Immanuel James: Mubarak Bala & The Danger of Buttoned Lips
Some
years ago, a new social culture emerged in Italy: many parents stopped
introducing their religious faiths to their children. They chose rather
to let them reach the official age of adulthood, so the latter could
choose for themselves which faith to identify with, upon objective
inquiry and conviction. For such parents, the commotion of truth claims
had left them confused rather than convinced, and they did not want to
instill error in the innocent teenager. Truth is, many people are not
totally convinced about their faiths. Some have questions that have not
been properly addressed by their Scriptures, but they stick around
either because they have not found a perfect alternative, or because of
the social consequences of apostasy.
Yet some parents are totally convinced.
Whether that conviction is a result of dispassionate inquiry into their
worldviews, or a result of cultural heritage, is a different thing
entirely. What is paramount for them, however, is that they have
embraced ‘truth’ and, just as they would force medication down the
throat of an unwilling, sick child, they must force their faiths on
their children. That was exactly what Mubarak Bala’s parents did.
The young man had embraced atheism
consequent upon his intellectual persuasion to that effect, and was bold
enough to declare same to his devout Muslim parents. His family members
would not accept that. They beat him up, injected him with sedatives,
and took him to a psychiatric hospital where he is now being ‘treated’
as a mad man. With a phone smuggled into his psychiatric ward at the
Amino Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano, he sent messages across to a
humanist friend of his, who has since contracted a lawyer to handle the
matter. His father and doctors in the hospital insist he had
psychological problems before he renounced Islam.
Two days ago, the lawyer was seeking to
contract an independent psychiatrist to examine him. Problem is, with
this kind of persecution already meted out to him, he would be lucky to
come out negative from tests on psychological trauma.
Sometime last year, an adult Christian
lady, daughter of a pastor, converted to Islam. When her father failed
to bring her back to Christianity, he resorted to violence. She went
through myriad persecution from her family, to the point that she had to
seek refuge in the palace of an Emir, much to the chagrin of her father
who alleged ‘Islamic’ diabolical entrapment.
Meanwhile, Mubarak’s father claimed that
he took the action to prevent his son from being mobbed by the people.
Sadly, that excuse, unfortunate as it is, protects a legitimate fear. As
a society, we seem unaware that education, in its true sense, confers
on the individual the privilege for rational skepticism. True education
forbids the acceptance of dictated truths, and prepares the mind to ask
hard questions about arrogant conventions. The search for meaning, for
truth – for intellectual or religious convictions – is best when the
individual is allowed to tread his own path with his bare feet, unshoed
with traditions and dogma. That adult individual, escorted by
‘objective’ parameters of engagement, will most likely arrive safely in
the journey.
When the mind is zipped up against an
inquiry for which it is hungry, the lips buttoned against the expression
of legitimate thought, there will be consequences. One of such
consequences is that the individual becomes a mere captive of mind
terrorism, an unwilling practitioner of the faith or ideal imposed. A
forced member of any faith is even technically no different from an
atheist, since the person involved performs hollow rituals lacking
internal support. The baggage of unresolved doubt will never allow
anyone to practise an imposed faith creditably. So what is the point in
enforcing religious adherence? The better approach would be to counter
the differing mind with factual proofs and other rational means of
persuasion.
Another consequence of muzzled thought,
this time with respect to the silent onlookers who would not condemn the
kidnap of the mind, is that such bystanders unconsciously promote an
ugly psychology. That mindset that frowns at otherness, one in which
terrorists are implicated, is the same one receiving the blessing of our
silence. Some may say, “after all he’s an atheist and therefore
deserves it.” They forget that these ‘little’ encroachments, these
private tyrannies, are the social elements that guarantee ideologies
like Boko Haram.
We must all speak out and condemn this
young man’s incarceration. We must reach out in love for, in the final
analysis, we are still family – members of that clan of intelligent
animals called humanity. We must embrace contrary opinion – whether as
theists or atheists. We should recognise that religious truths are
relative, not absolute, given the imprints of factors like
socialisation, geography, social exposure, etc. Let us understand that
each person in this pursuit of meaning and truth, is most likely an
innocent violator of our own grounds, just as we are, to theirs. If God
wanted us to reason alike, He would have made us all look the same.
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