Thought Picnic: The potential ransom of dual-citizenship

The potential ransom of citizenship

The return of British-Iranians Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, and Anoosheh Ashoori, 67, to British soil this morning that is so very welcome and heart-warming rings a cautionary tale of familial attachment and affinity that can put people with multinational citizenship in peril and jeopardy. [BBC News: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori back with families]

It was a sad development that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Mr Ashoori became pawns of international diplomacy where Iran was ready to persecute people of other nationalities who returned home to see family with trumped-up charges of espionage or insurrection in order to gain leverage in negotiations that in no way concerned the victims.

In the end, the release of these two people was obtained for the UK ensuring moneys to the tune of over £400 million owed Iran from the 1970s was paid back. I would not think of the interest, but that is a princely sum.

In things outside our control

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s situation was not made any easier by the gormless idiocy of the then Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, who at a House of Commons hearing suggested her activities in Iran were not altogether altruistic and that was used in another trial to turn the screws and incarcerate her for more time.

Then I think of many of us with dual or more citizenships who have close families in lands where freedoms, liberties, and expression are monitored, curtailed, or prosecuted. The apparent bounty that seems to hang on our heads when the malevolent either of state or private agency determine that they exact a price out of denying us our freedom by any means.

Much as I have family in Nigeria and many contemporaries do visit with ease, I do not have some rosy view of bliss, security, or safety, if I ever ventured there, despite the many assurances I have received from too many to mention.

I know how I feel

I left the country over 31 years ago, somewhat imperilled and I am not convinced that some of that past as well as the very present including the intervening years where my being abroad keeps out of the ambit of unguarded retribution does not present a clear and present danger to my wellbeing if I visit under any guise.

Besides, those who could almost pride themselves on being quite conversant with the Nigerian ways have quite spectacularly fallen for the wiles and scams that certain desperate can wreak on us and our resources. I have taken the stance that I am not comfortable with visiting Nigeria, and it is unnecessary to burden myself with the angst of attempting to override my deepest premonitions.

It might well be that there is nothing to my feelings than irrationality, I can live with that and the only reason Nigeria features in my purview is more at the behest of others than of any particular wish or desire of mine. When I consider it took almost 25 years for me to set foot on African soil with an official visit to South Africa in May 2015, I think I have a good idea of where my home is, and where next I am thinking of setting up home. It is not in Nigeria and that is a settled matter. Thank you.

President Trump and the post-Christian Evangelicals

A religious accident reported

When I first heard it, it felt like a topic for a school debate contest, but the facts that in certain circles the votes will come out in the affirmation validating it as the truth definitely means it needs to come up for some discussion, I know many will have angles on this matter, I am sharing my perspective.

“President Trump was the best thing to happen to the Christian church in America since maybe Jesus.” A guest on the Newsmax network in America.

Now, I have been trying to understand the encouragement of and bonding with Donald Trump of the grouping and cohort labelled as Evangelical Christians in America, because their apparent affinities from my appreciation of that strand of Christianity does escape me completely. Not too long ago, I had to wade through the incredulity of no seeing the fruit of the Holy Spirit in Donald Trump, addressed in the referenced blog.

Blog - And they see the fruit of the Holy Spirit in Donald Trump

God is not a voter

She was responding to the content of an article that covered an interview on the Donald Trump influence on the Evangelical movement. [Vox.com: The Trump presidency was a catastrophe for American Christianity] It puts a lot of things into context especially the desperate desire to alter the reality of the elections he handily lost. Some, even people I know thought it had been prophesied he will remain president and they held onto that belief until it became obvious someone had been blowing air in their ears.

For me, I had always been sceptical of the idea that in a democracy someone is chosen or elected by God, it is people who voted not a deity, now, someone might suggest the people were influenced by whatever means to vote a certain way by divine persuasion, that would be interesting if people equally believed the same things and were fully persuadable that way, but I am not convinced.

Man must be accountable to man

What concerns me more is the moment we attribute the election of a person to divine provenance to inadvertently take accountability out of the hands of both the electorate and man, the elected are then answerable to no one and depending on their personality and temperament, as power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

“The law of a theocracy is dictated without option to the people, not made by their judges and governments. The individual conscience is free to accept such dictated law, but the state, if its people are to be free, has the burdensome duty of thinking for itself.” Lord Justice Laws

Blog - The case for State law over religious guidance

It is my view that the presidency of Donald Trump tested the underpinnings of every institution of checks and balances literally to their limits, thankfully, they were robust, but no doubt, vigorously shaken.

