DEBORAH: Approaching Our Redlines With Discretion – Oyakhamoh Y. Carl-Abu’Bakar

 

‘Too often, we stray in the hope that we are working to please God. Who you be to please God? God is damn too pleased with Himself to think of your pleasing Him no matter what we do. The good or evil that we do is for our own good or bad. Na exam we dey here on earth‘

PEGASUS REPORTERS, LAGOS | MAY 30, 2022

Those who killed Deborah are villains according to Islam. Their action is not representative of the injunction in the holy book. However, we’ve heard of redlines. What are redlines! In very simple terms, redlines are those minimum negative emotional excitements or stimuli after which the animal in man is let loose.

They are not necessarily religious. They can be, but they can also be part of the social mores or norms or culture of a group, people or community. In certain African communities, you don’t kill a snake. Among some Indian communities, you kill their God when you kill a cow. In most of my native Edo communities, you don’t sleep with another man’s wife. The penalty is daring for the woman who was granted such access.

Redlines in religions are relative to communities and places. The Indian communities here in Nigeria will not hesitate to kill your cow if it strayed into their privacy. Would you say they kill their God? Naaa, na stray cow dem kill! Dem god na Indian cow, no be Fulani cow. In Lagos here, even those who support IPOB go to work on Mondays. But in some parts of the East, doing that is crossing the redline because “Unknown Gunmen” are watching you with the corner-corner eye.

There’s a similarity between the acts of the unknown gunmen and the fanatical mob in the north. Their redlines crossed nationally acceptable redlines. All over the nation, we have redlines that not only criss-cross other redlines but also established standards in both temporal and spiritual spaces.

Understanding these redlines is what is called discretion. If you’d forgotten, we read somewhere and accepted it that discretion is the better part of valour. As a Muslim, it’s better for me to cover my head with a cap when praying. But it will amount to crossing Christianity’s redline when I enter a church to pray. I was once rebuked by a church worker who didn’t know that I’m not a Christian for wearing a cap in the church. I maintain quickly otherwise I’d be asked to leave the church. That discretionary! When as a Christian you wear shoes into a mosque or a celestial church, you cross red lines.

There can be peace between all faiths if we understand our redlines. Grandstanding as to why did this happen is not the solution. Islam didn’t ask anyone to kill another for the blasphemy of Allah or the prophet. So those who killed Deborah stand accursed according to Islam for killing the whole of humanity. However, looking at it discretionarily, she crossed a peer group redline. And those who killed her cross both Islamic and Nigeria’s constitutional redlines. They stand guilty of blue murder. Above all, we all are guilty of a violation.

Too often, we stray in the hope that we are working to please God. Who you be to please God? God is damn too pleased with Himself to think of your pleasing Him no matter what we do. The good or evil that we do is for our own good or bad. Na exam we dey here on earth.

We must endeavour as parents to teach our wards and kids that discretion is the better part of valour. Lear Sheribu’s mates are today graduates from US universities. Some of them are now US citizens. The difference between the still missing Lear is that she was dogmatic in her belief when discretion was most advised. All the other girls from that kidnap saga who were discretionary enough to say after their kidnappers, “lai’ilah Il’Allah” from available evidence have kept their faith as Christians after their freedom. In the heat of the Chibok kidnap, I asked a clergy who said during a discussion that Leah was a hero for Christ if she would advise her daughter to play Leah in the circumstances she (Leah) found herself. After pausing for a few seconds, he hesitantly retorted: “that’s not my portion in Jesus’ name”! A typical case of do as I say, not as I do!

The Holy Books have in abundance examples of those who sacrificed in the name of their belief and those who saved themselves from death so that they can match on in their belief. Abraham didn’t offend God when he told a ‘diplomatic lie’ to save himself from the tyranny of a potentate seeking to take his wife from him. Saint Stephen in the Bible was sure of his conviction in his belief in the Christ when he let out his head for rains of stones when he was arrested by the Romans crowd. Its a matter of your standing with your God and how your sibling will view it.

I have not stopped telling the story of my friend who works for the NTA. during the Jos riots between the Muslims and Christians, he was caught by a mob of angry Christians while driving through the redline zones. He’s a Yoruba Muslim and you know we Muslim Southerners are taught the Bible from primary to secondary school. Even my children whom I brought up as Muslims know the often quoted Sunday school verses of the Bible. It was so with my friend when he crossed the redline zone on that faithful day and had his car and body doused in petrol! If he in that state shouted Laila Il’Allah, he would have been dead and long forgotten. But he told the mob that he was a Christian and they put him to the test by asking him to quote certain verses of the Bible. He confided in me later that the bible lessons he learnt in primary and secondary school flew back into his memory as he convinced his assailants that he was a Christian and got free! Today, as we speak, my friend is still a practising Muslim, an Alhaji like those Chibok girls who recited the kalimaat and got freed and are still Christians. That’s discretionary!

May the souls of those killed for crossing redlines find rest with the creator. They died of and from our excesses.

How una see dis talk?

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