The Detroit bomber, a breed from a historical, Taliban-like community
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-tear old man who attempted an arson terrorist attack on the Northwest Airlines’ flight from Amsterdam Friday is a Muslim born and raised in an Islamic, conservative Hausa family settled in the Northern Sunni environment known for its inter-religious, Muslims vs. Christians, deadly clashes and massacres, and for its confrontations between Muslim extremists and the Nigerian authorities. The Taliban-like community claims supremacy over the other Nigerian ethnic groups, over the Christians and Animists in Nigeria, and over the other religions and cultures in the world. We highlight the following topics: Thousands killed the last decades during Muslim-led clashes; Northern Nigeria’s 14 centuries of extremist and terrorist Islamism; Hausa and Fulani part of the Moors who invaded Europe for 7 centuries; The Moors’ racism as the source of the Whites’ later anti-Black and anti-Jew racism in Europe
By Ndzana Seme
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For, the young terrorist’s home community may be a breeding ground for Al-Qaeda recruits. Unfortunately, the facts confirm that it is more likely to be the case.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father, conservative and billionaire Muslim Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, was born in 1939 in the town of Funtua, in the north-central state of Katsina, which is home of the current, ailing president of Nigeria Umar Ya’Adua, another Nigerian Muslim billionaire.
Umaru Mutallab, a fellow of the Association of Chartered and Certified Accountants (FCCA), the Institute of the International Bankers Association (FIBA, USA), the Institute of Bankers, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (FCA), is counted as chairman of more than 36 blue-chip companies inside Nigeria and overseas; including as founder and current chairman of the first Islamic bank in Nigeria, Jaiz International Bank, established in 2003, former Chairman of First Bank of Nigeria (he retired from the position in mid-December 2009), former chief of the United Bank for Africa, former Federal Minister of Economic Development & Reconstruction, and former chairman of the troubled and woeful former National Electric Power Authority (NEPA). He was succeeded as the head of First Bank of Nigeria by Oba Otudeko, another billionaire, Chairman of the Honeywell Group of Companies and immediate past President of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).
Alhadji Mutallab, “one of Nigeria’s most respected technocrats and administrators, benefited from his deft positioning across an immense network of family, geo-ethnic and professional layers of interests,” wrote Chido Nwangwu, in ‘The Mutallabs: contrasting terror-bound son Farouk and business mogul father Umar.’
“The man has had a near permanent presence on Nigeria’s economic landscape as government official, banking investor, facilitator or shareholder — working the levers of power– all through civilian and military governments in Nigeria since over 35 years,” said Chido Nwangwu. His business success could barely be possible without the help of his Northern counterparts, who controlled militarily the Nigerian Federal government since the 1960s until 1999, including the oil wealth and corruption-rigged federal contracts.
Alhadji Mutallab, like his Northern counterparts, is most of all a devout Muslim, a conservative Hausa rooted in the Katsina cultural environment of his native Funtua. There is no doubt that Mutallab raised all his 16 children in the pure polygamous, conservative Islamic tradition.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is depicted by several accounts as the “Pope”, a "very religious" and "very obedient" child praised for his “saintly aura," who showed “signs of inflexibility,” who in a discussion in 2001 was “the only one to defend the actions of the Taliban in Afghanistan” and who “became upset when the teacher took students to a pub and said it wasn't right to be in a place where alcohol was served” during a school trip to London.
The Nigerian daily This Day reported indeed that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attended secondary school at the British International School in Lome, Togo, where the newspaper said he was known for preaching to classmates about Islam. He was nicknamed "Alfa", a local term for Muslim scholar.
Had Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab succeeded in blowing up the Delta Northwest Airlines’ plane, a Nigerian commentator thinks that “his parents would feel that he would be on his way to Heaven surrounded by seven virgins as the myth says.” He adds that “it is not only the children of the poor who engage in criminal activities; the rich also cry; and in this regard, poverty does not always explain deviant social conduct.”
Thousands killed these last decades during Muslim-led clashes
Born with a silver spoon in his mouth in an African envionment surrounded by extreme poverty, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s terrorist attempt in Detroit is amazing for most. But the surprise would be somewhat dissipated for two reasons.