I cut loose from them

For the many of us who took liberating Christian tutelage from some leading American Christian teachers in the Evangelical movement up to the recent past, who have now passed on, are wizened with age waiting for the Lord, or whose sons, daughters, and proteges have taken the reins of ministries they founded, Donald Trump exposed to almost unbelievable clarity the viscerally human flaws of these iron champions with clay legs and feet. All flesh and no spirit.

The church became political and sought power to protect its interests and base, they had become a tangent away and completely unrepresentative of the persecuted church of the Acts of Apostles to grew by travail and dispersal as Jesus Christ had predicted in his human walk on earth, nor did they represent the pioneering spirit of the Pilgrim fathers that landed America centuries, they looked more like the religious powerbase that John the Baptist first and then Jesus Christ railed against.

A Church not Christlike

They had unwittingly whilst forcefully become plotters against the person and gospel of Jesus Christ, whilst they paid lip service to a semblance of Christianity which was crudely Churchianity expressed in the words of Sanhedrin of chief priests and Pharisees that met to plan and instigate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, “What are we accomplishing? Here is this man performing many signs. If we let Him go on like this, everyone will believe in Him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” [Bible Gateway – John 11:47-48 (NIV)]

Basically, The evangelical movement is in a post-Christian phase of being unable to suffer for either Christ or the gospel, they would rather take political power, install judges, implement their fundamentalist policies to bring forward a kind of government or society, maybe kingdom itself that is a flawed, tarnished, corrupt, pastiche of the promised kingdom of God on earth. The church had become comfortably powerful and powerfully comfortable.

The cohort is lost and for a while, I have practised with deliberation one of the best lessons from those teachers of old, don’t attach yourself too close to a person or a cause that you can’t cut loose long before danger looms. I cut loose from following many of these leaders and their teachings, in the main, the movement simply followed Donald Trump all the way into the ditch, there will be casualties and fatalities, but it is my hope that all is not lost and there is much to recover of life and souls from this completely avoidable and sadly delusional catastrophe.

The UK: 50 Years since it was Against The Law - Consensual Homosexuality

Sometime ago

50 years ago, today, Sexual Offences Act 1967 received royal assent, bringing into law the decriminalisation of homosexual acts between men in private, as long as they had attained the age of 21.

I was born at a time of interesting changes in society when the worst form of abuse you could throw at anyone was the phrase, “You’re a bugger.” It carried the weight of disdain, disgust, condemnation and disgrace, there was no particular understanding of homosexuality apart from misconceptions that fed the idea they were acting against the law of nature, they were evil, they were paedophiles and possibly worse.

Yet, it was rarely the case that to that point in time, people who found themselves to be bequeathed with the burden of homosexuality were inclined to be anything but normal law-abiding human beings. Only that the law through moralisation and sententiousness or just the need to find those to persecute criminalised the nature of people who happened to be different.

Against the law

13 years before this, Alan Turing died of cyanide poisoning having been persecuted by the system for his sexuality, one of the pioneering brains of the computing age and to whom some of the successes to breaking the Nazi Germany encryption codes presaging the end of WWII is attributed. His profile saved him from jail, but it did not save him from the system that literally ruined him.

However, in all this, I celebrate three men, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Peter Wildeblood and Michael Pitt-Rivers who were charged and convicted in 1954 for conspiracy to incite certain male persons to commit serious offences with male persons" (or "buggery"), for which they went to jail.

Despite the sensationalism of what became known as the Montagu Trial, Lord Montagu admitted to being bisexual and Peter Wildeblood was first to publicly admit his homosexuality. The police were involved in a widespread clampdown on homosexuality even acting as agent provocateurs to entrap unsuspecting homosexuals for a prosecution that there were at least 1,000 men sent to prison yearly for being homosexual in the 1950s.

Against bad law

The way the prosecution and trial was conducted led to an inquiry which submitted the Wolfenden Report in 1967 suggesting consensual homosexual acts between adults be decriminalised. 14 out of 15 members of this inquiry agreed to this.

