{"id":65252,"date":"2022-05-22T13:00:17","date_gmt":"2022-05-22T12:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/uncategorized\/blasphemy-wole-soyinka-demands-sacking-of-national-mosque-imam"},"modified":"2022-05-22T14:07:39","modified_gmt":"2022-05-22T13:07:39","slug":"blasphemy-wole-soyinka-demands-sacking-of-national-mosque-imam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/policy\/blasphemy-wole-soyinka-demands-sacking-of-national-mosque-imam","title":{"rendered":"Blasphemy: Wole Soyinka demands sacking of National Mosque Imam"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. <\/strong><\/span>Following the recent riot in Sokoto State over alleged blasphemy, Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, on Saturday called for the sacking of the Imam, National Mosque, Abuja, Professor Ibrahim Maqari, over a comment on the killing of Deborah Samuel.<\/p>\n<p>Recall that Deborah, a 200-level student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto was killed by Muslim men who accused her of blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad.<\/p>\n<p>Reacting to the unfortunate incident, Mr Maqari stressed that the Muslims have some red lines which must not be crossed, saying if issues of blasphemy against the prophet are not addressed, the Muslims would address it themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in Abuja on Saturday during the one-year remembrance of the late former Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, Soyinka accused the Imam of directing followers to take laws into their hands.<\/p>\n<p>Soyinka said, \u201cProfessor Maqari, however, insists, with a handful of others, including vocal serving policemen quite recently, that there is no remorse involved in the torture and lynching of a young student on this earth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaqari has implicitly directed his followers to take the law into their own hands in the name of religion, and innovation. That is the message of a supposedly holy man to a nation embroiled in his madness of multiple incidences.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\">Nigeria<\/a> Follow <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. Following the recent riot in Sokoto State over alleged blasphemy, Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, on Saturday called for the sacking of the Imam, National Mosque, Abuja, Professor Ibrahim Maqari, over a comment on the killing of Deborah Samuel. Recall that Deborah, a 200-level student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":65251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,28,14,26],"tags":[1570,2140,7519,7520,254],"class_list":["post-65252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-homepage-english","category-policy","category-twitter","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-nigeria-2","tag-blasphemy","tag-national-mosque-imam","tag-nigeria"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Blasphemy: Wole Soyinka demands sacking of National Mosque Imam - Nigeria<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Following the recent riot in Sokoto State over alleged blasphemy, Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, on Saturday ca ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/policy\/blasphemy-wole-soyinka-demands-sacking-of-national-mosque-imam\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blasphemy: Wole Soyinka demands sacking of National Mosque Imam\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Following the recent riot in Sokoto State over alleged blasphemy, Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, on Saturday ca ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/policy\/blasphemy-wole-soyinka-demands-sacking-of-national-mosque-imam\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Nigeria\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-05-22T12:00:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-05-22T13:07:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sites\/3\/2022\/05\/postQueueImg_10-628a3584159f8.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"853\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/policy\/blasphemy-wole-soyinka-demands-sacking-of-national-mosque-imam#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/policy\/blasphemy-wole-soyinka-demands-sacking-of-national-mosque-imam\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Blasphemy: Wole Soyinka demands sacking of National Mosque Imam\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-05-22T12:00:17+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-05-22T13:07:39+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/policy\/blasphemy-wole-soyinka-demands-sacking-of-national-mosque-imam\"},\"wordCount\":235,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/policy\/blasphemy-wole-soyinka-demands-sacking-of-national-mosque-imam#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/sites\/3\/2022\/05\/postQueueImg_10-628a3584159f8.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Nigeria\",\"Blasphemy\",\"National Mosque Imam\",\"Nigeria\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"homepage-english\",\"Policy\",\"twitter\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/policy\/blasphemy-wole-soyinka-demands-sacking-of-national-mosque-imam#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/policy\/blasphemy-wole-soyinka-demands-sacking-of-national-mosque-imam\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/policy\/blasphemy-wole-soyinka-demands-sacking-of-national-mosque-imam\",\"name\":\"Blasphemy: Wole Soyinka demands sacking of National Mosque Imam - 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