As you read this, I’ll be in the air, but I wanted to call your attention to two informative posts on the jihadist terrorist group Boko Aram that reader Heather Hastie posted at her own site, Heather’s Homilies.
April 15: “Boko Haram: The scourge of Nigeria”
April 16: “The war against Boko Haram“
You’ll learn, among other things, that this organization is as Islamist as is ISIS, and that its name means “Western education is forbidden” in the local language. And, like ISIS, it’s dedicated to establishing the Muslim Caliphate—in Nigeria. Now really, can this movement be pinned on Western colonialism instead of the tenets of Islam? I don’t recall the West invading Nigeria recently.
There’s a lot of good information in these two posts, and I recommend your spending a bit of time reading them.
In her book “Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security”, Sarah Chayes explains that corruption often drives those who detest the state of their countries into armed rebellion. People in Muslim countries, she emphasises, are brought up to regard religious leaders as pure in mind and therefore likely to reduce corruption. That Islam as a religion has a strong drive to wield power also helps explain its propensity for engaging in rebellion – hat tip to Ayaan Hirsi Ali for educating me on that!(“Heretic” – another brilliant and readable book)
Ms Chayes’ argument implies strongly that if we want to help our fellow human beings who are threatened by Muslim violence, one way of reducing the metaphorical temperature is to fight corruption.
I read a long excerpt of Thieves of State in The New Yorker, I believe. Her ideas were very compelling.
Nigeria’s new president is a Muslim with the reputation of being an ascetic, and his main election promise was to fight corruption. He has some big baggage that Nigerians were prepared to overlook because of that.
Yes, I agree absolutely with that last comment. In fact I would go further: a very important way of reducing ‘honor culture’ writ large is to fight corruption in – and improve the objectivity of – social systems such as the judiciary, banking, education, employment, etc.
When the only thing you have to go on in loaning money to someone or hiring them is their reputation, then reputation is going to be an important ‘social good’ and you’re going to see attitudes like ‘religious leaders are pure in mind’ and vigilante crime meted out to people because Alice down the street said Bob burned a Koran. OTOH, when you can access past loan records, school transcripts, videos of Bob’s behavior and the like, you don’t need reputation and the whole idea of listening to someone just because they are a member of your tribe, your religion, or what have you goes right out the window.
I’ll make a note to seek out that book.
I’m not at all arguing against the thesis in saying this, but there’s corruption and then there’s corruption – and it’s a tragedy if people see theocracy as an alternative to corruption, when it’s merely corruption in another form. Clerics in a theocracy may not take monetary bribes – but they’re not there to serve the people, either, and are no better at their jobs merely because the kickbacks they receive aren’t always tangible.
Well, it is imperialism, just not western.
Islam spread the same way Christianity did, by the sword. It was somewhat late in the history of Christianity that missionaries tried to convert people by demonstrating good works.
And of course, Christianity has and still has, its equivalent of Sunni vs Shiite.
Oh, if some christians could get away with it, they’d dust off that sword real fast. They are kept at bay by moderate christians and by secular people and their laws.
This is really, well, counterfactual shall we say. Christianity grew strongly and steadily for 250 years before Constantine, often as a persecuted sect. Much of the spread in Europe before 900 but after the fall of the west was by proselytes.
We really need to be accurate or the apologists can just skewer you. Plus it is important to recognize the seductive power of the ideas.
Would that include South America?
I think you might have romanticized imperialism.
And try the Northern Crusades for a taste of Christian history…
Oh yes, I saw mention of the not-very-subtle techniques of conversion used in Scandinavia when we were in Copenhagen last week. Even by the standards of Vikings, subtlety wasn’t high on the agenda.
No small number of those “proselytes” would do their conversion by giving people the choice between converting to Christianity, or converting to a headless corpse. “Muscular Christianity” was never averse to holding a sword in that strong arm. Though as I recall, by the Middle Ages the ridiculous idea had got around that Bishops and higher shouldn’t spill blood. Which is why they took up using the mace.
Actually, looking at the Masai mace (“rungu”) in the umbrella bucket by the front door … y’know, I would really not like to see that thing coming towards me. Even less if it was wielded by someone who knew how to use it better than me. The Masai designed them for killing people by blunt force trauma leading to depressed skull fractures. Or for breaking joints. Nicely designed tool.
Boko Haram means something like “Western education is forbidden”.
Which is ironic, because Islam is western.
