Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Worlds Apart

Most of my life, man and boy, has been spent shuffling around between libraries and classrooms, optimistically hunting down scraps and titbits to add to the rambling neural labyrinths somewhere inside my head. I'm not being vain or superior, the fact is, we all do it, to a greater or lesser extent. Not the shuffling part, let me be clear, but the finding out part. It's relatively uncomplicated to amass facts, Dickensianly unconnected, and preen oneself at cocktail parties because one can pronounce the capital city of Burkina Faso correctly. It's a little bit more difficult to actually think for oneself, which is, after all, the holy grail of the educator. If my students simply outgrow me, I've done my job and led them forth with enough mental apparatus to make a difference in the world.
My alma mater 1964-1969

I was taught English literature by a master of his craft. English public schools throw up such people from time to time and one is indeed fortunate if such a one crosses one's path. He taught us, we gormless, pustular clods, to recognise type and similarity in a story. One term we were doing Lear. He asked us whether the story reminded us of anything. We sat in stupefied silence. He blew gently through his pipe and asked whether any of us had been read to as children. Hands went up, shiftily. He then asked, with sarcasm both weighty and painful whether any of us had, perhaps, come across a story about two bitchy sisters and their kind sibling who was bullied and humiliated just for being good, the story of Cinderella. Ah. When studying 'The Clerk's Tale', Chaucer's story was easily transposed into 'A Winter's Tale' where tormented wives suffered unreasonable treatment at their husbands' hands.
I was, of course, privileged beyond peradventure. Which is, I suppose, why I find myself outraged to the point of foaming homicide when a collection of rag-tag, brutal peasants in a town in northern Nigeria take it upon themselves not just to deny young girls the chance to think for themselves but have the unconscionable savagery to attempt to blame their perverted, vomitous behaviour on a tattered piece of fiction masquerading as religious literature and the halfwitted ramblings of its ignorant interpreters. These girls have become spoils of war and may even now be locked down in some disgustingly filthy hovel where their captors feel themselves entitled to use them for whatever obscene and grotesque purpose their shrivelled intellects can devise.
I do not normally find myself wishing ill upon any of my fellow-travellers on this planet. But, the head of this pernicious organisation, twitching manically and mumbling into the camera, is of a very different stripe as he threatens to sell the captive girls at the market. The video clip should be watched, disturbing as it undoubtedly is, so that the whole world sees what happens to people who have been overtaken by a dangerous religious mania. It should most especially be watched by those who seem to imagine themselves guiltless since they are only paying for the continued existence of this appalling, diabolical sect.

I am short on charity for the leader of Boko Haram, despite clear evidence of his mental unravelling. He stands for every twisted inversion of everything I have spent my life promoting and were he to be captured, and were I in charge of his sentencing, I would ensure that he lived long and had ample opportunity to listen to the howling voices in his head. Without interruption from his fellows. For an awfully long time.

2 comments:

  1. Everyone is repulsed by the savage behavior of these thugs. Assuming this has anything to do with one's faith is like saying Christianity is responsible for the Holocaust because Hitler was baptized, or the Crusades because Papal Authority signed off on it. It says more to me, having lived in Nigeria for longer than I care to admit, about Nigeria as a failed state. A state and entity that was created by the British Empire and nursed along as a cleptocracy by oil interests over the past 40 years. It is the lack of a government that can meet the first fundamental need of its citizens- what Hobbes called "Leviathan."
    As long as there is a lack of social justice in Africa and other parts of the developing world, and as long as capitalism props up inneffective and corrupt leadership in these places to exploit their resources, ignorance and fear will combine to allow movements like this to exist. Good government will restore the rule of law and meet the needs of the people or these kinds of actions will continue whether they be in Africa, Europe, North America or Asia. Crazy gets a seat at the table when desperation rules the day.

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    1. Always a pleasure, Noah. As Hobbes put it "every crime is a sin, but not every sin is a crime". British colonialism has much to answer for since it was local reaction to its high-handed habits which gave birth to the seeds of rebellion which have now borne such bitter fruit. Who knew?

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