Dear Editor,

In 2020, Mubarak Bala, president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria was arrested and detained for the unspeakable crime of posting uncomplimentary comments about Islam on social media.

In a surprise turn of events, Bala pleaded guilty to all the charges brought against him and was rewarded with a 24-year sentence for his guilty plea. UN human rights experts and international rights groups have condemned the detention of Bala and called for his release.

Bala, who lives in the Muslim State of Kano, could have been sentenced to death if he had been tried in an Islamic court. Kano is one of a number of states in northern Nigeria that practices Islamic law alongside secular law. Under Islamic law it is a crime to speak against Islam or the prophet of Islam. Blasphemy is a capital offence in Muslim jurisdictions that follow Islamic law.

Many things can be said about Islam, but no one can say that Muslims do not take their faith and the Koran seriously. Unlike Christian fundamentalists, Muslim fundamentalists do not cherry-pick about which injunctions from their holy book are to be enforced in the contemporary setting. If the book commands that blasphemers be granted speedy passage into the afterlife, then it is goodnight nurse for anyone stupid enough to blaspheme while living under Islamic law.

Muslim fundamentalists living under Islamic law enjoy the same kind of unquestionable power exercised by Christian fundamentalists during an age that is aptly called the Dark Age. After the collapse of the Roman Empire circa 476 CE, Christianity under the popes attempted to fill the power vacuum created by the absence of a Roman Emperor. The Church, under the popes, asserted itself over Europe and ruled with an iron fist covered in a glove of steel.

During the period of Church ascendency in Europe, sin and crime were synonymous. Any deviations from the dogmas of the Church were classified as heresy. Heretics, along with their families, pets, and fleas on their pets, were subjected to a rigorous judicial process that could include waterboarding or whatever was the medieval equivalent. Heretics that recanted or confessed were either released with their memories of intense torture intact or, in some cases, they were executed to prevent them from reverting to their heresies. Needless to say, blasphemers were sent on to meet their maker.

The Renaissance and the Protestant reformation challenged the hegemony of the Church. The rebirth of knowledge and learning in Europe, which, ironically, came through the tireless effort of Islamic scholars who had kept intact many of the classics of the Greek philosophers, led to a return of the use of logic and reason as the method of arriving at truth. Progressively, Europeans began to question and reject the dogmas of religion. This trend eventually led to the Protestant Reformation.

Catholics may disagree, but the Renaissance and the Reformation rescued Europe from the tyranny of the righteous. People started disregarding papal bulls and questioning the legitimacy of scriptural interpretation put forward by the Church. Advances in science also led to a wide-scale abandonment of religion and the book upon which the religion was based. Today Europe is considered to be a post-Christian society. Europe is also the place where people from highly religious nations are flocking to seek asylum, risking life and limb in the process.

The religion of Islam, unlike its sister faiths, is locked in a time warp that forces adherents to live exactly as proscribed by the holy book of Islam. None of the cleavages in Islam is comparable to the Protestant Reformation considered by many to be an updating and rebranding of the Christian faith. Even the Catholic Church today had embraced some of the elements of modernity, including the Darwinian origin of life concept.

African and Caribbean nations, as they attempt to navigate the present and blaze a path into the future, should be mindful of history. Locking ourselves in a past overlaid by religious superstition and illogical pronouncements written in books reflective of eras that have gone the way of the dinosaurs will not unleash the creativity and freedom of thought and action needed to power dynamic development in the future. Communities of faith should be respected and applauded for the positive contributions they bring to the table, but a check must also be placed on the most zealous who, if left to their own devices, would try to make us all prisoners of the past.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka

rodneynimrod2@gmail.com