Blogs and Stories
Wole Soyinka's British Problem
As religious violence deepens in his home country, Nobel laureate and Nigerian political activist Wole Soyinka shares his unbridled thoughts on Islamic terrorism and why England is a “cesspit” with The Daily Beast’s Tunku Varadarajan.
Seated under the portrait of a local maharajah, Wole Soyinka—as regal of face and mien as the potentate in the painting—leaned toward me and uttered words so harsh that I sat bolt upright: "England is a cesspit."
We were in India at the Jaipur Literature Festival, where he, a Nobel laureate for literature and vigorous activist for democracy in his native land, was the guest of honor. I'd seized the opportunity to talk to Mr. Soyinka, the world's most famous Nigerian, about the only other person who might tussle with him for that title: Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young man who boarded a flight in Amsterdam on Christmas Day with a bomb in his underpants.
“We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space."
What did the 76-year-old Mr. Soyinka—who divides his time between the U.S. and Nigeria—make of his country's placement on a watch-list of states deemed to be incubators of Islamist terrorism? "That was an irrational, knee-jerk reaction by the Americans. The man did not get radicalized in Nigeria. It happened in England, where he went to university.
"England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there."
Why is Britain the way it is? "This is part of the character of Great Britain," Mr. Soyinka declares. "Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness." And so it is, he says, that Britain lets everyone preach whatever they want: It confirms a self-image of greatness.
Mr. Soyinka's forthrightness is enhanced by a rich, baritone voice, one with which he'd captivated a largely Indian audience the day before in a discussion of his Beckett-like play, The Road. He had dwelt at length on the character of Ogun, the Yoruba god of the road, protector of travelers, and the deity came up again in our discussion of the undie-bomber, along with the possibility that Ogun had come to the rescue of the passengers on that flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.
"The Muslim Abdulmutallab believed in his own, alien deity, and yet, another deity—Ogun—protected his fellow travelers. In this case, the indigenous deity that [Abdulmutallab] carried inside him—Ogun, the god of wayfarers—thwarted his plan. The young man's suppressed deity came out…" Here, he chuckled wisely and added: "It's a poetic conceit, but I love it."
Our conversation turned to Nigeria, where ferocious killings had just occurred in the central city of Jos, with Muslims slaughtering Christians, and vice-versa. Mr. Soyinka, here, began to brood: "A virus has attacked the world of sense and sensibility, and it has spread to Nigeria, where it has taken on a sanguinary dimension. Roaming hordes of killers are entering homes and dragging out people of other faiths and hacking them to death. In my youth, you heard, side-by-side, the church bells ringing and the beautiful, sonorous call to prayer of the muezzin. But now, it's a disease. One doesn't really know how to handle it."
The day before, in his lecture on The Road, Mr. Soyinka earned a burst of applause with his own, ingenious solution: "I think this is where our rocket engineers and astronauts can come to our rescue. We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space." In our own conversation, he offered—almost apologetically—a more prosaic solution: "Education. And rigorous punishment for those who feel, not 'I'm right, you're wrong,' but 'I'm right, you're dead.'"
The Pure Greed of Obama's Phony Health-Care Reform
Michael Moore is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker and author. He directed and produced Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Sicko. He has also written seven books, most recently, Mike’s Election Guide 2008.
Look Who's Irish!
The Daily Beast is dedicated to news and commentary, culture, and entertainment. We carefully curate the web’s most essential stories and bring you original must-reads from our talented contributors.
Edwards Sex Tape Details
Investigative journalist and syndicated columnist Diane Dimond has covered the Michael Jackson story since 1993 when she first broke the news that the King of Pop was under investigation for child molestation. She is author of the book, Be Careful Who You Love—Inside the Michael Jackson Case. She lives in New York with her husband, broadcast journalist Michael Schoen.
Obama in Enemy Territory
Tunku Varadarajan is a national affairs correspondent and writer at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a professor at NYU’s Stern Business School. He is a former assistant managing editor at The Wall Street Journal. (Follow him on Twitter here.)
