Gradually but explosively, what Boko Haram, the Islamist terror group, has been doing in North East Nigeria has penetrated the mainstream from the social media. On 14 April Boko Haram (meaning ‘Western Education is Forbidden’) abducted more than 230 girls from a boarding school. Most are still missing. Abubaka Shekau, Boko Haram’s leader, obligingly gave a videoed explanation: ‘I abducted your girls; there is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell – he commands me to sell.’
The fact that these are girls, at least, makes their plight of international political and media interest. Feminism is an easy fall-back position for the foreign policy/human rights community. For that, the girls and their parents may yet have reason to be grateful. It allows the British Foreign Secretary to tweet that ‘using girls as the spoils of war and the spoils of terrorism is immoral’. But what neither the UK nor the US authorities is prepared to draw attention to is that these girls – all or nearly all of them – are Christians.
Boko Haram might, indeed, abduct Muslim girls from school because it thought they should be back at home, to be covered up, beaten, and to make the soup.
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