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State Department official: “Just not accurate” to characterize Boko Haram as Muslim

May 16, 2014 9:53 am By Robert Spencer

boko-haramMore fantasy-based analysis from the Obama Administration. As I explained in this article, in abducting and enslaving the schoolgirls, Boko Haram is operating in accord with widely accepted understandings of the Qur’an and Islamic law. Muslim writers who have claimed that Boko Haram is in violation of the Qur’an have not even mentioned its verses sanctioning sex slavery of captive women. Similarly, here the State Department official, apparently Robert Jackson, flatly asserts that Boko Haram’s philosophy is not Muslim, but doesn’t support his claim. It would be refreshing to see it supported for once, but don’t hold your breath.

“State Dept. Official: ‘Just Not Accurate’ to Characterize Boko Haram as Muslim,” by Bridget Johnson, PJ Media, May 15, 2014 (thanks to Anne Crockett):

A State Department official told a Senate hearing on terrorism in Nigeria this morning that “Boko Haram is trying to portray its philosophy as being a Muslim philosophy, and that’s just not accurate.”

Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs Chairman Chris Coons (D-Del.) referenced a hearing that he held two years ago, in which lawmakers learned that Boko Haram was training with Al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in an area the size of Texas.

“The hearing that we conducted two years ago could almost literally be repeated today in terms of ongoing structural challenges that have led to this insurgency and have created the conditions and sustained, and in some ways accelerated, the conditions for Boko Haram,” Coons said.

Ambassador Robert Jackson, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, stood in on the panel of witnesses for Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who was reportedly traveling. Thomas-Greenfield acknowledged to a House panel last November that while Boko Haram has a “religious bent to what they do, they are non-discriminating in their attacks on people.”

“We join the world, the people of Nigeria and the parents of these children in expressing our outrage at Boko Haram’s shocking acts and its perverse ideology,” Jackson said. “This tragic kidnapping calls us to redouble our efforts to defeat a malicious terrorist organization that has troubled Nigeria for more than a decade.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) questioned Jackson about whether the administration is properly characterizing the threat.

“Is the prime motivator here of this instance, in your opinion — is the prime motivator the desire to deny young women access to education and empowerment?” Rubio asked.

“Senator, I actually think the prime motivator is to raise more funds for Boko Haram through ransom,” Jackson replied. “However, the fact that Boko Haram opposes Western education is certainly a reason why these girls were targeted.”

“Can I suggest that I think there’s another motivation that’s not getting nearly enough attention, and that is that this is clearly motivated by an anti-Christian attitude of this group,” Rubio continued, citing “a grotesque statement” from Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau: “It is either you are with jahideen, or you’re with the Christians. We know what is happening in this world. It is a jihad war against Christians and Christianity. It is a war against Western education, democracy and constitution… This is what I know in Quran. This is a war against Christians and democracy and their constitution. Allah says we should finish them when we get them.”

“I don’t think there’s any doubt about what’s motivating them,” Rubio said. “One of their leading motivators here is this is not simply — and there’s no doubt that this is a part of it, but this is not just about girls going to school and it’s not just about raising money. There is a strong anti-Christian element of this organization and of this activity. Am I right in saying that?”

“Senator, there is a strong anti-Christian element, but I would offer that more of the thousands of people who have died as a result of Boko Haram’s activities are Muslim than Christian,” Jackson said.

Rubio stressed “we should not ignore the fact that there is a religious persecution aspect of this that is very significant and deserves attention, especially in light of what we are seeing not just in this part of the world but multiple areas of the world, where we are seeing horrifying instances of religious persecution against Christians, which, in my opinion, has been underreported.”

“Senator, I respectfully suggest while anti-Christian sentiment is a strong motivator, the fact of the matter is that Boko Haram is trying to portray its philosophy as being a Muslim philosophy, and that’s just not accurate,” Jackson said.

“I’m not claiming that this is somehow driven by legitimate teachings of Islam. What I’m arguing is that there is a strong anti-Christian element to this and that it is part of a broader anti-Christian persecution that we are seeing repeatedly throughout the world. Would you disagree with that statement?” the senator asked.

“I do not disagree, but I continue to want to emphasize that Boko Haram terrorizes all people,” the State Department official responded.

