Relations between “Muslims and Christians in Africa on the whole, it’s been absolutely fine…for many, many years,” unrealistically stated Channel 4 international editor Lindsey Hilsum in an April 16 podcast. Focusing on recent jihadist attacks in Mozambique, she suggested that such violence throughout Africa resulted largely from socioeconomic deprivation, but Nigerian Christians, with centuries-long experience with jihad, long ago refuted such hackneyed arguments.
The United Kingdom’s Channel 4 introduced Hilsum as someone who “explains how attacks like these are on the rise across the African continent; a consequence of poverty, domestic grievances new and old.” While she noted that in modern times “stricter forms of Islam from Saudi Arabia have gone everywhere” in Africa and the Middle East, she focused on “Muslim youth, who felt marginalized.” “A new ideology is laid on top of it, but it all comes down to the same thing, people are poor,” therefore the “only way you deal with an insurgency like this is if people have prospects, if there is development” and a “way out of poverty.”
By contrast, Hilsum should consider Religious Intolerance: A Threat to Nigeria’s Unity, a book published by the Stefanos Foundation, a Nigerian Christian aid association, in 2009, the year that Boko Haram emerged as a jihadist group. This book examines the oppression and violence Christians suffered in Muslim-majority northern Nigeria in the context of state governments applying sharia law. Beginning with Zamfara in 1999 (which as of 2017 had Nigeria’s highest poverty rate), 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states have enacted sharia in a country divided between a Muslim-majority north and Christian-majority south.
“Islam is not only a religion; rather it is a complete totalitarian system of life,” appears starkly in the book’s text. Thus sharia manifests that jihadists have a “universal supremacist ideology” and “demand conquest…by conversion, domination or death” in an “IMPERIALISTIC WAR FOR OUR MINDS AND SOULS.” “All other systems and governments must be supplanted,” as jihadists “project perfection when it is a Muslim leading or ruling.”
The anonymous book authors wrote of a “palpable threat to supplant our system,” for the “Nigerian Constitution, in unambiguous terms, guarantees freedom of religion” and prohibits the “adoption of any religion as a state religion.” Given jihad’s history, including Usman Dan Fodio’s 1812 establishment of a caliphate with its capital in what is now Nigeria’s Sokoto state, the authors considered themselves “constantly confronted by history.” They noted that once Christian Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey now all have Muslim majorities, while Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan likewise have lost their Buddhist, Hindu, and Zoroastrian cultures.
The book documented how precisely Christians suffered as “second class citizens” under sharia in states such as Zamfara because of discrimination in areas including education, employment, and religious freedom. In Bauchi, for example, Muslims “openly quote and criticize the Bible with impunity but when Christians make any reference to Islam or the Qur’an, the Muslims chant their war cry ‘Allahu Akbar’” before attacking. Accordingly, Muslims
go into every part of the state to preach unhindered and unmolested. Christians, however, on many occasions face stiff resistance, molestation, threats to life and physical attacks on their persons by Muslims while trying to propagate their religion through preaching.
Long before Boko Haram atrocities seized world attention, fear gripped northern Nigerian Christians, the authors noted. “Islamic fundamentalists in Yobe need no sign of provocation before unleashing terror on their victims and that they are very skillful in inciting crisis.” Here Christians lamented that “while Christians in other parts of Nigeria sleep with their eyes closed, the Christians in Yobe State sleep with one eye open.”
The authors warned that often peaceful-appearing Muslims “have no or little love for non-Islamic religions.” The authors gave an ominous premonition of how some Muslims would betray their longstanding Christian neighbors to jihadist ravages when the Islamic State invaded Mesopotamia in 2014: .
Each time when Christians are attacked, their reaction has always been an expression of surprise on the ground that persons they know, eat together and live together with would all of a sudden attack them. This position is based on some Christians’ ignorance of the practices of Islam.
Subsequent to the Stefanos Foundation publication appeared the undated, post-2009 booklet Boko-Haram: Inciting Messages of Intolerance against Christians. This contained English translations of speeches and interviews given by Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau and its founder, Mohammed Yusuf, killed by Nigerian police in 2009. Video and audio recordings of these statements by Boko Haram leaders came in an accompanying video CD.
Shekau left no doubt about his bloody cause. For Boko Haram jihadists, “our creator has commanded us to war against any person that refuse to accept or acknowledge ISLAM after we have invited him to the faith.” Boko Haram’s fight “is not an ethnic war, it is not ignorant war, it is not a war for money, it is not a war for any other reason. No, it is a religious war!”
Contrary to Hilsum’s Western progress ideals, Yusuf proclaimed that “what is of the West and the white man brought is ungodly and we’re not interested in it.” “It is democracy that we are against,” he added, the “democracy that came from the west.” Similarly “it is paganism, the football that is played is corruption to the good morals of our children.”
Yusuf indicated the origins of Boko Haram’s name (“Western education is sin”), as “western education is cooked with hidden issues that contravene the doctrine and teaching of Islam.” The theory of condensation, for example, contradicts predominant Islamic doctrines about a God unbounded by fixed scientific laws, such that natural events such as rainfall occur anew merely through God’s will. Yusuf also rejected coeducation.
Yusuf delineated the ideal Boko Haram member. “If anyone wants to be part of this movement he must have a thorough knowledge of the Quran, must pray in the night and fast fervently, must repent and stop blasphemy.” Contrastingly, “it is unheard-of that a Muslim should die for either ethnicity or patriotism.”
