Boko Haram was sponsored to smear Islam —Jingir

Sheik Sani Yahaya Jingir

 The National Chairman of the Izalla sect, otherwise known as Jama’atul Izalatul Sunnah,  Sheik Sani Yahaya Jingir, has dissociated the sect from the activities of the dreaded Islamic sect, Boko Haram, saying that the sect was being sponsored to smear the Islamic religion.

He urged Muslims in the country to continue to preach a just and egalitarian society and to pursue peaceful coexistence that could move the country forward from its present predicament.

Jingir, speaking to newsmen in Jos on Sunday, described as unfortunate  the inability of the government to  address  the critical security problems confronting the country, especially in the North-East.

He however expressed optimism that the activities of the sect would not affect the growth of democracy in the country.

Sheikh Jingir said that the destruction being unleashed on the region by Boko Haram had taken the North generally years back in terms of development.

“These security challenges in the country and in the North-East in particular has left the zone as the worse hit due to the current activities of Boko Haram and they are sponsored to spoil the image of Islam.”

The Islamic cleric called on the Federal Government and the state governments to, as a matter of urgency, formulate effective policies to tackle the current insecurity in the country and also deal with the debilitating poverty and the growing number of unemployed youths in the region.

Sheik Jingir noted that Nigerians were now under persecution in their own land and urged them not to be discouraged by the shortcomings of the leadership in the area of security.

He also expressed optimism that the situation would soon be a thing of the past, stressing, “It will surely be a history one day.”

Meanwhile, renowned Islamic scholar and author, Abumazeedah AbdulRauf, has described members of the Boko Haram Islamic sect as “misguided minds.”

According to him, there is the need for Muslims to be sensitised to reading with a view to correcting the wrong impression about western education.

But a lecturer in the Department of Islamic Law at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and Director in ABU’s Institute of Administration, Prof. Mohammed Bello, said the belief that western education is a taboo was western propaganda.

They both spoke in an interview with journalists on Saturday in Abuja during the opening ceremony of the 4th edition of a one-week Islamic Book Exhibition organised at the National Mosque by a publishing firm, De Minaret International.

Abumazeedah, who is the Managing Director/CEO of the company, said, “We want to mobilise Muslims and sensitise them to the habit of reading because we believe that if today everybody is campaigning for reading culture, we Muslims should be in the forefront because our religion had started on the platform of reading and this exhibition is even more important because it is coming at a time when there is a very wrong impression of the religion.

“Prophet Muhammed never postulated mathematical theory but those who came after him developed a technique of mathematics and today, it is beneficial to the world. So, to assume that western education is a sin is indeed a thought of the misguided mind, it’s not part of Islamic thinking. And this is one of the points that we are trying to prove here like I said earlier, through this exhibition that Muslims are indeed, the custodians of knowledge.”

According to him, the exhibition is to correct the erroneous impression that Islam is vehemently opposed to education and knowledge.

“So we are organising this exhibition to showcase the beauty of Islam. We are having more than 25,000 collections of Islamic titles here and the works that Muslim intellectuals have done. When you see this, you will agree with me that indeed, Islam is a religion of intellect, a religion of knowledge and that is what we are trying to prove to the world.

“Islam does not distinguish between education, there is no difference between Islamic and western education. In the past, we have among our ancestors, Muslim intellectuals who were basically mathematicians like Aljeberi, like Alberuni. These were Muslims and they were mathematicians”, Abumazeedah added.

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