Kwara State Muslim and the general public have been urged to desist from jumping to conclusions on the viral video in which students of an Arabic school were severely beaten.
According to AMILOADED NEWS The , the director and founder of an Islamic human rights organisation, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), Professor Ishaq Akintola. said, “While we regard the punishment meted to the students as too harsh, we maintain that the action of the school authorities should not be judged in isolation. The fact that the parents requested the school to discipline their children must not be ignored.
MURIC is also in possession of another video in which the students confessed that they engaged in shameful and unIslamic actions, namely, visiting a club, drinking alcohol, bathing themselves with alcohol, etc. These are horrible acts in which ordinary Muslims must not be involved.
Morality and the vault of uprightness are repository in Arabic schools . They are the conscience of the Ummah. The offence committed by those students becomes more unacceptable when the actors are students of an Arabic school who are expected to be the epitome of morality and religiousity.
Nigerians must brace up and understand where the authorities of the Kwara Arabic school are coming from? The students who received that beating were the black sheep in the school and they would have polluted others by taking them to the club if they had not been taught that bitter lesson. Who ever expected killings, kidnappings, rape and other vicious crimes in Northern Nigeria? It did not start in just one day.
“While we do not subscribe to merciless flogging, torture and other severe corporeal punishment, we make bold to say that children must be disciplined. MURIC will not encourage sparing the rod to spoil the child. Nigerians, nay Africans, must resist the temptation to embrace strange and obnoxious Western values.
“MURIC stands with discipline and high moral values. The highhandedness in the punishment is regrettable but what do those erring students deserve? Should they be showered with pancake, shawarma and ice cream? They must be made to know the enormity of their shameful behaviour. The punishment may have been lighter though.
“In the light of the above, we urge Muslims in Kwara State and the general public to allow the Kwara State Government to investigate the incident. Government itself must adopt a middle road. We invite parents and guardians to discipline their children and wards promptly and proportionately.
In view of the fact that many Muslims ran away from Arabic classes in the past due to fear of the cane, Arabic schools to adopt the stick and carrot policy. They should use the stick lightly and sparingly but cajole their pupils with carrot, sweet and buscuits everyday.”