Jackson said about 85 percent of the more than 200 teens taken from the Chibok secondary school are Christian. Nigeria’s population includes about about 60 million Protestants and 20 million Catholics, according to Pew.

Rubio stressed that a crime against Muslims “is no less worse or less bad than a crime against Christians.”

“What I’m trying to put aside — what I’m trying to put forward here is that we cannot continue to ignore that persecution of Christians is a leading motivator not just of what’s happening in Boko Haram but in other parts of the world, as well, but in this specific instance, they are clearly motivated by anti-Christian attitudes and anti-Christian beliefs,” he said. “And I don’t think that’s even debatable, given their very own statement.”…

Read the rest here.

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Comments

  1. mortimer says

    May 16, 2014 at 10:17 am

    No! Tiny Tim, the Unicorn and the Tooth Fairy are real Muslims.

    • mortimer says

      May 16, 2014 at 10:21 am

      When were Boko Haram EXCOMMUNICATED and declared APOSTATES or DEVIATIONISTS????

      What? Never?

      Only the Grand Imam of Al Azhar can definitely declare a Muslim to be a deviationist.

      No Islamic mufti has declared the Boko Haram to be apostates, so the wishful claim of apostasy by Obama’s clueless messenger boys is ABSURD and BASELESS.

      Boko Haram are Sunni Muslims IN GOOD STANDING! Just like OBL was!

      • mortimer says

        May 16, 2014 at 10:23 am

        When will Obama and his errand boys STOP INSULTING OUR INTELLIGENCE with such foolish TWADDLE? We have read Sharia law. He has not.

  2. Ayatrollah says

    May 16, 2014 at 10:29 am

    Is anyone talking about getting the money together to free the girls ?

  3. jewdog says

    May 16, 2014 at 10:34 am

    When I read that drivel from the State Department , that’s when I feel like buying a rifle, laying barbed wire around my property and refusing to pay taxes until they carry me out.

  4. mariam rove says

    May 16, 2014 at 10:52 am

    this official statement is correct. It should be muslim jihadists and murderers. M

  5. LibertyAtStake says

    May 16, 2014 at 10:54 am

    Memo to State Department pinheads: Well, they think they are. Who appointed you the authority on Islamic piety?

  6. Rezali Mehil says

    May 16, 2014 at 11:06 am

    Robert Jackson, flatly asserts that Boko Haram’s philosophy is not Muslim

    Listen to him …he thinks he knows the score ….ROFL.

    It would be refreshing to see it supported for once, …but don’t hold your breath.

    NO no …please do ….hold that MoFo ….60, 59, 58…..can you get to zero?
    Tch…tch failed again.

    I’ll bet that if you asked the girls whether they WANT to come back …the vast majority will say that they are settled now and do not want to come back.

    …..They have become ” rockers” now …Inshallah …busy learning the pages of the Koran….

    …More Later

    Rezali

    • Buraq says

      May 16, 2014 at 11:19 am

      @ Rezali Nihil

      You’re a clown, Rezali. A wire-wigged, red-nosed, baggy-trousered clown!

      • Rezali Mehil says

        May 16, 2014 at 11:23 am

        Buraq …it’s Mihil…..

    • Salah says

      May 16, 2014 at 12:06 pm

      ” …..They have become ” rockers” now …Inshallah …busy learning the pages of the Koran….”

      Check out some of your Muslim friends “learning the pages of the Koran”. You’ll love it!

      http://crossmuslims.blogspot.ca/2014/01/egyptian-muslims-tear-up-quran.html

    • Will Doohan says

      May 17, 2014 at 3:25 am

      I’ll bet if those girls had the chance, they would shoot their kidnappers and burn the unholy koran.

  7. bobm says

    May 16, 2014 at 11:59 am

    muslims are slaughtered as well because islam is rooted in antichrist .. it flows in darkness and murder is a pillar.

  8. Jaladhi says

    May 16, 2014 at 12:00 pm

    Looks like our State department is infested with morons, stupidos, liars…, what else we would expect from them. One Muslim says Mo will not approve of what Boko Haram is doing but the State dept. went even farther saying they are not Muslims. So all terrorist Muslims are not Muslims and Muslims are only those who not yet carried any terrorist act! Dissimulation is an art that one can learn from our State Dept. and Muslims.