Just an early version of Mormonism or Scientology.
All the silliness of Mormonism combined with the exit policies of Scientology.
I’m sensing the post-colonic subtitle for a major international advertising campaign here. Have your people call the Caliphate’s people to take a meeting. Maybe do lunch with some media flacks.
Sub
Ahhh, but Jerry, you forgot our cultural colonialism. Its not our occupation that drove these noble savages to do bad deeds they would’ve never thought of doing otherwise (and certainly not put in their heads by Islam), its our Big Macs.
Mr. Coyne, I am on the front lines in confronting bad ideas, and Islam is, of course, very problematic. But to understand Nigerias violence you have to look deep. Nigeria is wracked by violence and Western companies, like ExxonMobil, are either complicit in propping up wretched corrupt dictators or nominal presidents, because they protect the profits of the oil companies. Other times, Exxon just looks away because they do not want to discuss human rights at all.
Steve Coll’s excellent opus Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power (2012) talks about Nigeria a lot and it’s quite a dramatic place full of repression, oppression, and endemic corruption. We are dealing with a country that has been “independent” for only 60 years. Like almost all other newly independent countries, a devastating civil war erupted in the 60s and 70s. Next, there were intermittent periods of civilian and military rule until 1999. In the 21st century, their was organized movements to liberate the Niger Delta from the oil companies; the movement claimed that “the operations of petroleum companies in their area, did not provide a reasonable share of the petroleum profits in return.”
My point is things are really complicated. If Nigeria was a stabilized country built on law and order – and god forbid not sharia law like it is now in some parts – and corruption wsa reigned in, you could also reign in armed Islamist groups. I always just want to ask: outside of war, what do we do?
Educate.
Build institutions that are inclusive.
Increase electricity, water access, women’s literacy, and bolster intelligence and security and military forces – but this last part is the hardest because the government is awash in corruption.
Women’s literacy is actually pretty good in Nigeria, and most women there are treated equally.
I’ve dealt with the issue of corruption a bit, especially in the second piece.
I enjoyed your pieces Heather. I am just at this point of frustration that is hard for me to express. I agree with almost everything Sam Harris writes and that Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes, for example. I am educating myself regarding Boko Haram as well.
I think if and when they are defeated, it will be because of internal reasons and internal slowly and effectively building an economy that works for everyone in the country.
I do think for the remainder of our lives we are going to face jihadi groupss that are reactionary and there has to be an empirical way of dealing with this that does not create more blowback. I am interested in those answers. How to deal with armed jihadi groups and their ideology in a way that DOESNT increase their ranks. That’s the hardest question to answer.
Boko Haram are already a multinational operation. While they’re mostly active in Nigeria, they also operate in Niger, Mali and recently (the last year or so) Chad. When I was in Benin last year people were frankly shit-scared that they’d start operating in the north of that country.
The chances of getting coordinated action between all of the countries is slender. There are a lot of cross-border rivalries and dislikes.
That would perhaps be possible if there were only one country involved and only one people. But certainly for Benin, Ghana and Nigeria, they are all multi-ethnic countries with deep divisions and hatreds between those races. (At least, that is very much the impression that I’ve been left with after talking to lots of the various peoples in those countries ; I’d be astonished if the problem didn’t go much wider.)
The level of inter-“tribal” (or inter-ethnic, whatever you want to call it) distrust makes the infamous Scottish-English or English-Irish disputes look pretty mild.
At root, many of these problems are down to Western nations setting up their various colonies without any regard for – or indeed, interest in – the local distribution of tribes.
The problem is that what you speak of in Nigeria is true in many other places in Africa along and I won’t but mention Afghanistan or Pakistan or others. Do we blame all of this Islamic Terrorism on what the United States or some other country did.
I think the United States and many companies did a lot of bad things in many places. But to say it is then responsible for Al-Qaeda or ISIS or Boko Harem is a road too far.
At what point do any of these many countries take some responsibility for their own condition. And do any of them believe that Religion itself might be the major reason for this terrorist behavior. How long many of these countries have existed — thousands in some cases. The U.S. has been around for about 230 years.
One thing you can be sure of. The U.S. is in no position to make everything better or solve all the problems around the world. Many of these areas are going to need to step up and do it themselves.
The U.S. executive branch is completely, 100% responsible for the revival of ISIS and at least partially responsible for al-Qaeda. 100% responsible for its spread to Iraq and Syria.
