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David Nightingale: Boko Haram

Boko Haram is the group in northern Nigeria that kidnapped over 200 high school girls earlier this year. Half of those 200 students had returned to the boarding school, which had been closed because of previous attacks, to take a physics exam. Those girls have not been found, and the Boko Haram perpetrators now report that the teenagers are 'married off' and, in a few cases, killed.

On Nov 10, 2014, one of BokoHaram's suicide bombers has blown up and killed 48 High School boys.

BokoHaram translates loosely into 'books, no good' or 'western education is bad'.

The Nigerian government, under the southerner,  Goodluck Jonathan, has marginalized many in the poorer north, with the result that they have no jobs and essentially no food, and absolutely no hope.

BokoHaram people are a self-proclaimed part of Al Qaeda, and, as do many from Africa to the Middle East, they believe in the Sharia law of Islam.

What these extremists say they are offended by is not only their own life sentences of zero hope, zero marriage, zero employment -- but also seeing that others do have food, jobs, and things that they will never have, such as freedom of expression, freedom concerning clothes and living styles and beliefs. This situation is partly because the extremists have given themselves a narrowly limited data-base from their only source of learning – which is their handed-down religious faith.

Islamic extremists and BokoHaram people are essentially saying 'we regard your way of life as evil; the only way to salvation is to adopt (our) Shariah law.' But behind all this, I believe, is poverty.

Now don't we occasionally experience similarities to such 'my way or no way' here? What makes, for example, recently released prisoners like missionaries Kenneth Bae and, earlier, Jeffrey Fowle of Ohio [ref1.] travel to N.Korea and leave bibles ? Many would say such activity is stupid, and that they deserved the imprisonment North Korea gave them. Further, many would justifiably ask why we had to send our director of national intelligence to rescue them.

We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control...” was a popular song in Pink Floyd's 1979 rock opera “The Wall”. But that sentiment was different; it was criticizing sarcastic and bullying teachers, as sometimes found in boarding schools in the UK  -- and was thus not comparable to BokoHaram's 'western education is no good.'

Finally can, or should, the west do anything about this kind of extreme violence, or must we resign ourselves to having to live with this ongoing aggression? When Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with Hitler in 1939 and came back to England waving a piece of paper concerning an accord he had signed with Hitler allowing him to take over Sudetenland on condition that he not invade any other European countries, little did he know that Hitler had lied. When Hitler then invaded Poland, Chamberlain, to his credit, reversed himself and declared war on Germany. Analogously, Obama has wisely preferred to let warring Islamic sects fight things out, but now HAS to intervene in order to avoid repeating Chamberlain's mistake.

Therein is our dilemma. Facing violence and murder Obama cannot just sign accords of "peace in our time", but must retaliate with force. In the very long run, both employment plus wider education than comes from just religious texts alone, may help to reduce the criminalities of both ISIS and BokaHaram.

 Meanwhile, since reasoning is no match for the evils being committed, we are once again forced into the miseries of direct battle.

References:

1. p.6, Daily Freeman; AP, 11/10/2014.

2. Huffington Post, 2/24/2012

Dr. David Nightingale is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and is the co-author of the text, A Short Course in General Relativity.

 

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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