Category Archives: Boko Haram

Obama Pushes Funds for Islamists —- Trashes Their Christian Victims

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Boko-Haram-Violence-450x286By :

The “Islamist apologist choir” described in Cinnamon Stillwell’s recent story “Profs on Boston Bombing” doesn’t sing solely on behalf of Chechnya and Cambridge. Some of that choir’s most dreadful caterwauling today is in support of Nigeria’s yet-undesignated terrorists, Boko Haram. The choir stalls are located in the U.S. State Department, which not only refuses to designate the jihadists as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), but maligns and defames Boko Haram’s Christian victims, as well.

Boko Haram’s latest attack, killing at least 42, took place on Tuesday, May 7, in the already battle-worn town of Bama, in Nigeria’s northeast Borno State. Borno, one of 12 states under Sharia, has suffered heavy losses under the Islamists. Some believe that Boko Haram has taken over northern Borno State much as Islamists took over northern Mali. At least 277 had been killed by Boko Haram in Borno State in 2013 before this attack.  According to an AP story the Tuesday event involved “coordinated attacks by Islamic extremists armed with heavy machine guns” in multiple locations around Bama. The jihadists also raided a federal prison, freeing 105 inmates.

Military spokesman Lt. Colonel Sagir Musa told AP that “some 200 fighters in buses and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns attacked the barracks of the 202 Battalion of Nigeria’s beleaguered army.” Musa, who said two soldiers and 10 insurgents died in the attack, revealed that the attackers “came in army uniform pretending to be soldiers.” The Islamists killed 14 prison guards. They also attacked and razed a police station, a police barracks, a magistrate’s court, and local government offices, according to Lt. Col. Musa. Bama police commander Sagir Abubakar reported that at least 22 police officers, three children and a woman were killed in the attacks.

Boko Haram frequently attacks Nigeria’s police and military forces. In 2012 as documented by the Facts on Nigeria Violence website, there were at least 67 attacks, almost exclusively by Boko Haram, against military barracks, police stations, prisons, and other government facilities, as well as against individual soldiers, policemen, and civil servants. But Boko Haram’s main targets are northern Nigeria’s Christians and churches.

The official name of Boko Haram, Jamā’a Ahl al-sunnah li-da’wa wa al-jihād, can be translated “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad.” Its goal is to establish a pure Islamic state in northern Nigeria, removing the Christian presence – either by conversion, expulsion, or extermination. Boko Haram appears to prefer the third option. According to the World Watch Monitor (WWM) report on global Christian persecution, Nigeria had a higher death toll from anti-Christian persecution and violence than the rest of the world combined. WWM concluded that Nigeria is “the most violent place on earth for Christians.”

In a recent Front Page Magazine article, Daniel Greenfield exposed the unfortunate moral equivalence found in the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) 2013 report on Nigeria. While much of the report is very good and condemns Boko Haram, impunity, and the forced imposition of Sharia, USCIRF appears to have developed the same pathological impulse that afflicts the rest of the federal government, to never blame Islam. As a result, portions of the report mischaracterize certain acts of violence by both Boko Haram and other Islamists targeting Christians, and criticize northern Nigerian Christian leaders for calling the situation what it is: persecution.

USCIRF’s egregious observations and recommendations are actually State Department policy. For instance, USCIRF parrots former Asst. Sec. of State for Africa, Johnnie Carson, who declared in a congressional hearing, “It is important to note that religion is not the primary driver behind extremist violence in Nigeria” and that “the Nigerian government must effectively engage communities vulnerable to extremist violence by addressing the underlying political and socio-economic problems in the North.” USCIRF reports that “The U.S. government consistently has urged the Nigerian government to expand its strategy against Boko Haram from solely a military solution to addressing problems of economic and political marginalization in the north,” says USCIRF, “arguing that Boko Haram’s motivations are not religious but socio-economic.”

Read more at Front Page

Army teams going to Africa as terror threat grows

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Associated Press - In this Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011 photo, Gen. Carter Ham, head of the U.S. African command, attends a conference on terrorism in the Sahara in Algiers, Algeria.