First, it should not really come as a surprise that the son of a Nigerian, Muslim billionaire raised in a conservative Islamic culture and praised for his “saintly aura” became a follower of Osama bin Laden, the son of a Saudi billionaire also raised in a conservative Islamic culture. Second, if one knew that Abdulmutallab’s family is located in the heart of the Islamic fundamentalist, Northern area of Nigeria.
Just for this closing decade, the Northern Islamic Nigeria, where 12 States went on to establish Sharia law in 1999 after general elections, has witnessed very violent and deadly clashes and massacres, often treated by the Western media with either silence or underreporting.
Just this very Monday, December 28, 2009, thirty eight people, including two soldiers, were killed and twenty others arrested during clashes between Nigerian security forces and members of the radical Islamic sect Kala-Kato in Bauchi State, Northern Nigeria, particularly in the Zango neighborhood. Also known as Maitatsine, the extremist movement is present in the area since decades and had several times clashed in the past with Christians and the authorities, including in the town of Kano in 1980 and in the town of Yola in 1992, resulting at each time into thousands of people killed.
Before that, still in northern Nigeria, clashes between a radical Islamist group and Nigerian authorities left at least 700 dead and forced thousands to flee their homes late July 2009. The Islamist group responsible for the violence is known as the Nigerian Taliban, al-Sunnah wal Jamma (Followers of Muhammad’s Teachings) and also, most commonly, as Boko Haram, which means, “Western education is forbidden”.
Back in November 2008, more than 200 people were killed in two days of clashes between Christians and Muslims in central Nigeria, the Red Cross reported, during the worst unrest in the country for years. After rival gangs set fire to churches and mosques, the army then sent reinforcements to enforce a 24-hour curfew in the city of Jos, which lies at the flashpoint where Nigeria's Muslim north and Christian south meet.
“I counted 218 dead bodies at Masalaci Jummaa [mosque]. There are many other bodies in the streets,” said a Red Cross official, who asked not to be named. That death toll did not include hospital mortuaries, victims already buried, or those taken to other places of worship. The final count could be much higher, officials said.
Other recent occurrences include riots in 2006 following the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish publication, which left over 150 people dead; and riots in 2002 in the northern city of Kaduna after the publication of another article some Muslims felt was defamatory to the Prophet, with over 200 people killed. In the city of Jos, in central Nigeria, whose population is split between Muslims and Christians, thousands have been killed in multiple outbreaks of election-related sectarian violence in the past decade.
Nigeria, the most populous country on the African continent and home to 140 million people and over 240 African ethnic groups, is religiously split between Christians and Muslims. The Christians are dominant in southern Nigeria, while Muslims are the majority in northern Nigeria.
Nigerian Muslims belong primarily to the Maliki school of Sunni Islam. Sharia law had been established in 12 Northern States, but it was not really implemented, which is believed to be the reason why groups such as Boko Haram and Kala-Kato have occasionally tried to take matters into their own hands, attempting to implement a more extreme form of Islamic law. But Boko Haram and Kala-Kato may be just trying the repeat history.
Northern Nigeria’s 14 centuries of extremist and terrorist Islamism
For, since back in the 8th century with the first Islamic Jihad wars by Muslin Arab invaders targeting Africans for either conversion to Islam for those who were subjugated, or death and slavery for those who resisted, the converted Muslims of the Hausa and Fulani ethnic groups in the area (which covers both Northern Nigeria and Cameroon) have historically terrorized and often subjected the other African animist and Christian groups to their rule, slavery and economic oppression.
As an example, the tale of the Beti-Fang (the ethnic group of the writer of this report) people’s exodus starts with the crossing of the Yom (Sanaga) river by the Beti people. It is said that the group was pursued by cavalry invaders. The only known historic cavaliers fighting with swords and knives, as stated in the tale, are Arab Muslims and their converted local counterparts.
The Kanem-Bornu Empire is the last Islamic State in the central African area before Western colonisation. The Kanem Empire (700-1376) is the Ancient African state founded in the 8th century in what is modern day Chad. The Bornu Empire (1376-1893) is the Medieval African state which continued the dynasty of the Kanem state from what is modern day Nigeria and Niger.
