Boko Haram

Guardian, Join us or die: the birth of Boko Haram, 4 Feb 2016 extracts from Andrew Walker�s new book, Eat the Heart of the Infidel (Hurst).

DABIQ: Islamic State could transport Nuke from Nigeria into U.S. through Mexico

ISIS op-ed "claims it could transport a nuclear device in the same way illicit drugs are smuggled into Europe through West Africa, adding that Boko Haram�s presence in Nigeria could facilitate the transaction."

by Edwin Mora, Breitbart News, June 3, 2015

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), in the latest edition of its propaganda magazine, indicated that it could purchase a nuclear weapon in Pakistan, take it to Nigeria, and then smuggle it into the U.S. through Mexico by using existing trafficking networks in Latin America.

In an op-ed article published in the ninth edition of ISIS� Dabiq magazine released in late May, the jihadist group claims it could transport a nuclear device in the same way illicit drugs are smuggled into Europe through West Africa, adding that Boko Haram�s presence in Nigeria could facilitate the transaction.

The Nigeria-based Islamic terrorist group, Boko Haram, pledged allegiance to ISIS in March.

In March, Gen. John Kelly, commander of U.S. Southern Command (Southcom), warned that Islamic terrorist groups such as ISIS could exploit the capabilities and knowledge of Latin American smuggling networks to infiltrate the U.S. through Mexico and possibly bring in weapons of mass destruction.

The general, in October 2014, acknowledged that illegal drugs from South America move �through West Africa, up the Maghreb and into Western Europe,� adding that ISIS enemy al Qaeda and its affiliates take �a lot of money to allow it to flow.�

According to the alleged author of the Dabiq op-ed article, kidnapped British photojournalist John Cantlie, ISIS could smuggle a nuke into the U.S. by using the same route and reversing the flow� moving the nuke from West Africa into South America, from where it could be transported into the United States through Mexico.

�Let me throw a hypothetical operation onto the table,� Cantlie wrote in the article entitled �The Perfect Storm.� �The Islamic State has billions of dollars in the bank, so they call on their wilayah [province] in Pakistan to purchase a nuclear device through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region.� He addded:

The weapon is then transported over land until it makes it to Libya, where the mujahidin [fighters] move it south to Nigeria. Drug shipments from Columbia bound for Europe pass through West Africa, so moving other types of contraband from East to West is just as possible.The nuke and accompanying mujahidin arrive on the shorelines of South America and are transported through the porous borders of Central America before arriving in Mexico and up to the border with the United States.

�From there it�s just a quick hop through a smuggling tunnel and hey presto, they�re mingling with another 12 million �illegal� aliens in America with a nuclear bomb in the trunk of their car,� he also wrote.

If not a nuke, ISIS could easily smuggle in �a few thousand tons of ammonium nitrate explosive� that is easy to manufacture, said the article.

Cantlie wrote that ISIS, which started as a movement in Iraq, has suddenly morphed into a global phenomenon that the West and the democratic world as a whole is ill-prepared to handle.

He said that Boko Haram controls most of Nigeria, home to �an exhausted and smashed national army that is now in a virtual state of collapse�.

While testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March, Gen. Kelly noted, �Last year, ISIS adherents posted discussions on social media calling for the infiltration of the U.S. southern border. Thankfully, we have not yet seen evidence of this occurring, but I am deeply concerned that smuggling networks are a vulnerability that terrorists could seek to exploit.�

�While there is not yet any indication that the criminal networks involved in human and drug trafficking are interested in supporting the efforts of terrorist groups, these networks could unwittingly, or even wittingly, facilitate the movement of terrorist operatives or weapons of mass destruction toward our borders, potentially undetected and almost completely unrestricted,� he added.

The general, speaking at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. in October 2014, warned that Latin American drug cartels were working with jihadist groups in West Africa, namely Sunni group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and its affiliates.

Islamic State in Nigeria Targets Catholics: 100,000 Homeless, 5,000 Killed

• 350 Catholic churches destroyed in one diocese alone,
• More than half the diocese's institutions deserted,
• Boko Haram controls 85% of the territory,
• Boko Haram recently pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State Caliphate, and re-named itself 'Islamic State in Nigeria'.

Boko Haram Targets Catholics: 100,000 Homeless From Islamist Insurgency, Christian Charity Says

by Morgan Winsor, International Business Times � May 12, 2015

h/t Jihad Watch

More than 100,000 Nigerian Catholics have been left homeless by Boko Haram�s six-year insurgency in northeast Nigeria and another 5,000 have been killed, a Christian charity said Tuesday. As a result, there are now 7,000 widows and 10,000 orphans in the Maiduguri diocese, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) told Premier.

A report by the charity also found some 350 churches have been destroyed in the diocese, which encompasses Borno and Yobo states as well as part of Adamawa. More than half of the Maiduguri diocese�s parish centers, chaplaincies and church-run primary schools have been deserted by Nigerian Catholics and many of them are occupied by Boko Haram militants, who control up to 85 percent of the diocese territory.

�People are very scared, and those who are able to return home find there is nothing left,� Rev. Father Gideon Obasogie, the diocesan director of social communications, told ACN, according to Catholic Herald. �A life lived with much fear is terrible.��

Boko Haram has sworn loyalty to the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS or ISIL. ISIS officially accepted its pledge in March, making Boko Haram the largest and most lethal jihadi group to be inducted into the Islamic State group�s network. The militants seek the establishment of a state in northeast Nigeria based on strict Islamic law.

Nigeria rescues almost 300 female Boko Haram captives, none Chibok girls

"Since 2015, the terrorist group has kidnapped over 2,000 females. These women are raped, forced into marriages, or sold as sex slaves... Witnesses claimed Boko Haram terrorists forced abducted women to marry members of the jihadist group only to later slaughter them before a battle..."

by Mary Chastain, Breitbart News � April 28, 2015

The Nigerian army announced on Tuesday that they had rescued over 200 girls and 93 women from Boko Haram camps in the Sambisa Forest. None of the young girls, though, have been identified as among the hundreds the radical Islamic group kidnapped in April 2014 in Chibok.

The kidnapping inspired the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. Many celebrities, including First Lady Michelle Obama, posted pictures on Twitter of themselves holding a placard with the hashtag on it. The fad lost its prominent place in the news over time, and the girls became a passing thought in many minds, even though hundreds of girls are still missing.

In the past year, numerous people told media outlets they believed they had seen the Chibok girls. One woman captured by Boko Haram claimed to the BBC that the girls �were treated differently � their food [was] better and water clean.� The families told Deutsche Welle they still hold out hope authorities will rescue their daughters. AFP interviewed some girls who managed to escape Boko Haram.

Since 2015, the terrorist group has kidnapped over 2,000 females. These women are raped, forced into marriages, or sold as sex slaves. As the army rescues people from the grips of Boko Haram, more stories emerge of the brutal treatment suffered under the group. Witnesses in Nigeria claimed Boko Haram terrorists forced abducted women to marry members of the jihadist group only to later slaughter them before a battle, lest they remarry Nigerian troops or �non-believers.� A few men chose to flee with their wives instead of resorting to murder.

Boko Haram was established in Nigeria five years ago and have killed over 13,000 people as they attempt to build their own Islamic caliphate. Their time might be running out as the army advances into their territory. The army reported Boko Haram is quickly running out of weapons and ammunition.

�The Boko Haram terrorists have run out of arms and ammunitions as the military intensify attacks on Sambisa Forest,� explained one resident in Tabe village of Damboa. �You can find more than 500 members of the insurgents, with only a few of them having rifles and even when one or two of them have rifles, it is like a stick, as they have run out of ammunitions, because the usual supplies they get are not forthcoming.�

OCN Interviews on Boko Haram, Meriam Ibrahim, and ISIS

Fr Chris Metropulos and I cover some of the most urgent news of Orthodoxy and Islam, the Global Jihad, and Muslim Persecution of Christians:

