Perhaps we may yet rescue Religion from its ultimate indictment: conscription into the ranks of provable enemies of Humanity. The orientation – backed by declarations – of these violators leaves us with a foreboding that the invaluable library-treasures of Timbuktu may be next. Hermann, Denis (1 May 2013). “Akhund Khurasani and the Iranian Constitutional Movement”. Pune Warriors India in just 66 balls at some time in the 2013 IPL. It is time to demand a sense of proportion, and realism. Now that the largest black habitation on the globe has joined the club of religious terror under the portentous name Boko Haram – which means ‘The Book is Taboo’ – we can morally demand help from others, but we only find them drowning in the rhetoric and rites of anger and/or contrition. The name is derived from the ancient Egyptian word sekhem, meaning ‘powerful’. I use the word ‘infantile’ deliberately, because these alleged insults to Religion are no different from the infantile scribble we encounter in public toilets, the product of infantilism and retarded development. The hands of the clock of progress and social development have been arrested, then reversed in widening swathes of the Nigerian landscape.

That principle of personality development is every bit as essential as the education that inculcates respect for the belief systems and practices of others. Places of worship are primary targets, followed by institutes of education. Low rise are best worn with people who have well defined abdominal since it is worn about two inches below your navel. The door to the Universe stands where two paths meet – religion and science. After the consensus on the first two sites as well as further sites associated with the family of Muhammad, there is a divergence between Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims on the designation of additional holy sites. How then can anyone presume that there shall be no violations of the ideal state of religious tolerance to which we all aspire, or demand that the world stand still, cover its head in sackcloth and ashes, grovel in self-abasement or else prepare itself for earthly pestilence for failure to anticipate the occasional penetration of their self-ascribed carapace of inviolability?

The truth, alas, is that the science-fiction archetype of the mad scientist who craves to dominate the world has been replaced by the mad cleric who can only conceive of the world in his own image, proudly flaunting Bond’s 007 credentials – Licence to Kill. As if the resources of the nation were not already stretched to breaking point, they must now also be diverted to anticipating the consequences – as in numerous nations around the world – that would predictably follow the cinematic obscenities of a new entrant into the ranks of religious denigrators, who turn out – irony of ironies – to have originated from the African continent. Innocent sectors of Humanity, eking out their miserable livelihood, are being blown to pieces, presumably to relieve them of their misery. What we are witnesses to in recent times is that such proceeding is being accorded legitimacy on the grounds of religious sensibility.

One takes consolation in the fact that some of us did not wait to sound warnings until the plague of religious extremism entered our borders. The spiral of reprisals now appears to have been launched, what with the recent news that a French editor has also entered the lists with a fresh album of offensive cartoons. With the remorseless march of technology, we shall all be caught in a spiral of reprisals, tailored to wound, to draw virtual blood. The other side responds with real blood and gore, also clotting up the path to rational discourse. What gives hope is the very special capacity of man for dialogue, and that arbiter is foreclosed, or endures interminable postponements as long as one side arrogates to itself the right to respond to a pebble thrown by an infantile hand in Papua New Guinea with attempts to demolish the Rock of Gibraltar. They should not be answered by equally infantile responses that are however incendiary and homicidal in dimension, and largely directed against the innocent, since the originating hand is usually, in any case, beyond reach.