Homo Terrors: The Past and the Future of Boko Haram
Aliyu Dahiru Aliyu
Boko haram has been one of the deadly terrorist groups, not only in Nigeria but in the world over. In 2014, the group was ranked as the top among the international terrorist organizations after series of beheadings, bombings, kidnappings, and other terrorist activities.
Before the end of 2015, Boko Haram conquered and captured more than one-third of the Borno and Yobe states’ local governments and instituted its own violent interpretation of sharia law.
Some of the footages and the propaganda videos released by the army of terror show how they stoned women to death, beheaded and amputated uncountable men, and trained little children as soldiers in almost all the local governments they stormed.
Reports have shown how they massacred inhabitants of different, bombed and bulldozed. buildings and burnt many houses to ashes in different villages and the towns.
The Boko Haram insurgency has. dislocated social and economic activities in the Northeastern and some parts of the Northwestern Nigeria and that resulted in over 20,000 deaths and displacing close to three million people.
In 2012, when the insurgency was at its baby stage, the World Investment Report explained that more than one trillion naira was lost in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). This caused mass unemployment and forced mass emigration to neighboring countries like Niger, Cameroon, Chad and Ghana.
The strict and violent interpretation of the sharia law the army of terror adopted from “the most influential scholar that shaped the thinking of Muhammad Yusuf [the founding father of the group]… Taqiyuddeen Ahmad Ibn Taimiyya (1268–1328) after whom the group named its center and mosque” has helped in nourishing the movement.
The extremism of Ibn Taimiyya, the takfirism of Ibn Abdul Wahhab, and licensing the history of Usman bn Fodio to legitimize war on political rulers, associated with the salafi-jihadi interpretation of Islam, played a major role in the making of the ideology vibrant when it first emerged; especially when the soft attacks were only on security forces and some government officials.
Though religious clerics continue to cite emotions in countering the creeds of Boko Haram within quetist-salafists, but the political theologies of salafism that are preached in many mosques in the North and taught in madrasas remain stumbling blocks to countering the extremists’ ideology.
According to Professor Sani Umar, one of the leading researchers on Boko Haram from Northern Nigeria, clerics in the region contribute to creating a perfect climate for religious intolerance and extremism.
According to him, religious conflicts in the region are deliberately designed by articulating discourses that incite violence and would later turn into fierce sectarian battle.
He explained that “the ulema (clerics) contribute to radicalization by articulating discourses that could justify the radical tendencies of individuals and groups.”
This very short essay is intended to examine and analyze, from the near history, how the voice of the ulema played a major and dominant role in radicalizing a Northern youth, and to guess a possible direction of the insurgents in a region saturated with trends in politico-religious and sectarian combustion.
Abdulbasit Kassim, a scholar of the Boko Haram doctrines, described how terrorists in Northern Nigeria employ “the sacred texts and Islamic scriptures that have been adroitly exploited to support the jihad-salafis’ idealization, theological legitimization and meta-justification for divinely sanctioned Jihad”.
This provides an enabling environment for breeding radicalised youth from basic Islamiyya schools and improving extremism in a region where tolerance is looked at with suspicion.
This writer argues that Boko Haram may die and leave the stage for the emergence of another terror group in a new form. He adds that the Nigerian government is only attacking the armed terrorists but not addressing the root cause of the problem.
Brief History of Boko Haram
The history of Boko Haram (literally: Western Education is Sin), officially “Jama’at Ahlussnnah Lid Da’awati Wal Jihad” (Ahlussunnah Group for Preaching and Combat), can be traced back to 2001, when some unknown militants nicknamed “Yan Taliban” (Talibanists) appeared in some states in northern Nigeria.
The people that would later be identified as the first armer Boko Haram members, called Nigerian government “taghut” (an Arabic name for satanic or ungodly) and started with attacking a local government secretariat and police station in Kanamma in 2003.
