Given the New York Times’ track record, it’s safe to say that if Mubarak Bala were an American and a Christian, the Times would be excoriating him as an “Islamophobe,” not writing an admiring piece about his courage and independent thinking.
Note also that even here, the Times continues its practice, shared by all of the establishment media, of referring to Muhammad as “the Prophet Muhammad,” as if we were all Muslims now. The Times would recoil in horror at the prospect of referring to “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” But its casual affirmation of the Islamic faith — no problem!
“Outspoken Atheist, Arrested in Nigeria for Blasphemy, Hasn’t Been Seen Since,” by Ruth Maclean, New York Times, August 25, 2020
DAKAR, Senegal — Amina Ahmed knew her atheist husband was taking enormous risks with some of his Facebook posts criticizing Christianity and Islam in Nigeria, a deeply religious country.
She wanted him to be free to believe whatever he wanted. But she worried that if he kept up his commentary, the staunchly Muslim community he was born into would eventually retaliate.
“You should just calm down,” she remembers telling him. “They don’t care. They can just kill you and nothing happens.”
But her husband, Mubarak Bala, president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, was not one to filter his words. On April 25, he logged on to Facebook again and typed a post calling the Prophet Muhammad a terrorist.
Three days later he was arrested by the state police after being accused of violating anti-blasphemy laws, which can carry a death sentence. He has not been seen since.
“We are concerned that he may be prosecuted under anti-blasphemy laws that provide for capital punishment in Nigeria,” wrote a group of United Nations experts who have called for his release.
Mr. Bala, 36, was arrested after lawyers in private practice in his conservative birthplace, the Muslim-majority city of Kano, complained about his Prophet Muhammad post to the police. Other nonbelievers are worried that these same lawyers are drawing up a list of other Nigerian atheists to be prosecuted and that more arrests may be coming….
While it was Mr. Bala’s post on Facebook that led to his arrest, the social media site was also the platform where he and Ms. Ahmed met. She messaged him there after reading that his deeply religious family had locked him up in a psychiatric hospital when he first came out to them as an atheist. She, too, was from a staunchly Muslim family, and she was curious.
“I didn’t want to judge him,” she said in an interview. “I was just like — I want to hear his own side of the story.”
Growing up in Kano, Nigeria’s second-biggest city and an ancient center of Islamic learning in the country, Mr. Bala was from a highly respected family, descended from generations of Islamic scholars.
But as he got older, Mr. Bala came into contact with people outside Kano, and little by little he lost his faith. And as terror attacks increased in Nigeria, he became more vocal in his criticism.
“What finally made me come out as atheist was a video of a beheading of a female Christian back in 2013 by boys around my age, speaking my language,” he wrote in an article about his personal journey that was published in 2016. “It hit me that the time for silence is over. Either someone speaks out or we all sink.”
But even just speaking out to his close friends and family was dangerous. His father and elder brother thought he was sick, and got a doctor who believed that all atheists were mentally disturbed to admit him to a hospital. He was beaten, sedated and threatened with death if he tried to leave, he said….
Buraq says
But as he got older, Mr. Bala came into contact with people outside Kano, and little by little he lost his faith.
Interesting! Think of the tens of millions of Muslims who come into contact with the outside world through the Internet. I honestly believe the Internet will whittle Islam down to a manageable size. It just needs a little time and there will be a Muslim Spring!
Peter Buckley says
Correct. People finally are starting to get it. The principal goal of Sharia Law is not, as many think, the chopping of hands etc., though that is part of it. The most important function Sharia Law performs is to “protect the Islamic faith from “outside influences”. Hence “blasphemy laws and the banning of Christian proseletyzing. Once muslims live outside Sharia, they soak up other, better, ideas. As Bulal Phillips explains:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7pChq-3Qjs&t=1228s
The numbers are actually unimportant at present, as they will massively and inevitably increase in the coming generations. As I’ve been pointing out for years, there are probably tens of millions of “muslims” who are not muslims at all. This will become evident as the years go by.
Just the idea of there being a Humanist Society in Nigeria would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, but here we are:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/nigerianhumanists
Virtually every country, including muslim countries, now has its own ex-muslim organisation. Islam is collapsing…..
mortimer says
A fine conclusion by PB: “The most important function Sharia Law performs is to “protect the Islamic faith from “outside influences”.
Yes. Sharia’s anti-blasphemy protocol is Islam’s ‘non-competition’ clause.
gravenimage says
Hope so, Buraq and Peter.
Peter Buckley says
Well, you don’t have to “hope” anymore. It’s a reality:
https://iranintl.com/en/iran/iranians-have-lost-their-faith-according-survey
Aren’t you the clown who claimed not long ago that Iran was “95% muslim”? Presumably because those “reliable sources” like Wikipedia and Pew told you so,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXDPOzQOdgw
What a clown you are.
Lol.
Ade Fegan says
As long as people follow muhammad
and as long as people thing the quran is something special ..
we will have problems
David says
If you read the original article, it says he was arrested 3 days after posting on Facebook on 25th April.
So if this is correct, he was arrested on 28th April and the article says he has not been seen since.
The article is dated 25th August, so that’s four months since his arrest.
Why did it take so long for his arrest to be publicised?
The original article also says his wife has petitioned the Nigerian Senate & travelled to the National Police HQ of Nigeria to find out what has happened to her husband and has heard nothing.
