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Willful blindness: Obama administration official says “religion is not driving extremist violence” in Nigeria

Apr 10, 2012 3:36 pm By Robert Spencer

More wisdom from the Administration that told us all that the Muslim Brotherhood was “largely secular.” Now we learn that a group that has said “We are going to put into action new efforts to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping their women” is not actually religiously motivated. They’re secular, doncha know, but subtle about it.

And now: heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Johnnie! “Obama Official After Easter and Christmas Church Bombings in Nigeria: “˜Religion Is Not Driving Extremist Violence,– by Elizabeth Harrington for CNS News, April 10 (thanks to David):

(CNSNews.com) – Assistant Secretary of State for African
Affairs Johnnie Carson said Monday that  “religion is not driving
extremist violence” in Nigeria–just one day after a Christian church
conducting an Easter service was targeted by a car bombing that left 39
dead.

Similarly, on Christmas Day, the Nigerian Islamist terrorist group,
Boko Haram, attacked a Catholic church in that country, killing more
than 40 people.

“I want to take this opportunity to stress one key point and that is
that religion is not driving extremist violence either in Jos or
northern Nigeria,” Assistant  Secretary of State Carson said Monday at a
forum on U.S. policy toward Nigeria held at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

“While some seek to inflame Muslim-Christian tensions, Nigeria’s
ethnic and religious diversity, like our own in this country, is a
source of strength, not weakness,” he added,  “and there are many
examples across Nigeria of communities working across religious lines to
protect one another.”

On Easter Sunday a church in Kaduna, Nigeria, was targeted by a
suicide bombing that killed 39 and wounded dozens. Though no
organization has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, it is
suspected that Boko Haram, the Islamic terrorist organization, was
behind it.

As CNSNews.com previously reported,
Boko Haram, whose name translated into “Western education is
forbidden,” has links to al-Qaeda’s North Africa affiliate, al-Qaeda in
the Islamic Maghreb, and has repeatedly vowed to cleanse northern
Nigeria of minority Christians, and is responsible for more than 1,000
deaths since mid-2009.

Carson spoke at length about the terrorist group, saying Boko Haram
“capitalizes on popular frustrations with the nation’s leaders,” and
“seeks to humiliate and undermine the government and to exploit
religious differences in order to create chaos and to make Nigeria
ungovernable.”

Boko Haram was responsible for multiple bomb attacks including the
Jan. 20 attack in Kano, which killed nearly 200, a Christmas Day attack
on a church near the federal capital, Abuja, which cost more than 40
lives, and a car bomb at the United Nations headquarters in the Nigeria
capital of Abuja last August.

“Boko Haram’s attacks on churches and mosques are particularly
disturbing because they are intended to inflame religious tensions and
upset the nation’s social cohesion, although Boko Haram is reviled
throughout Nigeria and offers no practical solutions to the country”s
problems,” Carson said.

In February, Boko Haram killed five in a gun attack on a mosque in Kano, according to reports
in the Nigerian newspaper, The Nation. The terrorist group routinely
targets Christians, “but police stations and mosques deemed
“˜insufficiently Islamic” were also attacked last year, according to CNN.

In testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 27,
Carson previously stated that, “It is important to note that religion is
not the primary driver behind extremist violence in Nigeria,” and that
Boko Haram “attempts to exploit the legitimate grievances of northern
populations to garner recruits and public sympathy.”

Last Friday, ahead of the Easter attacks, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) issued a press release
expressing “deep concern” about threats from Boko Haram before the
Christian holiday and described the group as espousing “an extreme and
violent interpretation of Islam.”…

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Nigeria, Useful idiots


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