• Allegation of blasphemy; death of Deborah Samuel
Well, the issue of allegation of blasphemy that led to the death of Deborah is something that is very, very sad. Very sad because we can see that the common humanity that is there in us has simply disappeared; has simply disappeared in that particular instance, and we see it in other instances in our country today. And a situation in which the one who brings an allegation is also the judge and the executor of the sentence is certainly not the kind of thing that we expect in a human society. It is obviously a mob action, and unfortunately, even the security agencies did not do the right thing in that circumstance. And so, blasphemy obviously is something that should not be tolerated, either towards Christianity or towards Islam or towards any religion. However, we should not allow jungle justice to reign if there are allegations of blasphemy.
The law should be able to take its course and be implemented on whoever goes wrong. Happily, we are hearing many leaders of Islamic religion saying that that is not the way it should be, that the law convicts the person of blasphemy and goes ahead and kills him. We are happy to hear that. But it is important that it goes beyond saying that, to ensuring that they actually create this awareness in the masses of Muslims all over the country, all over the world because we hear the same thing in other parts of the world, in Afghanistan and so on and so forth. There is a major need for Islamic leaders to really do an aggressive education of their followers, in order that this sort of thing will not be bringing shame to the religion itself. So, certainly as I said, we cannot tolerate blasphemy, but at the same time, there must be processes by which allegations of blasphemy are treated.
• Most Rev. (Dr.) Alfred Adewale Martins is the Archbishop of the Metropolitan See of Lagos.
