The Muslim Rights Concern has reacted to the questionable flogging of some Islamic School students in Kwara State.
Deemed to be punishment for an unknown offence, the viral video has attracted widespread condemnation on social media.
However, MURIC’s Director, Professor Ishaq Akintola, in a statement on Monday, cautioned against drawing conclusions based on the video alone.
He 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.
“Arabic schools are the repository of morality and the vault of uprightness. 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.
“While we do not subscribe to merciless flogging, torture and other severe corporeal punishment, we make bold to say that children must be disciplined.
“We commend the parents of those children who instructed the school authorities to punish their children. Posterity will count them among Nigeria’s puritanists and disciplinarians.
“Those who are condemning the parents and the teachers today are those who will gladly encourage their own children and wards to participate in BBNaija’s shameful sex in public.
“MURIC stands with discipline and high moral values. 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.”
