Leading Feminist Explains Boko Haram

Boko Haram and the History of Child Rape in Jihad -Phyllis Chesler, PhD

Dr. Chesler puts Boko Haram into context

On April 14, 2014, Boko Haram captured three hundred Christian and Muslim Nigerian schoolgirls to become their sex and domestic slaves. The Muslim fundamentalists swooped down upon them as they were learning in a “forbidden” government secular school. Some girls managed to escape. Two hundred and seventy six girls are still missing.

The world media calls this a “kidnapping” in Nigeria. It is not a “kidnapping.” It is the face of Jihad, the way of Jihad. Boko Haram are not holding these girls for ransom, they are not willing to return them for money. They already view the girls as their God-given booty, and as sale-able property.

The girls are between the ages of twelve and fifteen. The Christian girls will be raped, converted to Islam, and then, like the Muslims girls, “married” to one of their captors. Some will be trafficked into the sex trade, which is pandemic throughout Africa and the Muslim Middle East. Sharia law allows men to purchase the sexual favors of a female child or a young woman for one hour, a week, or a month. Private and public brothels exist as well.

Please understand: Boko Haram are the Nigerian Taliban. Like their Pakistani and Afghan counterparts, they oppose education for girls and would rather marry and impregnate them instead--for Allah’s sake.

This behavior is absolutely par for the course in Islamic history. Anyone who is surprised or shocked by this latest outrage in Nigeria simply does not know the facts.

Contrary to the politically correct intelligentsia, who focus only on Western sins, Islam also has a long and ongoing history of imperialism, colonialism, conversion by the sword, sex slavery, (of both boys and girls), polygamy, sex trafficking, and the brutal subordination and cyclical massacres of religious minorities.  

Westerners either do not know this, do not want to know this, don’t care all that much, or misunderstand this.

Some, including journalists, still believe that Boko Haram and other such groups are crying out against injustice and poverty, against government corruption and ineptitude--all of which exist.

But that is not Boko Haram’s major concern. They want to assert an Islamic state in Nigeria, similar to that which exists in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, and now, Brunei. These Muslim extremists, both Sunni and Shiia, want Sharia law to dominate public and private life. This means that the state will have the power to stone people to death for adultery and apostasy, to amputate for theft, to lash and jail for “blasphemy,” to tax and hold hostage, jail, murder, or exile infidels.

Oh, yes--male polygamy will be legal, marriage will be forced, women will be veiled, normatively beaten and raped without recourse, honor killed for the slightest perceived disobedience. Women are breeders and housekeepers--an education would ruin them.

Nevertheless, for the first time, the world is mobilized, we have a “teachable moment.” Petitions have been signed, tweets tweeted, articles written, offers of military support tendered.

I wonder what will happen to those poor Nigerian girls who survive this ordeal? Will they be rescued and embraced? Will they be able to one day see themselves as war heroes, not victims? Will they all ever be found?

Mainly, will the world finally take a strong stand against such militant and barbaric Islamic groups who not only rape and imprison Muslim girls and women but who also slaughter both Muslim civilians and "infidels" indiscriminately?
Dr. Phyllis Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies, and the author of fifteen books including the classic Women and Madness, Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman, and The New Anti-Semitism. Her latest book, An American Bride in Kabul, just won the National Jewish Book Award for 2013. She is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum and can be reached through her website: www.phyllis-chesler.com
[Breitbart]


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Activism by Twitter? -Charles Krauthammer, MD

The identity of the victims here — young, black and female — undoubtedly helps explain the worldwide reaction. Two months earlier, Boko Haram had raided a Christian school and, after segregating the boys, brutally murdered 59 of them. That elicited no hashtag campaign against Boko Haram. Nor was there any through the previous years of Boko Haram depredations — razing Christian churches, burning schools, killing infidels of all ages.

Nonetheless, selective outrage is not necessarily hypocrisy. There are a million good causes in the world, and one cannot be devoted to all of them. People naturally gravitate to those closest to their heart. Thus last week’s unlikely sight: a group of congresswomen holding a news conference demanding immediate U.S. action — including the possible use of drones — against Boko Haram.

These were members, like Sheila Jackson Lee, not heretofore known for hawkish anti-jihadist sentiments. No matter. People find their own causes. Their sincerity is to be credited and their commitment welcomed.

The American post-9/11 response to murderous jihadism has often been characterized, not least by our own president, as both excessive and morally suspect. There is a palpable weariness with the entire enterprise. Good, therefore, that new constituencies for whom jihadism and imposed Shariah law ranked low among their urgent concerns should now be awakening to the principal barbarism of our time.

Trending now (once again): anti-jihadism, a.k.a. the War on Terror.
[Jewish World Review]
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Boko Haram and the Future of Nigeria - Col. Dr. Jacques Neriah
   
For the first time since the government decided to fight Boko Haram in July 2009, President Jonathan Goodluck has openly accepted Western and Israeli assistance in the war.
     
The events in Nigeria have highlighted the issue of political Islam in Africa's most populous country, with its 177 million citizens divided roughly equally between Christians predominating in the south and Muslims in the north. Sheikh Ibrahim Alzakzaky, the undisputed leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, is a Nigerian Shiite. A protege of Iran, he works to disseminate Shiite theology and create a radical socioeconomic and military order resembling that of Hizbullah in Lebanon. He is believed to have over a million supporters.
     
Many armed Islamist groups are now fighting the Nigerian government, seeking to force it to adopt an Islamist regime. Northern Muslim states have become a battleground, with Boko Haram combatants being trained in terrorist camps in Mali. The Nigerian government's inability to cope with the Boko Haram threat has led some Christian intellectuals and politicians to note that the developed parts of Nigeria are mostly in Christian areas, and call for a partition of the country if necessary.

Subduing Boko Haram is in the West's interest. 
(Institute for Contemporary Affairs-Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
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