"forgiveness of the unforgivable"?
How is that possible?
Try selling such a preposterous idea
to the usually vindictive Trump
an Old Testament warrior of this ilk :
an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,
Try preaching to him that he should forgive Joe Biden
who never did him any arm, that he should face reality
bite the bullet and forgive himself
for losing the 2020 Presidential Elections
And as for all his perceived enemies,
instead of wanting to obliterate them
as a wannabe great Christian President
he should turn the other cheek
he should do good to those who hate him
he should abide by The sermon on the Mount
On Sunday, 28 December 2025 at 20:10:03 UTC+1 Biko Agozino wrote:
Oluwatoyin,I was answering a question raised by Rabbi Cornel, on whether the proposal to resolve terrorism through non-violence (as is often the case) is feasible in Gaza. I say that it is given that the Palestinian Authority was regarded as a terrorist organization until the Oslo accord. Ditto for the ANC, PAC, and the CPSA and the IRA or the Marxist guerrillas of Columbia. Democracy remains the worst system of government except for all the alternatives, said Churchill. Democracy will never solve all our problems but more democracy is always the best solution to crises in a democracy.The solution to genocide is not more genocide. It is the forgiveness of the unforgivable, according to Derrida who found this more common in the African tradition than in the religions of the book, though Tutu retorted that there is no such thing as the unforgivable in the philosophy of Ubuntu. If people of African descent are not seeking for revenge against Europeans and Arabs for 1000 years of enslavement, if the Igbo are not seeking retaliation for the genocide against them in Biafra, and if South Africans are not seeking genocide against whites for the crimes of apartheid, since they only demand reparative justice; surely Africans can seek healing and forgiveness for African youth and emphasize the funding of education and social services while shunning the weapons of mass destruction being pushed by imperialism to aid genocide in order to facilitate the extractivism of natural resources.Those of you who are hailing the racist bombing of Nigeria by a white supremacist administration should ask yourselves why Trump has never contemplated bombing a majority white country and why he is not inviting thousands of Nigerian Christians to move to the US with asylum the way he is doing for white South Africans? If the US wants to help Nigerian Christians, let them start by paying reparations for slavery, let them support the reunification of Africans under one federal government, and let them seize all the bank accounts of corrupt politicians and their properties in the US and return them to the masses of Africa. No to imperialist bombing!Biko''Democracy is not wishful thinking. It is the system of government preferred by the masses. The electoral process would not be enough to prevent violence. However, combined with heavy investments in education, infrastructure, and industrialization, there is likely to be significant increase in happiness and civility, making militarism obsolete. Yes, the Middle East crisis would be more effectively solved through a single state solution for all residents to share the territory on the basis of one person one vote and the right of refugees to return. The decades of relying on militarism have proven that War is good for absolutely nothing.'' -Biko Agozino(emphasis mine)Valuable when employed judiciously.While you engage in ''heavy investments in education, infrastructure, and industrialization [ leading to] significant increase in happiness and civility'' how best should you respond to terrorist campaigns of murder and massacre?Preach to them?Dialogue with them as Nigeria has been doing as they escalate their campaigns and take over increasing ranges of territory?Nigeria is already ''a single state [in which] all residents share the territory on the basis of one person one vote'', yet some are insisting that is not enough for them as they want to dominate the social space through murder, massacre and terror.
The Nigerian situation is very different from the struggle between the Palestinians and Israel.i wonder why Biko is in effect sermonizing out of context, preaching a doctrine that is impractical as a single solution to the issues being discussed.toyinOn Sun, Dec 28, 2025 at 8:30 AM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovadep...@gmail.com> wrote:thanks.
the article reinforces my position thougha thrust of the article is excerpted below''Jihadist Terrorism in the United States Remains Rare
''As the Bourbon Street attack suggests, the jihadist movement in the United States is resilient. However, the data so far do not indicate that it is resurgent comparable with its past peaks. The number of jihadist attacks and disrupted plots against the United States decreased after the territorial defeat of the Islamic State in 2019 and has stayed much lower than at the peak of its territorial control.The decline in jihadist attacks in the United States is a complex phenomenon resulting from a variety of factors, some of which are out of policymakers' control.Military pressure on the Islamic State has likely deprived would-be jihadist terrorists in the United States of an important source of support for their attacks.The reduction in facilitated attacks may be credited, at least in part, to U.S. counterterrorist pressure. Although virtual facilitators do not require control over territory the way terrorist trainers of the past have, facilitation still requires skills like ideological persuasion or bomb-making training—skills that diminish within terrorist organizations when operatives are killed or captured.''How does this align with my views?Military force is critical in defeating and as a deterrent against violent ideologies, particularly those that want to overthrow the state.Secondly, I hold that even in Northern Nigeria, with a Muslim majority population, any group that pursues its goals of creating a particular kind of Islamic society through terrorism rather than through the democratic process must never be legitimized, never be integrated into politics for any reason so as to avoid a degeneration into poisoned ideologies aligned with inhumane ways of reading the Quran and other foundations of Islamic thought.There is a critical need to decouple Islam from the colonising and imperial culture of violent jihad, one of the greatest problems of the modern world.Boko Haram, ISWAP, ISIS, who are seeking to impose their version of Islam on others through violence are of course different from Hamas who are seeking justice in connection with the loss of Palestinian homeland.thankstoyinOn Sun, Dec 28, 2025 at 8:01 AM John Edward Philips (Yahaya Danjuma) <yahaya....@gmail.com> wrote:--On Dec 27, 2025, at 15:50, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovadep...@gmail.com> wrote:How come there has been no further Islamist terrorist attack in the US after 9/11?This isn't quite true. Just because you haven't heard about something doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/BB84A4CE-715D-4DAA-B2FC-5E1B38718EE8%40gmail.com.
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/94100d2e-ec85-49d8-aa01-700005014ea3n%40googlegroups.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment