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The women' s wing of an Islamic aid group, Jama'atul Nasril Islam (JNI), has honored President Margee Ensign of the American University of Nigeria, Yola in recognition of her selfless service to society.
National Director of JNI, Hajia Hadiza Mohammed presented a certificate of merit and a plaque award to Professor Ensign for her community development and humanitarian activities in Adamawa state, a statement from the university said.
The occasion ended a two-day seminar on "Strengthening the Capacity of Muslim Women Participation for Peace and Development towards Nation Building."
It was organized by JNI in Jimeta, Yola.
President Ensign, an American, was described by the organizers as a native of Bole, AUN's host community which made her an honorary citizen in 2012.
She was recognized for the establishment of Adamawa Peace Initiative (API) "which has become a leading, non-profit organization determined to maintain peace and community development in Northeast Nigeria," the statement said.
She was also cited for her astute management of AUN as an institution committed to partnering with the community to ensure sustainable development and security.
The Deputy Amira (leader) of the JNI women's wing in Adamawa State, Hajiya Sa'adatu Abdullahi, said it was significant for the people in the state and the international community to understand that JNI holds Dr. Ensign in high esteem and appreciates her commitment to the education and empowerment of women in the region.
On receiving the award, President Ensign reflected on the theme of the seminar saying "As you look around the world, peaceful societies are those that have empowered and educated women and encouraged them to be leaders. At this moment in our history, when we are surrounded by violence, it is more important than ever to recognize the key role that women play in society. Women are the foundation of a society."
Dr. Ensign appealed to Muslim leaders to make the world to understand that Islam represents cooperation, compassion, and generosity at these trying times.
The Wife of the Vice President, Hajiya Amina Mohammed Namadi Sambo has attended the World Hijab Day tagged Hijab: My God-Given Right, My Symbol For Good Not Evil organized by Coalition of Nigerian Muslim Women at the National Mosque, Abuja.
Hajiya Amina Sambo in her speech, said, she was delighted and honored to be at the second World Hijab Day in Nigeria. She explained that the hijab is not just a piece of cloth used to cover the head but a shield to cover the exposed parts of the woman body. It's to protect the women from indecent men and it constitutes the morals of Islam. She supported her words with a quote from the Glorious Qur'an, chapter 33 verse 59 where Allah told Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) thus; "O Prophet, enjoin your wives and your daughters and the believing women to draw a part of their outer coverings around them. It is likelier that they will be recognized and not molested". Thus, wearing of hijab by Muslim women is not a choice but submission to the injunction of Almighty Allah.
She further explained that, the hijab is an act of worship and obedience, an act of honour and dignity, an act of belief and faith and an act of purity and wisdom of Allah that send a signal of modesty to the men that the person wearing the hijab is not just a Muslim woman but a dignified person, especially this critical time when women tends to go nude all inthe name of fashion. She urged the Muslim women especially the young ones to wear the hijab with the fear of Allah.
Hajiya Amina commended the organizers of the program for making it happen and that she would love to see the same go round other States in the country. She then advised mothers to be conscious of their children and encourage them to tread in the way of God and pray for peace and harmony in Nigeria.
The typical trajectory of most French Islamist terrorists follows
four steps: alienation from the dominant culture, thanks partly to
joblessness and discrimination in blighted neighborhoods; a turn to
petty crime, which leads to prison, and then more crime and more prison;
religious awakening and radicalization; and an initiatory journey to a
Muslim country like Syria, Afghanistan or Yemen to train for jihad.
Stints
in prison were seminal for Chérif Kouachi, Amedy Coulibaly and other
major figures of French jihadism in recent years — Mohammed Merah, Mehdi
Nemmouche, Khaled Kelkal — as both a rite of passage and a gateway to
radicalism.
Muslims account for about 7-10 percent of France’s
total population but around half of its prison population of 68,000.
Muslims are even more numerous in facilities near large cities,
particularly in maisons d’arrêt, which hold prisoners serving shorter
sentences.
Precise
figures are unavailable because laïcité, France’s strict form of
secularism, prohibits officially asking and collecting data about
people’s religious preferences. These estimates are based on research I
conducted in French prisons in 2000-3 and again in 2011-3, when I
interviewed some 160 inmates and many guards, doctors and social workers
in four major facilities, some among the largest in Europe. Fifteen of
those inmates had been sentenced for terrorist acts.
Many
Muslims feel marginalized when they get to prison, due to exclusion and
bigotry from the white majority in mainstream society, and their own
counterracism. Although in urban prisons they are a majority, they
continue to feel victimized and trapped. Very few guards are Muslim, and
prison officials, who tend to be hypersecular, have little
understanding of Islam, for example confusing fundamentalism with
extremism.
“Look
at how a Catholic or a Jew is treated, and look at how we are treated,”
Abdelkarim, a Frenchman of Italian origin in his late 20s who was
serving a five-year sentence for armed robbery, told me in 2012. “They
have their weekly prayers; in this prison we don’t have Friday prayers.
Their rabbi can go to all the cells; our Muslim minister cannot. There’s
kosher food, but no halal meat. They despise us, and they call that
laïcité.”
In
fact, Muslim ministers can visit Muslim inmates in their cells but
usually don’t do it for lack of time, and halal meat is increasingly
available. But such misperceptions are common, and they only reinforce
the appeal of Islam as the religion of choice for the stigmatized and
the oppressed. Unlike Christianity, it has an anti-Western and
anti-imperialist bend.