Such jihadists in groups such as Boko Haram, and sharia agendas more broadly, in Africa or elsewhere stand in stark contrast to Hilsum’s materialist outlook. Jihadists are only willing to embrace material benefits as long as they do not jeopardize faith dictates, which in turn place their own limitations on progress, such as women’s education. Like other believers, jihadists do not live by bread alone.
born saturday says
islam is another of the perversions of the modern world in the west that is promoted as an ideal… while young boys in the west learn that they literally have to be girls, in islamic countries, the boys are taught to hate the west and wage any type of jihad against the kafur of the west… it is a contradiction that shows that while islam is preparing all its men from a young age to wage war against all westernes some leaders in the west want the westerners castrated from a young age, and taught all about tolerance and human rights that are due to the chosens ones only of this governing class, in one case to the muslims….. you take a pick and tell me who wins in this war of civilisations in the future. the castrated from a young age men of the west stand a chance against the global jihad that is increasing world wide??? already in many countries the human rights apply to muslims and immigrants only the sacred cows of the governing elites all around the west almost.
Infidel says
Africa’s – and anybody’s – root cause of jihad – is Islam!
gravenimage says
+1
Dude says
But isn’t it islamophobia that causes jihad to manifest? When villanous monsters take boisterous exception to being targeted for death, robbery, slavery and rape by the bandit cult, then they must be silenced.
They should just accept what god has decreed as their fate, and die happily like men, not snivelling cowards, afraid of death and poverty and being raped or turned into slaves.
The bandits are just following the books that justify, deify their thug lifestyles. And ain’t nobody gonna take that nobility away from them.
Walter Sieruk says
As for the question “What are Africa’s the root causes of jihad terrorism ?”
The answer is Islam with it’s Qu ‘ran with its instructions for Muslims to engage in violence and killing for the cause of their religion. As found in ,for example 2:191. 4:89. 5:33. 9:5,111,123. 47:4.
Furthermore, it may be illustrated that if Islam is represented as a tree then the fruits then the fruits of that tree are the many brutal, violent and deadly jihad terror entities. Such as Boko Haram, al Shabaab and so forth.. With this statement, the Wisdom of the teachings of Jesus may, very much, apply to this subject. For Jesus taught “Ye do know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.” After saying this Jesus told them what He told them when He said “By their fruit ye shall know them.” Matthew 7:16, 17, 18,.20. [K.J.V.]
In conclusion, Islam is a corrupt tree and also a false religion, Proverbs 14:12. John 14:6. First John 2:22,23. 4:14,15. 5:12,13,20.
Emmanuel says
This is very barbaric,why would someone derive Joy in killing people,I rather die than become a Muslim
Jayell says
I recently bought an excellent and very academic book on ‘Slavery in Africa’. It comprises a set of very well-researched sociological treatises related to the various different countries and tribal areas of the African continent from modern times back to the 1700’s and before, and shows how inter-tribal conflict, slavery and general human exploitation have been a regular feature of African societies and history probably since time immemorial. Sadly, it seems that the islamic outrages in Africa that we seem to be constantly reading about in the press and on the internet just seem to fit into the same long-established pattern, only the identities of players changing in this ongoing gruesome drama.
AmericanPride says
There is no Nobility in Satanism, there is only one aspect and that is Satan who is one and all of that cult, and all others are soo far below that Evil that they can’t escape with their lives, so here are the facts. If you Join forces with Satan and sign contracts for Fame and Fortune, after your run of Success your Contract runs out, and you are put to work for the Beast until death at which time the Pit awaits you for eternity. Now look at Islam, You either Join Islam and be their slave to be traded and sold, or you are already a slave and serve a Moon-god, but either way, you don’t leave with your life, this is a FACT and can’t slam me for being Factual. Their own Book of Quran States this Fact, but no Muslim or Infidel can question this book as that also will be the end to your life. Very clever that Imams and Religious scholars are using this book as their personal avenue for revenue. They interpret what they want you to believe and there is no other way to bring any middle ground until this book is destroyed by Christ who they also deny and force all others to deny so their souls are sealed.
gravenimage says
What are Africa’s Root Causes of Jihad?
…………………
Orthodox Islam.
Kepha says
My guess is that sooner or later, the Christian people of Sub-Saharan Africa will take matters into their own hands, tell the rest of the world to mind its own business, and it will be a very, very bad day for the Dar-ul-Islam.
I’m more worried about the positive picture of Islam that is presented in the West. In teaching World History to high schoolers, I’ve made it a point to note the genocides of the Armenian, Anatolian Greek, and Syriac Christians in the early 20th centuries, the laws of Dhimmi status in classical Islam, and the role of Islam in the African slave trade (the Spanish and Portuguese started to remember their erstwhile colonizers’ introduction of African slaves when they saw the Indians dying off). I’ve even written to the not-so-honorable Shamie Rascal and both Maryland Senators suggesting that if they pass reparations for African-Americans, they also ask much of EUrope and Africa itself to pony up (expecially the Islamic parts and Atlantic-facing countries).
As for the foolish idea that Islam gives African-American males a sense of pride and dignity, I can only note the boys in my school who are so rye-chee-uss that they won’t be caught dead without their kufi, yet they parade about with their pants down about the thighs, advertising themselves as available for bacha bazi. I also not that one of the execrable Malcolm X’s great accomplishments was convincing a borderline feeble-minded pugilist to drop the name of a walk-the-walk abolitionist (admired by that pugilist’s own great-grandfather; hence the name given to offspring) for a red-haire, freckle-faced, long-nosed Albanian brigand who hijacked Egypt from his Ottoman master in part to get control of the Middle East slave trade coming up from Sudan. I even corrected our school materials view of the original Mehmet Ali (I’ll give the Turkish and Sqip form of his name) as an “Egyptian nationalist” (although I might allow it for ‘Urabi Pasha). I welcome the Los-vom-Islam that seems to be going on among some of our West African (and other) immigrants and bless God for it.