For those not aware, Gov El Rufai of Kaduna state has already sent a controversial bill to the Kaduna State House of Assembly, seeking to regulate religion in the State, in what is widely understood as a testrun for the entire Northern Nigeria. Dr Tayo Babalobi has posted scanned copies of this Bill (provided by the Social Movement of Nigeria ) on the internet here
A newspaper report on CAN's reaction to the Bill can be found here
But our recommended reading on the subject would be the article by Moses Gbenu, pasted below. Happy reading.
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THE
EL-RUFAI SHARIA LAW ON PREACHERS – Matters
Arising
I assume all those
reading this note must have already read that proposed law by El-Rufai, the
governor of Kaduna State. First, we must bear in mind that El-Rufai is a Muslim
bigot. As many brethren on this forum have already noted, Rufai’s draft law is
simply to stifle or ban Christian activities not only in Kaduna State but in
the North.
To enact a law against
preaching, El-Rufai knows that Muslims really don’t have any message to preach.
It is Christians that really preach, and we don’t abuse people. We only ask
people to repent of their sins. Any government that has commonsense should
rather encourage Christian preaching, because as people repent of their sins,
crime is drastically reduced and people are more productive. It is Islam that
has no message than attacking Christian doctrines: “God has no Son; he is not
begotten, he does not beget anyone. There is no trinity, the Bible is not the
word of God, Jesus did not die on the cross, He did not resurrect, … etc” This
is simply to counter the Gospel, abuse Jesus and denigrate Christianity. A
Muslim cannot even pray any day without reciting Sura 112, which is directly a
denial of the Gospel claim of the deity of Jesus. In fact, there would have
been no Islam if there were no Christianity because much of the preaching of
Islam is either to counter or pervert the Christian doctrines.
If the law of El-Rufai
must hold, close to 50% of the Quran must also be expunged or be banned under
the law. Most Islamic books must have to be banned because most of them
denigrate the core Christian doctrines and blaspheme Jesus our Lord.
In Law or Philosophy,
you don’t start arguing until you do ‘conceptual analysis’. Any committee that
would sit to examine the proposal law of Rufai must first of all define the
terms properly. When for example el-Rufai says in that draft that anyone who
uses “offensive language” against “a religious leader” both dead or alive, he
would be prosecuted, he must tell us what constitutes “offensive language”; he
must also tell us the meaning of “a religious leader dead or alive”.
This clause is simply
to protect Mohammed, and to begin the so-called ‘blasphemy law’ as it is
practiced in Pakistan and other Islamic nations under which Christians are
murdered either by Muslim mobs or officially by government. A muslim may
deliberately ask you whether or not you believe that Mohammed is the last
prophet and the greatest. If you say you don’t believe this, he may accuse you
of saying he is a false prophet. If you preach that Jesus is the ONLY Saviour,
that also means that you are saying that Mohammed is a false prophet. The
interpretation of ‘blasphemy’ knows no bounds when it comes to reference to
Mohammed. That is the trap they are setting for Nigerian Christians.
Moreover, what does Rufai
mean by “a religious leader”? Does that include a pastor or any evangelist or a
founder of religion? If I found a new religion am I included in that? Do the
founders of any traditional religion fall into this? The man certainly does not
know all implications of any law about definition of terms. His bigotry won’t
allow him to think since his real aim is to stop Christianity.
We must remember that
in 2013, this Mallam El-Rufai abused and insulted Jesus on his tweeter page.
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) responded to his insolence and
blasphemy.
On a number of
occasions, El-Rufai has also insulted His Eminence, Pastor Ayo Ortisejafor, the
CAN chairman.
His own laws must be
used to arrest and prosecute him first as a test-run, before the law is even
debated upon.
What is the meaning of
“preaching”? Does that include sharing the Gospel with a neighbor or friend in
office or on the road or anywhere? Or does he mean open air preaching or
preaching in church or any public place? It means EVERY Nigerian Christian must
have to get that license in order to preach because the Bible commands us all
to preach the Gospel everywhere!
His law is also talking
about “abusive religious books”, “books that use derogatory remarks to describe
any religion ….”
The first books that must
be banned under this Rufai Law are the QURAN and the HADITH. This is because
the Quran and the Hadith are the manuals for Islamic terrorism.
Christianity and
Judaism are the major focus of Quranic abuses. For example, the Quran and
Hadith describe the Jews who practice Judaism as pigs and monkeys! Hadith
presents Jews as descendants of apes or
mutated monkeys or that monkeys, pigs and apes are descendants of Jews.
Quran 62:5 and 2:65
specifically compare Jews to “a donkey laden with books”, what else
can be more racist, abusive and a hate speech? This is also stated in Sura
7:166. Also Hadith Sahih Muslim No
7135 and 7136.
Even though Jews
make up only 0.2% of the world's population and 2% of the population of the
United States, they have received the highest academic awards in history.
Between 1901 and 2014, at least 194 Jews or people of Jewish ancestry have been
awarded the Nobel Prize in different areas of life. This accounts for 23% of
all individual recipients worldwide and constitutes 36% of all recipients in
the United States within that same time. The greatest Man in human history,
Jesus Christ, came through them. Any ‘holy book’ that downgrades the Jews is
satanic. Any religion or ‘god’ that calls the Jews (or any other set of human
beings) descendants of swine, apes and monkeys have already labeled themselves
to be so.
If El-Rufai wants to
make a law that prohibits religious books that abuse a religion or religious
leaders, the ‘holy books’ and leaders of Islam should be the first culprits. It
is Islamic books that incite Muslims to attack non-Muslims. It is Islamic ‘holy
book’ Quran that calls Christians and other non-Muslims as “diseased” (Sura
2:10, “perverse” (2:99) and “stupid” and “worst of creatures” (98:6) and “the
vilest of animals” (Sura 8:55), “panting dogs” and “cattle” (7:176). That is
why Muslims don’t feel any sense of guilt slaughtering a Christian. If a book
is to be banned in Kaduna so that we can have peace, it must these ‘holy
books’.
The Rufai proposed law
talks about arresting people for “carrying of weapons to religious places with
a view to using them to cause religious disturbances ….”
This is a trick.
Christians don’t carry weapons to church. It is Muslims that do so in the North.
But the clause “with a view to …” is the trick. What if weapons are seen in
mosques and the people who own the
weapons say they are keeping them for DEFENCE? They can be exonerated from the
clause stating that the weapons are not for “causing disturbance ...” but for
defence. In any case, who will go to mosques to be searching to weapons?
Christians all over the nation must speak out
loudly by any means we have to expose the slyness and conspiracy of El-Rufai
and his team of jihadists in Kaduna and the North generally.