Of course, the West is also responsible for the (apparently not deliberate) creation of and (deliberate) collapse of Islamist rule in Northern Mali.
Not forgetting that Shell has been very active there, also Unilever (who are either less malignant or better at search engine optimisation, because no scandal came up in the first two pages of google).
What’s becoming so interesting is scientists are starting to reveal how ignorant they are when it comes to history, political science, and the likes. I spend many conversations criticizing Islam, and will continue to do so, but sometimes I have to suspend my disbelief during these conversations because the truth is so complex that even smart people have started to just say: fuck it, let’s continue bashing Islam and not think about war, pillage, expropriation, corruption, history.”
I enjoy bashing on ideology as the next guy but scientists and brilliant thinkers KNOW better than this.
So, this group self-titled “Western Education is Forbidden” chops off young girl’s (but not boy’s) hands because of war, pillage, expropriation, corruption, and history?
Doesn’t it make a lot more sense to expect that they may be chopping off girl’s (but not boy’s) hands because they think its immoral of girls to get a western education? And if that’s the case, what about western pillage, expropriation, corruption, and history would ever give them this idea that women’s education is immoral?
Now, to be fair, I can see how Exxon’s expropriation of their resources could make them think that capitalism was immoral. Even that Americans were immoral. If they had named their group “Natural Resource Exportation is Forbidden” I would totally agree with you. But I’m having a hard time seeing the connection between Exxon’s bad deeds and thinking girls being taught how to read is immoral. Can you draw me that connection?
Boko Haram does commit atrocities due to a legacy of all of those phenomenon, certainly. Also: their interpretation of Islam, like you write. I take BH at their word for why they are doing what they are doing. I just wanted to broaden the conversation.
There was groups that were formed in the Niger Delta, one called The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). This group, from what I can see, has NO relation to Boko Haram. MEND operated in the southwest while BH are heavily focused in the northwest and want a islamic caliphate.
I can’t make the connection you are asking for.I am simply saying their is always a larger context.
If an entire country is awash in corruption – one of the worst in the world – you get instability, armed insurrections, young men with time to fill their minds with ideas that empower them, etc..
South east, I think. Between Warri, Port Harcourt and the Cameroonian border.
I’m not going to defend Exxon’s (or Shell’s, or any of the other oil companies operating in Nigeria) miserable record in Nigeria or other countries, but in this specific case, it’s not particularly relevant. The overwhelming majority of Nigeria’s oil production and exploration activity hasw taken place in the Niger delta in the south of the country. Boko Haram have developed and expanded in the north of the country.
When tilting at windmills, it is important to get the correct windmill.
In what respect do you claim the criticism leveled at Islam by your unnamed “scientists and brilliant thinkers” is wrong (rather than, say, merely uncomfortable or inconvenient)?
Do you have a source for “this truth” you’ve asserted that “the U.S. government has killed wayyyyyyyyy [sic] more people than any armed terrorist group in the world in the last two decades”?
The criticism is right; it’s just not complete and they hardly ever discuss the horrendous war on terror.
Literally every organization that aggregates war deaths: Iraq Body Count, AP, Classified Iraq Logs, = 150,000 – 1 million in Iraq alone in the last decade.
There are approx. 17,000-20,000 deaths per year due to terrorism.
This is common knowledge regarding how devastating the Iraq War really was.
What Western governments are essentially doing is basically determining that all oppositional movements that use violence are illegitimate; there can never again be sanctioned revolutions, uprisings, overthrows (except for ones that we create and approve of that let Western industries have access to cheap labor and favorable tax regimes), or resistant movements in a way that is unprecedented.
The only recourse we all have now is voting, protests in a very narrow sense of the word, and to sign petitions. Any other organizing can now be labeled as terrorism to shut down debate or any possibility of change.
We live in a peculiar time. Please don’t read any of these later comments as regarding to Boko Haram; I think Boko Haram is vile and I would oppose them at all cost. If a group like that existed in the U.S., they would be an enemy of the pepople, in my opinion.
I’m just making a broader point that we are living in an interesting time and a lot of Islam critique is becoming creepily apologetic towards what the Arab world sees as creeping wars of never ending occupation. the U.S. government has killed wayyyyyyyyy more people than any armed terrorist group in the world in the last two decades and we must confront this truth to really address the problem.
Violence begets violence; narratives endorsing violence are always draped in cloaks of nationalism, xenophobia, religion, ideology, etc..
