While the Islamic threat has receded from American public consciousness, with domestic woes and Ukraine’s conflict sucking up the media oxygen, it hasn’t receded as a world stage force. One place long bedeviled by it is Nigeria, where Boko Haram and other Muslim entities have long been waging war against Christians, native religious groups, and the government itself. Yet the situation is now so bad that the nation is “devolving toward chaos,” as one observer puts it, and the jihadists have made such headway that the Nigerian government has ordered schools in Abuja, the capital, closed and the students evacuated.
Oil rich and, with its 218 million people, Africa’s most populous country and the planet’s sixth most, Nigeria would be quite the prize for any caliphatist. Christian persecution is the norm there now, too, with this site indicating that more than 100,000 of Jesus’s followers have been murdered by jihadists in the last 22 years.
CBN News provided some background in 2020, writing that militant “Muslims are waging an insurgency to overthrow the [Nigerian] government and rid the country of Christians.”
“After losing ground in Syria and Iraq, the top general of US Special Operations Command in Africa is warning that Al Qaeda, ISIS, and other Islamic terror groups are now trying to take over parts of the continent’s most populous nation,” the site continued. “Their goal: eventually turn Nigeria into a Muslim country and force Christians, who make up half the country’s population, to either leave or convert to Islam.”
Nigeria’s federal government has sought to unify the Muslim North with the primarily Christian South via various initiatives. One was the creation of the new capital city of Abuja in the center of the country (the previous capital was Lagos); another was instituting a “system of Federal Government Colleges (FGCs), also called Federal Unity Colleges, which are actually secondary (high) schools,” informs commentator Thomas Lifson.
These institutions’ purpose is “to guarantee national integration and national building among Nigerian children if given the opportunity at a very tender age to live, learn and play together in [an] ideal education[al] environment as provided ab initio by the Federal Unity School established in the 1970s and 1980s,” wrote former Nigerian education official Dennis Okoro.
Unfortunately, however, the jihadists appear wholly uninterested in singing Kumbaya. As The Sun of Nigeria reports (presented as oddly written/translated):
Late Sunday evening, an unconfirmed reports trended on social media indicating that there were heavy shootings in Federal Government Colleges (FGCs) Kwali, Abuja, and parents were rushing to the school to ascertain the safety of their children and possibly return home with them until calm is restored.
Daily Sun could not reach the school authorities for reactions, but a parent identified as Chika whose three children are in FGC Kwali, confirmed that a message came from the school that parents should come pick their children not later than Monday noon.
… A senior staff at Federal Government Girls’ College (FGGC), Bwari, Abuja, who pleaded anonymity said the directive they received from the Federal Ministry of Education, was that students should vacate the school before Wednesday….
Similarly, a parent whose son is in JSS 3 in Federal Government Boys’ College, Apo, Abuja, confirmed that the school is shutting down on Monday … and parents have been asked to come pick their children on Monday unfailingly.
After relating the above, Lifson cited a Facebook contact as writing, “So, if Nigerian Capital City is not secured, you can now imagine how secured those [of] us living in interior and remote villages are. Jesus Have Mercy On Us!”
A commenter under Lifson’s article adds, “I have a couple of friends who live there [in Nigeria]. They are terrified. They used to have hope for their future.”
The following videos provide more perspective:
Some analysts claim to find this violence befuddling coming from what they term the “religion of peace.” Yet this conception is belied by a German study released in 2010. Involving 45,000 young people, it found that, sure enough, increasing religiosity made Christian youth less violent.
Interestingly, however, increasing religiosity made Muslim youth more violent.
While a partial explanation for this can be found by scouring the Muslim canon, far more significant than what’s taught is what’s more often caught: virtues (and vices). Remember that people don’t follow ideas; they follow people, which is why any wise parent appreciates a good example’s importance. It’s also why Christians may ask, “What would Jesus do?”
Likewise, Muslims consider their prophet Mohammed “The Perfect Man,” the ultimate role model. Yet far from the Prince of Peace, Mohammed was a warlord, caravan raider (a bandit), and slave owner and trader. He ordered massacres, used torture, and had dissidents assassinated. He also was a polygamist and made it lawful for masters to have sexual relations with their female captives.
In other words, as with Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and many others, Mohammed was very much a man of his time. But to more than a billion people, he’s also the perfect man even in our time. That’s the point, too. For if someone told you Attila the Hun was the perfect man and his role model, would you turn your back on that person?
As for Nigeria, its government is no prize, either, being rife with incompetence and corruption. But whatever its failings, rule by Boko Haram bloodletters would be far worse.