Why India Loves Facebook
Tunku Varadarajan is a national affairs correspondent and writer at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a professor at NYU’s Stern Business School. He is a former assistant managing editor at The Wall Street Journal. (Follow him on Twitter here.)
Ken Starr's Liberal Lovefest
Tunku Varadarajan is a national affairs correspondent and writer at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a professor at NYU’s Stern Business School. He is a former assistant managing editor at The Wall Street Journal. (Follow him on Twitter here.)
Rakiba
Because whitel liberalism carries within it the illness of low expectations, it will be non whites who explain to the educated Western elite that the radical Muslims really mean what they have been saying for 1,400 years, that George Bush did not go back in a time machine and write the 9th sura so he could justify could a war for oil.
case1234
A more balanced discussion of Nigeria was needed in the US media. For weeks the nation was discussed with little regarding its ethnic and religious make up, which includes a Islamic north and Christian south almost equally divided 50/50. The nation is paralysed because the Islamic side believe it is "their turn" after a run by a flamboyant Christian Yoruba.
Most of the Nigerian in the US are evangelical Christians, so the unbalanced discussion has skewed who and what they are.
SensiStar
A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush
JAMES A. HAUGHT
Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible's satanic agents of the Apocalypse.
Honest. This isn't a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.
Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their "common faith" (Christianity) and told him: "Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East.... The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled.... This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins."
This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its "coalition of the willing" to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush's call and "wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs."
After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn't comply with Bush's request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to "turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws," and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, "and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them."
""England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence."
If you say so buddy.
jomama
'Islam' has lived in peace with the West for most of Islamic history, so don't make up lies as you go along. After their initial few hundred years of takeover, they settled down. The vast majority of Muslims and Muslim governments are in fact pro-Western. Finally, the latest round of problems with Islam have only happened because of Western occupation of their lands: Palestine, Afghanistan, the Shah in Iran, US bases in Saudi Arabia (this is Bin Ladens call) and other gulf states. Put another way: were Israel, UK, French and USA to have left the middle east alone for the last century we likely would not be in the situation we are. There was no talk of 'Islamic terror' in the 1980's - and things don't start for any reason.
vesnob
Nonsense.
Islam sprang forth in the 7 century. The Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in 1453. In that time, Europe was relentlessly attacked. So spare me your 'most of Islamic history nonsense.'
Islamic terror has been talked about since Islam came into being. It's the reason for the creation of the US Marine Corps.
Modern Islamist terror happens because the region has been unable to adapt to the modern world, not because of 'occupation'. If 'occupation' were the cause of modern terror, then India, China, South America, etc would all be terror havens, for they too were 'occupied' and far more brutally.
You must be a Muslim, for only such a fool would spout such nonsense.
Rakiba
Your narrative reveals its own falsehood. You say that Muslims only attack when "their" lands are invaded but "their" lands only became "their" lands by invasion.
Jerusalem has for most of its history, including in the 19th century, been a majority Jewish city and Jews and Christians lived all over the Middle East before the advent of Islam.
Islam lived in peace with the West since its defeat at the Gates of Vienna and since the West rose beyond it in power and knowledge. So, for several hundred years at most. Minus from 1,400 that would be a negative.
Right, leave the ME alone since once Arabs conquer the land become theirs but when the West reapportions the spoils of its victories (like when the Palestinians -- or the Jordanians and Egyptians who would become the Palestinians lost WWI and WWII ) that is brutal conquest.
Yawn.
Marooph
Rakiba,
I'll really love to demand for the sources of the historical evidences of all your quoted fallacies. Islam, Christianity and Judaism: which one engages in subtle preaching to attract its adherents more than the other? Get a copy of Encyclopedia or simply google the word 'Crusade' and rid yourself of sentiment, you'd be shocked at your discovery.
The Egyptians, Jordanians, Indonesians and rest of the Muslims across the world know their roots more than it's written by the biased western orientalists. The exemplary characters of Muslim traders ushered in Islam into these lands you mentioned in your post. Obviously, juxtaposing the entrances of Islam and Christianity into the land of Africa is really going to be ugly for one, surely not Islam. The fingerprints are crystal clear.