  9. Jack Diamond says

    May 16, 2014 at 12:04 pm

    Robert Jackson, that scholar of Islam who can discern what is and is not a “Muslim philosophy” and do for Muslim clerics what they won’t for themselves and declare Boko Haram non-Islamic, who knows a “religious bent” from a philosophy, who knows what is and is not a war against Christians because Muslims are killed too and therefore “they are non-discriminating in their attacks” has spoken. Non-discriminating attacks such as in October 2012 when the jihad-killers attacked the Federal Polytechnic College and (for some reason!) separated Christian students from Muslim students, and slit the throats of the Christian students (if they did not convert). It just happens 90% of the kidnapped girls were Christian (taken on Good Friday) but Robert Jackson sees nothing significant in that. That Boko Haram (after letting Muslim girls go) calls the (Christian) girls war booty and justifies marrying them off or selling them into sex slavery by reasons of Islam, the learned authority on the Qur’an and Sunnah Robert Jackson knows better and would educate that this is not a “Muslim philosophy” but rather a “perverse ideology” they made up themselves. He knows it is about wanting ransom money like John Kerry and Bill Clinton know it is all motivated by poverty. This comes from either abysmal ignorance of the history and the texts & tenets of Islam– for which there is no possible excuse in the year 2014, let alone for someone in charge of “African affairs”– or just a craven willingness to lie to the American people by someone who does know better.

    Since Boko Haram has trained with al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab I assume Robert Jackson would say there is no “Muslim philosophy” connected to them either. Probably to no jihadists anywhere, consistent with the Obama position from the beginning: the Innocence of Muslims.

    Abubakr Shekau has his own ideas “Let the world know that we have been enjoined by Allah to kill the unbelievers. We shall continue to kill those who strive to stand against the will of Allah by opposing shariah. We don’t mind if we die doing this because it is even a blessing for us to die in this cause and gain paradise.” In the statement he makes clear Boko Haram was not only fighting the cause of Islam in Nigeria but also against the leaders of the U.S., France and all other countries that do not rule according to the teachings of the Qur’an. Does this ring any bells for Robert Jackson? No. He chooses to appear staggeringly dumb.

    More Christians have been targeted and murdered by Boko Haram in Nigeria than in the rest of the world combined but Robert Jackson sees nothing discriminating here. The “Allahu akbar!” screaming Jihad-killers have attacked and destroyed hundreds of churches, each and every year, killing and maiming worshipers, but it wouldn’t be fair to any Muslims they have also killed to discriminate or discern a meaningful pattern. Boko Haram threatens to poison the food eaten by Christians and “strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping their women.” (March 2012). Agence France Fresse 1/5/12 “Gunmen stormed a church in northern Nigeria Thursday and killed six people as they were praying, the pastor said, as an ultimatum from Islamists for Christians in the region to leave expired.”

    To deliberately miss that the purpose of Boko Haram, in their bid to bring the pure shari’a to Nigeria, is to cleanse the Muslim-majority north of all Christianity, is to lie and it is a lie that only enables the persecution of Christians to continue. Jackson’s weasel-words are disgraceful and damning. To pretend to not know that there is Islamic justification for what Boko Haram does, to pretend that they aren’t connected to global jihad, or to pretend that their goals aren’t those of orthodox Islam, is to also lie. Even Marco Rubio has to chime in “I’m not claiming that this is somehow driven by legitimate teachings of Islam” after linking the Boko Haram persecution of Christians with the worldwide persecutions in the Muslim world.

    • Jack Diamond says

      May 17, 2014 at 3:04 pm

      And no, Boko Haram could not possibly share the same motivation as those who trained them or the al-Bashir government in the Islamic Republic of Sudan:

      “Franco Majok serves as program manager for Nigeria projects with Christian Solidarity International and travels frequently to the West African nation. Majok helps displaced Nigerians who fled violence in the country’s northern states.

      Majok told Fox News’ Lauren Green in an interview that Boko Haram has connections to other Al Qaeda-connected extremists groups in North Africa.

      “The [founders] of Boko Haram trained in Khartoum [Sudan] with Usama bin Laden and then they were sent to Nigeria,” Majok said. He sees the extremists as the “Taliban of Nigeria.”

