NIGERIA: Jos Archbishop and Anglican Primate Say Boko Haram are Enemies of Church and State Religion not poverty is the issue, say Anglican leaders By David W. Virtue DD www.virtueonline.org November 17, 2104 The Anglican Archbishop of the Province of Jos, the Most Rev. Benjamin Kwashi, blasted the media, especially war correspondent and investigative journalist Jerome Starkey of The (London) Times for saying the brutal kidnappings and murders by Boko Haram are about poverty when in fact it is all about religion. Speaking at a recent diocesan convention, Archbishop Kwashi, who is also the Bishop of Jos, pointed a finger at The Times Nov. 11 report for saying that the bombing that took place at Potiskum was not fueled by Islamic extremism, but that insurgency in the North of Nigeria is fueled by poverty. "This undermines the truth with the same old story we hear again and again from those unwilling to face the connected and organized global jihadist network we face today," an angry Kwashi said. "Poverty does not explain the death by suicide bomb of 40 school children- Muslim children in Potiksum. It does not explain the abduction, forced conversion, and forced marriage of some 200 girls in Chibok. To say that this is the result of poverty and corruption is to play down the evil of Boko Haram, and their form of Islam- an Islam we do not know from the Quran, or from the Muslims of my generation. "Remember that often those Muslims who do not share their extremist ideology are often their victims too. Boko Haram and their kind delight in massacres, slaughters, rape and murders, this is not the face of poverty, but the face of radical Islamist jihad. Many world governments are increasingly recognizing this global terror movement- from ISIS to Al Queda to Boko Haram: to hide behind the issues of poverty or corruption- which do not figure in extremist ideology- is a red herring. To do as this report has done is to put both Christians and non-extremist Muslims in jeopardy." Archbishop Kwashi added that he deplored the poverty and corruption of his country, "though I wish those co-conspirators in the West would take their lion share of the blame for the stolen monies and disgraced leaders they harbor. Further, I can attest that the Muslims of my childhood were certainly poorer than those of today, yet they never bought arms or slaughtered innocents. Poverty is real, corruption is global, complex and also real. But so is the global terror ideology of which Boko Haram is a practitioner, and the global terror network of which it is a part. It is both untrue and unhelpful to conflate and confuse these issues." In Washington DC recently, the leader of Nigeria's 20 million Anglicans, the Most. Rev. Nicholas Okoh called the Department of State and US Commissioners for Religious Freedom to account saying the situation in the northern part of Nigeria is not a result of poverty. "The majority of the governors in the north are Muslims so the issue is religious extremism -- it is all about religion." In a message to Virtueonline through his Nigerian affiliate bishop Julian Dobbs of CANA East, he wrote that there is a need for Islam in Nigeria's north to exercise its dominance. Rest of Article: http://www.virtueonline.org/nigeria...e-say-boko-haram-are-enemies-church-and-state
Flip side - is it not possible that people who are sick in the mind are using religion to quench their thirst of all that evil and twisted? One can argue that both the extremist and the "thinking" (for lack of a better term) Islam draw their faith from the same source. Not to defend anyone, but media has a way of reporting things such that they create more hype.