ByAbdulhaleem Ishaq Ringim

I find it absolutely hypocritical whenever people try to make it seem as though Shiekh Dr Isa Ali Pantami’s views more than 15 years ago was alien.

I personally could remember having a shirt with the picture of Osama Bin Laden on it. I don’t remember who bought it for me but I could remember that it was one of my favourites. Osama was a lot of people’s role model in those days.

Just yesterday too, we were discussing same issue with some acquaintances and I mentioned Osama and his terrorist legacies, and 3 out of the four of them asked, “Wai dama Osama terrorist ne”?

But we all know these things today, right?

All of the Muslim worlds held a sympathetic position towards Iraq, Afghanistan etc and a reactionist position against the US’s offensive on those countries. And not only the Muslim world, even within the United States, UK and the west entirely, but there was also a certain category of people that were totally against those offensives. People like Obama while he was a Senator, Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi.

Among all of them, there’s a video clip of MP Tony Benn of the UK’s Labour Party speaking against the invasion of Iraq(which was virtually the beginning of all these issues), it moves me every time I remember the speech which concluded with a quote from the United Nations Charter; “WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind….”.

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And he said at the end that this charter “was the pledge of that generation to this generation and it will be the greatest betrayal of all if we voted to abandon the charter and take unilateral actions and pretend we were doing it in the name of the international community.”

People like Al-Zarqawi were seen to be actively opposing the invasion (which was a betrayal to even the UN charter) and as nature and emotions have it, they got cheers from a vast segment of the Northern Nigerian people. If we weren’t old enough, our fathers or uncles or other relatives did cheer. So why single out Pantami?

I also find the call for a public retraction of his statements extremely pedestrian, what retraction is bigger and more genuine than retraction through more than a decade of proven actions against all the allegations against him today? I mean, you don’t have a single Islamic cleric alive in Nigeria that had actively fought against extremism to the extent of partaking in debates with the extremists in their own strongholds like Pantami did. Do you?

Read Also:Sheikh Pantami: A hard bone to crack-Maiwada Dammallam

Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) reportedly said, as part of a Hadīth:

‎… إنما الأعمال بالخواتيم

“… verily, (the rewards of) the deeds are decided by the last actions (deeds)”.

And while commenting on this, My Brother Ibrahim A. El-Caleel posited this and I completely agree with him, he said;

“This hadith is indicating that Allah will judge us by our last actions, what we end up dying upon- believers or non-believers; pious servants or sinners. The past is history, and will not be used to judge the present. This is the mercy of the Divine Lord, Who knows the social dynamics of humans. It makes pretty good sense.

Malevolence is the singular reason why some people prefer to dwell more on people’s past than the present. They do this revisionism out of not being so comfortable with the reformed personalities that people have become.

C’mon! Why should I today be stuck in discussing Caliph Umar bn Khattab in the Jahiliyyah period, more than his caliphate days that gave Islam one of its best moments ever? I can only do that if I want to distract people from the reformed great image of Caliph Umar bn Khattab (RA).

So, ditto Dr Isa Pantami!”

Shiekh Pantami has averagely spent more than 200hours of his time actively fighting against Boko Haram and other extremist tendencies, how many hours have those issuing all these biased statements spent on same task?

Shiekh Pantami deserves a National Honor for he is indeed one of the most ardent fighters of terrorism and extremist in this country; he is indeed a National Benefactor. And he shall stay to finish his job as mandated by the Nigerian People through the President.

Ringim is a political and public affairs analyst, he writes from Zaria and can be reached through haleemabdul1999@gmail.com