... not to be confused with Procol Harum, Harum Scarum, possibly to be confused with Helter Skelter. The Nigerian version of al-Qaeda and the Taliban rolled together and flavored with a smigeon of distinctly Subsaharan ignorance and brutality...
is demanding that Nigeria's Christian president convert to Islam or resign, a stance that again calls into question the B.O. regime's playing down of religion as the primary motivation for the radical group.
In an online video clip released over the weekend, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau told President
Goodluck Jonathan... 14th President of Nigeria. He was Governor of Bayelsa State from 9 December 2005 to 28 May 2007, and was sworn in as Vice President on 29 May 2007. Jonathan is a member of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). He is a lover of nifty hats, which makes him easily recognizable unless someone else in the room is wearing a neat chapeau...
to "repent and forsake Christianity."
The News Agency of Nigeria said Shekau, speaking in Hausa, said the president should convert or resign if he wanted Boko Haram to end its violent campaign.
Presidential front man Reuben Abati dismissed the demand as attempted "blackmail."
"When Nigerians voted overwhelmingly for President Jonathan in the 2011 general election, they knew they were voting for a Christian," he told news hounds in the federal capital, Abuja.
"He has the mandate of Nigerians to serve his fatherland. Nobody should imagine that he will succumb to blackmail."
Inviting an enemy to convert to Islam or face the consequences is a longstanding tradition in Islam, modeled on the example set by the religion's seventh century prophet.
A hadith (the writings and sayings of the prophet) by Sahih al-Bukhari quotes Mohammed as saying, "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform a that, then they save their lives an property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah."
(In 2006, Iran's diminutive President
Mahmoud Short RoundAhmadinejad sent President Bush a letter interpreted by some scholars as incorporating an invitation to embrace Islam. He urged Bush to make "a genuine return to the teachings of prophets, to monotheism and justice, to preserve human dignity and obedience to the Almighty and his prophets." Reporting on the letter at the time, Iran's hardline Siasat-e Rooz daily said, "It has been the prophet's way to invite the infidel leaders to the right way.")
Boko Haram has grabbed credit for dozens of deadly bombings and other attacks, mostly targeting Christians in northern parts of Africa's most populous country. It has vowed to cleanse northern Nigeria of Christians.
Declared goals of the group, whose name roughly translates "Western education is forbidden," include banning non-Islamic education and extending shari'a (Islamic law) -- currently implemented in 12 northern states -- across the entire country, 40 percent of whose people are Christians.
Despite its increasingly bloody campaign, the B.O. regime so far has resisted calls by U.S. politicians to designate Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) under American law.