These bastards took the girls!
Posted on 05/16/2014 11:00:18 AM PDT by xzins
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.”
Shekau boasted in a recent video that the schoolgirls had been forced to convert to Islam.
“These girls, these girls you occupy yourselves with… we have indeed liberated them. These girls have become Muslims,” the terror leader said.
"In that case, do you believe that it is accurate to describe Al-Qaeda's philosophy as a Muslim one?"
and then this....
"Why do you claim to understand the true philosophy of Islam better than the leaders of Boko Hiram and Al-Qaeda? Have you studied the Koran more than they have"
THERE ya go!
If so, that was good advice.
You don’t declare war, even informally, on 1.2B people if you can avoid it.
Even if it’s a transparent political ploy, a legal fiction that Islam itself is not the problem can be useful.
That should not, of course, blind us to the fact that it very largely is the problem and should not impact our actual strategy and tactics.
It appears that many of our political and possibly even military leaders have fully bought into our legal and diplomatic fiction, which is really, really stupid.
You should never start believing your own propaganda.
Actually, I don’t think they believe their nonsense about Islam,
but are actually in support of Islam as an anti-Christian movement.
See? They’re not Muslim.
Later, Obamugabe and his thugs will get to define what “Christian” means, too...and that’ll be anything John Shelby Spong says along with that homosexual Episcopal bishop whose false marriage just ended in false divorce.
These communist traitors in wdc sure seem to believe that everyone else is an idiot. These degenerates in wdc need brought to Justice.
Then call him Muslim trash.
That’s indisputably true of many liberals and leftists.
However, I think their bête noire is wider than Christianity.
They hate and despise all Western Civilization, with of course America, capitalism and Christianity in many ways the most visible symbols of that civilization.
Christianity, of course, is the foundation of Western Civ. But we could all become atheists tomorrow, and these guys would still hate the rest of Western Civ.
‘BH ain’t Muslims’
Comrades, this is glorious news! We must stream from our offices, factories and homes carrying banners praising Comrade Obama and the Inner Parties for their wise leadership and our new, happy lives ...
We’ll never know for sure,
but I would assert that the flipside is the real truth.
They hate Western Civ because it is based on God’s moral Law.
I wonder if they’ll realize what they’ve lost when we’re all gone.
There is an old saying about, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
Just the other day it struck me that this could be expanded to explain at least some of the otherwise illogical hatred for Western Civ out there.
“The perfect is the most deadly enemy of the (pretty darn) good.”
Western Civilization objectively (simply using common units of measurement) simultaneously provides much greater personal freedom AND prosperity for more people and for a larger percentage of its people than any other that has ever existed.
Because it isn’t perfect, that some people are still oppressed or in poverty, its opponents insist it must be destroyed and the (prsumably) perfect civilization built on its ruins.
Yet surely any logical person should be able to recognize that when you destroy a pretty darn good civilization, what replaces it is much more likely to be pretty darn crappy than perfect. Or even as good as what you just destroyed.
I guess there is a shortage of logical thinkers around.
Or Obama could not have campaigned successfully on “Hope and Change,” implying that ANY possible change will by definition be an improvement.
It’s the humanist worldview that leads them to believe that they can do better, if only the existing order was destroyed.
These bastards took the girls!
Proving once again that the greater threat to freedom is Progressivism not Islam.
That hashtag will do the trick. The State Department has to stop confusing non-Islamo-fascist Procol Harum with terrorist Boko Harum.
This is evident, of course, in “Whiter Shade of Pale” where procol harum admits to only 16 vestal virgins while boko harum has about 300.
#ReligonOfLove
*********
Yeah. They *love* you to pieces.
LOL!
So now our State Dept. is telling muslims whether or not they are muslims?
We are surrounded by IDIOTS!
Of course they are muslim. The Country is predominately muslim. Nothing they do is outside of the teachings of islam.
Stop trying to cover for these animals.............
Correct. That's exactly what it is.
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