Humanity and Against,

By Wole Soyinka

I am certain there are others
who, like me, received
invitations to the recent edition
of the Storymoja/Hay Literature
Festival in Nairobi, but could not
attend. My absence was
particularly regrettable, because
I had planned to make up for
my failure to turn up for the
immediate prior edition.
Participant or absentee however,
this is one edition we shall not
soon forget.
It was at least two days after the
listing of Kofi Awoonor among
the victims that I even
recollected the fact that the
Festival was ongoing at that very
time. With that realization came
another: that Kofi and I could
have been splitting a bottle at
that same watering hole in
between events and at the end
of each day. My feelings, I wish
to state clearly, did not undergo
any changes.
The emotions of rage, hate and
contempt remained on the same
qualitative and quantitative
levels. Those are the feelings I
have retained since the Boko
Haram onslaught overtook the
northern part of our nation. I
expect them to remain at the
same level until I draw my last
breath, hopefully in peaceful
circumstances like Chinua
Achebe, or else violently like
Kofi. As becomes daily clarified
in contemporary existence, none
of us has much control over
these matters.
Two earlier commitments were
responsible for my inability to
attend the Festival. One was a
public conversation with a very
brave individual, Karima
Bennoune, an Algerian national,
whose trenchant publication –
YOUR FATWA DOES NOT APPLY
HERE – is of harrowing
pertinence to the events of
Nairobi, a pertinence that
continues to ravage our, and
other nations.
The other preventive factor was
the annual conference of
International Investigators in
Tunis, doing battle with the
monster of Corruption. The link
of the former event is obvious
enough, but if you think the
latter has no relevance to what
has happened in Nairobi, or is
taking place in the northern part
of this nation, permit me to
correct you.
Yes, we all know of material
corruption, we confront it all the
time. Tragically neglected
however is what we should learn
to designate as spiritual
corruption. Those who
organized and carried out the
outrage on innocent lives in
Nairobi are carriers of the most
lethal virus of corruption
imaginable – corruption of the
soul, corruption of the spirit,
corruption of that animating
humanistic essence that
separates us from predatory
beasts.
I am no theologian of any
religion, but I aver that these
assailants delude themselves
with vistas of paradise after life,
that their delusion is born of the
perverted reading of salvation
and redemption. Those who
attempt to divide the world into
two irreconciliable parts –
believers against the rest – are
human aberrations. As for their
claims to faith, they invoke
divine authority solely as a
hypocritical cover for innate
psychopathic tendencies. Their
deeds and utterances profane
the very name of God or Allah.
Let us however abandon
theology and simply designate
them enemies of humanity,
leaving a very real question that
the rest of us must resolve –
whether this breed even belongs
to the human race, or should be
seen as a mutant sub-species
that require both moral and
scientific definitions. We cannot
continue to pretend that those
who have set their sight against
that enabling spark that we call
creativity, those who arrogate to
themselves the right to dispose
of innocent lives at will, belong
within the same moral universe
to which you and I belong.
Without a moral universe,
humanity exists in limbo.
Not since Apartheid has our
humanity been so intensely and
persistently challenged and
stressed on this continent.
History repeats, or more
accurately re-asserts itself, as a
murdering minority pronounce
themselves a superior class of
beings to all others, assume
powers to decide the mode of
existence of others, of
association, decide who shall
live and who shall die, who shall
shake hands with whom even as
daily colleagues, who shall
dictate and who shall submit.
The cloak of Religion is a
tattered alibi, the real issue – as
always – being Power and
Submission, with the
instrumentality of Terror. Let us
objectively assess the true
nature of the dominion that they
seek to establish in place of the
present ‘dens of sin and
damnation, of impurity and
decadence’ in which the rest of
us supposedly live. We do not
need to seek far, the models are
close by – they will be found in
contested Somalia. In now
