Obama Administration: Boko Haram Has 'Legitimate Concerns'

For reasons that only Barack Obama can answer, the State Department took far too long to designate the savage Muslim group, Boko Haram, a terrorist organization. When State Department officials finally did designate it a foreign terrorist organization, they did so while never mentioning that the people being terrorized were Christians who are being targeted for their beliefs. The media doesn’t mention it, but the kidnapped schoolgirls who have finally brought this evil group to international attention are Christians.

But the State Department implied that the group had other motivations. “These designations are an important and appropriate step,” the State Department said, “but only one tool in what must be a comprehensive approach by the Nigerian government to counter these groups through a combination of law enforcement, political, and development efforts, as well as military engagement, to help root out violent extremism while also addressing the legitimate concerns of the people of northern Nigeria.”

Boko Haram originated in northern Nigeria, where there is strong support for the imposition of Islamic law – which is also Boko Haram’s goal.

The idea that a devout Muslim group that slaughters in the cause of Islam practically every day and whose very name means “Western education is sinful” has “legitimate concerns” exposes the dangerous motives of the pro-jihadist Obama administration.

Boko Haram sets schools ablaze. Boko Haram targets teachers and doctors, but above all, Christians. They murdered over 2,596 people in the first three months of 2014. What possible legitimate concerns could these savages have? Imposing Islam is not a legitimate concern.

“Legitimate concerns” – was the Obama administration referring to CIA director John Brennan’s notorious statement that “jihad is a legitimate tenet of Islam?”

The mainstream media’s sudden interest in the abducted girls and Boko Haram is amazing. Back in 2012, my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), ran a citywide bus campaign in New York, highlighting the savagery of jihadists against Nigerian Christians. One hundred bus ads called attention to the victims. The ad read, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support the Nigerian Christians. Defeat jihad.”

These ads were attacked by media and cultural elites as “anti-Muslim” “hate” ads, condemned by the same two-faced quislings in the mainstream media who are now writing furious editorials demanding that these abducted girls be saved.

This devout Muslim group, whose official name is The Congregation of the People of the Sunnah for Dawah and Jihad, has been waging bloody jihad in Nigeria for years, while the U.S. government, the United Nations and the mainstream media yawned. Here are just a few of the stories that should have touched off an international media firestorm, but didn’t:

• Last Monday, they stormed the town of Gamboru Ngala, torching houses and murdering at least 300 people. They set houses on fire and shot those who tried to escape.

• In mid-April, according to Reuters, they “killed at least 60 people in an attack on a village in northeast Nigeria, while a separate attack killed eight people at a teacher training college.”

• In late March, the Nigerian jihadists “killed 19 people and abducted 15 others in different villages of Agatu local government area in Benue state.”

• On March 5, they “attacked a cluster of villages in Plateau state, killing 16 Christians and destroying numerous homes.”

• The day before that, on March 4, they “burned 11 people to death inside their homes in northeastern Nigeria, where frequent attacks have claimed at least 130 lives in the past four days alone.”

• And on the day before that, March 3, they “killed at least 29 people in an attack on a town in north-eastern Nigeria’s Borno state.”

• Several days before that, on February 27, they “killed at least 37 people in three separate attacks in northeast Nigeria, including at a theological college” – a Christian college, of course.

• Two days before that, they “burned children alive,” entering a college in northeast Nigeria before dawn, setting it afire, and murdering 43 students. A teacher said that they “shot and slit the throats of children who tried to escape through the windows,” while others used machetes to hack students to death.

• Five days before that, they “attacked the northeastern town of Bama on Wednesday, opening fire on a school, shooting or burning to death 47 people and trashing the palace of a traditional ruler.”

• In late January, they “used explosives to attack a village in north-east Nigeria, killing 52 people and razing more than 300 homes.”

That isn’t even a full list of their attacks just this year. And why are they committing all this bloodshed and savagery? Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has said, “The reason why I will kill you is you are infidels, you follow Democracy… Whoever follows Democracy is an infidel.” In a video, members of this group said, “We are working for Allah and must bring Shariah to existence; we are committed to protecting Muslims from being annihilated by infidels. We are going to kill them. We will enter Churches and slaughter Christians… We are calling on all Muslims to come out and fight Jihad.”

Few people cared. I wrote on February 25, “When are good and decent people going to be free to speak about Muslim supremacist savagery? Instead, reporting on these stories of unimaginable horror is considered ‘islamophobia.’ That’s where we are in the modern age of the savage.”

Maybe the attention that the kidnapped girls has brought to this group will finally result in concrete action to stop this bloodlust. How many more people must they slaughter? It is not a good sign that the denial and willful ignorance are continuing: Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday blamed Boko Haram on poverty, saying that “much of this challenge comes out of this poverty where young people are grabbed at an early stage, proffered a little bit of money.” In reality, poverty doesn’t cause terrorism. Studies show that jihadis are generally wealthier and better educated than their peers.

Let’s have some uniformity in outrage against all jihad groups, not just against one monstrous incident but the ideology behind the global jihad. Only then can we begin to defeat this scourge.

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.