Associated Press – In this Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011 photo, Gen. Carter Ham, head of the U.S. African command, attends a conference on terrorism in the Sahara in Algiers, Algeria.

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. Army brigade will begin sending small teams into as many as 35 African nations early next year, part of an intensifying Pentagon effort to train countries to battle extremists and give the U.S. a ready and trained force to dispatch to Africa if crises requiring the U.S. military emerge.

The teams will be limited to training and equipping efforts, and will not be permitted to conduct military operations without specific, additional approvals from the secretary of defense.

The sharper focus on Africa by the U.S. comes against a backdrop of widespread insurgent violence across North Africa, and as the African Union and other nations discuss military intervention in northern Mali.

The terror threat from al-Qaida linked groups in Africa has been growing steadily, particularly with the rise of the extremist Islamist sect Boko Haram in Nigeria. Officials also believe that the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, which killed the ambassador and three other Americans, may have been carried out by those who had ties to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

This first-of-its-kind brigade assignment — involving teams from the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division — will target countries such as Libya, Sudan, Algeria and Niger, where al-Qaida-linked groups have been active. It also will assist nations like Kenya and Uganda that have been battling al-Shabab militants on the front lines in Somalia.

Gen. Carter Ham, the top U.S. commander in Africa, noted that the brigade has a small drone capability that could be useful in Africa. But he also acknowledged that he would need special permission to tap it for that kind of mission.

“If they want them for (military) operations, the brigade is our first sourcing solution because they’re prepared,” said Gen. David Rodriguez, the head of U.S. Army Forces Command. “But that has to go back to the secretary of defense to get an execute order.”

Already the U.S. military has plans for nearly 100 different exercises, training programs and other activities across the widely diverse continent. But the new program faces significant cultural and language challenges, as well as nagging questions about how many of the lower-level enlisted members of the brigade, based in Fort Riley, Kan., will participate, since the teams would largely be made up of more senior enlisted troops and officers. A full brigade numbers about 3,500, but the teams could range from just a few people to a company of about 200. In rare cases for certain exercises, it could be a battalion, which would number about 800.

To bridge the cultural gaps with the African militaries, the Army is reaching out across the services, the embassies and a network of professional organizations to find troops and experts that are from some of the African countries. The experts can be used during training, and the troops can both advise or travel with the teams as they begin the program.

Read more at news.yahoo.com

Religious Apartheid: Islamic Terror Group Slaughters Christians in Nigeria

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NigeriaBlast_Boko_HaramBreitbart:

By  AWR Hawkins

Boko Haram is a Nigerian-based terror group which actually brags of its ties to Al Qaeda. Since 2009, it has conducted a brutal and intense war against its own government which has involved the slaughter of Christians. It has also voiced threats against the United States and President Barack Obama.

The terrorist group has murdered more than 3,000 people since 2009, most of whom were Christians; many of the victims were killed by being chopped up with machetes, while others were tortured until death or burned alive.

Just last weekend, members of Boko Haram attacked and killed 10 Christians in northeast Nigeria and burned their houses to the ground. Police reports indicate Boko Haram members attacked at night by setting the houses on fire, catching the victims as they ran out, and cutting them down with machetes.

In January 2012 alone, Boko Haram killed more people than died in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria combined that month.

The number of people Boko Haram has killed this year ranges from 770 to 860; the majority of victims were Christians.

In August 2011, a Boko Haram operative bombed the United Nations building in Abuja, killing 23 and wounding 18. Following the attack, Boko Haram released a pre-recorded video wherein the bomber said he carried out the attack to send “a message to the U.S. president and ‘other infidels.’”

Gen. Carter Ham, head of the U.S. Africa Command, is warning that Boko Haram’s focus is increasingly broadening, and could soon include attacks on Europe if left unchecked.

On Dec. 3 Ham said, “Anything that is Western is a legitimate target in their eyes. I think it’s in our national interest to help the Nigerians address the problem internally before it gets worse.”

