Originally published in Aina
Suppose that there was a country where Muslims were being massacred every month and mosques and imams were being targeted and destroyed. Could anyone imagine the Obama Administration choosing to remain silent in the face of such atrocities?
A mob attack on Muslims in Burma immediately resulted in a condemnation from the State Department and a call for its government to make more concessions to Muslims. But a car bombing and shooting attack on two churches in Nigeria have not been similarly commented on by the State Department, sending the message that Muslim life is precious, but Christian life is cheap. The Muslim dead of Burma are sacred, but the Christian dead of Nigeria are only more dead infidels.
Boko Haram, the Islamic terrorist organization responsible for both attacks, has yet to be declared a terrorist organization by the State Department, despite having carried out religiously motivated bombings and shootings that have killed over a thousand people in the last few years alone. These numbers begin to approach the level of murders carried out by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The “Boko Haram Terrorist Designation Act of 2012“, introduced by Senator Scott Brown, mandates that the State Department produce a detailed report that either designates Boko Haram as a terrorist group or justifies why it should not be listed as a terrorist group. A similar bill was introduced by Congressman Meehan in the House. It is a testament to the obstructionism of the State Department and its whitewashing of Boko Haram that such a bill even had to be introduced. While the State Department has played delaying games, the bodies of murdered Christians have continued piling up.
It is also tragically noteworthy that all eleven sponsors of the “Boko Haram Terrorist Designation Act”, in both the Senate and the House, have been Republicans. Not a single Democrat appeared to be willing to stand up for the human rights of Nigerian Christians. If the “Boko Haram Terrorist Designation Act” comes down to a vote, that vote should be seen as nothing less than a test of complicity for individual Democrats in the cover-up of Nigeria’s Islamic genocide by the Obama Administration.
Genocide denial pervades not only the Obama Administration and its Congressional allies, but also the media, which continues to promote the destructive myth that Boko Haram is not truly religiously motivated and that it can only be stopped by giving more money and power to the Muslim north.
Had a non-Muslim group carried out numerous attacks on mosques and Muslim worshipers, and then ordered Muslims to leave an area, it is absolutely inconceivable that the Obama Administration and its media allies would deny that these were religiously motivated attacks. It is even more inconceivable that its preferred solution would be to tell the government to stop fighting terrorism. But what is inconceivable when it comes to Muslims is Obama Administration policy for Christians.
At the end of April, Daniel Benjamin, from the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, testifying at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, denied that Boko Haram was affiliated with Al-Qaeda, while conceding that its members were probably being trained by Al-Qaeda. Benjamin then stated that the State Department’s response to the Islamic genocide of Christians by Jihadists in the Muslim north was “to press for a change to its (Nigeria’s) heavy-handed approach to the security threats in the north”.
The State Department’s approach to the genocide of Christians by Muslims is to press the Nigerian government to scale down its efforts against that genocide. Benjamin’s statement is not unique; it is the consistent policy of the State Department, which is the consistent policy of the Obama Administration, to respond to Islamic genocide in Nigeria by pressuring its government to step down its war on terror.Johnnie Carson, the Assistant Secretary at the Bureau of African Affairs, in his remarks on Nigeria, claimed bizarrely, that despite a campaign of violence focused heavily around attacks on churches, “Religion is not driving extremist violence in either Jos or Northern Nigeria” and warned the Nigerian government to “avoid excessive violence”.
That same month, Don Yamamoto, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of African Affairs, testifying at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and reading from the same script, said that, “Religion is not the primary driver of extremist violence in Nigeria”, like Carson, claimed that Nigeria’s “religious and ethnic diversity is one of its greatest strengths” and demanded that the Nigerian government spend more time teaching its security forces to respect Muslim human rights.
The claim put out by the State Department and the media that Boko Haram is not a true terrorist group, but only a handful of rogue elements, has never been particularly credible. Boko Haram’s attacks are effective and lethal; the execution is more in line with Al-Qaeda and Hamas, than with a motley bunch of thugs. Former members of Boko Haram have described following the usual Jihadist trail of Muslim countries and training camps. And some have implicated high ranking Muslim officials in Nigeria as the force behind the genocidal campaign.
The name of General Muhammadu Buhari, who took over Nigerian in a military coup in the 1980’s is the one that comes up most often. Buhari, who lost the last election after calling for Sharia law, has warned that if he is not allowed to win in 2015, “By Allah, the dog and the baboon will be soaked in blood.”
Last time around, Buhari’s supporters had targeted Christians for bloody retribution, blaming them for the failure of Muhammadu Buhari to win over the Christian majority. During those bloody days, 350 churches were destroyed by Buhari’s Muslim gangs. Boko Haram’s attacks on churches are a more strategic and covert version of the attacks that had been carried out by Buhari’s Muslim supporters.
Sani Haliru, a former Boko Haram member, has claimed that top Nigerian Muslim leaders, including General Buhari, and General Ibrahim Babangida, his Muslim successor, are behind the genocidal campaign. While there is no definitive evidence of this yet, it is clear that some Muslim leaders have extensive contacts with Boko Haram leaders. Others like Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso have given amnesty to Boko Haram terrorists. Some like Governor Mamuda Aliyu Shinkafi have issued their own murderous fatwas in the name of Islam.
The Obama Administration and Boko Haram appear to share the same goal of undermining the Nigerian government in order to replace it with a Muslim dictatorship that will operate under Islamic law. While the Muslim north massacres and terrorizes its way to power, the Obama Administration cover-ups their atrocities and pressures the freely elected Nigerian government into making concessions to the genocidal foot soldiers of an Islamic dictatorship.