1. Orthodoxy and Islam: Boko Haram
By Fr. Chris Metropulos in OCN Now Radio � Islamic militant group Boko Haram has kidnapped hundreds of Nigerian girls, killed masses of civilians, and called for Muslims around the world to �kill, kill, kill.� Ralph Sidway updates us on the group�s atrocities, discusses how it relates to other Islamic terrorist groups, and asks how they are receiving funding to continue.
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2. Orthodoxy and Islam: Meriam Ibrahim
By Fr. Chris Metropulos in OCN Now Radio � Join Ralph Sidway and Fr. Chris as they discuss Meriam Ibrahim � the Sudanese Christian woman who was condemned to be lashed 100 times and then executed. Hear about the developments in her situation, the danger she faces from honor killings, and what her story can teach us.
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3. Orthodoxy and Islam: ISIS
By Fr. Chris Metropulos in OCN Now Radio � ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) has declared its plan to take over large territories in the Middle East. Ralph Sidway offers a crash course on this Islamic terrorist group. Who are they? How has the group developed? Who are they targeting and is the US in danger?
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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: 'Every form of violence in the name of religion is violence against religion itself'

Which is why Islam fails utterly and is being revealed throughout all the world as a false religion. Violence against Christians and other non-Muslims, and against women, in the name of Islam is part of Islam itself. It is not only permitted but made obligatory in the supposedly eternal and unchanging words of the Quran, the example being established through the Sunnah, the life and sayings (or 'Way') of Muhammad. 

We live in a pivotal age, when Orthodox Christians should hold out to Muslims of good conscience the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and invite them to leave behind their false religion which unleashes such bloodshed and madness upon the entire planet, and come into the Church to work out their salvation with us in fear and trembling. 

In a very subtle way, this is what +Bartholomew is doing. Without being antagonistic, His All Holiness is appealing to those Muslims who retain some measure of their God-given conscience.

Message to Muslims: "Leave falsehood, embrace Truth � Leave Islam, embrace Christ."

Every form of violence in the name of religion is violence against religion itself

What is happening in Nigeria and Sudan is a dual act of wrongdoing.

Pravmir � May 18, 2014

The Ecumenical Patriarchate has witnessed with great pain and distress the recent manifestations of religious violence against women in Northern Africa, which have profoundly and justifiably concerned the global community. It expresses its outright and unequivocal condemnation of the kidnapping in Nigeria of scores of young women, who are forcibly subjected to espouse Islam. Moreover, it professes its wholehearted and unambiguous denunciation of the pregnant young Christian mother in the Sudan for refusing to espouse Islam.

[That last sentence was horribly mistranslated so as to make it sound like His All-Holiness was denouncing the pregnant Sudanese woman (Meriam Ibrahim, who has since given birth in prison) for not adopting Islam. Of course, he is denouncing the Sudanese government for condemning her to death for being a Christian.]

While on an official pastoral visit to Germany, His All-Holiness delivered a message of hope for the release of these women:

We are horrified that, in the early twenty-first century, our world still experiences such horrific and disgraceful acts of religious violence. As we have repeatedly emphasized, every form of violence in the name of religion is violence against religion itself. 

What is happening in Nigeria and Sudan is a dual act of wrongdoing: first and foremost, it is a disgrace against humanity, which we believe and proclaim is created in the image and likeness of God; and second, it is a defamation of the God, whom the great religions of the world worship as divine creator of all life. 

In Northern Africa, both believers of Islam and Christianity are obliged to promote a God of love and compassion. And the political authorities are responsible for protecting their citizens, especially the more vulnerable members of their societies. Such acts are unacceptable from the perspective of religion and morality, as well as by standards of international human rights.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate fervently prays � and urges the prayers of all its faithful, together with all people of good will � for the safe release of the young girls in Nigeria as well as the safety and life of the young mother in Sudan.

276 Enslaved Nigerian Girls: The atrocity of Boko Haram

You repulsive vomitous excuse of a man.
Human beings are not for sale.   The girls belong to their own selves, belong to their own families and communities.   You are nothing short of a thief.

This is a bastardization of Islam, of decency, of liberation, of all that is good and beautiful.

We are dealing with people�s children here.  If we were dealing with property, it would be akin to someone breaking into another person�s home, stealing their property, and then stating that they are willing to sell the stolen material.

Except that we are not dealing with property.  We are talking about human beings.

- See more at: http://omidsafi.religionnews.com/2014/05/05/276-enslaved-nigerian-girls-atrocity-boko-haram/#sthash.aNBk7UBy.dpuf