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U.S. Distorts Nigerian Jihad on Christians

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Boko Haram’s leader, flanked by armed jihadis, calls on Nigeria’s president to “repent and forsake Christianity.”

By Raymond Ibrahim:

While the Obama administration continues to say that the Islamic group Boko Haram’s jihad against Nigeria’s Christians—which has seen countless churches destroyed, and thousands of Christians killed— has nothing to do with religion, the group once again made clear that it is all about religion. According to a recent report:

In an online video released last week, the militant Muslim group Boko Haram demanded that Nigeria’s Christian president either convert to Islam, or resign. [Boko] Haram head Abubakar Shekau told President Goodluck Jonathan to “repent and forsake Christianity,” otherwise Shekau’s followers would continue their violent campaign…

Indeed, despite the fact that the Obama administration has agreed to spend $600 million in a USAID initiative launched to ascertain the “true causes” behind Boko Haram’s murderous bloodlust, it was clear from the very beginning that the group and other Muslims were enraged that Nigeria was being led by a Christian, President Goodluck Jonathan, even though he won elections “by a landslide.”

Writing back in April 2011, Nigerian analyst Peter Run said:

The current wave of riots was triggered by the Independent National Election Commission’s (INEC) announcement on Monday [April 18, 2011] that the incumbent President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, won in the initial round of ballot counts. That there were riots in the largely Muslim inhabited northern states where the defeat of the Muslim candidate Muhammadu Buhari was [deemed] intolerable was unsurprising…. Now they are angry despite experts and observers concurring that this is the fairest and most independent election in recent Nigerian history.

Once again, then, reality is easily ascertained—at root, Boko Haram’s terror campaign is entirely motivated by religion—even as the Obama administration refuses to designate the group as a terrorist organization, spends millions of U.S. tax dollars on superfluous initiatives (or diversions), and pressures the Nigerian president to make concessions, including building more mosques, the very structures where Muslims are radicalized and recruited to Boko Haram’s jihad.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Muslim Terrorists Tell Nigeria’s Christian President: ‘Convert or Resign’

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Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan visits a village in his native Bayelsa state on Feb. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

By Patrick Goodenough

(CNSNews.com) – Boko Haram is demanding that Nigeria’s Christian president convert to Islam or resign, a stance that again calls into question the Obama administration’s playing down of religion as the primary motivation for the radical group.

In an online video clip released over the weekend, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau told President Goodluck Jonathan to “repent and forsake Christianity.”

The News Agency of Nigeria said Shekau, speaking in Hausa, said the president should convert or resign if he wanted Boko Haram to end its violent campaign.

Presidential spokesman Reuben Abati dismissed the demand as attempted “blackmail.”

“When Nigerians voted overwhelmingly for President Jonathan in the 2011 general election, they knew they were voting for a Christian,” he told reporters in the federal capital, Abuja.

“He has the mandate of Nigerians to serve his fatherland. Nobody should imagine that he will succumb to blackmail.”

Inviting an enemy to convert to Islam or face the consequences is a longstanding tradition in Islam, modeled on the example set by the religion’s seventh century prophet.

A hadith (the writings and sayings of the prophet) by Sahih al-Bukhari quotes Mohammed as saying, “I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform a that, then they save their lives an property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah.”

(In 2006, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent President Bush a letter interpreted by some scholars as incorporating an invitation to embrace Islam. He urged Bush to make “a genuine return to the teachings of prophets, to monotheism and justice, to preserve human dignity and obedience to the Almighty and his prophets.” Reporting on the letter at the time, Iran’s hardlineSiasat-e Rooz daily said, “It has been the prophet’s way to invite the infidel leaders to the right way.”)

Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for dozens of deadly bombings and other attacks, mostly targeting Christians in northern parts of Africa’s most populous country. It has vowed to cleanse northern Nigeria of Christians.

Declared goals of the group, whose name roughly translates “Western education is forbidden,” include banning non-Islamic education and extendingshari’a (Islamic law) – currently implemented in 12 northern states – across the entire country, 40 percent of whose people are Christians.