Peter Wildeblood wrote about the trial in his book, Against The Law: The Classic Account of a Homosexual in 1950s Britain, which was adapted for television and shown last night. [BBC Two]

Finding myself different

I began to realise my own same sex attraction from around the age of 7, just about the time that I had my first sexual encounter with a much older girl who was twice my age. I did not know or understand what happened between us, but I know I was taken into the toilet, told to pull down my shorts and instructed to put my thing in her thing.

How that impacted my sense of sexuality, I would never know, but in that singular event, I lost my innocence and became sexualised. In the following years up to the time I was 10, I suppose male servants seeking a sexual outlet found easy prey in me, to which I somewhat acquiesced, none the wiser about what it meant.

In fear and loathing

Through secondary boarding school, there was a fondle, some frottage and consequently lots of fellatio with one friend who assuredly was not homosexual. In fact, I met no homosexuals in any sense in school, or at least never knew of any until I saw some of my schoolmates in the UK.

By my late teens, I was in great conflict between understanding my sexuality and embracing spirituality, I could never square the situation of being naturally attracted to men and yet feeling condemned for what I did not choose as a matter of cause or course.

Meanwhile, I found amenable and willing partners for sexual expression into my twenties. On one occasion, we were caught in the act and literally blackmailed into complying with some norms. At the eve of my departure from Nigeria, one such liaison had revealed the tryst to another party and they both schemed to blackmail me, I refused to budge, told them to do their worst as I was also about to leave Nigeria.

The journey to accepting myself

By then, I had become aware that there were much more people like me, even if I did not know where to meet them. Back in the UK, I sought out men like me, I found a bar in the West-End called the Brief Encounter, now defunct, and from the moment I stepped into the bar, I began to the journey to the acceptance of who I was.

There were still many battles to fight for being homosexual in 1990, the police still found opportunity to harass, coming out had grave consequences for life and well-being, Justin Fashanu had just come out as gay and there was a great backlash, gays were being queer-bashed without finding any recourse or redress, discrimination was tolerated everywhere against homosexuals with homophobia expressed from politics to pulpit without sanction, we existed in an underclass of secrecy finding community in minority and the persecuted.

We were also in the first decade of the AIDS epidemic, I watched friends and acquaintances grab each day as it came, them wasting away until they expired. It was scary, then there was Section 28 enacted in 1988, which stated that a local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship." That’s Russia today and worse.

We’ve come a long way

Within this period, I found companionship and love, great tolerance and understand at work where my managers protected me from abuse from colleagues and much else. Many never understood homosexuality but accepted we existed and respected us for who we were. Our sexuality and sexual preferences do not define us, we are first human beings and there is much to us than labels.

In the West, in 50 years, we have come a long way, equality is the norm, discrimination is condemned, expression is free, gay marriage is legal in many countries, we’ve had gay heads of government in Iceland and Belgium, and currently in Luxembourg, Ireland and Serbia, coming out is not such a big deal anymore.

The spectre of AIDS that strafed the gay community is not so much the sentence of death it was some 20 or 30 years ago, because of new treatments that limit the debilitating effects of HIV.

Many battles remain

Yet, there is much to do for gay minorities, to tackle sexuality and status stigma, to address homophobic laws gaining traction in other countries where gays are abused, persecuted, prosecuted and murdered, just for being who they are.

Many are caught in that morass of being against the law – of nature to some when that is what they naturally are. Homosexuality is not a mental disorder, it is part of our humanity and human nature, but the journey to accepting, tolerating and respecting our varied and diverse humanity is still a long one.

Today, I must celebrate that where I live, my homosexuality is not against the law.

Alan Turing: The Imagination Game

“Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of that do the things no one can imagine.” Recurrent quote in The Imitation Game.

Father and victim

In Sackville Park, Manchester sits a statue with a plaque at its feet, one line, less prominent but quite important, "Victim of prejudice." That was a bygone age where the other sexuality was criminalised and with it came the law, heavy and merciless in its application.

Yet, to this man we owe more than we can ever fully appreciate him for. It was his genius that gave birth to the computer.

I type away literally oblivious of the real history of computing that Hollywood has attempted to serve us in film, one that opened in cinema theatres just over a week ago.

Of the film

Interest and engagement have gotten me have viewing The Imitation Game twice already, it is the story of Alan Turing and his work in breaking the encryption of the German Nazi Enigma machine.

