So This Is How It Feels

How does one put into words the feeling of having your life threatened while fellow citizens cheer on?

Inflammatory Comments

This past week, the U.S. president Donald Trump has pushed a 'Christian genocide' narrative on my country and threatened an invasion all while fellow citizens have cheered it on.

All blissfully unaware or conveniently forgetting the fact that the largest group displaced by insurgency in this country is in the North, a Muslim majority part of the nation, a region I was born in and many others.

A region that has horror stories of killings, kidnappings, and destruction of property affecting both Muslims and Christians alike.

Friends and family escaping the violence imposed on their lives regardless of religion.

Millions displaced in a larger Sahel story of insurgency, but the messaging? "...terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!"

Not The First Time

Personally, this is not the first time I've felt alien to the people I live amongst. About 6 years back, there were clashes in Kaduna (one of the hotbeds of violence) and a childhood friend called out 'the Northerners' for not joining a social media campaign to seek justice for the killings.

Despite my attempts to reassure him that not joining a social media campaign is not indicative of a lack of support, especially among a largely offline and non-English speaking part of the country. I got what I later recognise to be my first encounter with Islamophobia, just labeled differently, 'you northerners' instead of 'you muslims', prefixed with the familiar context of being barbaric and averse to logic.

This as a whole should not surprise me, because despite the ongoing genocides in Palestine and Sudan, I live in a country where the English speaking and easily poll-able population maintains large support for Israel.

Most people across 24 surveyed countries have negative views of Israel and Netanyahu

International views of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are much more negative than positive.

The Imperial Cannon

The U.S. is a metaphorical cannon, it's military, economy and culture dominate the world. It stands unmatched, and for so long the cannon was wielded by a competent global dictatorship. Everything goes well for you and your people as long as you don't oppose the dictator.

Different economic principles? Not on their watch.

Unwilling to handover your resources? Expect a coup or rebellion.

Opposing the imperial force? You are a barbarian and a terrorist.

Now, that cannon is wielded by an incompetent global dictatorship, haphazardly waving it around and using Netanyahu tactics where local failures are painted over with imminent danger elsewhere that must be addressed to protect the glory of something or the other.

A cannon now pointed squarely at my face while people I looked up to and share a nation with cheer on from behind me, not realising how cannons work.

Being Muslim

The world has generally always been Islamophobic, I tend to forget that as I live my day-to-day life working and hanging out with colleagues, friends, and family.

Only something like the last two years can wake someone up to the reality. Alhamdulillah, I've woken up.

Despite all the flavours of discrimination that exist, I've realised that Islamophobia is a generally accepted form of it. Because even among black Africans, there are people who matter less.

I will not change who I am. I will continue to support Palestinian and Sudanese liberation, Uyghur self-determination, Yemeni freedom, Kashmiri autonomy, the Indonesian fight against dictatorship, restoring dignity to my brothers and sisters in Myanmar, the freedom of the Congolese from imperial forces, and all the other places I have forgotten or aren't widely known, not because their suffering means any less but because we have failed them.

I will continue to say 'There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger' peace and blessings be upon him. I will continue to stand firm upon my beliefs and world view no matter what tactics are used to justify my dehumanisation.

And God willing, I'll die on them.

My Fellow Nigerians

Unjust killings need to stop, nobody is dragging that with you. But should we treat it as a phenomenon that's purely religiously motivated? I don't think so, because it paints the millions of Muslims you live with as monsters who seek nothing but blood despite both sides experiencing violence.

Killing of Chief Imam is a Tipping Point of Widespread Insecurity

Amnesty International condemns the brutal killing of Chief Imam Alkali Salihu Suleiman and urges Nigerian authorities to end rampant rural violence.

Ethnic and Religious Violence Worsen in Kaduna

Kaduna is increasingly the epicenter of violence in Nigeria, rivaling Borno state, the home turf of Boko Haram. In rural areas, conflicts over water and land use are escalating, and Ansaru, a less prominent Islamist group, is active. Over the past year, some four hundred people were abducted for ransom in the state by criminal gangs; more than two hundred violent events resulted in nearly one thousand fatalities, and some fifty thousand are internally displaced. These estimates apply to the state as a whole, including the city of Kaduna, the capital of the state. The city of Kaduna has long been a center of political, ethnic, and religious violence. The city has undergone ethnic "cleansing," with Christians now concentrated in south Kaduna city and the Muslims in the north. Since the end of military rule in 1998–99, Kaduna city saw election-related violence that soon turned into bloodshed along ethnic and religious lines. Like the Nigerian state, the city of Kaduna is a British colonial creation orchestrated by Lord Frederick Lugard, first governor general of an amalgamated Nigeria. He established Kaduna as the British administrative capital of the northern half of the country, to be situated on the railway that linked Lagos and Kano—then, as now, Nigeria's largest cities. As the administrative capital of the north, Kaduna acquired some of the accoutrements of British colonialism, including a race track, polo, and expat club. A number of foreign governments, including the United States, established consulates in Kaduna, an "artificial," planned city reminiscent of the current capital, Abuja. The British encouraged Muslims incomers to settle in the north and Christians in the south. In part because of the railway connections, Kaduna became an important manufacturing center, especially for textiles. An international airport was eventually built. But the last half-century has not been kind. Nigeria moved from four regions, of which Kaduna was the capital of the largest, to thirty-six states. The establishment of a new national capital at Abuja led to the departure of consulates and many international business links, and, while the airport survives, most regional air traffic goes to Abuja. The textile industry and most heavy manufacturing have also collapsed, the consequence of erratic economic policy, underinvestment, and foreign competition. The national railway network became moribund and is only now being restored by the Chinese. Yet Kaduna's urban population has exploded. In the 2006 census [PDF], the state capital's population was 760,084; now, the estimate is closer to 1.8 million. Agricultural output has collapsed, the result of climate change and the breakdown of security, resulting in waves of migrants into a city that does not have the infrastructure to accommodate them. Very high levels of unemployment (nobody really knows how high), a youth bulge, and shortage of housing makes the city a veritable petri dish for violence that acquires an ethnic and religious coloration. Further, the traditional Islamic institutions to be found elsewhere in the north were either never present in the British-founded city or have been weak. Hence, in the city of Kaduna, violence is multifaceted in origin, and no one strategy is likely to bring it under control. At best, small steps to improve services to the population could buy some time for the larger political, economic, and social changes that will be necessary to restore the health of the city.

“Those Who Returned Are Suffering”

As of July 2022, the Boko Haram conflict had displaced about 2.2 million people in the Northeast, the vast majority–over 1.8 million—in Borno State.[17] The conflict also displaced over 280,000 refugees from the Northeast into three neighboring countries—Cameroon, Chad, and Niger.

If you have read all of this and you still support U.S. intervention, I won't necessarily stand in your way. Everyone has a right to believe and support something.

I have decided to look forward, move on, and live my life no matter what happens,

حَسْبُنَا اللَّهُ وَنِعْمَ الْوَكِيلُ