How the Sultan Could End the Violence, Mineral Looting, and Displacement in 90 Days or Less
He has the power. It’s not hard. The question is — does he have the desire?
To make it easy for him, a draft fatwa is included.
By Mike Arnold
Every week another village burns. Another Christian pastor is hacked apart on his way home. Another Catholic schoolchild disappears into the bush. Another peaceful Muslim who dared object is found in a ditch. More mineral wealth looted, multitudes more displaced.
And every week, from the seat that could end it with a single ruling: Silence. Vague statements. Press releases that name nobody, forbid nothing, and bind no one.
So let me make this easy.
I have drafted what a real fatwa from the Sultan of Sokoto would look like. Not a press release. A binding religious ruling, in the tradition of Saudi Arabia’s Council of Senior Scholars and Egypt’s Al-Azhar when they faced down Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
I am not the Sultan. I am not Muslim. I have no authority to issue it. He has all of that authority — and has chosen, for seventeen years and counting, not to use it.
The document is attached. Read it. Then ask yourself why he hasn’t.
It names the killers. Boko Haram. ISWAP. Ansaru. The Lakurawa. The Fulani militias. It declares them khawarij — rebels who have departed from Islam through the shedding of innocent blood. It forbids the killing of Christians. It forbids blasphemy lynching by name — Deborah Samuel by name. It calls for the deputy imam who justified her murder to be removed from his post. It rules the doctrines of jizya, Dar al-Harb, and spoils of war inapplicable to the citizens of Nigeria. It orders cooperation with Nigerian security forces. It declares the Caliphate’s silence on the nine billion dollars a year being looted from his own lands haram — and orders an audit. It calls for the kidnapped children to come home.
And it welcomes any independent investigation into whether members of the royal family, staff, or institutions under the throne have facilitated, funded, or sheltered the killers.
A fatwa like this would end most of the killing inside ninety days.
Not because every jihadist would obey. Boko Haram and ISWAP have already declared the Sultan an apostate for being insufficiently radical. They wouldn’t listen. But the Fulani militias would lose their cover. The political class that has used the throne as a shield would lose its shield. Mainstream Northern Muslims — the silent majority who, it is likely, want this carnage to end as much as anyone — would have explicit theological permission to oppose what is being done in Allah’s name.
The killing would not stop overnight. The architecture that protects the killers would.
So the question for the Sultan of Silence is the easiest question in Nigeria: Why hasn’t he?
I do not say this lightly. I say it because the document below took me less 10 minues to draft. The Sultan has had seventeen years.
Issue this. Issue something stronger. Or stand exposed as the man who could have ended it with a signature and chose, for seventeen years and counting, not to lift the pen.
The hour is late. The world is watching.
He has the authority. He has the office. He has the moral platform. He has more than 100 million Muslims under his spiritual command. He has every tool he would need.
The only thing missing, it seems, is the desire.
The real question is, why won’t he?
Hmmm.
#EarthShaker