CREEDE HINSHAW: Voices encouraging in the face of evil

I had never heard of Lamido Sanusi, his name having first surfaced in the fifth paragraph of a story found in The Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago. The headline of that story: “Bombers Kill Dozens at Mosque in Nigeria.”

As it later developed 120 obedient, praying Muslims were killed in that blast and another 100 Muslims were injured. The story noted that Central Mosque, in Nigeria’s second largest city Kano, is home to one of Nigeria’s most prominent persons: Lamido Sanusi.

Some investigation revealed that Sanusi was named in 2011 by Time as one of the most important 100 persons in the world. That same year Forbes named him their “Person of the Year”, featuring him in a full cover photo beneath the storyline “A Banker Unafraid.”

Type his name into a search engine and you will find dozens of photos of a confident middle-aged, bespectacled man, close cropped hair, neatly trimmed beard, most often dressed in Western pinstripe suit and natty red bowtie. He looks like he could be an economist, which he is.

Appointed to Nigeria’s Board of Governors of the Central Bank, Sanusi repeatedly attacked his government for corrupt banking practices, exposing so many illegal practices that the government sacked him earlier this year.

Sanusi is also a very devout follower of Allah; he has studied the Koran and Sharia law very thoroughly, fearlessly proclaiming that there is no place in Islam for the fundamentalist understanding of the Koran and Sharia law.

Earlier this year Sanusi was appointed Emir of Kano, making him the second most important Muslim leader in Nigeria. The man who was unafraid to confront Nigerian corruption was equally bold to confront Islamic fundamentalism in the prominent, moderate Central Mosque in Kano where women can dress mostly as they choose and whose people advocate that Nigerians Christians must be able to worship freely.

Lamido, who scoffs at the notion that Sharia could be the law of the land, had previously written scathingly about fundamentalists who “encourage rote learning, do not welcome imagination and, most dangerous of all…offer solutions for problems they had no idea about.” Now he spoke publicly against the violent, fundamentalist Boko Haran terrorists who earlier this year kidnapped, raped and enslaved 300 Nigerian schoolgirls, proclaiming at Central Mosque that if the government could not or would not protect them from these terrorists that they should be prepared to take up their own arms and fight back.

Two weeks later Boko Haran answered. They bombed the Central Mosque. Violent, fundamentalists who warp the Koran will attempt to massacre all who will get in their way, lumping tolerant Muslims along with Christians, Jews as “unbelievers.” Verbal or written resistance to their ruthlessness opens one up to kidnapping, torture or brutal death.

Sanusi lived to see another day, being absent from the mosque on the day of the bombing and he will continue to witness to the true roots of Islam. Voices like his are encouraging in the face of such evil. The unafraid banker is also an unafraid Muslim.

Creede Hinshaw is a retired Methodist minister residing in Macon.