Boko Haram kidnappings

It appears that the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram has repeated one of its most well-known crimes — kidnapping hundreds of children. Recent media reports say that a man claiming to be the group’s leader took credit for the kidnapping of over 300 schoolboys last week. We do not know if the man on the recording was actually Abubakar Shekau, but we do know that his theories and ‘reasoning’ were outlandish enough to match up with the group’s known leaders of the past and present.

Boko Haram claims to oppose ‘western education’, but the truth is that it opposes all education except for a very narrow field of theology that matches up to its beliefs. The proof for this lies in the fact that the founder of the group, Mohammed Yusuf, posited that the earth is flat and evaporation does not exist. Neither of these is ‘western education’. In fact, early Muslim astronomers are credited with several advances that helped prove the earth’s shape. Among their motivations was how to find the direction of the Qibla. That is about as Islamic as it gets.

Boko Haram is, like many others, an outright gang of murderers and rapists. Look at what they did when the last time they kidnapped a large number of children. Over 200 Christian girls were abducted, raped, and murdered, with some survivors swapped in prisoner exchanges with the government. Dozens remain in captivity. Apart from these large-scale kidnappings, Unicef estimated last year that Boko Haram had kidnapped over 1,000 children since 2013.

Much like Daesh, with which Boko Haram has a love-hate relationship, Boko Haram represents the worst of humanity — unrepentant evil. Unlike Daesh, however, Boko Haram appears to be expanding its base of operations. Last week’s kidnappings took place in Western Nigeria, whereas the group had previously been restricted to the northeast. This in itself is concerning. Unlike Syria and Iraq, Nigeria has no neighbours capable of helping contain and push back a terrorist infestation.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 17^th, 2020.

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