Dear Boko Haram, Could You Please Spare Us An Attack-free Ramadan?

I have hoped year after year that the world would have a month’s break from terror attacks, but every year my hope has been dashed with attacks. It makes me wonder the kind of Islam extremists practice.

Permit me for not calling them terrorists outrightly – they were first Muslims, and then took their practice of Islam to the ‘extreme’ and started believing Jihad only meant killing. And so they claim they are still fighting for Allah, even when they kill without reason. They don’t stop even during Ramadan.

Fasting during the holy month of Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam and they all observer the fast. It beats me however why anyone would fast and still kill people when Prophet Mohammed himself made it clear that one of the reason for fasting is to become pious.

“Oh you who believe, observing As-Sawm (the fasting) is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, that you may become Al-Muttaqoon (the pious)” – al-Baqarah 2:183.

What piety is in killing?

It may therefore not be wrong to agree with the Muslim world that terrorists are not killing for Allah. For what it’s worth, we know the holy month of Ramadan is a month when all Muslims should desist from all evil as much as possible.

Hesham Hassaballa writes; “One thing…that always deeply offends and angers me is the ‘terror alerts’ issued because of Ramadan, and I lay the blame on the terrorist mutants who call themselves Muslim. Ramadan is a month of spiritual rebirth and meditation. It is not a month of ‘slaying the infidels wherever you find them.’ It is true that the Prophet fought some of his battles during Ramadan, particularly the most important of these, the Battle of Badr. But these battles, such as the one at Badr, were thrust upon him, and he was not the first to start hostility. Many who seek to malign the Prophet point to the fact that, after ‘running for his life’ to Medina, he immediately started raiding the caravans of Mecca, fulfilling his ‘bloodthirsty urge for war.’ This is a gross distortion of the truth.”

I wouldn’t know if attacks during Ramadan are cool in Islam if the attacks are meant to defend your territory, but even if that were so, Nigeria isn’t Boko Haram territory; why should there be a ‘jihad’ in Abuja or Adamawa?

As we try to end the scourge of terrorism in our dear nation, could the Boko Haram folks please spare us a peaceful Ramadan?

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