One cannot say that the depiction in film is entirely true to the facts especially in the part where Alan Turing might well have been slandered in the film by being accused of being a spy.

The film itself is worth watching, it is interesting, engaging and somewhat plays around the youth, the genius, the sexuality, the persecution and the prosecution of the man, the man who died on the 7th of June 1954.

There is much acknowledgement of his seminal work, honours that have come posthumously and the royal pardon granted from 2013. [Computing Machinery and Intelligence – Turing, A. M. (1950)]

My crazy

This is not a film review, I somehow cannot help myself when I watch films, and I have to find something of the essence of life in the drama and the action.

I liked the line, "Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of that do the things no one can imagine," which passed from Christopher Morcom to Alan Turing to Joan Clarke and back to Alan Turing in the film.

However, the other bits that got me thinking in my usual penchant for over-analysing plots and plays are some of these things.

How crossword puzzles were used as a means to interview personnel for code-breaking, the conventional wisdom was to use linguists to decipher German code, Alan Turing however saw these as puzzles.

And so …

Somehow, what Alan Turing did was to eliminate chance from solving logical problems, at least that is one perspective to things.

Once the Enigma code was broken, the greater task was keeping it a secret and consequently, when it comes to tough decisions, who makes them and what goes into it? That was what Ultra was about and apparently that is why the allies won WWII.

That is why the Imitation Game was more like the Imagination Game for me, what he imagined became the reality of the world of computational power at the fingertips of mankind today. Alan Turing was an exceptionally gifted man, his homosexuality should never have taken such a genius away from us.

Other readings

Alan Turing: a short biography by Andrew Hodges

The Alan Turing Internet Scrapbook

Manchester Pride: Love is not a crime

Pride against prejudice

From the 1990s, I have attended quite a few gay prides, people of difference and diversity united in common purpose of living and letting live.

This celebration of our humanity and acceptance has always attracted me because it speaks to the kind of thinking I have, that all can live in peace together if we accept and respect each other.

In London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Playa del Ingles, Vienna, Zurich, Antwerp, Brussels, Cologne, Hamburg and many other places I cannot remember, I have watched streets fill up with crowds young and old, of all races, of all sexualities and of all beliefs to watch the spectacle, cheer on and have a lovely day.

All out for fun

Never have I seen or witnessed a counter protest, but an engagement of fun that almost forgets the seriousness of what is being celebrated.

The stranglehold of religion and Victorian values on our society with regards to what we consider moral or immoral has been lifted in most cases, many battles for equality won, but the war still rages in many lands where difference and diversity on the grounds of sexuality is criminalised.

Today, the Manchester Pride march/parade passed right in front of my house, at first, I watch from a window, then stepped out unto the front porch of my building to watch and take pictures.

We are many and one

The participants marching past as I stepped out was first the Suffolk Police and then the Greater Manchester Police, in full uniform and with a marching band, they were as involved as anyone else and at the same time I thought about the countries where the police is the enemy, the instrument of the state to persecute and prosecute difference on the basis of sexuality.

Organisations, institutions, political parties, unions, companies, sports teams, hospitals, civil service groups, activities groups and many others marches past as certain even held up placards not forgetting where persecution persists, especially in Nigeria.

Pride in my country

For the very first time of attending a Pride march, I suddenly felt emotional and even shed a tear, to think of the country I live in, the freedom of expression, the celebration of diversity and the fighting for rights of others, it dawned on me the great privilege we have along with the need to keep speaking up for those who have no voice.

More pertinently, the best message to my reading was on a placard, it read, “Love is not a crime”, who we choose to love, the partner being adult and with the choice and opportunity should never ever be the business of anyone else apart from those involved in that relationship.

The ultimate pursuit of happiness is in finding love and celebrating it, and that is what I think the gay Prides are all about. Indeed, I would want more representation of ethnic communities and minorities, my surprise and happiness at seeing ladies wearing hijabs on the march, shows we are getting there.

The Manchester Pride would run for 4 days and we are just on the second day.

Opinion: Thank you Ian Thorpe for coming out

He came out

Yesterday evening, I got to my hostess’ place and heard the news that Ian Thorpe, the amazing Australian, athlete and swimmer had come out as gay on a Michael Parkinson interview in Australia.

That we still have to greet this news as brave and courageous is indicative of the global community we live in, even so in Western liberal societies where being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual or intersexual is generally accepted.

