AMERICA THE UNWARY TRANSGRESSOR —

By Maiwada Dammallam

Watching The US President, Donald Trump humbled right inside the White House where he was captured sitting helplessly listening to recitations from the Holy Quran, I couldn't help but rue my naivety for once seeing Trump as a powerful being who could end the world with just a touch of a button. Seeing Trump going spiritual as seen to it by the fear of a microscopic virus, I feel I can safely go spiritual without inviting the wrath of modernists.

Covid-19 is a rude reminder of the bad story ahead for humanity for its past, present and developing transgressions. Although microscopic, the scourge is clearly more powerful than humanity's so called superpowers combined. It's already a pandemic of similar proportion to the 14th Century Great Bubonic plague which wiped off close to 60% of Europe's population and shook the world to its roots killing more than 100 million people globally.

Imagine USA, agreeably the Chief Supervisor of the modern world, running out of options and overtly turning to God with its tail tucked between its legs — deadly nuclear war heads, powerful satellites to identify enemies with frightening accuracy, stealthy drones to deliver swift deaths in all corners of the world and powerful fighter jets to constantly remind the weak of their weakness and perpetual enslavement, all, either forgotten or helpless to fight Covid-19 if remembered at all.

All of a sudden the ferocious fire power of the USA and NATO that conspiratorially and needlessly decimated Iraq and Afghanistan, perforated Syria and Yemen to look like a rag beside destroying millions of lives of their innocent citizens mostly women and children, incinerated Libya destroying and leaving behind similar anguish and hopelessness while processing the entire African continent; setting helpless countries ablaze allocating pain and penury nation by nation according to a bizarre ambition to subdue a world they already conquered. God is truly Great! By HIS powers, a sleepy invisible power has conquered the powerful of the modern world. Indeed, in this are great lessons in humility!

From the weak to the powerful, now it's every nation to itself. By the arrogant choices of the so called superpowers some weak nations were turned into giant crematoriums complete with the eerie smell of burning flesh while the world's powerful undertakers operates with a reckless sense of defiance and of course, a false sense of immunity against karma. Sure, Covid-19 is a lesson in how the world should be what it ought to be — a live and let live planet.

Covid-19 is also a lesson in transgression. It's humbling to see the arrogant and assertive managers of the modern world all of a sudden remembering there's God! The same USA that was defiant to the biblical lessons of Sodom and Gomorrah and was only recently determining its relationship with other nations on the basis of their forceful subscription to homosexuality, even whipping recalcitrant nations for non compliance, is the one begging to be saved by the same God who incinerated Sodom and Gomorrah for their transgressions. If God didn't forgive Sodom and Gomorrah for homosexuality, why should HE forgive the modern world for taking homosexuality a notch above where Sodom Gomorrah left it — not only encouraging homosexuality but legitimizing and elevating it into a marital institution?

What was America thinking when it was dealing with the rest of the world on the basis of individual commitment to homosexuality? That God is so unjust as to punish Sodom and Gomorrah for homosexuality and overlook America's tripartite transgression of homosexuality, legitimizing homosexuality and forcing homosexuality on the global community? Covid-19 is just divine warning, the punishment for this transgression is better left to imagination.

Lessons in the Old and New Testaments and Holy Quran about what awaits transgressors both in this life and next are as abundant as they are core to Christian and Islamic beliefs yet, overt and covert subscription to homosexuality is the commonest phenomenon in contemporary world. Perhaps, that's what make globalization of homosexuality by the USA a very easy affair.

And yes, thanks to agents of modernity led by the US, the world is no longer worried about nudity and forcefully rebranded vices that are now culturally or even religiously accepted as normal. Nudity is now big business and the bustier the better. From automobile to simple household consumables, goods are only good enough for our consumption when advertised by naked women of shapes and sizes relevant to the regional taste and peculiarities! Just how we expect to get away scot free from the wrath of our creator is better left to the calculation of our mostly commercialized religious leaders.

That Covid-19 in just few weeks has unlocked our potentials to think properly and in line with our default settings, let's use the opportunity to re-arrange our priorities. With particular emphasis on my little part of the world, Nigeria, to say injustice is enough to invite the wrath of Allah SWT is to say the least. For as long as one could recall, injustice is the operating template. By selfish choices, the rich are perpetually getting richer and the poor perpetually getting poorer. Selfishness, greed and a seeming genetic deformity has seen to it that most of us would rather corner what belongs to all for their personal economic security and that of their families down to unborn generations.

We are lacking hospitals and schools not because we cannot reasonably afford but simply because some few people chose to steal the money for these basics to guarantee their ability to ferry themselves and their families to foreign hospitals and schools when the need arise. Now the need has arose and foreign hospitals are stretched to the limit and no longer accessible to those who refused to provide such services for their countries — a real life, real time "as-you-make-your-bed-so-you-lie-on-it" situation.

And this is not a pass mark for the have-nots in anyway. Nigeria was not destroyed by the haves only and neither is their class the only one operating with corrupt template that landed us in this mess. For each 1 super rich "government thief", there are thousands of dormant super rich "government thieves" fully incubated and praying to hatch at the right time, in the right position. Our patriotism and ranting is mostly induced by absence of opportunities but, even by assessing the picture on the lower rung of the corruption ladder, one would easily believe the future is very bleak. In summary, this is not only about USA and its ways. It's about all the bad people in the world.

May we get out of the Covid-19 pandemic and may we learn the lessons of it.