Support For Boko Haram Fading

Bitter Fruits

We have seen this pattern before.  Extreme (albeit doctrinally faithful) Islamic groups practising their religion end up turning many adherents and followers away from their faith.  The latest evidence is Boko Haram's declining support in Nigeria.

Brutal acts at the hands of Boko Haram jihadis are leading Muslims to abandon their faith in the capital of Nigeria’s Borno State, the birthplace of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL)-linked terrorist group, an African media outlet reported on Wednesday.

“After a decade of fighting, many in Maiduguri are all the more horrified by the indiscriminate brutality that Boko Haram has committed in the name of Islam,” the African Argument news outlet reported.  “That violence is what led me to believe they were bad for religion,” Ibrahim Suleiman, a resident of the Borno capital of Maiduguri, told the media outlet. “They preached hatred and divided people … Their jihad has failed.   People are boycotting the mosques,” he added. “People are afraid of the bombs, but they also no longer trust religious leaders as before.””  [Breitbart News]

Islam is at root a religion of violence.
  A perusal of the Koran would convince any neutral reader of this fact.  This is not to say, of course, that all professing Muslim's believe and practise the Prophet's commands given towards the end of his life, commanding his followers wage war upon Unbelievers.  But the more seriously and literally they take the last chapters of the Koran, the more likely they are to grow their religion out of the barrel of a gun.

The jihad in Nigeria appears to be failing because the people are become sickened by the violence and bloodshed.  One evidence of this is the increasing interest in schools and education--something which Boko Haram has (literally) fought against.

African Argument noted:  In the birth place of Boko Haram, religious fervor has dimmed after years of unrest. Attendance at Islamic events is down. School enrollment is up … many people seem much more ambivalent about religion than they once were … In what can be seen as a backlash against Boko Haram, which rejected the formal education system, school rates have also risen sharply in Maiduguri − at least anecdotally.

“Now people want education. Enrollment is so high,” Suleiman Aliyu, the headmaster at a private Islamic school in Maiduguri, told African Argument. “They realize they were fooled.”  The name Boko Haram translates to “Western education is a sin.”

Some Islamic clerics are banding together in an attempt to bring the mosques under the rule of law.

African Argument acknowledged that some “reform-minded clerics” have taken a stand against the jihadist group.  “Clerics now generally embrace the idea of some kind of regulation to ensure a similar movement is never allowed to take hold – overhauling the current laissez faire approach where the government has no control over the 300 mosques in Maiduguri where Friday sermons are delivered,” it reported.

These positive developments are good news for Nigeria.  Let's hope within a few years Boko Haram will be seen as a distant, fading nightmare.