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A Shiite non-governmental organisation, AlThaqalayn Cultural Foundation has cautioned the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against using Nigeria as another testing ground for their struggle for regional supremacy.
It’s Secretary-General, Hamzah Muhammad Lawal, told newsmen at a media briefing in Kaduna yesterday that he was once a member of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) between 1981 and 2000, a year after he returned from Qum, Iran, where he studied Theology.
He said, “IMN started in the late 1970s as a socio-cultural and politico-religious revivalist movement, essentially drawing inspiration from Egypt and Pakistani Sunni activists.
“It was an offshoot of the Muslim Students Society and its birth coincided with the inception of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which gave it a living and contemporary example of what it was yearning for and, therefore, gravitated toward its political message.
“When the leader of IMN, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, became a Shiite afterwards, he was faced with the dilemma of either abandoning his Sunni revivalist movement or risking the possibility of losing his followers or continuing the movement with all its Sunni content, but with a Shiite face. He chose the latter, and that has been his undoing.”
He explained that Zakzaky has not been able to complete his process of migration from Sunni activism to Shiite evangelism, adding: “His movement is a curious hybrid and admixture, a concoction, a dangerously unstable cocktail of incoherent and disorganised hallucinations and fantasies that only exist in their wildest dreams.
“In fact, when push comes to shove and a critical study of IMN is done, it may turn out that it is much closer to Sunni Islam.”
He, therefore, argued that the IMN under Elzakzaky’s leadership was a fake Shiites movement, insisting that the organisation was not another name for Schism and that neither of them was synonymous or interchangeable.
“Some IMN leaders appear to the public in the regalia of Shite clerics, but that is where it stops. IMN is not genuine; it is a fake group. It is a bad product and an unmarketable one for that matter; a wrong advertisement copy.
While appealing to Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufa’i to withdraw the case against Sheikh El-Zakzaky from the High Court, Lawal urged President Muhammadu Buhari to extend the olive branch to members of IMN.