One
young French inmate of Algerian origin told me in 2013, “If you are a
Muslim and ask to participate in the Friday prayers, they take your name
down and hand it over to the Renseignements Généraux.” (The
Renseignements Généraux is the French equivalent of the FBI.) He added:
“If I try to take my prayer carpet to the courtyard, they prohibit it.
If I grow a beard, the guards call me Bin Laden, smiling and mocking me.
They hate Islam. But Islam can take revenge!”
Adherence
to radical Islam is largely the transfer into the spiritual realm of
that particular combination of indignation, rancor and wholesale
rejection encompassed by the expression, widespread among prisoners,
“avoir la haine” (to have hate). For some inmates, especially those who
were only nominally Muslim and nonpracticing, violent aspirations emerge
first, with religiosity — and often a very approximate understanding of
Islam — grafting itself onto to them later.
Abdelkarim,
who converted to Islam (and adopted an Arabic name) about a decade
before I met him, acted as an informal Salafist chaplain; his prison
counted about 1,000 Muslim inmates and just one Muslim minister, an
older gentleman from North Africa out of touch with the young prisoners’
concerns. Each time Abdelkarim sang the call to prayer at dawn he would
be sent to solitary confinement for a few days; eventually he was
transferred to another jail. Nationwide, there is only about one Muslim
minister for every 190 inmates, leaving self-proclaimed ulama to proffer
their own religious guidance.
Radical
preaching catches on because it offers young Muslim prisoners a way to
escape their predicament and develop a fantasy of omnipotence by
declaring death onto their oppressors. During my research in 2000-3, the
prisoners idolized Khaled Kelkal, whose network killed eight people in a
Paris subway station in 1995 to punish the French government for
backing a military coup against an Islamist party in Algeria. A decade
later their new icon was Mohammed Merah, who in 2012 shot down seven
people, including soldiers and Jewish children, in the name of radical
Islam; some inmates even impersonated him. Now the new celebrities will
be the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly.
About
three months ago, the authorities at Fresnes, a very large prison known
for its strict discipline, started experimenting with separating
suspected Muslim radicals from the general population, grouping them in
special cells. Although it is too early to assess the measure’s
effectiveness, the provisional results are mixed.
The
prisoners’ segregation at Fresnes is incomplete, owing to the shape of
the 19th-century building. With rows of cell blocks branching out
perpendicularly from a central corridor, the inmates can communicate
with each other simply by shouting. The radicalized prisoners now have
less influence on other inmates, especially ones who are impressionable
or have mental disorders. But they are in closer contact with one
another, allowing them to organize and make plans.
Prime
Minister Manuel Valls announced recently that the quarantine program
would be expanded in several prisons around Paris. The proposal needs to
be refined. Seasoned jihadists must be separated from untested radicals
and the returnees from, say, Syria and Iraq, who may have been
traumatized or disappointed by their experience of jihad and still stand
a chance of being reintegrated into mainstream society.
More
must also be done to address the legitimate claims of Muslim inmates.
Collective Friday prayers should be allowed in all French prisons, for
example. The government announced last week that 60 Muslim ministers
would be trained to supplement the 182 or so currently in service. This
is a welcome proposal. But at least three times as many ministers are
needed, and they must be more uniformly distributed throughout the
prisons. Above all, they will need to be coached to better understand
and address the concerns of disaffected young Muslim prisoners.
Indeed,
reform must begin with respect. For if French prisons have become a
breeding ground for radicalism, it is partly because they mistreat the
Islamic faith itself.
Egypt's Grand Mufti Sheikh Shawky Allam tells public forum in Singapore
that ISIS is not considered a state and is not justified by Islam.
ISIS fighters parade in the northern Syrian city of Tel Abayd, Jan. 2, 2014
Islamic State, which has sown a trail of terror across Syria and Iraq, is neither a state nor justified by Islam, Egypt's top Muslim cleric said Monday.
"We have already asserted that we should never use the term Islamic
State for ISIS," Egypt's Grand Mufti Sheikh Shawky Allam said at a
public forum in Singapore.
"It is not a state in the first place, neither is it justified by any Islamic justification," he told the packed gathering, which was organized by the city-state's Islamic Religious Council.
"The establishment of any Islamic state will need to go to its roots,
its basis and foundations," he said through an interpreter when asked
if the formation of the group, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), was in line with Islamic law.
Since the group emerged in its current form in 2013, its militants have captured large swathes of territory in both Syria and Iraq.
It has declared an Islamic "caliphate" in territory under its control, and gained a reputation for brutality, including torture and beheading of its captives.
In its latest act of brutality, the group said Sunday it had executed
one of two Japanese hostages it has been holding, apparently by
beheading him.
Sheikh Allam said the group was misrepresenting Islam.
"The main intention of Allah is certainly not the destruction, killing or war," he said.
"What we seek is stability. If these people are there to only
cause destruction, and you say you do it in the name of Islam, certainly
this is not what Islam is about."
Sheikh Allam also said the publication of Mohammed cartoons by
the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo "affected our emotions
deeply" but stressed that "we have to deal with this issue in a rational
manner."
Two Islamist gunmen this month attacked the Paris
office of the magazine, leaving 12 people dead, including some of
Charlie Hebdo's top cartoonists. Five more people were killed in related
attacks by a separate gunman.
"When someone has committed a crime in any country, there are ways
to ensure this matter is raised through proper channels," the cleric
said.
"Anything we do must be just -- that is the basis of Islam."
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