Brief Boko Haram history and ['Islam has nothing to do with it' so there must be] a 'poverty excuse' for their terrorism (many allegedly sympathized with previous Maitatsine extremists)

From AP (Words not in block quote or skewed in the middle are commentary on the AP report.)

It was here a decade ago where Mohammed Yusuf, a one-time moderate imam, began preaching against the practices of Western education in life across Nigeria's Muslim north. Boko Haram was a constant refrain in the Hausa-language sermons, meaning "Western education is sacrilege."

A 'moderate' Muslim becoming an extremist; something to watch out for since there are many 'moderate' Muslims offering the West to fight extremism. Have to wonder whether Yusuf really was a 'moderate' to begin with.

Funny that Yusuf should be against Western education, which, under xenophilic liberal and leftists, is very pro-Anything-non-Western-and-Christian, especially anything Islamic, while always looking for and pointing out flaws in the Christian West.

Yusuf's words came at a time when about a dozen northern states adopted Islamic Shariah law, in the wake of the country becoming a democracy after decades of military dictatorships. Many believed the law, a code of conduct based on the teachings of the Quran, would end the corruption that gripped the country's government.

Muslims use democracy to vote in the un-democratic sharia. This is just like Muslim extremists abusing the rights and freedoms they enjoy in the West in order to destroy those very same rights and freedoms.

Wanting more sharia and Islam to solve problems is a common psychological flaw among Muslims. The problem is that it is 'backward' Islam (according to the assasinated Pim Fortuyn) and 'barbaric' sharia (British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Brazilian president-elect Dilma Rousseff) that is causing problems in the first place. Islam is not the solution. It is the problem.

"People are living in absolute poverty," said Ibrahim Ahmed Abdullahi, an imam in Maiduguri. "Whenever people are living in this type of poverty, if you start saying to them, 'Look, come let us bring about change,' ... people must listen to you."

This is what's called the 'poverty excuse' for Islamic extremism.

University graduates who joined Boko Haram tore up their diplomas. Others joined riots in 2007 attacking police stations. Yusuf's preaching became even more incendiary.

Wonder what they were taught at the university. That Christian non-liberal-left-West is the source of all the evils in the world?

This also shows that lack of education isn't solely responsible for Islamic extremism, if at all.

In July 2009, sect members attacked local police stations and government buildings throughout northeast Nigeria. The riots brought a crackdown by Nigeria's military and left more than 700 dead.

endemic poverty [in the Maiduguri region]

members likely come from the teeming poor in Nigeria and surrounding countries, said Murray Last, a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University College of London who studies Nigeria's north.

"What else would you actually do if you haven't got an education, if you haven't got a job, if you haven't got any future of a wife or a family?" Last asked. "Wouldn't it be better to join a religious community that might ensure you of a wife and children and sort of an education? ... A lot of young men have got no real option at all."

Classic 'poverty excuse' for Islamic extremism. This comes out of the outdated and discredited Marxist social-deterministic world view that blames socio-economic problems for everything and denies people free-will.

The quick and easy reply is that Islamic extremists come from many different backgrounds. Not all terrorists are poor and disadvantaged. The oil-rich Saudis and Arabs for example are funding terrorists, and some of them are also terrorists. Money isn't the problem for them.

There are also many Muslim immigrant who live in the West and enjoy the same freedoms, benefits and privileges of Westerner, and yet still cling on to their archaic Islamic ways and turn to extremism and terrorism. So the 'poverty excuse' can't be used to explain them.

There are plenty of terrorists who are educated, with a wife or wives (Islamic polygamy), children, a career and aren't poor.

And, again, as with most of the other excuses for Islam and Muslims, non-Muslims who face the same or even worse poverty and disadvantage than the Muslims don't turn to extremism like the Muslims.

Non-Muslims also don't turn to terrorism (no where near as much or as savagely as Muslims, with the exception of communists) when they are oppressed, most often by the Muslim.

Why is it that is it only Muslims that usually turn to extremism and terrorism when non-Muslim in the same or worse situation normally don't?

A WikiLeaked UK cable for example show that Muslims have the worse unemployment statistic of any religion in the UK and have other social problems.