Despite its increasingly bloody campaign, the Obama administration so far has resisted calls by U.S. lawmakers to designate Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) under American law.

In June it did list Shekau and two other Boko Haram individuals, as “specially designated global terrorists” (SDGTs) under an executive order designed to disrupt funding to terrorists.

But Republican lawmakers Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.), chairman of the committee’s counterterrorism and intelligence subcommittee, said the step was “insufficient.” They reiterated their earlier calls for FTO designation, pointing to a report released by the committee last November investigating the group as a potential threat to the U.S. homeland.

Read more at CNS news

 

50 Christians burned to death in pastor’s home

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by Michael Carl

Fifty members of a northern Nigerian church were burned to death in their pastor’s house.

The attack by armed gunmen was only the first in a 12-village spree of violence that left over 100 dead in northern Nigeria’s Plateau State, a region that had previously been outside Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram’s operational area and is the largely Muslim Fulani tribesmen’s homeland.

Yet Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attacks and threatened even more violence.

Open Doors, USA spokesman Jerry Dykstra says the recent wave of attacks is rapidly turning Nigeria into a deadly religious battlefield, where Boko Haram is declaring Christians must convert … or die.

“Nigeria is truly becoming the new killing field for Christians. Hundreds of Christians have already been brutally murdered – including women and children – by the Boko Haram,” Dykstra said. “The Boko Haram earlier this week said that all Christians need to turn to Islam or ‘they would never know peace again.’ Their goal is make all of Nigeria a country run and dominated by Shariah law.”

Church of Christ of Nigeria officials report that all of their denomination’s church buildings were burned to the ground in the 12-town rampage.

Plateau State is home to the nomadic and largely Muslim Fulani tribesmen, the group that some Nigerian security officials say was originally blamed for the attack.

Nigerian criminal justice consultant Innocent Chukwuma is reported as saying the logistics suggest that Boko Haram could not have acted alone.

“I don’t think that Boko Haram could, out of nowhere, have raided these villages. They couldn’t do that without local support and collaboration,” Chukwoma said according to the report.

Fulani spokesmen denied responsibility and had no response to a potential alliance with Boko Haram.

Heritage Foundation Africa analyst Morgan Roach leans against Boko Haram’s involvement because of the Fulani tribe’s violent track record.

“Attacks on Christian villages are not new in Plateau State, as Fulani tribesmen are known to have raided Christian communities in the past,” Roach said.

Roach says because Plateau State is out of Boko Haram’s normal territory, she tends to agree with Nigeria’s security officials. She also says these church burnings are a deviation from the terrorist group’s typically advanced methods.

“Should Boko Haram be responsible, this would deviate from its past tactics, which have tended to be more sophisticated,” Roach said.

“Two questions I think would be fair to ask: Is Boko Haram trying to capitalize on the instability in plateau and partner with Fulani tribesmen? Maybe, but I need more evidence,” Roach said. “If this incident is confirmed to be Boko Haram-related, it would be a worrying development for the country’s security.”

American Enterprise Institute Middle East and Terrorism analyst Michael Rubin, however, says he believes Boko Haram is responsible.

“No one should be surprised that Boko Haram’s range of actions is growing broader. Jihadists cannot be appeased; they are expansionists,” Rubin said.

Read more at WND

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The Obama Administration’s Genocide Denial

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Johnnie Carson

By Daniel Greenfield

Suppose that there was a country where Muslims were being massacred every month and mosques and imams were being targeted and destroyed. Could anyone imagine the Obama Administration choosing to remain silent in the face of such atrocities?

A mob attack on Muslims in Burma immediately resulted in a condemnation from the State Department and a call for its government to make more concessions to Muslims. But a car bombing and shooting attack on two churches in Nigeria have not been similarly commented on by the State Department, sending the message that Muslim life is precious, but Christian life is cheap. The Muslim dead of Burma are sacred, but the Christian dead of Nigeria are only more dead infidels.

