From Abdallah: "this is the same guy who, after the Christmas Day terror attempt, said the UK is
a "cesspit" because of its tolerance of different religions proselytizing
openly:
Mr Soyinka, 76, who was born in Nigeria and studied at Leeds University in the 1950s, said: “England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims.”
He added: “Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it.
Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there."
Mr Soyinka said Britain took pride in its “openness” and added: "I doubt you can have the kind of indoctrination schools in America as you do in the UK…The Muslims there are open Muslims, whereas in Europe they tend to go into ghetto schools.”
During a lecture at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India, he told the audience: “We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space."
But he admitted that the “disease” of radical Islam had reached Nigeria with the recent clashes in Jos.
"A virus has attacked the world of sense and sensibility, and it has spread to Nigeria,” he added.
Mr Soyinka put the origins of the problem with the fatwa [religious ruling] by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran against the author Salman Rushdie in 1989.
"It all began when he assumed the power of life and death over the life of a writer. This was a watershed between doctrinaire aggression and physical aggression. There was an escalation. The assumption of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim in the world—as if someone had given them a new stature.
"Al Qaeda is the descendent of this phenomenon. The proselytization of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi Arabia. Madrassas were established everywhere."
Mr Soyinka, the son of a Christian clergyman, worked at the Royal Court Theatre in London after university. He is a cousin of the Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, who was studying music in London around the same time."
