By Mahdi Garba The educated illiterates in our midst are sometimes funny. At sometimes, I find their renditions on national and ...
By Mahdi Garba
The educated illiterates in our midst are sometimes funny. At sometimes, I find their renditions on national and international discourses as such while at other times those inputs expose their mediocrity. Since the gibberish they spew is mostly written in a good English, after reading it, one would be left with no option than to conclude that these pseudointellectuals have nothing to offer more than the borrowed colonial language.
I was not surprised with what I have been reading from these people on the unfolding events in Iran in the last few days. Some comments are against Iran as a country I don’t find myself in a better position to address.
On the other hand, some are against hijab, theocracy and in some quarters, the religion of Islam. Those are the ones that you be will amused by and at the same time depressed. These ‘secular’ Muslims think the war on hijab is not their problem, unknown to them that it is a war against their religion.
Personally, I don’t think these attention-seekers deserve what they seek. But, I feel silence at this time cannot be golden. Young people who see English language as a yardstick for gauging intelligence may end up gulping down the undiluted hogwash spewed by these ‘secular’ Muslims as knowledge. Hence, the reason I feel it is important to pen down what I take from the anti-Iran protests.
To jog our memories, in October 2020 peaceful protests rocked all major Nigerian cities where young people came out to make a fuss against police brutality in the country, especially the Southern part. In a country where a large population of youth are unemployed and students of public institution are at home as a result of the unending impasse between their teachers and the government, the economic effects of the COVID-19 lockdown also on, the EndSARS protest soon became an avenue to protest these woes.
We were all supporting the protesters until miscreants hijacked it.
The tragic death of Mahsa Amini in the hands of moral police in Iran recently is not too different from what transpired during the EndSARS protest in 2020. Amini’s death prompted many young people to protest the country’s economic hardship. Soon the protest was hijacked by malfeasants. And, the Western media is always waiting for such stories in order to advance their anti-Iran and Islamophobic narratives.
It is befuddling to see that some Nigerians who were against the EndSARS movement even when it was peaceful are today supporting the young Iranians that are destroying and looting properties in the guise of protesting against the hijab. To protest is legal but to loot or destroy the property of innocent people will never be justifiable in Iran, in Nigeria and wherever.
Finally, I would also like to advise Nigerians who are desperate to comment on international issues to understand the history, culture and religion of the people they are talking about and most important, the political underpinning of the social issue before making a judgement.
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