By Moses Oludele Idowu
In his book My Battle Adolf Hitler made a distinction between the two Reformations in German History which is very significant and perceptive for a politician.
He said in the earlier Reformation of Luther it was the best brains and the saintliest souls that left the Catholic Church but in the second it was the not- so- good, the mediocres, the undistinguished ones. That is true.
The same thing can be said about Nigerian politics and democracy and between the 2nd Republic and the 4th Republic we are in. In the Second Republic there were real politicians, learned and serious, well- prepared, educated and knowledgeable and ideologically focused.
Sadly in today’s world of the Fourth Republic the current politicians are largely ignorant, self- serving, unserious, wayward, opportunistic, lacking in honour, ideology and focus.
They know so little but speak with so much boldness and confidence; and it is this very fact that make them a danger, existential danger if not pestilential threat to the next generation and the community of the learned.
They are doing a great damage through miseducation, spreading of ignorance and illiterate ideas among the masses. I am not surprised that Nigerian situation is getting worse by the day.
Reno Omokri pretends to be a man of knowledge and claims to be well groomed and tutored. He is always quick to state that he has visited 95 nations on Earth!
He was a Presidential spokesman for the corrupt and effete administration of Goodluck Jonathan and although he worked for Abubakar Atiku during the last election campaign he has since jumped ship to the winning party and has since become a megaphone of the same man he excoriated to the high heavens. That is Reno for you.
The same Yorubas he now praises every day and moment as civilized and progressive he once abused with scurrilous language in 2015 because they voted against his principal, Jonathan.
That is just to tell you something about the man and his sense and Culture of Honour. Not to worry though because honour is not an essential attribute or commodity to a Nigerian politician.
However, it is not Reno’s politics that irks me as to his pretensions to knowledge and scholarship, his spewing of garbage concocted as History and Theology and his many distortions of facts to his many unfortunate followers who see in him a leader and a dispenser of knowledge.
I once took him up on one of his statements on Esu, the Yoruba divinity, and Ajayi Crowther’s translation of the Bible and challenged him to a debate which he did not accept or answer.
I only pity his large followers running to 700,000 who swallow everything he says as Gospel Truth. ( He calls himself a gospeller, table shaker, deep-thinker and author) It is because of these followers and other Nigerians I am responding to his latest release to set the record straight.
Letter to JesvinGeo
Few days ago a member of one of my WhatsApp platforms posted a letter ostensibly to mock and spite the Christians on the Platform. The said letter written by Reno Omokri and addressed to @Jesvingeo who had compared Christianity and Islam.
Let me say from the outset that I have nothing against Reno and it is never my intention to put down or disparage anyone. However as I have always taught my fans when you put up an idea or suggestion on the public space it could be challenged and you must be ready to defend it.
Reno has made serious claims about History, Islam, Christianity, many of which are so distorted and false that I would be doing future generations a great disservice not to answer.
The 10 Lies About Christianity and Islam
In order for this essay not to be unduly lengthy I would not repost the entire letter of Reno. Readers can go to his page and see the letter for themselves.
After reading the letter I won’t have believed that it was written by Reno but for the fact that it was on his page and and signed under his name. Virtually everything he said was a lie or half- truth; or truth that has been so configured that it has lost any semblance of authenticity.
It shook my faith in Reno. Sincerely I used to think he was really knowledgeable, much more than what I saw or read on his page. I wondered where he learned his own History and the professor who taught him. And to think that this was the same man that was advising and speaking for a President of Nigeria for 5 years makes me worry about Nigeria.
Lie No. 1: Jihads are fought only against idol worshipers
Reno declares: “Please note that Islamic Jihads have historically only been fought against idol worshipers.”
Those were his exact words.
This is a politically – correct statement which is now accepted as truth in conventional circles. But historically it is untrue. It is blatantly false. Substantial evidence now available on our contemporary times even invalidates the assertion.
Because the encounter between the West and Islam has been very bloody and the image of Islam in the West is so battered there was need for a whitewashing of the sordid aspects of the history of Islam especially in its early engagement with other nations.
This fuels much of the leniency currently shown by Western media about Islam and why nothing is usually written against it unlike Christianity that is always ridiculed by both print and electronic media.
However, going into the real History of Islam even written by Muslims that statement is actually false. Jihad is the holy war waged by Muslims and commanded in their holy book against others and this is in progressive stages. I won’t go to that here now
It is true that the prophet of Islam showed some respect for the Christians and Jews initially, the so – called “People of the Book” and that legally Muslims should not declare war against them.
However this legality did not stop Muslim hordes and mobs from attacking and levying war against Christians and Christian dominions. Even Muhammad himself did not follow this rule at some point.
When Muhammad was born in 570 AD there were many Christians and Jews in the Arabian peninsula. Medina was a thriving city of Jews and many Christians. This is an historical fact. So what happened to them, their wives, children?
In 624 AD 700 Jews were expelled from Medina forced to leave all their possession or take what a camel could carry. Muhammad himself gave this order.
In 627 AD all men of the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza, about 700-900 were beheaded and buried in the graves they dug and their wives and children sold to slavery. [ See Wikipedia “Banu Qurayza” or any standard Medieval History book]
All these in the lifetime of Muhammad himself.
The statement that jihad was directed only against idol worshipers is good as a politically -correct statement but as a piece of historical fact or narrative it is false. It is a lie.
The first three hundred years Islam spread by wars, Jihads; most of these were directed against nations, communities and settlements most of which were then largely Christian.
So what happened to the rule?
None of these places was spared because it was a Christian and neither were Christians spared from conquests.
