Abubakar Shekau gleefully taunts the mothers of the girls he abducted, knowing that what he has done in abducting them has clear Qur’anic sanction: the Qur’an allows a man to have sex with the “captives of the right hand” (4:3), which has traditionally been understood as slave girls. The large number of girls abducted in this case has finally brought some international attention to the Nigerian jihad, but untold numbers of girls have suffered the same fate as these girls throughout Islamic history and in the present day.
“‘I Abducted Your Girls,’ Nigerian Extremist Leader Admits,” by Charlotte Alter, Time, May 5, 2014:
The extremist group’s leader claims the April kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Nigeria and vows to “sell them on the market”
A leader of the extremist group Boko Haram takes responsibility in a newly-disclosed video for the kidnapping of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls last month.
“I abducted your girls,” Abubakar Shekau said in the video, obtained by AFP. “I will sell them on the market, by Allah.”
Islamist extremist group Boko Haram (which translates roughly to “Western education is forbidden”) has been terrorizing northern Nigeria for years, but the kidnapping was its biggest attack yet. Shekau said in the video that the abduction has caused outrage because “because we are holding people [as] slaves.”