Colonialism is certainly at least partly to blame for some of Nigeria’s problems. The British ran it as a colony until 1960. I don’t know if that counts as “lately”, but it’s recent enough. And as others have pointed out, economic imperialism continues today.
Whether this has much to do with Boko Haram is not completely clear, but I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand.
There is a relationship, in that the “Western Education” in western education is forbidden relates not just to education, but a lot of other things done by colonial powers. The word “Education” is partly symbolic of the bad stuff of those times.
However, imo these days it’s an excuse as well as a reason. In a country where the average life span is fifty years, there aren’t that many people around who can still remember British rule. There is still an impact, but to think Nigerians still can’t get it together because of what happened then is pretty patronizing. Nigeria is the richest country in Africa (no, it’s not South Africa), and is pretty well developed too.
Hey, there aren’t any Americans who can remember slavery either, and look how many problems we’re still having as a result of it.
“the U.S. government has killed wayyyyyyyyy more people than any armed terrorist group in the world in the last two decades and we must confront this truth to really address the problem.”
Who says it’s the “truth”? The Taliban and assorted jihadists in Iraq have killed far more people (usually their own civilians ) than have died at the hands of the US military in those countries. To that you can add an estimated 100,000 or so deaths in the Syrian civil war, plus thousands more in Somalia and Nigeria – none of which can be blamed on the US.
The US, and the west generally, is not engaged in “any wars of never-ending occupation”. The US is not “occupying” any countries in the Middle East. Any troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan are there with the permission and agreement of the democratically-elected governments of those countries.
Who says this the truth? Well….statistics.
The latest body count memo put out by the Physicians for Global Survival has a total of 2.5 million deaths in during the Iraq, Afghan, and Pakistan theaters of the “War on Terror.” Millions more are internally and externally displaced. The NATO bombing in Libya was disastrous and violence has increased 4-fold since that attack; the bombings have created an even bigger vacuum, according to Alan Kuperman in Foreign Affairs.
I think I wrote that we are “perceived” as armies of occupation and perception is massively important and ontologically as real as anything else. In Somalia, we have warlords on CIA payrolls. I could keep going on and on; and I will when I return from work tonight.
Do you have data for your claims?
P.S. – I am in no way whatsoever apologizing for BH; I think they are abhorrent and a real problem and there does need to be solutions in dealing with them, even violently.
“P.S. – I am in no way whatsoever apologizing for BH; I think they are abhorrent and a real problem and there does need to be solutions in dealing with them, even violently.”
And the subject of this post and of Heather’s two posts is solely Boko Haram. No matter how many ways you want to expand the conversation, BH is completely based on Islam. Sure the residue of failed colonialism may produce chaos attractive to the power hungry, but it is in no way responsible for the explicitly Islamic basis of BH. That manifestation of Islam is so abhorrent we must oppose it incessantly. Take away the murderers’, slavers’, and kidnappers’ religion and there goes their raison d’etre.
agree 100% with Diane here.
Take away their raison d’etre …
And they’ll find a new raison d’etre.
The people in power at the top of Boko Haram … sorry, I’ll lapse into programmer-ese
The people in power at the top of NAME_OF_ORGANISATION will invent a new raison d'etre if you challenge the current raison d'etre of NAME_OF_ORGANISATION, because they enjoy the trappings of power that come from being people in power.You see exactly the same whether your organization in question is Boko Haram, the local anti-new-road organisation, a religious cult with a failed end-of-the-world prediction.
Well, of course, but the point is that religion enjoys special status among many people that none of the other rationalizations do.
I still fail to understand how the end-of-the-world prediction cults ever manage to survive their failures. But they do. Does anyone know of an example which did give up after a failed experiment?
Since these are religious ideas (again – a counter example, anyone?), then religions are as malleable as other rationalizations.
Applying logic to religion – now there’s a fine example of a WOMBAT (Waste Of Money Brains And time).
Dave is kidding me, the number of people killed in Syria since the civil war began now exceeds a quarter million and 1/2 the population has been displaced (11 million people). This is the worst catastrophe so far in the 21th Century. And no end is in sight.
Nah. Second Congo War was worse.
I think Dave is objecting to counting people killed by X as being killed by Y.
Important words those.
“so far”, of course, not “worst catastrophe etc”.
I can’t see where America might be to blame for the troubles in Somalia and Northern Nigeria, but Turkey+U.S. is almost entirely to blame for the Syrian Civil War.
