* Says anyone who kills a Christian will not see paradise
John Shiklam in Kaduna
Kaduna-based Islamic scholar, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, has condemned Thursday’s mob killing of Miss Deborah Samuel, a student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education for alleged blasphemy against Prophet Mohammed.
Gumi made the condemnation during his daily preaching at the Sultan Bello Mosque, Kaduna.
A video clip of the preaching was shared on his Facebook page.
He declared that any Muslim who kills a Christian in Nigeria because the prophet was insulted will not smell paradise.
He maintained that Nigeria is not an Islamic state, adding that Muslims in the country have agreement with people of other faiths to live together peacefully and anyone who kill them on religious guise has committed a grievous sin.
Gumi lamented that it was unfortunate that some Muslim clerics were quoting verses they don’t understand and telling people to kill whoever insults their religion.
Quoting several verses from the Qur’an and Islamic jurisprudence, Gumi said killing a non-Muslim under the guise that the person uttered a blasphemous statement against Prophet Muhammad is not an excuse, “because Allah has told us in the Qur’an the non-Muslims will insult Allah and His Prophet.
“In fact, it is now the blasphemy will start after the killing of that lady in Sokoto, the insult will increase, not reduce”.
He said: “Some Muslims in Nigeria that want to defend Prophet Muhammad should be ashamed of themselves because they are corrupt.
“The best way to go, if we want to defend the Prophet, is to follow his teachings.
“We the clerics need to wake up and teach the Muslims their religion. We must leave this state of ignorance, we have turned to animals. We the Muslims are not the only ones in this country.
“It is not only that we are not the only ones in this country, we must know that there was nothing the unbelievers did not do to Prophet Muhammad, but he was patient, because he was concious that if he killed them, the unbelievers he was trying to bring to the fold of Islam will tag him a killer.
“There are people who are neither Muslims nor Christians in Nigeria, and everyone is trying to win their souls. Also, there people who are not Muslims, whom we are preaching Islam to, so that they can enter the fold of Islam and be salvaged in the hereafter.
“If we now begin to kill people, they will say it is even from the leader of our faith, Prophet Muhammad, that we have learnt it.
“They will say their religion is a religion of bloodletting. At a time we are trying to draw attention of people to see the beauty of Islam, we are now scaring them away.
“It is unfortunate that we even see some clerics who are telling people that whoever insults your religion, just kill them. They are quoting verses they don’t understand.
“There is no one who has the will to kill anyone except through the Islamic justice system. And in doing this, the conditions of such justice must be completed before anyone can be killed.
“Our religion is a civilised religion. The white people learnt the rule of law from Islam. But today, we are the ones in this level of lack of civilisation, to the extent that an Islamic cleric is quoting Qur’an and Hadith spreading and encouraging barbarism.
“People that have not been able to perfect their own acts of worship the way they are supposed to. People who don’t know how to pray properly are now the ones that say they want to dispense justice to people who commit blasphemy.
“What people don’t know is that, in the Islamic perspective, the world is divided into two, the Islamic world and the non-Islamic world, that is countries that are governed by the Islamic law and those that are governed by other laws.
“Those who are not Muslims are divided into two; there are non-Muslims that you engage in war, and there are non-Muslims that you have agreement with.
“Those you have agreement with are also divided into two; those who are living under the Islamic laws and those that are not binded by the Islamic laws.
“Nigeria’s non-Muslims are not living under Islamic laws, we all have an agreement under the Nigerian constitution to live together. So, Prophet Muhammad said whoever kills a soul of non-Muslim that is under such agreement of living together, will not smell the fragrance of paradise, such person’s distance to paradise will be like a journey of 40 years.”
Gumi said killing a non-Muslim under the guise that the person uttered a blasphemous statement against Prophet Muhammad is not an excuse, because Allah told the Muslims in the Qur’an that the non-Muslims will insult Allah and His Prophet.
He said Allah has asked Muslims, in the face of blasphemy in a society Nigeria’s to be patient and preach to the people and make them understand Islam.
He said no Muslim has the right to kill for blasphemy, “as many people who call themselves Islamic clerics who have equally been killed because they have fallen into blasphemy by calling Allah human being or saying they know tomorrow or those who have indirectly turned to herbalist”.