The capital for both Kanen Empire and Bornu Empire was Sokoto; which had been used in recent history as early as October 1804 by the Shehu Usmanu Dan Fodiyo as the venue for the meeting with Galadima, Yunfa's Vizier. Subsequently, it was used by Muhammad Bello as a staging post for an attack on Dufua in the spring of 1806.
Current Nigerian Sokoto area may have been known as Sokoto as early as 7th century. It was re-founded as Ribat (military camp or frontier) in 1809 when Shehu Usmanu was at Sifawa. It later became the capital of the caliphate after Shehu's death.
In the 1820s, Sokoto was at peak of prosperity coinciding with the peak of its rulers' powers at the center of the caliphate, receiving annual tribute from all its fiefs, before a long period of decline.
According to GlobalSecurity.org article Nigeria Christian / Muslim Conflict, Usman Dan Fodio’s jihad from 1804 to 1810 ended with the establishment of the Sokoto sultanate. This Islamic theocratic empire extended from what is now extreme northwest Nigeria into contemporary north Cameroon. The resources of the empire were mainly from raids and looting, slave trade and trans-Saharan trade control.
For example, as reported by GlobalSecurity.org, armed forces of the emirate of Zazzau, based in present-day Zaria in north-central Kaduna State, pursued intermittent warfare and slave raiding in the southern half of contemporary Kaduna State, an area populated by some 15 minority ethnic groups. The emir claimed suzerainty over this whole area. After colonization, a number of the minorities, including the Gbagyi, who are the indigenes (first occupants) of the area where Kaduna city developed, converted to Catholicism and to various Protestant sects. The emir of Zazzau, however, continued to assert his jurisdiction over those Nigerian Middle Belt minorities. In the Northwest, core of the old North, some emirates—for example, Sokoto, Katsina, and Kano—retain much of their old authority.
Others, such as Zazzau, have recently lost control over areas they formerly claimed, and their authority may be waning. By contrast, minority groups in southern Kaduna State such as the Byagyi, have, as part of the same recent events, gained recognition as new “indigenous” governments, the GlobalSecurity.org’s article further states.
Still others—for example, the newly minted Emirate of Dutse (1990)—may lack, at least at the emirate level, the authority associated with governance structures in the original seven Hausa states (Daura, Kano, Rano, Gobir, Biram [Sokoto], Zamfara, and Zazzau [Zaria]).
Hausa and Fulani part of the Moors who invaded Europe for 7 centuries
When some Hausa-Fulani extremists claim their cultural superiority over all other cultures in the world, they are backed by historical facts. For, the medieval mixed race (Blacks, Mulattoes and White Berbers), Muslim people then called the Moors, invaded Spain; like under Abderrahman I (757-787), the founder of the independent kingdom of Cordova. In Troupes noires (Revue de Paris, p. 62. July 1909 pp. 61-80), it is written that a rival Moorish leader “brought from Africa a great number of Negroes from which he formed a redoubtable regiment of cavalry in 1016” and took over the Caliphate.
Other historical readings report, among many other Blacks, that in 1086, Yusuf ben Tachfln, who is described by Moorish historian Ali ibn Abd Allah as “dark” and “wooly-haired,” (Roudh ci Kartas, p. 304.) and who was probably a Nigerian, brought in an army composed largely of “pure Negroes” (11. Ency. Brit. Vol. 21 (See SPAIN—Almoravides). Ibn El-Athair. Roudh ci Kartas pp. 525 Also pp. 457-60, 462. Scott, S. P. Hist. of the Moorish Empire, p. 622. 1904.)
Another Moor, Yakub el-Mansur, known as “the son of a Negro woman,” (Roudh el Kartas, p. 304.) invaded in 1194 and made himself master of almost the whole of Iberia. The guards of these Moorish kings were specially chosen for their sized Negroes, “jet-black and of immense strength, recruited from the Atlas, Tumbuctoo, and Nigeria." (Scott. S. P., op. cit. History of the Moorish Empire, p. 668. 1904.)