It must also be said that about 800,000 children have been displaced from their homes because of the violent activities of Boko Haram.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/13/world/nigeria-children-boko-haram/
As one gentleman already said earlier, you must show a connection to what you claim. It does no good to say that over the last how many years you have killed more than all the terrorist. Even if it were true, what does that mean? How does mobile oil end up with Islamic Terrorist? What does colonialism have to do with any of these terrorist groups? You must make sense not just words.
How many terrorist groups running through India today because of colonialism? The terrorist groups are all being created in Islamic areas and they say that what they are doing is for religion. I tend to believe them.
There is a significant socialist insurgency in India.
How many terrorist groups running through India today because of colonialism? Over 100. Since 1947, India and Pakistan has fought in 4 – count that 4 – wars and other smaller conflicts. Much hostility taking place is the fact that Kashmir – a majority Muslim population – is a historically disputed peace of land and comprised of all kinds of different ethnicities that can be found throughout Asia.
According to India, you can find ethno-nationalist terrorism, religious terrorism, left wing terrorism and narco terrorism.
All of these are decreasing every year due to the country rising as they are building a middle class. Any area that is so dense with so many different ideologies, you are gonna get hostilities.
I think we need to really think about our country and how we had a civil war that killed nearly 5% of the population; than basically until 1965, had many terrorist actors, mostly of them the KKK or other white supremacy groups committing lynchings and burning down black business districts.
Well, you can always blame colonialism. Nigeria was under British rule; and I’m sure people are right now beavering away trying to come up for an explanation according to which the British are to blame, undeterred by the fact that every inhabited part of the planet has colonial rule somewhere in its past.
I’m remembering back to when Britain was a colony of Denmark.
The fundamental cause of the rise of Boko Haram is the container ship.
The extremely inexpensive shipping operations afforded by the container ship have offered economic advantages to coastal cities, as these regions can more easily tap into international markets. The Nigerian North, however, is relatively secluded from those markets, due to the relatively high cost of land-based transportation (especially the railroad against the container vessel). As such, Boko Haram is the early sign of the social fragmentation caused by such a difference in economic growth between coasts and the interior. Similar groups will likely rise in Chinese and Indian rural areas in the future, as both nations succumb to civil war.
I should be interested to know who the people are who are claiming that the rise of Boko Haram is due to Western colonialism and has nothing to do with religion. I admit I haven’t looked very hard, but I haven’t come across any.
Well even in Heather Hastie’s pieces, she admits that part of Boko Haram’s ideology does consist of anti-Western ideals in general, not just education. But I should state: BH is Islamic, they don’t believe in secular governments at all and they are Wahhabbi extremeists. Some of the most dangerous ideology that is being spread in the world.
There is a video from Abubakar Shekau stating that this all started in 2009.
“After years of tension and a series of minor incidents, things finally exploded in July 2009 when a group of Yusuf’s followers were stopped by police in the city of Maiduguri–Boko Haram’s traditional home–as they were on the way to the cemetery to bury a comrade. The officers, part of a special operation aimed at stamping out violence and rampant crime in northeastern Borno State, demanded that the young men comply with a law requiring motorcycle passengers to wear helmets. They refused and, in the confrontation that followed, several were shot and wounded by police.” – writes Joe Bavier, in 2012, for The Atlantic.
A separate reccomendation:
A great full length book about the dialectical we are seeing between modernity and some gilded notion of the past is by political scientist Benjamin Barber and his book Jihad vs McWorld. He argues that homogenous exported Hollywood/American vapid culture AND jihad, which he actually meant like reactionary groups trying to cling to traditions, and the past, are both undermining democracy and making the world more volatile.
I saw Heather’s posts and like a miscreant, only had time to scan them but they are quite good. I feel bad for my spread-thinness. Why can’t it just be regular thinness?
Good articles though, Heather!
Two factors about Nigeria that I wonder about: British colonialism, which ended in 1960; and the fact that since 1970 the population has more than tripled. Would those in any way help explain the situation with Boko Haram?
I like the thesis I read in one of the comments about corruption and the perception of Muslims as being relatively “pure” in that respect.
As also already mentioned: foreign multinationals (petroleum notably, but others) also may play a role.
Actually, according Ayaan Hirsi Ali in her recent book Heretic, ‘Boko Haram’ is closer in meaning to “Non-Muslim teaching is forbidden” (which of course includes Western education).