Suffice to also let you know that the Spanish case study is mind blowing. Islam entered and ruled Spain for four centuries. I'll leave you with findings on how Islam came in and what transpired the day the crusaders rooted out the Muslims in Spain. You can help yourself with the more recent Bosnia saga as well.
I think what is being confused here is the inherent intolerance Islam has against oppression. Human nature abhors this too and because Islam is defined as a way of life, God could not have omitted that. America claims its global policing is motivated by anti-oppression instincts. So how would you expect a religion divinely designed to rule the world not to have its anti-oppression squad? Islam has always been engaging in defensive encounters across ages to repress oppression.
cbl99201
"White" liberalism? Sounds racist to me.
Julius
It doesn't sound racist. It is racist.
DakLak
Interesting sewage proposition.
England has, obviously, decided to address this sanitary challenge by imprisoning or deporting these fundamentalists by the use of law.
Nigeria's cesspool is further contaminated when their citizens murder each other.
wareagle82
how much more clear does someone have to put it? "none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence." Therein lies the difference between modern-day Islam and the world's other faiths. What Christians or Catholics did centures before is immaterial; the point is, they stopped doing it. The Muslims are not only NOT stopping, they are ramping up. But, that's okay; let's continue to pretend that Islam is a religion of peace.
jomama
WHAT ABOUT THE US BACKED VIOLENCE BY ISRAEL - AN OCCUPYING POWER - AGAINST PALESTINIANS??? EVANGELICAL CRAZIES IN THE US PREACH THE APOCALYPSE AND CAN'T WAIT FOR JESUS TO RETURN ONCE ISRAEL HAS KILLED OR EXPUNGED THE PALESTINIANS.
wareagle82
have those evangelicals actually gone out and killed someone? Strapped dynamite to themselves and set it off in crowded places? Good grief, listen to how far you are attempting to stretch credulity. There is no parallel between radical Islam and any other faith on the planet. The man this story centers on is dead right - no other religion preaches apocalyptic violence. A few evangelicals with bumper stickers about the rapture isn't the same as blowing up people.
Rakiba
I agree Israel should give back the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt even though those countries lost them in an attempted annihilation of Israel, but the idea that Israel is not a legitimate sovereign state is BS.
Jews are an indigenous part of the ME, not a colonial export, and 2% of the ME on land they have occupied continuously is just fine. After all 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands for a loss of territory bigger than Israel.
As far as expunging, you might want to ask yourself why the population of Palestinian Arabs has grown from 650,000 to 4.5 million in the last 60 years.
whipmawhopma
wareagle82 - There is a certain amount of truth in jomama's assertion(s).
There are (some) Christian evangelicals who can't wait for the apocalypse to start, as it means (to them) the mass conversion of a certain number of Jews to Christianity, and after some very uncomfortable moments ushers in the 1,000 year rule by Christ. If they need to help it along, then by all means possible they will...
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0609-07.htm
http://www.jimpivonka.com/pages/Darbyism&Israel.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/readings/forcin g.html
http://www.loonwatch.com/2010/01/waiting-for-armageddon-the-convergence- of-apocalypse-and-politics/
http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/End-Times/On-The-Road-To-Ar mageddon.aspx
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/index.php/2003/04/01/apocalypse-now-2/
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1728510,00.html
All this is alive and well in Christian bookstores and other venues. I own a good amount of this sort of literature, most of which I purchased in the 1980's, so it's not current.
I became convinced it was coming, back in the 1980's. After a while it didn't happen and I became aware of the 'wait and see' method of anticipating the end of the world. In the meantime, there were other things that needed attention.
Not all evangelicals Christians consider the end times to be all that important. Christ, to them, has his own schedule and Christians are to trust in him rather than rely on DIY methods, which show poor faith and deliver poor results.
And there are other religions that believe in the end times. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a well known Shiite, has some pretty strong apocalyptic beliefs and he wouldn't mind helping things along. He's not alone.
Disclaimer: I am an evangelical Christian.
Snertly
I can't quite hear you. Do you have something louder than all caps?