Boko Haram, the Islamic terrorist organization responsible for both attacks, has yet to be declared a terrorist organization by the State Department, despite having carried out religiously motivated bombings and shootings that have killed over a thousand people in the last few years alone. These numbers begin to approach the level of murders carried out by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The “Boko Haram Terrorist Designation Act of 2012”, introduced by Senator Scott Brown, mandates that the State Department produce a detailed report that either designates Boko Haram as a terrorist group or justifies why it should not be listed as a terrorist group. A similar bill was introduced by Congressman Meehan in the House. It is a testament to the obstructionism of the State Department and its whitewashing of Boko Haram that such a bill even had to be introduced. While the State Department has played delaying games, the bodies of murdered Christians have continued piling up.

It is also tragically noteworthy that all eleven sponsors of the “Boko Haram Terrorist Designation Act”, in both the Senate and the House, have been Republicans. Not a single Democrat appeared to be willing to stand up for the human rights of Nigerian Christians. If the “Boko Haram Terrorist Designation Act” comes down to a vote, that vote should be seen as nothing less than a test of complicity for individual Democrats in the cover-up of Nigeria’s Islamic genocide by the Obama Administration.

Genocide denial pervades not only the Obama Administration and its Congressional allies, but also the media, which continues to promote the destructive myth that Boko Haram is not truly religiously motivated and that it can only be stopped by giving more money and power to the Muslim north.

Had a non-Muslim group carried out numerous attacks on mosques and Muslim worshipers, and then ordered Muslims to leave an area, it is absolutely inconceivable that the Obama Administration and its media allies would deny that these were religiously motivated attacks. It is even more inconceivable that its preferred solution would be to tell the government to stop fighting terrorism. But what is inconceivable when it comes to Muslims is Obama Administration policy for Christians.

At the end of April, Daniel Benjamin, from the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, testifying at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, denied that Boko Haram was affiliated with Al-Qaeda, while conceding that its members were probably being trained by Al-Qaeda. Benjamin then stated that the State Department’s response to the Islamic genocide of Christians by Jihadists in the Muslim north was “to press for a change to its (Nigeria’s) heavy-handed approach to the security threats in the north”.

The State Department’s approach to the genocide of Christians by Muslims is to press the Nigerian government to scale down its efforts against that genocide. Benjamin’s statement is not unique; it is the consistent policy of the State Department, which is the consistent policy of the Obama Administration, to respond to Islamic genocide in Nigeria by pressuring its government to step down its war on terror. Johnnie Carson, the Assistant Secretary at the Bureau of African Affairs, in his remarks on Nigeria, claimed bizarrely, that despite a campaign of violence focused heavily around attacks on churches, “Religion is not driving extremist violence in either Jos or Northern Nigeria” and warned the Nigerian government to “avoid excessive violence”.

Read more at Front Page

Obama: Slaughter of Christians a misunderstanding

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By Steve Peacock, WND:

The violence in northern Nigeria is mistakenly viewed as a religious conflict rather than simply a tribal dispute over land, according to the Obama administration.

Despite the ongoing Muslim destruction of churches and the slaughter of Christians – including many murdered during worship services – the U.S. Agency for International Development claims that the misunderstandings make it difficult to administer aid programs.

USAID, therefore, has launched a program titled Project PEACE – an acronym for Programming Effectively Against Conflict and Extremism.

PEACE says it will hire contractors to help the agency analyze the “true” causes of conflict and consequently provide more effective humanitarian and conflict-resolution assistance, according to planning documents that WND located via database research.

The cost of Obama’s new “knowledge generation, dissemination and management” initiative is $600 million.

The unveiling of PEACE comes as the slaughter of Nigerian Christians is on the rise.

As WND reported earlier this month, an international Christian ministry says Muslims recently killed hundreds of Christians gathering for worship.

Patrick Sookhdeo, international director for Barnabas Fund, said at the time: “The simple act of going to church on a Sunday has become a perilous one for Christians in many parts of Nigeria.”

Indeed, Nigerian media have reported that the Muslim jihadist group Boko Haram has pledged to “eradicate Christianity.”