Thilo Sarrazin said in Germany that "no immigrant group other than Muslims is so strongly connected with claims on the welfare state and crime"

Germany's Family Minister Kristina Schröder said "Religion was part of culture and culture shaped behaviour"

“If someone made an issue of the disproportionate tendency to violence among young Muslims, it was always said that this was a blanket judgement. But that’s not the case,”

“Social disadvantage and discrimination are important factors, but they are not sufficient as an explanation,”

So Muslim poverty and dysfunctionality, instead of excusing extremism, instead shows that Islam and Muslim culture causes the poverty and problems among Muslims.

It is not poverty that causes Islamic extremism. It is Islam (or versions of it) that causes both poverty and extremism.

It is a vicious cycle. The worse things get, the more Muslims turn to Islam and sharia, like an unstoppable addiction that only grows every time it is fed.

Proof: Non-Muslims usually aren't as poor as Muslims (see above), and poor non-Muslims don't become extremists or terrorists like the Muslims. Just compare it with non-Muslims in the same situation.

Many such young men flooded into northern Nigerian cities during the country's oil boom in the 1970s, hoping for jobs. Those coming from villages instead found hardship and alienation that made them receptive to any promise to change their lives, Last said.

In 1980, the radical Maitatsine movement took hold in the ancient northern city of Kano. Led by a Cameroonian immigrant who inserted his own name into the Quran in place of the prophet Mohammed, the sect decried a corrupt federal government made up of "infidels." Riots left 4,000 people dead.

The military finally put down the sect after years of violence, but many still identified with the group.

"An awful lot of men and women sympathize with them," Last said. "One is dealing with an unspoken sense of: 'These people are thinking and doing things which may be wrong, but they aren't that far wrong.'"

Hopefully Murray Last wasn't sympathizing with the terrorists, but this is an admission of widespread sympathy (caused by distorted views of the world) for terrorists among Muslims, and not a tiny minority as deniers claim.

The usual liberal-left narrative or way of seeing things is to cast terrorists as the good guys fighting some evil (even when their fellow liberals and leftists and special groups that they pay extra attention to, are being butchered), usually the Christian West, or in this case corruption in Nigeria.

But corruption is far better than Islamic totalitarianism (or left wing totalitarianism), which will make corruption even worse as it causes even more poverty, which in turn encourages corruption, with the additional gross human rights abuses under sharia.

And corruption can be dealt with without resorting terrorism or Islamic extremism, which are far worse.

Its like excusing Hitler and Nazism with economic problems in Germany before World War Two.

If non-Muslims turn to non-left wing extremism or terrorism because of corruption or oppression, the liberal left and Muslims won't cast them as heroes fighting evil. Instead they will be demonized and told that there is no excuse for their actions.


Source: AP


Comments: What this story seems to say is that poor Muslims should be given resources so that they won't become terrorists - in a word give in to blackmail.

Sounds like 'give us/them money (or whatever we/they want), or we/they will become terrorists'.

This is also just another 'blame game' showing the distorted view among Muslims and non-Muslims alike and highlights the 'poverty excuse' which falls under the 'socio-economic excuses' for terrorism.

Such views are hegemony or reign supreme in the 'ivory tower' academia. It is a blasphemy to question it, despite claims that 'academic freedom' supposedly exists.

Finally, as usual, there was a prior history of Islamic extremism. In this case it was Maitatsine movement before the current Boko Haram. And if Boko Haram is defeated, then some other extremist group will emerge later on, complaining of something or other. Its all predictable.


Some previous similar or related stories:

Deadly dysfunctional Muslim culture, past, present, future, and why democracy and modernization fail [Blame game throughout history.]

ISLAMIC TERROR 101: A case study in race-card, victim-card, blaming victims & isolated explanations, using UK 'anti-terror' police John Larkin [Blame game with different cards]

Finally some PROOF: German studies find religious and cultural roots to Muslim propensity to violence, PC excuses can't explain all – like so DUH!!! [Cultural and religious roots of Muslim problems]

Multiculturalism utterly failed in Germany, say German Chancellor Merkel [Muslims do worse compared to others.]

WikiLeaked US embassy UK cable: Muslims most unemployed and disabled, some supports killing for Islam, and apostates (6 percent)

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