Slim45
Islam is a religion of peace. 99% of all Muslims abhor the actions of these so-called Jihadists. It is defeatist and ignorant to say Islam is not a religion of peace. Christianity brought us: The Slave Trade, two World Wars, Apartheid, Nuclear Weapons, and the Holocaust. Don't even get me started on the Iraq war with Christian passages etched on to the guns of US soldiers. All religions have good and bad people.
wareagle82
and yet, 99% of Muslims sit and wait for signs of profiling, discrimination, and other horribles, saying next to nothing about how their faith is being hijacked. Their silence sends a signal of acceptance. Where was the outcry after death calls were issued with regard to the cartoons in Denmark? Where were the condemnations re: Ft Hood? Please.
Your attempt to draw parallel wrongdoing misses the point, not to mention the facts. Christianity is hardly alone in having participated in slavery; it had NOTHING to do with starting either world war; nor did it invent the bomb. That aside, are renegade christians threatening jihad against anyone? Setting off IEDs in the public square? No. Face reality. This isn't a comparative religions class; it's reality and whether 99% of Muslims abhor it or not is irrelevant. Their actions show that, at the least, they accept it.
Rakiba
99% of Muslims may be peaceful but Islam itself is loaded with injunctions against the kuffr.
PS Slavery ended in Saudi Arabia, home of Islam, in 1964.
whipmawhopma
Slim45 - "The Slave Trade"
If you're talking about the African slave trade then the Europeans stole the idea from the Spaniards and Portuguese (only nominally Europeans, sort like the way Alaska is nominally part of the United States in terms of mindset), and the Spaniards and Portuguese stole the idea from the Berbers and Arabs who were running most of Spain before it was Spain.
White slavery, meaning Europeans stealing other Europeans to be slaves, was a much older tradition, and spanned the continent and beyond.
And the Arab Empire, which was more or less a Muslim empire, was a big fan of enslaving Africans and Europeans wholesale.
And the Africans were big fans of enslaving other Africans, and when the opportunity came along to sell other Africans into slavery elsewhere, profits ruled.
Likewise some Europeans sold other Europeans into slavery, usually to the various Muslim powers, but not always, as a good number of Europeans ended up being worked to death as chattels of assorted rich and powerful interest groups in America and the Caribbean. Nothing on the scale of the Africans, but in the tens and tens of thousands, if not several hundreds of thousands.
Just about every powerful country, cultural group or major religion has practiced slavery in one or more ways, and it is still very much alive today, even though quite illegal. It's all about money. Cheap labor and certain powerful people getting rich on it.
attilathehunny
Slim all I can say is log onto www.thereligionofpeace.com for a bit of reality.
Julius
Give me a break, Christianity brought the Slave Trade? Dear fellow reader--for "Western Civilization" , slavery began in the " cradle of civilization", which is certainly vying for the illustrious title "Cesspit of the World" Ahem, hello? Judaism is a direct result of Slavery and breaking free of its Bondage. Slavery existed long before Christ, and the denizens of the cradle had already perfected slavery and excelled as Slavers, and not simply content to enslave their own, but also to branch out and enslave others thereby passing their scourge (including its ideology) onto other peoples and cultures. This is without question one of the deepest most profound legacies rightfully attributed to those in the Cradle--which includes the Middle East.
To say that your claim that Christianity brought the World Wars and the Holocaust is fallacious is an understatement and perhaps and undue courtesy to you.
You had better understand where Hitler adopted the word Aryan from, who were the original Aryan "Race", what their actual role in history was/is, rethink Hitler's symbolism and where he co-opted them, the origin of his philosophy which is not some single Catholic priest--as Hitler himself envisioned an Atheistic State (though A Deist lacking compassion could easily fill his shoes). Try wrapping your head around that last bit.
There is simply not enough space nor time to detangle the mish mash you've posted on this site.
TaterSalad
The White House hasn't killed these taxes though. Obama is promoting Sharia Law with our tax money>
http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/american-taxpayers-promot e-sharia/
vesnob
Since when is the Nation of Islam mainstream? They're not even Islamic in the traditional sense. They believe some wacky shit, and a lot of it is racially supremacist.
