Following the London underground bombings in 2005
Those sixteen years with the Sixth Form programme also included a huge variety of perspectives with a variety of team colleagues and diversity of schools. The programme was in full swing in 2005 when bombs exploded in the London Underground, killing 52 people. A big anti-Muslim backlash followed this. I met Musa Aliyu, a young Nigerian Muslim student who was very worried about this, as was I. Musa was working on his PhD titled ‘The role of the media in the inter-religious conflict in Northern Nigeria’. His deep experiences of that conflict which killed over 50,000 people, moved him to work in reconciliation and community building.
We ended up going to sixty Sixth Forms together, mostly in London, Nottingham, Berkshire and Liverpool; a young Nigerian Muslim and an elderly English Christian (by this time), joined together in a bid to foster a vision of our shared humanity.
The students we met (often in groups of 100 – 150) were struck and challenged by what Musa shared. His message echoed what they saw in the film, The Imam and the Pastor, about the astonishing reconciliation and subsequent partnership of two religious leaders, Imam Ashafa and Pastor Wuye, who had each led opposing militias in the Northern Nigerian conflict.
Students asked how it was that the same religions that had led these men to fight had also led them to forgive and reconcile. We quoted Imam Ashafa who had given an example of a candle, which can either be used to light up a house or to burn it down. “The same is true of religion”, he said.
We asked the students, “Does it takes more courage to do what Ashafa and Wuye were doing (leading armed militias to defend 'their people', and being prepared to die) or what they are doing now (crossing barriers to do peace building)? They usually said "What they are doing now". When we asked, "Why?", they often said that it takes courage to break away from the line of your own people; also, that it takes strength not to react and act in anger if someone has killed your relatives or chopped off your hand (which had happened to Pastor Wuye during the conflict).
This focused the inner struggle with the destructive forces in our own natures, referred to in Islam as the ‘jihad al-nufs’, or the Greater Jihad. This practical example helped the students understand the deeper aspect of the word 'jihad', as well as to reflect on their own characters.