Boko Haram's war on Nigeria

THE latest act of violence of the Islamist group in Nigeria has taken the lives of more than 50 innocent students of a school in the north-eastern Nigerian town of Potiskum on Monday. While the insurgents have been targeting primarily schools and educational institutions – its name, Boko Haram, stands for “Western education is forbidden” – security forces, and even the UN headquarters in the capital, have been targeted too.

Regrettably, the Nigerian military has not been able to effectively check the spate of violence perpetrated by Boko Haram despite the state of emergency declared in the north-eastern region of the country since May 2013. There is no palpable effect on the insurgent group nor has the effort to restore normalcy in the region borne fruit. In fact its writ in the north-eastern region of the country is being gradually established.

Regrettably too, the world is witnessing another so called Jihadists group who wants to establish their kind of Sharia in the country. What, however, it completely overlooks is that it is violating the very teachings and injunctions that it wants to establish in the country. Indiscriminately killing innocent people, and that too children, because they are taking western education, or keeping 200 female students hostage for over six months, is not what the Koran or the Sunnah teaches. It must realise that the path of religion is not traversed through means of brutality, and their cause, if any, cannot be served by the strategy of violence they have adopted. And even more, their atrocious acts provide fodders to the detractors of the religion.