A factional Shi’ite organization, Al-Thaqalayn Cultural Foundation, has described the Ibraheem El-Zakzaky led Islamic Movement in Nigeria, (IMN) as a fake movement that only exists in the wildest dreams of its members.
Secretary General of factional Shi’ites group, Sheikh Hamza Muhammad Lawal, who addressed a press conference in Kaduna on Tuesday said the Zakzaky’s movement is a curious hybrid and a concoction, a dangerously unstable cocktail of incoherent and disorganised hallucinations and fantasies that only exist in their wildest dreams.
He urged the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to desist from using the IMN crises to make Nigeria another testing ground for their struggle for regional supremacy.
According to him, IMN is not synonymous to Shi’ism and neither of the two are interchangeable.
Lawal revealed that he was once a member of IMN, between 1981 and 2000, one year after he returned from Qum, Islamic Republic of Iran, where he had studied Theology.
“IMN started in the late 1970s as a socio-cultural and politico-religious revivalist movement, drawing its inspiration and taking its cue from essentially Sunni activists from countries like Egypt ánd Pakistan,” he explained.
“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 it got attracted and gravitated to its political message.
“When the leader of IMN, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, became a Shiite afterwards, he fell into the dilemma of either abandoning his Sunni revivalist movement and risking the possibility of losing his followers, or continuing with the movement with all its Sunni content but a Shi’ite face. He chose the latter, and that has been his undoing.
“Sheikh Zakzaky has not been able to complete his process of migration from Sunni activism to Shiite evangelism. His movement is a curious hybrid and 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, much closer to Sunni Islam.
“The Press should therefore seriously note this and start calling IMN by the name it has given itself IMN. The Press is thus hereby called upon to appreciate the difference between IMN and Shi’ism. IMN is not another name for Shi’ism. The two are neither synonymous nor interchangeable.
“IMN is not a Shi’ite organisation. Yes, many of its recruits are Shi’ites; but there are many others also who are Sunnis and Christians. It is a movement.
“Yes, some of its leaders appear to the public in the regalia of Shiite clerics; but that is where it stops. IMN is not genuine. It is fake. It is a bad product, an unmarketable one for that matter. IMN is the wrong advertisement copy.
“IMN has crashed the gate of Shi’ism. We at Al-Thaqalayn Cultural Foundation feel undermined by IMN. We also believe that it is an embarrassment to our Shiite identity and credentials, a threat to our religious survival, and a misrepresentation of what we are as Nigerian citizens who accept the rule of law,” Lawal said.
He however appealed to the Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufa’i, to use his good office and withdraw the case against Sheikh Zakzaky in the Kaduna High Court.
Lawal also called on President Muhammadu Buhari to continue to extend the olive branch to members of IMN.