Here's another theory as to why America doesn't have a large Islamic Fundamentalist problem(yet): There simply isn't a large enough population of Muslims in the US, which is around 6 million or so, and they're all concentrated in certain areas. But we do have a problem, it's just not a large one.
eurydice9276
It's kind of a relief to hear a notable person say that some other country is a cesspit.
sophia5
Is it "over" for Great Britain ?
Is it a good idea to introduce Sharia Law to "some parts" of the British Legal System ?
A tidbit from the BBC.
LINK:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7488790.stm
ThinkAgain
Those Nobel people really know how to pick em.
Slim45
WarEagle, half of America sat around and saw the invasion of Iraq even though the evidence was scanty or non-existent. After 9/11, a lot of Muslims marched through the streets of London with placards proclaiming, "No in My Name." A lot of Arabs also pledged solidarity with the US.
You must be a right-winger. You have "blame-down" syndrome. Everything bad must be attributable to someone else of a different race, religion or color.
TaterSalad
The White House hasn't killed these taxes though. Obama is promoting Sharia Law with our tax money>
http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/american-taxpayers-promot e-sharia/
xsm941f
"The most famous Nigerian in the world"? Huh? I think I'm a well informed person and I have never heard of him.
sandwiches
quick, name another nigerian
whipmawhopma
Chief Scamoftheday...
External
Ken Saro-Wiwa who unfortunately was "murdered"
scott1607
I can't recall his name, but he frequently sends me emails asking me to wire him money... he's definitely the most famous Nigerian.
whipmawhopma
"I think this is where our rocket engineers and astronauts can come to our rescue. We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space."
This is an excellent idea. We should start building the interstellar colony ships now.
Cymatic
So how does the author expect the government should start rolling back the rights of its citizens? The death toll is absolutely tiny from a historical perspective, yet England should change the democratic traditions that have seen it avoid and fight off Fascism, Communism, and calls to become a police state when facing Irish terrorists. By repealing people's rights you're giving in to the terrorists who want to radicalize mainstream Muslims by claiming victimhood.
And sorry, claims that England is a cesspool by a Nigerian... that takes some serious chutzpah! Most of the Africans I have met seem to go to lengths to point out that they are not a Nigerian, because of the bad reputation for producing scammers. Also, Nigeria has produced some truly terrible governments that imprisoned anyone who spoke out.
The author's recipe is little other than a knee-jerk reaction that would cause more problems than it would solve.
makao88
Well said. Mr. Soyinka is ranting feverishly - these claims of England (land of my fathers) being a "cesspool" can only be described as emanating from a loony with a superficial understanding of the matter in hand, clumsily employing jingoistic secondhand opinions to back it up.
The statement "Remember, that country was the breeding ground for Communism" just confirms that he is, indeed, deranged.
concise913
Islam is not of peace at all. Islam means violence an d destruction.Simple
indieinva
More like simple-minded.
jonnicolucci
Maybe Mr. Tunku Varadarajan, the author, should go easy on the term 'Islamic Terrorism.'
And since he is in India, he might want to give us some insight into Hindu extremist groups. Just yesterday, one of them tried to 'terrorize' an Indian Muslim actor into leaving the country and tore off street posters for his new movie.
Does this qualify as 'Hindu Terrorism'? Any thoughts, Mr. Varadarajan?
Opomaja
Long live Ogun--Olorun Olodumare is great! Why have we allowed ourselves to be bamboozled by the two alien religions in the Yoruba Kingdom, as well as overall in Naijiria ("Nigeria")? We should all return to the traditional spiritual ways of our ancestors, as Africans, with much more polish and propanganda, as in the Western World; and the Middle & Far-East, bearing it in mind that we all call on the same Almighty God, Who we worship differently and refer to by different names. I will settle for the loving and accomodating hearts of our ancestors over the pillaging, racist, deceitful, and destructive ways of alien religious practices and faith...
Snertly
Tolerance of the intolerant is the most challenging sort.
But when intolerance branches out to violence, it's no longer a matter of expressing one's faith, but just an expression of thuggery, regardless of the motivation.
Thank you.
As a first time user, your comment has been submitted for review. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or two for your comment to be reviewed, depending on the time of week and the volume of comments we receive.