This is very ominous and makes you fear the worst.
mortimer says
Mubarak Bala, president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, has made a frontal attack against Nigeria’s blasphemy law. The problem with that law, of course, is that supreme court judges do not have a definition of blasphemy that fits all cases. What is blasphemous in one religion may be good theology in another. For an agnostic, the idea of blasphemy is theoretical.
The Supreme Court of India on Monday 3 March 2014, dismissed a public interest litigation (PIL) by Advocate M L Sharma seeking intervention by the court in directing the Election Commission to curb hate speeches. Dismissing the plea, the Apex court said that it could not curb the fundamental right of the people to express themselves.
“We cannot curtail fundamental rights of people. It is a precious right guaranteed by Constitution,” a bench headed by Justice RM Lodha said, adding “we are a mature democracy and it is for the public to decide. We are 1280 million people and there would be 1280 million views. One is free not to accept the view of others”. Also the court said that it is a matter of perception, and a statement objectionable to a person might be normal to another person. – Wikipedia
– The Irish Law Reform Commission’s 1991 Report opined that “there is no place for the offence of blasphemous libel in a society which respects freedom of speech.”
It refused to allow the prosecution, stating “in the absence of any legislative definition of the constitutional offence of blasphemy, it is impossible to say of what the offence of blasphemy consists … In the absence of legislation and in the present uncertain state of the law the Court could not see its way to authorising the institution of a criminal prosecution”.
Re Charlie Hebdo…the right to blaspheme includes defending its practice – Jonathan Chait
1) On the one hand, religious extremists should not threaten people who offend their beliefs. But 2) on the other hand, nobody should offend their beliefs. (So), the right to blasphemy should exist but only in theory. (Liberals) do not believe religious extremists should be able to impose censorship by issuing threats, but given the existence of those threats, the rest of us should have the good sense not to risk triggering them.
The line separating these two positions is perilously thin. The Muslim radical argues that the ban on blasphemy is morally right and should be followed; the Western liberal insists it is morally wrong, but should be followed. Theoretical distinctions aside, both positions yield an identical outcome.
The right to blaspheme religion is one of the most elemental exercises of political liberalism. One cannot defend the right without defending the practice.
– Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, January 7, 2015
craig says
Islam would have died off long ago without blasphemy and .apostasy laws
gravenimage says
Likely so,, Craig–Muslims themselves have admitted this.
FYI says
His father and elder brother thought he was sick and got “a doctor who believed that all atheists were mentally disturbed”.
What kind of an idiot of a Doctor would be so obtuse as to think non-belief in Religion is a mental illness?
He sounds like that ‘mehical'{sic} Doctor,Zakir Naik,a man who once famously said
“I would rather kill myself than commit suicide”
People are perfectly entitled to be freethinkers,atheists,humanists or agnostics.
Blasphemy laws,Theocracies and it being considered wrong to be an ‘apostate’ must be opposed.
There is no such thing as ‘islamophobia’.That was invented to stop criticism of islam thus giving power to religious fanatics and Political islam.
James Lincoln says
FYI says,
“People are perfectly entitled to be freethinkers,atheists,humanists or agnostics.”
Correct, at least they *should* be.
Masters who force totalitarian ideologies do not want their subjects to think critically, lest they lose their power over them…
FYI says
They used to do the same thing in the Communist Soviet Union:dissenters were classified as psychiatric cases.
Totalitarian ideologies ,be they religious {like islam} or secular {like nazism/fascism/communism} use anything available to them to control opposition.Of course this is going on in China today.
gravenimage says
+1
Ade Fegan says
????? Did I read that right ?????
Aussie Infidel says
Mubarak Bala, was president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria. This incident should send shock waves throughout Humanist and Atheist Societies in the West. Most Humanists are Leftists; and in their naivety, most Leftists are tacit supporters of Islam, because they are both totalitarian ideologies, and oppose Christianity and capitalism, the two foundation stones of Western civilization. However, Mubarak Bala apparently saw Islam for what it is – a hateful, violent and tyrannical creed, and spoke out against it.
If Leftists enable the Muslims to achieve political superiority in the West, these useful idiots will be the first to be offered the Shahadah (the Islamic testimony of faith). And if they refuse, they will be killed like millions before them – which might already have been the fate of Mubarak Bala.
UVG says
Maybe I am completely wrong and maybe a little over imaginative, but I don’t think these should be seen as sunspots. This might be a temporary armistice because an anti jihadist/Islamist outcry is very much in vogue at the minute.
In Indian history Jihadism has come in waves. Waves retract and reform but their onslought is pretty constant. This is more strategy than anything else. An attempt to take the edge of this war on ideas.
There are no sunspots as far as Islamism goes. I view the New York Times as a compromised left+jihadist institution. No dramatic sunspots at all as far as I am concerned. This feeds into their BLM rhetoric.
gravenimage says
Sunspots? New York Times defends Nigerian atheist who called Muhammad a terrorist
Given the New York Times’ track record, it’s safe to say that if Mubarak Bala were an American and a Christian, the Times would be excoriating him as an “Islamophobe,” not writing an admiring piece about his courage and independent thinking.
……………
True. Still rather surprising, though.
somehistory says
Seems the arrest of one atheist gets more sympathy and news coverage than the murder of thousands of Christians…in the same African country.
But then, Jesus said His disciples would be hated by the world.