Even in the latter Middle Ages after Islam became established in those nations there were still regular massacres, bloodshed to force the remaining inhabitants to become Muslims by Muslim mobs and hordes.
Regular bloody purges by jihadist gangs that do not discriminate or show any respect for Christians. History is replete with this almost throughout Islamic history that it is confounding to me how Reno missed it.
Lie No. 2: Jihads are not fought against Christians and Jews
In the fourth paragraph of the letter Reno Omokri built on his earlier faulty premise and foundation when he declares: ” Jihads are not fought against Christians. Christians and Jews are considered ‘ People of the Book’ in Islam and are to be respected.”
I am shocked, shell- shocked reading this statement from Omokri. He is again confusing political correctness with history. But for a man who claims to have visited 95 nations it is simply dumbfounding. What then did he see in all the nations he visited? Did he not go to the Middle East and North Africa where Christianity started and where Islam through jihads and pogroms and wars routed Christianity?
This is why today many people including some scholars who should know usually think that Christianity was a European conception. Europe became the centre of Christianity by default because of Jihads in the Middle East. So where did Reno get the fact that jihads are never waged against Christians?
Syria, Byzantine Syria was Christian dominion as well as the whole of Egypt and a substantial part of North Africa. Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia were substantially Christian and the most vibrant portion of Christianity before the rise of Islam. How have they now become Islamic nations and Muslim? Was it by preaching by Muslim alfas or miracles from marabouts?
It was through the swords, Jihads and “holy wars” declared by Islam. How was Jerusalem captured? Alexandria the second largest city of Christendom, how was it captured if Muslims do not wage war against Christians and Jews as People of the Book?
I am so disappointed in Reno with these illiterate, ignorant statements. A “table shaker” that cannot shake anything; a “deep thinker” that does not think and need to be taught?
There were many thriving Christian and Jewish tribes and communities in Arabia in the 6th century.
A large area in northern Arabia was fully Christianized and there was a number of Christian towns in the south ( modern Yemen). Same for Jewish communities within Mecca and Medina, at least six Jewish towns in Arabian peninsula. [ See David Ecole, 2005 Historical Atlas of the Islamic World; Rodney Stark 2011.p.200 ]
If all these thriving Christian communities exist in Arabia and Mecca and Medina before Mohammad what then happened to them if Muslims do not wage war against Christians and Jews?
I am so shocked that Reno calls himself a “deep thinker”; it is obvious he has not thought much on this to see the contradictions in his statement.
In 636 AD Caliph Umar who took over after the death of Muhammad faced Syria to wage war when Syria was essentially Christian.
After three years of fighting and capturing it the Muslim hordes faced the Holy Land of Jerusalem and also forced it to surrender.
From there in 639AD they began the planning of invasion of Egypt another Christian nation. It should be noted that these were not only wars but they were wars of aggression because there was no cause for it except for greed of booty, spoils, plunder and extension of religion against people who were on their own.
Christians suffered all manner of humiliations and privations under the Muslim rule. They must pay special taxes for protection, some were given the offer to leave or convert or die.
The invasion of Syria and Persia in 634 resulted in thousands of Christians being massacred. Egyptian towns such as Behnesa, Fayum, Nikiu and Aboit were all put to the swords by the jihadists.
Spain, Portugal etc that were Christian domains were attacked by the Mohammedan gangs. Even France was attacked that was essentially a Christian domain.
The decisive battle was the Battle of Tours when Charles Martel met the jihadist gangs and inflicted such blow that saved the Western civilization from forced occupation by Islam.
I have gone to this length to show that it is false, very false that jihads were not declared against Christians and Jews. It is so sad that a once- proclaimed pastor is spreading lies that even the historical books on Islam written by even Muslims disproved.
How did Christians fare under Muslim rule? Did Reno ever read the history? Did he ever hear about the Pact of Omar and the implications?
Lie No. 3: Politicization of religion is the problem
Again Reno declares: “The major problems we have in this world are political Judaism, political Christianity and Political Islam.”
Again this is another politically-correct statement and is only partly true. I don’t like collective blame or guilt
It is true that politicization of religion is a major problem but this is really escaping or begging the issue.
In most nations of the West for instance religion is separated from the state. Judaism is only practiced by majority in only one nation – Israel. Only in the Vatican does Christianity exists as a governing authority of state power. All the nations of the West the church is separated from the state.
However in Islam this is not so. Islam does not recognize any separation between religion and state or any notion of secularism. Thus in Muslim nations today the principles of Islam or , in some cases, the Sharia, are used as the governing or directive principles of state policy.
Has the State of Israel ever forced anyone to convert to Jews or turn to Judaism? Has Britain or France or even Spain or even Italy forced anyone to abandon its way of life and belief and become Christians?
Only in Muslim nations are stringent rules against other people and their beliefs and threats against other faith traditions and believers. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, Somalia etc are good examples.
So in the light of these the above statement is mere political correctness and arrant nonsense. What is political Judaism? Has Israel ever declared war on its Arab neighbours since 1948? Has it ever sought to expand by forcibly converting others?
The issue is this, the fact we are all afraid to say is so clear in history. There is one religion that has a consistent history of war and warring, pillage, plunder, bloody raids against infidels – defined so loosely as to include anyone not following their prophet – , carnage and even forced expropriation and forced choices: conversions or death.
Trying to bring different aspects of history from different contexts to justify lumping everyone together is the way of politicians since many of them know very little anyway.
[ To be continued ]
Ensure to read the second and third part of the essay.
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April 29, 2025All Rights Reserved
