, CYO.  The rest they say “is history”.

We live in a community where we are still been hoodwinked into thinking abnormally. This abnormal thinking has to do with the frivolous and backward   conventions and norms that certain positions are meant for the “elders.”

It is baffling and sometimes irritating to find an ignoramus portraying himself as the know-it-all just because he is a man of age.
It is high time we (youth) broke away from this untruthful, vacuous, empty and backward thinking. At least the proverbial case of Solomon (the wisest man ever) and Methuselah (the oldest man ever) is a fountain we can draw inspiration from because “the wisdom of Solomon had nothing to do with the age of Methuselah.”

If we fail to take up the mantle of leadership in our communities, then that will be the very bane of our existence.  For too long we have vested power into our so called “elders” and they have failed us woefully.

I find it difficult to comprehend, do we as a community lack competent people in our midst who can represent us at the higher level? We have given enough chance to “foreigners” and their cumulative performance is appalling and nothing to write home about. We the people of Nima have vested our confidence into the hands two DOCTORS as our Members of Parliament and without any modicum of doubt, I will say they have failed us.  Why are we failing to think us a community?  It’s time we started voting wisely and prudently. We have allowed these people to take us for a ride. Don’t we have people from this community competent enough and conscious of the plight of the community to agitate and champion our cause?

 My fellow youth lets wake up from our slumber and fight for this community. It is at this point that I lift my hands up for Inusah Mohammed (Maazi Okoro} for such a bold step in contesting for the Assemblyman.

 Let us as youth take a great cue from the confidence   of this young, hardworking and educated youth.

It’s time we sat and make the right decision by giving our support to the youth.

Barring all unforeseen circumstances, we will sooner than later be going to the polls to elect our assemblymen for the various electoral areas.

I am not trying to be a political chauvinist. Neither am I not been politically jingoistic, but I think it’s time we vested the destiny of this community into the subtle hands of the youth, for I believe the destiny of any community rests on the shoulders of the youth. Let’s vote wisely. Let’s support the youth and we shall see ourselves raised from the nadir to the zenith of prosperity and development.

Alhassan Ahmed

NB: The writer is a student of Tafsiliyya School for Training and Education and the University of Ghana.