Watching Abubakar Shekau claiming responsibility for the kidnap of over 200 schoolgirls in Chibok, Borno State and threatening to marry them off or sell them as slaves should turn the stomach of every sane creature on God’s green earth.
Any doubt that the arrowhead of Boko Haram is a mindless bigot – leading a bunch former military Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari, described as “misguided persons masquerading as adherents of Islam” – is erased by Shekau’s declaration.
He boasted: “I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah.” He twisted the knife further, saying, “There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women”
One does not need to be versed in the Quran to know that the “Allah” Shekau claims speaks with him must be different from the one most of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world swear allegiance to. And the message coming from faithful across the world is that it is utterly despicable and un-Islamic to invoke the name of Allah in terrorist activities.
Those who think Boko Haram is driven by a religious zeal have been told in very clear terms that their activities are a gross misrepresentation of Islam.
Egypt’s Al-Azhar, one of the oldest and most credible Islamic institutions of higher learning in the world, on May 7 demanded that Boko Haram should release the girls. “This action,” Al-Azhar said, “does not relate to the noble teachings of Islam in any way.”
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has also denounced Boko Haram’s claim that it wants to establish a pure Sharia state in Northern Nigeria. “This crime and other crimes carried out by such extremist organisations negate all human principles and moral values and stand in contradiction to the clear teachings of the blessed Koran and the rightful examples set by the Prophet (Mohammad),” OIC’s International Islamic Fiqh Academy said.
A statement posted on the website of the academy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia added: “The secretariat of the academy, shocked by this ugly act, strongly demands the immediate release of these innocent girls without causing any harm to any of them.” The OIC’s Human Rights Commission also condemned “the barbaric act of abducting the innocent schoolgirls” and the “misguided claim of Boko Haram” that selling them as slaves is Islamic.
In an opinion published by CNN, Muslim human rights lawyer, Arsalan Iftikhar, argued that the insurgents “have clearly never read the Holy Quran, which states quite clearly that ‘oppression is worse than murder’ (2:191) and that nobody ‘shall force girls to commit prostitution’ (24:33).
“They must have also missed the numerous times that the Prophet Muhammad categorically stated during his life that women or children were never to be harmed under any situation.”
Chances are that the terrorists can recite those verses of the Quran with their eyes closed, but as it is with the rest of their operations, theirs is a movement built on distortion of the faith they profess. Even their claim that Western education is sinful falls like a pack of badly arranged cards, given Shehu Sani’s disclosure that some Boko Haram members are university graduates with more than one degree.
Sani, a human rights activist and writer who brokered a face-to-face peace talks with Boko Haram in 2011, paints a picture of a well organised army, a far cry from the rambling Shekau who appears in videos posted by the group.
Clearly, Boko Haram is everything Islam is not. Jama’atu Nasril Islam, Nigeria’s national umbrella group of Muslim organisations, condemned the kidnapping in Chibok as an “act of barbarism”.
Other organisations and individuals that had previously maintained a disturbing silence over the activities of the extremist group are now finding their voices. Many more still need to join the campaign.
As anger mounts justifiably over the inability of the federal government to rescue the girls more than three weeks after their abduction, Nigerians now look up to the United States and other countries to help with logistics, communication and intelligence.
President Goodluck Jonathan’s constant assurance that the government will crush Boko Haram has become grates to the ear.
If the Chibok abduction will truly be the end of insurgency in the North, it will have more to do than the international focus on Nigeria right now than the effort of an impotent government under whose watch thousands have been killed in the past four years.
Book Haram does not fight for Islam anymore than Joseph Kony of the Lord’s Resistance Army fights for Christianity. Any group or persons that attacks, kills, maims and enslaves the innocent cannot honestly lay claim to serving a just, beneficent and merciful God.
The custodians of Islam need to move a step further than condemning Shekau; they should declare a jihad against him.
Tiwa’s savage behaviour
Tiwa Savage did not wait for the ink to dry on her marriage certificate before crossing the line between sexy and slutty.
Even with the reportedly racy ‘Wanted’ video by the new Mrs Balogun yet to make a public debut, the young woman on May 4 left little to the imagination with a risque one-on-one with a male fan on stage during the Ekwulobia, Anambra leg of this year’s Star Music Trek.
She had told critics a few days before that “I’m off to the beach to show more of my bikini body. Because I’m married I should turn into a nun, abi? Maybe if you work on your body your husband will not be drooling over me.”
Fortunately, some people still buy Tiwa’s CDs because of her music. Pray her voice lasts longer than the bikini body because that is what will endure when everything else starts drooping.