      Majok says many would-be terrorists travel to Sudan to train under the guise of an education scholarship. “Those people were sent to [Sudan] to train in terrorist camps and sent back to Nigeria.”

      http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/05/08/boko-haram-terrorizes-nigeria-christian-community/

  10. Lynn says

    May 16, 2014 at 10:13 pm

    Our president practices taqiyya on a daily basis. He’s not going to do or say anything to help anybody but MB groups. Period. He stated long ago he would side with Islam and we see it on a daily basis…

  11. Elisheva14 says

    May 17, 2014 at 10:50 am

    The extreme far left ideology wants to lead us all to commit suicide by burying our heads in the sand permanently.

  12. Ray Lanfear says

    May 17, 2014 at 8:50 pm

    Boko Haram was after Christians (just so happens all the girls were Christians) mainstream news will not tell you that along with the fact that “Boko” follows Wahhabi, the most violentt form of Islam.
    Forgot to add this. What you should know about Qatar, a devoutly Wahhabi Muslim country, with billions of oil money to buy influence throughout the World and especially America. America is asleep and just too far politically correct to address the threat. Qatar purchased Al Jazeera America, with corporate headquarters in downtown Manhattan. Wahhabi is one of the most violent forms of Islam in the World today. See here for some history to make you aware of just how violent. http://www.independent.co.uk/…/wahhabism-a-deadly…

  13. dumbledoresarmy says

    May 18, 2014 at 8:44 am

    Sen Marco Rubio hasn’t “got” the full extent of the problem. But he’s on the right track.

    American jihadwatchers: please write to him (especially if you’re in Florida, the state that he represents) and tell him about Mohammed’s rapes of Safiyya of Khaybar and Rayhana of the Banu Qurayza. One mohammed called a “wife” and one he simply used as sex slave or concubine, but they were both, basically, sex slaves, seized by him and used under compulsion, after he had attacked and destroyed their communities. He raped 17-year-old Safiyya on the evening of the same day that he had had her husband Kinana tortured to death.

    Use some of the material Mr Spencer has cited, in articles in the past few days, to refute the nonsense and give Sen Rubio an accurate “background briefing”.

    And you might like to print off, and pass on to him (and to other of your elected representatives), one or more of the following, suitably highlighted. Or just read it, and boil it down, and then put some of it in your own words.

    1/ http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/53926
    Friday, 9 May 2014
    The Full Text Of Abubakar Shekau’s Latest Message To The World

    2/ http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/53923
    Friday, 9 May 2014
    The Mind Of Abubakar Shekau

    http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/53925

    Friday, 9 May 2014
    Abubakar Shekau Makes His Views Crystal Clear
    [this was in March 2014]

    “In Islam, it is allowed to take infidel women as slaves and in due course we will start taking women away and sell in the market.”

    And then there’s *this*, which would be useful for
    all non-Muslim politicians everywhere whose countries are taking an interest in events in northern Nigeria:

    http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/53946
    Sunday, 11 May 2014
    Boko Haram and the Return of the Nigerian Slave Trade

    And then there’s this, from Hugh Fitzgerald, who used to contribute extensively here in this forum as well as in posted articles.

    http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/53969
    Tuesday, 13 May 2014
    The Muslim Wars In Africa, Nigerian Schoolgirls, And Remembering
    Biafra

    Read through those, before you compose those letters to Senator Marc Rubio, and to other elected representatives.

    Senator Marc Rubio needs more ammo. Then next time he comes up against an Islamopologist like Jackson, he won’t be so easily fobbed off.

  14. Jack Diamond says

    May 18, 2014 at 9:58 am

    From Hugh Fitzgerald’s piece above:

    “Now comes Boko Haram. It is doing what Muslims have been doing for the past 1400 years, seizing the women of the Infidels, and using them as sex slaves, and breeders, as the Qur’an and Hadith, and the example of Muhammad himself, make clear they have a perfect right to do so. And the world’s Muslims can denounce, to protect “the image of Islam” about which they constantly prate and worry about, as if that “image” were not directly connected to the observable behavior of Muslims toward non-Muslims all over the world, what to Infidels seems an outrage, as with the Nigerian kidnappings, but they don’t mean it, and they know perfecty well that the texts of Islam support the acts and attitudes of Abu Shekau, and are reduced to claiming that they are “outraged” by what has happened, but immediately grow silent when asked to offer Muslim texts that serve to delegitimize Boko Haram, its works and days. They can’t, and they know it.”

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