After becoming popular, the group moved to Gwoza in Borno State where it took the town as its underground training camp.
Muhammad Yusuf, the Boko Haram leader, user to be student of a popular and influential salafi cleric, Sheikh Ja’afar Adam, but later engaged with him in discourses on political Islam and western education, and that forced their bitter separation.
Yusuf started preaching violence and embarked upon aggressive sermons in a mosque he made his centre and named it after the 13th century controversial scholar, Ibn Taimiyya. His eloquence and charisma won the hearts of many youths who trooped to the Markaz Ibn Taimiyya for learning and economic assistance.
Abdulbasit Kassim traced the genealogy of the group to about three decades before it became well known. According to him, a Nigerian disciple of Osama bn Laden in Sudan, Muhammad Ali, in 1990s, collected a large sum of $3 Million for a jihadi start-up in the country.
Ali failed to institute the terror group after Nigerian government figured out that he had a link with foreign terrorist group and, as a result, tried to arrest him.
He fled to Saudi Arabia where he met with Muhammad Yusuf in 2002 and handed him a cash of $2 Million which the later would use to lead the movement until his death in the hands of the. Nigerian security forces in 2009.
In 2009, the terror squad started to launch retaliatory attacks in various cities and villages in Northern Nigeria after the death of their founding leader.
The movement then merged those attacks with a primary motivation of instituting a caliphate in northern Nigerian an to continue conquering lands beyond the Sahel – as it is in the slogan of its terror mother (Islamic States), “Baqiyatun Wa Tatamaddad” (eternal and maximizing).
Homo Terrors
A history of human social interactions and his political philosophies is so complex that a student, or even a scholar, cannot perfectly collect the bits and pieces of the past to predict what would happen in his future.
However, in everything some group of men do, one can see a reflection of their pasts. This is the reason one can perfectly use the concept of historical determinism, operate time-machine and go back to history and have a very short glimpse of the future that can stand within the range of discrete probabilities.
In this short essay, to admit an imperfection, what I may say might not give a perfect picture of what will happen in the near or distant future if a hands of change is dipped in the “here and now”. To the writer, men are not mechanical machines under scientific experiment in a well-controlled laboratory that can be observed under a microscope.
We all have experienced the menace of Boko Haram, in one way or the other, and watch the horror movie the death squad brought to our cinemas. But why Boko Haram chose Northern Nigeria as its operational theatre? How did they get easy recruits in the region? What makes them survive close to three decades operating in these lands – from silent hate speech mongers to the rocket-carrying warlords? What will likely be the future of Boko Haram if proper action is not taken?
Northern Nigeria is a region with deeply religious people but with little knowledge on how laws of the universe operate vis-à-vis political evolutions, religious pluralism and globalization. To be religious here means to be fanatic in most instances. Many people among us have a spiritual conviction that if they die “defending God and His Scriptures” they will directly ascend to Heaven to enjoy feast with uncountable virgins.
As a person who spent his first 15 to 20 years attending various Mosques’ lecture sessions and roaming different Islamiyya and Zaure schools, I can vividly remember how these schools help in radicalizing children at an early age.
In the Islamiyya schools I attended, a teacher could hardly give you biographies of Sahabbai (companions of the prophet) who were lenient or not army generals in the battles of Uhud, Khandaq or Badr.
Role models among the pious predecessors are known not as tolerant religious men but as persons who could kill for a slight mistake in front of the Prophet even if the Prophet might so “no”!
You could hardly find an Islamiyya pupil who doesn’t know perfectly about the battle of badr but who, at the same time, will not be so amazed when you tell him about the philosophy behind the Treaty of Hudaibiya or a perfect explanation of the Medinan Constitution.
An average Northerner who attended Islamiyya School would not know what Jihad really means beyond wars, Arab colonialism and religious conquests. Most of us don’t know the other side of the jihadi coin: as spiritual struggle and defending Islamic borders.