It is worth reminding readers that many historians record that the word Negro was first used by the Romans to describe the “Niger” people living around the Niger river.
History thus recorded that the invasion of Western Europe by a non-White, Muslim army after 711, very nearly extinguished modern White Europe. This was after the Muslim armies had conquered all of Northern Africa by 709. Following the invasion of current day Portugal and Spain, their Holy War, or Jihad, forced them ever on. In 722, they crossed the Pyrenees and invaded Gothic Gaul (France). Their ambition to subject the entire Europe was cut short only by Charles Martel, (Charles the Hammer), king of a Celtic/Indo-European tribe called the Franks then established in current day Paris. For, Martel immediately mobilized a White counter attack and defeated the Moors in 732.
For five centuries the Moors resisted all Franks’ and other White Visigoths’ attempts to re-conquest Europe. Only two great leaders - the red-haired Isabella I (1451-1504), Queen of Castile, and Ferdinand V, King of Aragon, finally drove the Moors out of Europe. On January 1492, Moorish king, Abu Abd-Allah and his army surrendered Granada to Isabella. This was the first time in 770 years the White Goths once again ruled all of Spain.
The Moors’ racism as the source of the Whites’ later anti-Black and anti-Jew racism in Europe
Like all imperialistic invaders, the Moors were racist. They described their European foes as inferior people. For example, Sa-id of Andalusia (1029-1071) wrote the following about his White Iberian opponents:
They “are nearer animals than men . . . They are by nature unthinking and their manners crude. Their bellies protrude; their color is white and their hair is long. In sharpness and delicacy of spirit and in intellectual perspicacity, they are nil. Ignorance, lack of reasoning power and boorishness are common among them.” (Kitab Tabakat al Umaxn, Blachere K. p. 36. 1935).
Queen Isabella I and king Ferdinand V formally expelled all Jews from Spain, punishing the Spanish Jews for having actively collaborated with the Moors during their 780 year long occupation; which was the start of anti-Semitism in Europe; with such horrors as the infamous Spanish Inquisition, set up to enforce Christendom. Isabella I and Ferdinand V were also the funders of Christopher Columbus’ expeditions and discovery of America.
The subsequent African slave trade was certainly based upon the racist views towards Blacks, which Isabella I and Ferdinand V had reinforced in Europe.
The Kanen Empire had strong links with the Moors who invaded part of Spain and were one of the main providers of Negro Moorish troops. It should therefore not be a surprise that current day Hausa and Fulani Muslims, then the dominating tribes of the Kanen Empire, have supremacy views towards Europe and historical resentment towards White Americans. They see themselves as the root cause of African slavery.
These are probably the historical mutations that make coexistence in a post-colonial Federal, USA-tailored Nigerian State an explosive melting society, which erupts from time to time. There is no doubt that such an explosive environment has become the best breeding ground for Islamic fundamentalism and for all forms of terrorism.
He may be born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is a breed from the Hausa/Fulani Islamic community; which claims supremacy over the other Nigerian ethnic groups, over the Christians and Animists in Nigeria, and over the other religions and cultures on Earth.
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Abstracts from the following articles were either quoted or reproduced entirely:
- The Mutallabs: contrasting terror-bound son Farouk and business mogul father Umar, By Chido Nwangwu
- Bomb suspect came from elite family, best schools, By JON GAMBRELL, Associated Press Writer Jon Gambrell, Associated Press Writer – Sun Dec 27, 2009
- Flight terror suspect scion of wealthy Nigerian family, AFP Sun Dec 27
- Taliban influence feared in Nigeria clashes,THE INDEPENDENT UK, TUESDAY, 11 AUGUST 2009 19:18 BY MELINA PLATAS
- Nigerian Islamist attacks spread, BBC News, 27 July 2009 17:00 UK
- Dozens of people have been killed after Islamist militant, Reuters, The Observer, Sunday 30 November 2008
- Nigeria Christian / Muslim Conflict
- MUTALLAB: Man Who Shamed Nigeria
THE INDEPENDENT UK, TUESDAY, 11 AUGUST 2009 19:18 BY MELINA PLATAS
Clashes in northern Nigeria between a radical Islamist group and Nigerian authorities left at least 700 dead and forced thousands to flee their homes late last month. This incident was the latest in a series of violent outbreaks the half-Christian, half-Muslim West African nation has seen in the past decade.
