Consistently Islamic

 What Boko Haram and Aceh Province Have in Common

The Western world has been aghast over the depredations of Boko Haram--an Islamic group active in northern Nigeria.  For months its members have been invading schools to kill and kidnap female pupils.  After a recent abduction of over 200 female students, the leader has boasted in public they will be sold as slaves.  Meanwhile, half a world away, an Indonesian woman has been gang raped in punishment for illicit sexual congress.  The couple also face the cane--as called for by the head of the local Sharia office. 

Culturally, what do Nigeria and the island of Aceh in Indonesia have in common?
  Islam.  The connection is not hard to find.  Islam has a peculiar perspective on women, that connects the depredations of Boko Haram upon schoolgirls and the gang rape of a woman in Aceh province, Indonesia.  It is a straight line connection.

Rosemary Sookdheo, in her book Secrets Behind the Burqa {McLean, VA: Isaac Publishing, 2008] explains:

Curbing active female sexuality is the basis of many of Islam's family institutions.  The stability of society is maintained by creating institutions which encourage men to dominate within it, while excluding women from it. . . . Islam perceives women as a disruptive force.  There appears to be an assumption that men cannot resist women's lure, which offers justification for controlling (women's) sexuality.  The solution to the problem of what is seen as women's disruptive power is to confine her to the home where she has to look after the children and to enforce the use of the veil.

Ghazali, one of Islam's classical scholars on marriage, sees civilisation struggling to contain women's destructive, all absorbing power.  He believes women exert a fatal attraction which erodes the male's will to resist her and places him in a passive and pliable role.  This power is seen as the most destructive element in the Muslim social order, because men become distracted from their social and religious duties.  Society can only survive by creating institutions that foster male dominance through sexual segregation and polygamy.  He casts the woman as the hunter and the man as the passive victim.  {Ibid., p. 59f.]

So, Boko Haram kidnap girls from school, declaring that education for girls is evil.  It opens up the possibility that females will have a wider role in society, thereby unleashing their destructive powers upon men and society in general.  Meanwhile in Indonesia, a woman is gang-raped in retaliation for allegedly having sex with a man not her husband.  Both incidents were manifestation of the Islamic religion, which sees women as a disruptive force in society, needing to be subjugated, controlled, and enslaved.