When terrorist organisations like Boko Haram are raping school children, kidnapping, maiming, suicide bombing and causing collateral murders in the pretext of Islamic fundamentalism, I wonder if truly they are Muslims.

That reminds me of some 4,500 pilgrims from Cameroon going to Mecca for Hadj this year with 3,300 from Garoua and 1,200 coming in from Douala. They are the real Muslims joining millions of others in Mecca for the Hadj pilgrimage.

It is a religious ritual every true Muslim who has the means and the physical fitness must make in a life time. Hadj is the fifth pillar of their religion.

The first is the profession of faith, followed by prayer while the third pillar is compulsory charity. The other is the Ramadan feast.

The pilgrimage reminds the faithful of how their great prophets and teachers of faith instituted a deep and personal relationship with Allah. They believe that the pilgrimage provides, after a supplication to Allah, a “rich inner peace, which is manifested outwardly in the values of justice, honesty, respect, generosity, kindness, forgiveness, mercy and empathy to others”.

Those are the same lofty values preached by the Christian Religion. So why are some committing macabre atrocities in the name of Islam? Aren’t they soiling the image of Muslims like in Kenya where every Muslim is perceived as a potential terrorist?

What are Muslims doing so as to avoid the radical preaching that is turning supposedly religious youths into murdering squads? Doesn’t their religion preach tolerance? Aren’t Cameroonians suffering the impact of religious hostility in the Central African Republic where their refugees like those in Nigeria are trooping to Cameroon?

President Biya has launched a war against the insurgents from Nigeria who according to credible reports, also have Cameroonians in their midst. Surely, the war with weapons will be won but there still will remain the war “to win the souls and minds”, to use President Barrack Obama’s phrase. Radicalised Muslim youths are likely to emerge after Boko Haram would have been crushed.

That is where I think the real Muslim should begin to give a thought of the aftermath. That reminds me of an incident where a Muslim acquaintance saw a copy of the Koran in my possession.

He was so furious to the point of almost releasing a blow on my face; questioning why an “infidel” should read the Koran, not to talk of owing it.

Even when I explained that it was a gift from a Saudi diplomat, he still insisted I should surrender it to him. Thank Jehovah, we are in a secular nation and I wonder what would have been my fate if we were in an Islamic state with its Sharia laws.

We are lucky there is religious tolerance in Cameroon, but with the way the Boko Haram is radicalising the religion, the real Muslims who I watch scrambling to go to Mecca for the yearly ritual and slaughter rams in obedience to the fourth pillar, must begin to watch their preachers to ensure they keep within the provision of Islam which is a religion of peace, not mass slaughtering in the name of Allah.

Postscript “Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see-egoism, arrogance, conceit, selfishness, greed, lust, intolerance, anger, lying, cheating, gossiping and slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then you will be read to fight the enemy you can see”-Abu Hamid al-Ghazali.