The struggle

Yet, the bigger struggle is with the individual, the idea of self, the acceptance of self, the conflicts and inner turmoil of the mind, the fear of rejection, ostracism, persecution, abuse and excoriation, the guilt, the shame, the self-loathing, the tendency to conform as if what you are can be done away with by the use of willpower, the list of emotions and battles is endless.

Then, many are blessed with the situation that they can care less of what others think because they have become whom they want to be and have begun to thrive and excel with the full expression of self, we are almost envious and jealous of them because they are in the process of completing their lives in the pursuit of happiness.

The society

Certain societies cannot countenance sexuality that deviates from heterosexuality predicated from religion and what they call their culture or traditions to the extent that they have not only criminalised homosexuality, but created criminal justice systems to punish severe what in more ‘civilised’ societies is regarded as normal as for any other person.

The individual then has to decide which battles to take on or live a kind of double life, satisfying the public needs of heterosexual expression whilst finding private fulfilment of their somewhat suppressed sexuality, living on the down-low.

Ian Thorpe ran the gauntlet of media interest in his sexual preferences all through his active swimming career as if it is anybody’s business what a person’s sexuality was or who they decide to have sex with.

Depression taking hold

Within the miasma of this personal struggle of conflict, concealment, fear and adjustment, Ian Thorpe fell into deep depression maintaining an identity that was not his that he drank heavily and contemplated suicide.

Thankfully, he went into rehab and has come to the point as he said in his interview, “I’m comfortable saying I’m a gay man. And I don’t want people to feel the same way I did. You can grow up, you can be comfortable and you can be gay.”

This is the point where a person has in an adaptation of the Kübler-Ross model, for every encounter of adversity, be it grief, disease, struggles with sexuality, failure or any similar circumstance, we traverse with varying degrees of impact and periods of time of introspection and expression, the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Acceptance leads to freedom

Until we reach the point of acceptance, it is nigh impossible to get on with life and move on to the next stage beyond what ails us.

Yet, we have scored victories with the model in terms of grief, maybe disease in my case and also failure in many cases of my life story, but are stuck in the rut of sexuality, usually not on the acceptance of who we are, but on the bold acceptance of who we are to others.

That freedom eludes many and the freedom is a great release, for he is now looking towards finding a partner and starting his own family.

The reality

This is the world we inhabit, one that freely expresses homophobia that takes licence to abuse, malign, harangue and persecute for who we choose to love and how we express our love.

It is however heart-warming to read of the deluge of support from around the world to Ian Thorpe’s coming out, more so, the real human story of the pain he lived through before being confident enough to accept his own identity and the expression of it would be one to witness to many that we do not need to suffer for the fact that we are not heterosexual.

Focus on the person

If those who have known us for so long and have respected us for who we were then decide on learning of our sexuality that we are no more worthy of their love, fellowship, understand, acceptance and respect, it should be a reflection on them rather than ourselves.

Sexuality should never be a function of respect, rather it should be the personality, the character, the integrity and the virtues of the person, in goodness, compassion, thoughtfulness, empathy and developing relationships.

Maybe in our lifetime, all across the world, it would not matter to anyone who we love and when we touch, kiss, celebrate and talk of our lovers, it would just be as normal as it is to be human and part of humankind.

Thank you, Ian Thorpe for making it easier to be who we really are, thank you.

Berlin: That We May Never Forget

A sign of times past

Just at the entrance of Wittenbergplatz U-Bahn Station is a panel board of place names. Twelve in a list that spells the recording of one of man’s greatest inhumanities to man.

A list of Nazi Concentration Camps

These were the Nazi Concentration Camp names of which if you have read a bit of World War II history, Auschwitz is the most prominent.

The Nazis used these camps for various activities as hostage, labour, prisoner-of-war, re-education, transit and extermination camps. It was in some of these extermination camps that they systemically killed off people, most especially the Jews in what is known as the Holocaust.

Feeling the presence of pain

Now, I have never visited any of these places, but in 2007, I visited Pawiak Prison in Warsaw and that experience still lives with me, for I am of the opinion that where innocent blood is shed, there is always a memorial of feeling and uneasiness that beclouds that place.

Blog - PAWIAK!