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Christian Slaughter in Nigeria

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By Faith J. H. McDonnell, Front Page:

Are they terrorists yet? Boko Haram, an Islamist sect seeking to impose Sharia throughout Nigeria, attacked three church services on Sunday, April 29, 2012. The latest slaughters added twenty-seven more dead to 900+ victims of the past two years’ efforts by Boko Haram to kill all the Christians in northern Nigeria. In recent months, the sect has also been marking the houses of Christians in the north, targeting them for killing, forcing thousands to flee from their homes.

On the morning of April 29, Boko Haram struck Catholic and Protestant worship services simultaneously at Bayero University in Kano. Twenty-two so farhave been confirmed dead, and twenty-three wounded. In the evening they attacked a church service in Jere, near Maiduguri, Borno State, killing another five people.

U.S. Congressmen Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Patrick Meehan (R-PA) recently wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging that she designate the group as a terrorist organization. Meehan’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence released an extensive, bi-partisan report on Boko Haram as an “emerging threat to the U.S. Homeland.” But the State Department continues to downplay Boko Haram’s Islamist nature, preferring to see the terrorist murderers – of whom even the Nigerian police are afraid – as victims of poverty and marginalization.

One survivor of the April 29 attack on the Catholic Mass was a geography professor, Emmanuel Olofin. Olofin reported that Mass had just gotten underway in the university indoor sports complex at 8:10 AM when the worshippers heard the sound of “gunshots and pellets falling on the roof of the building.” According to reports, the attackers arrived in a car and two motorcycles. They threw explosives into the building and sent people into a panic. They fled from the building, straight into the attackers’ line of fire.

Professor Olofin, age 71, leaped over an eight-foot fence instead of using the actual exit in the gate. “I believe that most of the people that died were those who took the pedestrian exit because it seemed as if the attackers used the pedestrian gate to gain entrance,” said Olofin, who found refuge under a tree. Among the dead were two of Olofin’s university colleagues, Professors Jerome Ayodele, Department of Chemistry, and Andrew Leo Ogbonyomi, Library Science.

At the same time the attack on the Catholics was taking place, other members of the sect attacked the Chapel of Victory Protestant church service, meeting outdoors near the Faculty of Medicine. Professor Julius Falola, who was preaching when the Islamists arrived, recounted a horrific scene similar to that described by Professor Olofin. Explosions and gunshots were followed by fleeing church members who provided easy targets for Boko Haram killers.Falola said that some of the Christians “jumped over the fence while others ran deeper into the campus.” Falola hid in the university clinic. Falola and Olofin, as well as other witnesses, said that the police did not arrive until 10 AM. “The shooting went on for 45 minutes,” said Falola.

Boko Haram topped off their killing spree later that night, by opening fire on the Church of Christ in Nigeria parish in Jere. Because of a state of emergency in the town, worshippers had foregone meeting in the morning in favor of what they assumed would be an unnoticed and therefore less dangerous evening worship. Halfway through the service, witnesses reported that the Islamists came “in their trademark car, Volkswagen Golf, dressed in flowing gowns.” After “their routine shout of ‘Allah akbar,’ they . . .  headed straight for the altar” where they shot and killed the pastor, Reverend Albert Naga. Four others died from the attack, as well.

In response to Sunday’s targeted killing of Christians by Boko Haram, Secretary Clinton put out a paragraph on May 1, saying that the United States “strongly condemns the recent attacks on innocent civilians in Nigeria, including yesterday’s disgraceful assault during church services at Bayero University in Kano.” Clinton said that they are “concerned about attacks on churches, news media, and government installations that increasingly target innocent civilians across Northern Nigeria.” She condemned “attempts by those in Nigeria who seek to inflame Christian-Muslim tensions, and support those who recognize Nigeria’s ethnic and religious diversity as one of the country’s greatest strengths.” She concluded by saying that “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of those who were killed and injured.”

