Could Boko Haram be right after all?

Considering the fact that the nefarious activities of Boko Haram is always a news item on BBC's Focus on Africa, I have had the privilege to carefully think about the logic in the activities of Boko Haram, and have always asked myself the question: 'Could Boko Haram be right after all?' First, Boko Haram is now known to mean book is prohibited.

Actually, what they mean by book is not the Arabic kitab, but western education. Boko Haram is fighting the pervasiveness of western civilization, which has western education as its harbinger, in the Nigerian society. They are calling for a revival of the classical Islamic period, where Islamic values had profoundly impacted on the lives of Muslims.

According to the group, western culture, creeping deeply into the social fabric of the Nigerian society, is perverting and distorting the true landmarks of Islam. They alleged that, western education is polluting not just the minds of Nigerians, but also making most Nigerian Muslims liberal or non-Muslims all together.

Indeed, some Muslims in the Gold Coast expressed this paranoia of Boko Haram during the colonial era. The fear of most Muslims in Gold Coast was that western education was used to as an instrument of converting Muslim children into Christianity. And so, a number of Ghanaian Muslims would not allow their children to receive western education.

Thus, apart from the possibility of their children becoming Christians, they feared that western education would interfere with the true practice of Islam by their children. In a way the fear of most Ghanaian Muslims was justified, because the missionaries used western education to proselytize.

The post-colonial Ghana saw a radical change of attitude among Muslims. Secularization of the Ghanaian society assured Muslims that their children could also receive western education without any let or hindrance.

But that is not to say that all Muslims take delight in sending their children to secular schools. In a research I conducted in 2008, I discovered that a number of Muslims in Maamobi community, Accra, had no interest in sending their female children to secular schools for the fear that the Islamic identity of their daughters would be diluted or compromised. In consequence, to ensure that Islam continues to exercise huge impact on their children, most of these Muslims prefer to give their children Islamic education provided by the Madrasas.

Now about Boko Haram, can they be right? Do they have a justifiable cause? Well, secular education is built on two solid foundations: positivism and evolution theory. Following these two basic principles, God has no place in secular education. The human mind is considered the final arbiter in all matters.

Anything that the human mind could not comprehend and could also not be experimented was considered an anomaly. And since God and matters of the metaphysical world could not be experimented, God was thrown out of the widow, and religion was considered an anathema to secularism.

A chasm was created between religion and politics: Religion was pushed from the public space to the private space. Indeed, in the academic world today, it is almost as if for one to be a scholar one must be an atheist. The nineteenth century completed the eradication of God from the academic world.

The rise to fame of some radical scholars such as Friedrich Nietzsche (who made the audacious claim that God is dead), Karl Marx (who said religion is the opium of the masses), Sigmund Freud (who said God is a figment of imagination), Herbert Spencer (who said God is simply an elevation of societal values), James Frazer (who said religion is nothing other than the practice of magic), and Charles Darwin (who disputed the existence of an intelligent creator of the universe).

The provocative thoughts of these scholars provided the linchpin for secular education. The idea of God was believed to be ingrained in the mind of the so-called primitive man, whose primitivism enforced the belief in God.

It was generally accepted that the primitive society, which was characterized by ignorance of science, provided the ambience for the belief in God to thrive. In other words, man’s ignorance of science was a sine qua non condition for the belief in God’s existence.

It was, therefore, predicted that advancement of science will further the cause of secularization, since God will be useless in explaining existential realities of life. Following the influence of these great thinkers, the popular niche that developed in the West is that, ‘to modernize is to secularize.’ The belief in God is considered to be dangerous and anathema to the modern world. Sam Harris, the atheist and author of, The End of Faith, has argued forcefully that religion is a threat to the modern world.

Other strident atheists like Richard Dawkins have also asseverated that the belief in God is a scar on the human conscience. Religion and its affirmation of the existence of an intelligent ultimate reality is considered to impede human progress, since, according to them, is science is anti-God.

Somehow, the lived-realities of religious fundamentalism, which has found expression in wanton killing of human beings and destruction of property in the name of God has to the causal reader given some credence to the claims of atheists and agnostics.

The existential realities of evil in our world have further equipped atheists that the belief in God is an illusion of human history, and even if he exists, he is dead, according to Nietzsche.

Coming from a home where religion provides answers to what is scientifically inexplicable, I had difficulties with some of my Professors, when I was pursuing undergraduate studies at the University of Cape Coast. I remember one of them telling me that: 'Prempeh, you are so intelligent, but God is too much in your language, that will impede your quest for scholarship.'

So, yes to be a scholar is to be secular. In other words, God and intellectualism were seen as belonging to two differentiated worlds. The pervasiveness of secular thinking is so strong in our schools that the study of religions, which ideally should be focused on God, leads the student doubtful about God.

For most people, it is incomprehensible to be both academic and religious. Given this background of secularism in our education, Boko Haram is calling for the reinstatement of God in the academic environment. But what is their premise?

Didn't Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam, ask Muslims to seek knowledge even if it meant going to China? What did the Prophet mean when he made that profound suggestion? Was he talking about secular education, which has less regard for God or the education of the Chinese, which was based on religion?

It must be stated that until the period of the renaissance and the industrial revolution, all education was based on religion: Religion provided the worldview for knowledge acquisition.

So, am tempted to think that the Prophet was not talking about secular education, which is very godless. So, a number of Muslims, particularly those who travel to the West are becoming very secular and less and less religious.

Most of them prefer to stay away from religion in order to pursue secular education. So, in a way, there is some sense in the awareness that is being created by Boko Haram, but their approach is simply dangerous and anti-human.

The best Muslims or all religious groups can do is not to pick arms to attack secularism. Secularism should encourage the religious to engage in deep intellectual exercise to challenge secularism and godlessness in our society.

It is now time for people who profess faith in a supreme intelligent being to prove to the world that there is no conflict between science and religion.

The use of force and barbaric slaughtering of human beings in the name of restoring the glory of God is primitive, inhuman and inane. Those of us who are godly need to engage atheists, who are dominating the academic, in an intellectual debate to prove to them that God is the centerpiece of the universe, and that the universe runs on the axis of God's power.

The leadership of Boko Haram should come to their senses to admit that an atrocity of such historical proportion is not the way out. The way out is commonsense. In any case, the sophisticated weapons they are using did not drop from heaven: they came from the human intellect.

Satyagraha!!!! Charles Prempeh The writer is a Lecturer at the African University College of Communications, Prolific Social analyst and now at Makerere University, Uganda.