However, what struck me more about the Nazi setup was their attention to detail that created a bureaucracy of such efficiency that the particularity of things they documented just took your breath away.

Badges of badgering

One good example of this was the identification in the Nazi Concentration Camps where tattooed numbers, badges and armbands immediately identified the type of prisoner you were.

Nazi Concentration Camp Badges – Courtesy Wikipedia

So, you had political prisoners (red), professional criminals (green), emigrants (blue), Jehovah’s Witnesses (purple), Homosexuals and sexual offenders (pink), asocial elements (black), Roma gypsies (brown) and so on. Pink triangle along with the rainbow flag now signify LGBTI causes and diversity.

The Original Rainbow Flag – Courtesy Wikipedia

The two superimposed triangles in the sign of the Star of David depicted Jews, typically yellow but could have other colours signifying Jew and another offender category.

That we may never forget.

The most important lesson to learn from this and in that understand why World War II was fought and won for our liberty, freedom and acceptance of difference and diversity is in the many memorials that say as shown on that sign, “Orte Des Schreckens, Die Wir Niemals Vergessen Dürfen.” This roughly translates to, “The Places of Horror, That We May Never Forget.”

They who have no history and keep no memorials are destined to repeat history, those reminded of the horrific past are quicker to embrace the greater good of humanity and human existence.

More correctly, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana or “Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.” Edmund Burke.

We speak of history because there is a burden of truth we must carry for the present in order to secure a future of peace and happiness.

Thought Picnic: Tolerating diversity on the streets of our humanity

Death on our streets

“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Karl Marx [Wikipedia]

One fateful day in May 2013, a young 25-year old father of one who had served his country in the treacherous battlefields of Afghanistan and returned unscathed was butchered on the streets of London, his name was Lee Rigby.

The scene of that murder, macabre, gruesome and beyond belief was the handiwork of Michael Olumide Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Oluwatobi Adebowale, 22, both black, British and of Nigerian descent.

Just like me

Nigerian descent by reason of both their middle names and surnames which are of Yoruba origin, very much like mine are, we are Third Culture Kids.

“A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents' culture. The TCK frequently builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCK's life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background.” [Wikipedia]

That is probably where the similarity ends, beyond having Christian names this tale takes a turn for the worse.

Drugged by religion

They took religion, became religious and adopted an outlook to life and circumstances that seem to give cause to what they presumed was their oppressed existence – their fellow Muslims were suffering around the world; that appeared to justify their heartless act – to take an innocent human being off the street and butcher him like a dog and that informed their soulless utterances – expressing no empathy, care or remorse for the evil acts wrought by their hands.

They were opiated by religion that nothing they did made sense and whatever made sense to them was to any other human being manifestly evil, incomprehensibly beyond words and lacking in humanity that they had become demons in human skin.

Blinded by belief

They represented the extremes of how religion can blind people to the community, communion and commonality of our humanity with all its differences and diversity. The tendency to feel one has right by some deity or some instruction to lose perspective of the fundamental human rights of another and thereby deprive them of their freedom, their life, their expression and their pursuit of happiness.

As we battle with our conscience we sometimes lose consciousness of the fact that regardless of what we believe or what we are persuaded of, we may not understand the world of others besides ourselves, but as fellow human beings they have a right to live, survive and thrive in the world we all share – free of persecution, prosecution and execution - it is called tolerance.

Harm no one

The greater lesson here is not so much about heritage, culture or religion, but the need to recognise within ourselves our Good Samaritan humanity not to harm others because of our persuasion, omission, commission, inclination, indifference, silence or utterance.

Examples of which is fearfully expressed in the Boko Haram menace in Nigeria where children and people are massacred, and a government continually stand clueless of ability, purpose, resolve or empathy apart from the wringing of hands, the miniskirt ban in Uganda, the new homophobic laws of Nigeria and Uganda along with the religious and cultural expression that underpins such inclinations.

Free our streets from offence

As we all freely walk the streets and justice is served by taking extremists off our streets, we must be careful not to hound off the streets others whose only offence to us is to be different, diverse and divergent from what is our norm but not their norm.

Back to England, may Lee Rigby rest in peace, his family, relations and friends find some closure and strength in the fond memories of that innocent man and that we all learn that religious fanaticism can lead to ruinous consequences for both believer to the wider society. Our humanity must always inform, temper and moderate our beliefs, not the other way round.