While the statement does specifically mention churches, her condemnation of “those in Nigeria who seek to inflame Christian-Muslim tensions,” is vague enough to cause concern. First of all, it is obvious to almost everyone but the State Department why the “tension” is there to begin with: Islamic supremacism such as that of Boko Haram and other radical Muslims who want a pure Islamic state. In that case, any action, statement, or mere existence of non-Muslims can inflame the tension – a lunar eclipse, a Miss World pageant, the election of a Christian president, a speech by the Pope… and usually it is the Nigerian Christians (or the Christians anywhere in the Islamic world) who are blamed for “inflaming” things.

Other popular targets of Boko Haram have been newspaper offices and television viewing centers. On April 25, Boko Haram was responsible for bombing a television viewing center in Jos, Plateau State, where hundreds of Christians were watching a soccer match. One person was killed and four were injured when the radicals drove by the site and threw an explosive device at the viewers. On December 10, 2011, Boko Haram bombed three television viewing centers in Jos. At one site, 31 year-old Joshua Dabo was killed in the explosion. Ten people were injured, with four in critical condition and two in left in a coma, at the two other viewing centers. Apparently, watching soccer also inflames Christian-Muslim tensions.

The government of President Goodluck Jonathan has been asking the United States for help in dealing with Boko Haram and other terrorists, but so far the U.S. State Department has talked of providing financial aid to impoverished and marginalized youth, like Boko Haram. In his Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Johnnie Carson said, “The Nigerian government must effectively engage communities vulnerable to extremist violence by addressing the underlying political and socio-economic problems in the North.” In what is absolute dismissal of the life-and-death struggles that Nigerian authorities have had with Boko Haram, he added, “The government must also promote respect for human rights by its security forces, whose heavy-handed tactics and extrajudicial killings reinforce the belief that Abuja is insensitive to the concerns of the North.” Then he added helpfully, “The appointment of credible northerners to lead the government response to northern grievances would be an important and tangible step toward reversing that perception.” Well, since the State Department appears to see Boko Haram as “credible northerners,” perhaps it will suggest their appointment. That would follow the pattern the Obama Administration has helped to set through Arab “Spring.”

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Obama Official: Religion ‘Not Driving Extreme Violence’ in Nigeria… a Day After Islamists Slaughter 40+ Christians

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Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson

  at The Blaze:

The radical Islamist group known as Boko Haram has killed more than 390 people in Nigeria this year, alone. The Associated Press reports that the group has slaughtered Christians, Muslims and foreigners.

Yet, just days after an Easter-day attack during which more than 40 Christian church-goers were killed, an Obama administration official made the allegation that “religion is not driving extreme violence” in Nigeria.

“I want to take this opportunity to stress one key point and that is that religion is not driving extremist violence either in Jos or northern Nigeria,” proclaimed Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson on Monday. “While some seek to inflame Muslim-Christian tensions, Nigeria’s ethnic and religious diversity, like our own in this country, is a source of strength, not weakness and there are many examples across Nigeria of communities working across religious lines to protect one another.”

Carson was speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. at a forum on U.S. policy toward Nigeria. CNS News has more about his address:

As CNSNews.com previously reported, Boko Haram, whose name translated into “Western education is forbidden,” has links to al-Qaeda’s North Africa affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and has repeatedly vowed to cleanse northern Nigeria of minority Christians, and is responsible for more than 1,000 deaths since mid-2009.

Carson spoke at length about the terrorist group, saying Boko Haram “capitalizes on popular frustrations with the nation’s leaders,” and “seeks to humiliate and undermine the government and to exploit religious differences in order to create chaos and to make Nigeria ungovernable.” [...]

“Boko Haram’s attacks on churches and mosques are particularly disturbing because they are intended to inflame religious tensions and upset the nation’s social cohesion, although Boko Haram is reviled throughout Nigeria and offers no practical solutions to the country’s problems,” Carson said.

The Obama administration official maintains that the terrorist group is not a “monolithic, homogeneous organization.” It is a large body with a primary focus of discrediting the Nigerian government, he explains. Still, considering the past violence being used in the region, it’s hard to digest the notion that religion — particularly when considering the Christian individuals who are targeted — isn’t driving the horrific issues present in the nation.

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