Wednesday 5 March 2008

Come Off It

Anyone who has read the Ven. AkinTunde Popoola (Director of Communications of the Church of Nigeria) on Thinking Anglicans knows that they must look carefully at what he writes. He has emailed Father Jake and the same has appeared on Anglican Mainstream in defence of Archbishop Akinola and his "No comment" about his alleged involvement in Christian youth violence at Yelwa in 2004.

The questions were direct and the answers specific (and evasive), and this further comment followed:

I'm only doing what the Holy Spirit tells me to do. I'm living my faith, practicing and preaching that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to God, and they respect me for it. They know where we stand. I've said before: let no Muslim think they have the monopoly on violence."

To be told in the response by AkinTunde Popoola that this direct exchange is in the context of Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad is nothing but a smokescreen. No one is surely taken in by this crass attempt at sleight of hand and misdirection.

Father Jake points to his own interesting comments from 2006 and the silence of the Anglican Communion as it maintains its own self-protection. There are origins in this from Thinking Anglicans and Stephen Bates. Thinking Anglicans has more on this controversy, Nigeria, and, via AkinTunde Popoola's response there, a link to a meeting of Archbishop Akinola (with other Anglican bishops) with the Sultan of Sokoto when Sokoto told Akinola that if someone wants to hit him he, Sokoto, will stand his way to be hit first.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't imagine the astonishment on the faces of the bishops when they heard the sultan of sokoto offering to be hit first, before a christian is hit, under his watch.

This incidence can easily explain what happens when ignorance creates fear in the mind of people who otherwise could have been each others "brothers' keepers."

In most cases, those who seek to see division between us for ulterior motives are the same ones who fan the flames of hatred among us.

The reality is that we have more in common than we are willing or ready to admit, except for the courageous ones among us.

Regardless of our ethnicity or tribal origin, all of us are a part of the same human family. Come to look at it, what can be more related than that?

I am glad to know that sokoto proves that we have more affinity towards each other, despite our religious differences, than we are generally made to believe by people who seek to divide us.

Prince Kabir Abubakar was born in Sokoto and is the Webmaster of www.KebbiState.com

Pluralist (Adrian Worsfold) said...

Of course nobody should be hitting anybody.

Anonymous said...

Hi Andrian Worsfold,

Please avoid taking statements out of context. The question at issue with the Sultan of Sokoto was not literal hitting, rather, unjustifiable acts of any nature.

By the way, there were very few occasions when my late father had to hit me, in my early teens. Now in my adult life, I am able to understable why he had to do that.

The sultan was talking about serious business thought; neither literally about hitting nor about children.

Hope this clarification helps. God bless!