The Islamist group responsible for this most recent violence has been known as the Nigerian Taliban, al-Sunnah wal Jamma (Followers of Muhammad’s Teachings) and, most commonly, Boko Haram, which means, “Western education is forbidden”.
As their name suggests, members of the group oppose western education and western culture more generally. Their purported mission was to overthrow the Nigerian government and impose a strict interpretation of Islamic law on the country.
The fighting began on Sunday, July 26, but was largely curtailed by the end of the month. Initially, members of Boko Haram had been arrested in the state of Bauchi on charges of a plot to attack a police station. Violence quickly spread to neighboring states of Kano, Yobe and Borno. Members of Boko Haram targeted police stations, churches and government buildings, apparently attacking anyone who looked like a police officer or other government official.
The police fought back against Boko Haram members wielding pangas, knives and homemade explosives until July 28, when the army was called in assist. The army subsequently shelled a mosque and the home of the group’s leader, Mohammed Yusuf. Following this attack, hundreds of the group’s members were either killed or arrested. Most of the casualties were believed to have occurred in the northeastern city of Maiduguri. On Friday, July 31, Nigerian authorities reported that the group’s leader, Mohammed Yusuf, had been killed while in police custody. Some reports have said that Yusuf was hiding in a goat-pen immediately prior to his capture and death.
Shortly before his death, Mohammed Yusuf was quoted by the BBC as saying that western education “runs contrary to our beliefs in Islam.” He also said that if any belief, such as the earth being spherical in shape, “runs contrary to the teachings of Allah, we reject it.” This rejection of “western” education is despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact, that Mohammed Yusuf himself was believed to be highly educated, and likely received the same “western” education he denounced. The group’s leader was believed to be relatively young, in his thirties, and thought to have substantial wealth. Human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Nigeria’s Civil Rights Congress have called for investigations into Mohammed Yusuf’s death, as the details surrounding his killing remain unclear.
Boko Haram, apparently founded sometime in 2004, had for some time been under surveillance by security agencies, according to Nigerian president Umaru Yar-Adua, who described them as a “potentially dangerous group”. Established in Maiduguri, the capital city of the state of Borno, Boko Haram had over the years recruited a number of unemployed and poorly educated youth. While Boko Haram apparently modeled itself after the Taliban of Afghanistan, there have been no proven links with terrorist groups either inside or outside of Africa. Radical Islam is not thought to have gotten a strong following in either Nigeria or West Africa more generally. Nevertheless, the potential for the cooperation of groups like Boko Haram with radical Islamist groups outside of Nigeria has for some time been a concern of Nigerian and western governments alike.
This most recent outbreak of violence is only the latest in a series of deadly confrontations linked to religious groups in the country.
Other recent occurrences include riots in 2006 following the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish publication that left over 150 people dead, and riots in 2002 in the northern city of Kaduna after the publication of another article some Muslims felt was defamatory to the Prophet. Over 200 people were killed. In the city of Jos, in central Nigeria, whose population is split between Muslims and Christians, thousands have been killed in multiple outbreaks of election-related sectarian violence in the past decade.
Nigeria, the most populous country on the African continent, is home to 140 million people and over 200 ethnic groups, whose population is split more or less evenly between Christians and Muslims, who belong primarily to the Maliki school of Sunni Islam. The Christians are dominant in southern Nigeria, while Muslims are the majority in northern Nigeria. 12 northern states introduced Sharia law in 1999 after the general elections, though it has not been strictly implemented. This is believed to be one of the reasons why groups such as Boko Haram have occasionally tried to take matters into their own hands, attempting to implement a more extreme form of Islamic law.
They have failed in the face of the far superior military might of the Nigerian authorities, but they have left many dead or injured in their wake. And without addressing the underlying issues that have been simmering for years, it is likely only a matter of time before the next outbreak occurs.
©2003 The African Independent, Inc. All rights to republication are reserved.
