Northern Nigeria senior Archbishop Ben Kwashi has said that people need to understand that the terrorism of Boko Haram is not a result of poverty, but of Islamic extremism.
Kwashi continued that Boko Haram’s abduction of over 200 girls from Chibok was due to poverty, nor was the recent bombing of a school in Potiskum that killed 40 children.
"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 Koran, or from the Muslims of my generation,” Kwashi said.
"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 recognising this global terror movement - from ISIS to Al Qaeda 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."
“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,” Kwashi said.
Publication date: November 14, 2014
