Nigeria’s Islamic Movement Can Never Be Banned: Sheikh Zakzaky

“The IMN is not a name, it is an ideology like Islamic awareness, Islamic ideology, Islamic education, or Islamic philosophy. It is a sort of concept. We never used it as a name, and the movement can never be banned or proscribed,” Sheikh Zakzaky said in reaction to the government’s action in proscribing the IMN, Iran Press Reported.

Sheikh Zakzaky said proscribing the IMN is just like saying one is not permitted to practice his religion, contrary to the Nigerian constitution.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the cleric said, “My wife and I still have bullets in our bodies.”

He added that his wife has a full bullet lodged in her body which doctors have not been able to remove.

“But, experts from outside the country promise that they can do something about it.”

In December 2015, the Nigerian army raided Huseiniyya Baqiyhatullah religious center and Sheikh Zakzaky’s house in Zaria town in Kaduna State of Nigeria, killing hundreds of armless civilians, among them women and children.

It wounded the leader of the IMN and his wife with gunshots, a massacre that has been condemned by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other international activists.

During an aborted trip for medical treatment in India in August 2019, the Nigerian authority seized their international passports. It refused to hand them back even though Kaduna State High Court ordered their release on July 28, 2021.