This applies not only to youth but many clerics and preacher men who use Friday pulpits to spread the version of Islam they understand.
Recently, one of the quietist-salafi clerics and a university professor, Prof. Umar Labdo, posted on his Facebook account that Benue state. (a Christian majority state in Northern Nigeria) belongs to Muslims by right of conquest!).
Scholars have described the relationship between northern quietist-salafi ulema, who are outspoken in influencing and promoting polemics, to the jihadi-salafi Boko Haram is tantamount to the relationship between salafi-jihadi scholar Almaqdisi and the well-known in the jihadisphere Abu Mus’ab Alzarqawy. The former spread the carpet while the later lied on it.
This created an atmosphere for easy radicalization from early years of childhood. Many children grow up trying to emulate the other side of the history of pious predecessors and to be the force that would bring the nations of kafirai (infidels) down, of wars and conquests, until at some times they got diverted by economic needs.
When the name of Osama bin Laden became popular after 9/11, only a few scholars, you can count them with fingers, condemned his atrocities. Majority of them showed Osama bin Laden as a religious figure who set out to destroy America and its allies that were (or still “are”) stumbling blocks to instituting Sharia law globally.
One influential cleric and a Commander of Islamic Moral Police (Hisbah) in Kano State, Sheikh Aminu Ibrahim Daurawa, voiced out that those who condemned 9/11 (like Sanusi Lamido Sanusi[?] and Sheikh Musal Qasiyuni Kabara), and considered suicide bombing as Islamicaly impermissible, are hypocrites! To legitimize suicide bombing and to show how gallant Osama bn Laden was, he added that even “Allah is suicide bomber”.
These types of clerics are the ones a Northerner listens to in a radio after he left Islamiyya and started gluing his ears to the speakers of his radio in markets, or join their mosque classes and lecture sessions in the evening. Boko Haram exploited these loopholes and chose the North as its operational theater where it can find vulnerable youth to be easy recruits.
The bad economic conditions and the rising rate of unemployment among the northern youths contributed to the easy recruitment of insurgents in the region, though not a major factor.
Boko Haram, under Muhammad Yusuf, used this backdoor for easy radicalization which lead to religious conviction that would later turn to jihadi activities.
YZ Ya’u et al summarized it: “The initial success of the BH movement was also linked to the fact that it was organized in a way that had direct bearing on the question of livelihoods”.
Markaz Ibn Taimiyya served as a focal point for wealth distribution and economic support for the teeming unemployed youth working in the fields of agriculture, transport and trade.
The Future of Boko Haram
Religious extremism is the background upon which religious terrorism is built. The other loopholes that are exploited by the recruiters are poor economy (the wider gap between the rich and the poor in Nigeria), misgovernance, corruption and mismanagement of public funds by the government officials.
Religious conviction and the extremists’ interpretation of Islam are the two major. triggers of terrorism in Nigeria. Islamists’ rhetorics and polemics instigate debates that raise emotional triggers to violence.
Nigerian government put huge resources in addressing the terrorism through armed war but little is done in the non-conflict aspect of the religious militancy.
The internal schisms among different Boko Haram groups have helped in dividing the terror and that could lead to conquering it but not in a near future.
It is sad to admit that Nigeria will see the re-emergence of another and different Boko Haram even if the current one is vanquished.
Extremists continue propagating their own interpretation of religion – of war and bloodsheds, and government is not doing enough to stop them because politicians profit from their numbers.
To address this, preaching should be regulated and religious hate speech should be curbed and countered before it reach to the point of becoming religious terrorism.
The moderate voices should as well be promoted even if their numbers are negligible. Nigeria as a secular country can copy some of the counter extremism tactics being used by other secular countries like Britain.
The future of Boko Haram is in the hand of the government, the society and the people in general. For effective resilience the three should work side by side in preventing another emergence of terrorist groups. We are still battling this war. We should not allow another one to break.
This essay was originally published in 2017