liberated Mali.
Fitfully in Mauritania. In those
turbid years of enchained
Algeria, and her yet
unconsolidated business of
secularism. Theirs is the
dominion of exclusion. Of
irrationality and restraints on
daily existence. A loathing of
creativity and plurality. It is the
dominion of Apartheid by
gender.
Of the demonization of
difference. It is the dominion of
Fear. Let us determine that, on
this continent, we shall not
accept that, after victory over
race as card of citizen validation,
Religion is entered and
established as substitute on the
passport, not only for citizen
recognition, but even to
entitlement to residence on
earth.
After the deadly calling card of
these primitives, the rest of the
Nairobi Festival was cancelled.
Understandably, but sadly.
I have however written to the
organizers not to even bother to
renew my invitation for next
year’s edition – life permitting, I
shall be there. We must all be
there. And we must learn to
smother loss in advance, not just
for that Festival but for all
Festivals of Life and Creativity
wherever in the world. Resolve
that, no matter the tragic
intervention, such events must
run their course. Let us accept,
quite simply, that a force of
violent degeneracy has declared
war on humanity. Thus, we are
fated to be ever present on the
battlefield until that war is over.
I submit that we were all present
at that concourse of humanity in
Nairobi. We were present by the
side of every maimed and fallen
victim, among who was a
distinguished one of us, one of
the very best that have defined
us to the world. We were
present in Mali even before this
nation, to her credit, joined in
stemming the tide of religious
atavism and human
retrogression.
We were beside the students of
Kaduna, Plateau, Borno, the
school children of Yobe, the
mangled okada riders and petty
traders of Kano, beside all those
who have been routinely
slaughtered for so many years
past in this very nation. In
Nairobi’s hub of commerce we
were present, confronted yet
again with that same diabolical
test that was applied to school
pupils in Kano many years ago,
where those who failed to recite
the indicated verse of the Koran
were classified as infidels, and
led away to have their throats
serially slit.
We have been present at the
travails of Algeria, recorded for
posterity by that lady Karima
Bennoune in YOUR FATWA DOES
NOT APPLY HERE. We were
beside Tahar Djaout, author of
THE LAST SEASON OF
UNREASON, cut down also by
religious fanatics. We are the
mere survivors who continually
ask, when will this stop? Where
will this end?
The ones who echo Karima and
that miraculous survivor Malala
in declaiming – No indeed, your
fatwa can never apply here. We
have been beside the children of
Cherchyna in the Soviet Union,
innocents who, taken hostage,
were reduced to drinking their
own urine, then deliberately
gunned down as they made
their way out of a school
gymnasium that had turned into
an inferno.
We continue to remain beside all
who have fallen to the blight of
bigotry, religious solipsism and
spiritual toxicity. We shall
continue to stand beside them,
denouncing, condemning, but
most critically, urging on all who
can to anticipate, stem, and
ultimately eliminate the tide of
religious tyranny. We have taken
the side of Humanity against
those who are against.
At this very time of the latest
outrage, the world body, known
as the United Nations
Organization was actually
convened in General Assembly.
We must instigate that body to
evolve, through just, principled,
but severe and uncompromising
action, into a United Humanity
Organisation, that is, thinking
not simply ‘nation’, but acting
‘humanity’. It means going
beyond pietisms such as – this
or that is a religion of peace, but
obliging its members to act
aggressively in neutralizing those
whose acts pronounce the
contrary, so that Humanity is
placed as the first and last
principle of nation existence and
global cohabitation. The true
divide is not between believers
and unbelievers, but between
those who violate the right of
others to believe, or not believe.
Memories that span fifty or more
years are difficult to distill into a
few words. Suffice it to stress
for now that Kofi Awoonor was
a passionate African, that is, he
gave primacy of place to values
derived from his Ewe heritage.
That, in turn, means that he was
thoroughly imbued with the
spirit of ecumenism towards
other systems of belief and
cultural usages – this being the
