Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

GetReligion

Home
Religion News
WSJ profiles Nigerian terrorist with no mention of ‘Christians’

WSJ profiles Nigerian terrorist with no mention of ‘Christians’

Last updated on: August 29, 2014 at 1:32 pm by Bobby Ross Jr.

WSJ profiles Nigerian terrorist with no mention of ‘Christians’ 2014-08-29T13:32:15-04:00 Bobby Ross Jr.

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Is there a religion angle on the heartbreaking story of the kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls?

Of course there is, as GetReligion has made clear in previous posts, including tmatt’s insightful analysis titled “So #bringbackourgirls is finally a news story! Why now?”

From that post:

The bottom line: The girls were taken from Chibok Government Girls Secondary School and the vast majority were Christians and the others were Muslims who were willing to attend a non-Islamic school with Christians, a violation of Boko Haram’s vision of true Islam.

So when a top Wall Street Journal editor touted that newspaper’s front-page profile of the terror group’s leader, I was curious to see if the story would reflect the important role of religion. (Tip: If you get the subscriber-only version when you click the link, Google the headline and you should be able to open the full story.)

A deep look at the Boko Haram leader who seized the girls–and the world stage: http://t.co/PoJI1Qrkcr pic.twitter.com/njoRdq4ory

— Matt Murray (@murraymatt) May 13, 2014

Let’s start at the top:

ABUJA, Nigeria — When he appeared in a video on Monday boasting of having abducted more than 200 schoolgirls, the leader of terror group Boko Haram took the occasion to egg on the U.S. Army and get in a dig at ancient Egypt.

“We don’t fear any American troops,” shouted Abubakar Shekau, whose Islamist insurgency has terrorized northern Nigeria and recently drawn search-and-rescue advisers from the U.S. and other countries. “Let even the Pharaoh himself be sent down here! We will deal with him squarely!”

Bombastic and bellicose, Mr. Shekau has shown a boundless appetite for celebrity. He has sought to achieve it through mass murder and most notably through the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in April from a boarding school in the country’s north.

By boasting—and laughing—about these deeds on YouTube, often with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, Mr. Shekau has attained the distinction that has long eluded him: Africa’s most notorious terrorist.

“He seems to want to distinguish himself by the depth of his brutality,” said Daniel Benjamin, a former counterterrorism chief at the State Department who is currently director of Dartmouth College’s Dickey Center for International Understanding. “It is a big part of his calling card.”

Way up high, there’s the reference to “Islamic insurgency.”

A little deeper in the story, the Journal provides this important background:

Mr. Shekau has achieved this ignominious rank through a willingness to slaughter. Boko Haram has killed more than 7,000 people in the past two years alone, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Most of the group’s victims are Muslims deemed too close to the Nigerian state or insufficiently devout. Boko Haram loosely means “Western Education is a Sin” in the local Hausa language.

And later, this:

Mr. Shekau has taken responsibility for the murders of a series of imams who spoke out against him, dubbing what they did as “Boko Halal,” loosely translated as “Western Education is Permitted.” Last week, Boko Haram took responsibility for killing more than 300 villagers near the Cameroon border, many of them huddled in a mosque.

Still deeper in the meaty profile, there’s more:

Mr. Shekau preaches about a state he says has failed its people. In his view, Nigeria has been rendered irredeemably corrupt, first by colonialism then by English-language education and an overly liberal interpretation of Islam.

And finally, this:

For years, Mr. Shekau lingered in obscurity as the second-in-command of Boko Haram. For most of the early 2000s, the group was encamped 2 miles from the Niger border. Members called the community “Afghanistan” and attempted to build an Islamic utopia free from the corruption and crime of everyday Nigeria, said analysts who have followed the group’s emergence.

Residents of his hometown of Maiduguri said Mr. Shekau drove his motorbike while reading a Quran balanced on his handlebars. Many Western and African officials say they believe he traveled to Mali to train with militants there. Mr. Shekau has said he has never left Nigeria.

But among the 1,700 words in the Journal’s mostly enlightening account, one word never appears: Christian.

That seems strange, given that a story in the previous day’s Journal reported on a video claiming that some of the abductees have converted to Islam and included this reference to the girls’ faith:

In the town of Chibok, the father of one of the missing girls said he hadn’t yet been able to see the video, but that he was both hoping to see his daughter on it and worried about the idea of her having converted to Islam.

“Most of the girls who have been kidnapped, they are Christians, and now that they are on the side of Islam, it is very disturbing for all us parents,” said Lalai Mutah, who said he has heard nothing of his teenage daughter since she was taken.

Is there a religion angle on this heartbreaking story? We already answered that question.

Is there a Christian angle? That seems obvious, too, even if this particular Journal story fails to connect the dots.

Christian schoolgirls

Previous Post

May 14, 2014

Missing elements in NYTimes marital rape report from India

Next Post

May 15, 2014 There he goes, there (Bill Keller) goes again ...

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 5Q+1 Academia Anglicanism Announcements Atheists & Agnostics Baptists Books Business & Economy Catholicism Creeping Fundamentalism Education Ethics Evangelicals Film First Person gays Godbeat Got news? Humor Interviews Islam Journalism Judaism Lutherans Mainline Marriage & family Middle East Mormons Music Nones Orthodoxy Pagans Pentecostalism People Podcasts Politics Pop Culture Race Radio & TV Religion religious liberty Same-sex marriage Science Sex Social Issues Sports Uncategorized Vatican Web/Tech What is this? World World Religions Worship

Select a Month August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 May 2010 July 2009 February 2009 October 2008 July 2008 January 2007 August 2006 July 2006 October 2005

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who said, "You shall have no other gods before me"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Joshua Moses God Aaron