scriptural ethos that permeates
belief practices of most of this
continent.
We mourn our colleague and
brother, but first we denounce
his killers, the virulent sub-
species of humanity who bathe
their hands in innocent blood.
Only cowards turn deadly
weapons against the unarmed,
only the depraved glorify in, or
justify the act.
True warriors do not wage wars
against the innocent. Profanity is
the name given to the defilement
of the sanctity of human life. We
call on those who claim to
exercise the authority of a fatwa
to pronounce that very doom,
with all its moral weight, upon
those who engage in this serial
violation of the right to life, life
as a god-given possession that
only the blasphemous dare
contradict, and the godless
wantonly curtail. This scalp that
they have added to their
collection was roof to a unique
brain that a million of their kind
can never replace.
A few months ago, in New York,
on a joint platform of the United
Nations and UNESCO, I entered
an urgent plea into the
proceedings of that International
Conference on the Culture of
Peace: Take Back Mali!, I urged.
At home, I impressed that
urgent necessity on our own
government. I know that Kofi
Awoonor, poet, diplomat and
democrat, would approve my
commendation – in this specific
respect at least – of the action
of our and other ECOWAS
governments – albeit after
France had taken the critical lead
– in taking back Mali. I especially
applaud the outgoing Foreign
Affairs Ambassador Gbenga
Ashiru, who hearkened to that
imperative of speedy
intervention and urged it with
vigour and urgency on the
African Union.
We salute the courage and
sacrifices of the soldiers who
reversed the agenda of the
interlopers – al Queda and
company – with their arrogant
designs on those freedoms that
define who we are in this region,
and on the continent itself.
Safeguarding freedoms, alas,
goes beyond even the most
intense passion and will of the
poetic Muse, and we must never
shy away from acknowledging
this cruel reality.
Those who believe that a tepid,
accomodative approach to
fundamentalist rampage can
generate peace and human
dignity should study – as I have
often urged – the experience of
Algeria, captured with such
chilling diligence in Karima
Bennoune’s work. The cost of
‘taking back Algeria’ is one that
will be reckoned in human
deficit – and unbelievable
courage – for generations to
come. Today, I urge all forces of
progress to – Take Back Africa!
Rescue her from the forces of
darkness that seek to inaugurate
a new regimen of religious
despotism, ruthless beyond what
our people have known even
under the imperial will of
Europe.
These butchers continue to
evoke the mandate of Islam,
thus, we exhort our moslem
brother and sister colleagues:
Take back Islam. Take back that
Islam which, even where it
poses contradictions, declares
itself one with the Culture of
Learning, one that honours its
followers as People of the Book,
historic proponents of the
virtues of intellect and its
products. There is no religion
without contradictions – it is the
primacy of human dignity and
solidarity that serves as arbiter.
We call upon the fastidious
warrior class of the intellect,
steeped in a creative contempt
and defiance of enemies of the
humanistic pursuit.
We speak here of that Islam that
inspires solidarity with the
Naguib Mafouzes of our trade,
with the Tahar Djaouts, with the
Karimas and the Mariama Bas,
not the diabolism of al Shabbab,
Boko Haram and their
degenerate ilk. Let us join hands
with the former, and enshrine
their mission as the history
prescribed destination of our
creative urge.
What Nairobi teaches – and not
just this recently – is that there
is no place called Elsewhere.
Elsewhere has always been right
here with us, and in the present.
I urge upon you this mandate:
seize back your Islam and thus,
take back our continent and, in
that restorative undertaking –
take back our humanity.

Professor Wole Soyinka, Nobel
laureate and
compulsive defender of freedom
and justice, delivered this tribute
at a recent gathering of Nigerian
writers at the Freedom Park,
Broad Street, Lagos.

Hmmm. Must be the article Okey Ndibe strongly recommended in his own recent write-up which I posted on NLand yesterday.

Enough of the lip service and political correctness. Evil is being perpetrated in the name of Islam almost ON DAILY BASIS yet many choose to play the ostrich.

HI Op please I need the link to original article. kindly post it if u have. thanks