To start with, Islamic militancy has less to do with finding work for the “idle hands” or “jobless” individuals than with propagating extremist ideology. For example, the Detroit-bound Flight 253 bomber on Christmas Day, December 25, 2009, 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, was the son of one of the wealthiest men in the Northern part of Nigeria. Also, the 9/11 hijackers, including Mohammed Atta (the son of a wealthy Cairo lawyer), were well-educated children of privilege. None of them suffered first-hand economic privation or political oppression. According to a recent 200-page leaked document by the British Security Agency, commonly known as MI5 (Military Intelligence, Section 5), a majority of British Islamic terror suspects are middle-class or upper-middle-class. Also, a statistical analysis of the determinants of participation in terrorist activities by members of the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad between the late 1980s and May 2002 showed that both higher education and standard of living are positively associated with participation in Hamas or PIJ and with becoming a suicide bomber.
Given the above, it is obvious that, like violent radical Islamist extremism, Boko Haram’s violent uprisings are not a fall-out of frustration with corruption and venality in the country; nor the attendant high level of poverty and unemployment in the Northern part of the country, as many are wont to say. If that be the case, amnesty is not amenable to those who are content to exist in a 7th-century backwater rather than in the vicissitudes of 21st-century politics. Amnesty, as a political forgiveness, is granted in a social or legal context to end hostilities and maintain peaceful civic relations. Also, unlike pardon which is associated with a somewhat personal concession by a head of state to the perpetrator of an offence, amnesty is usually addressed to crimes against state sovereignty – that is, to political offences with respect to which forgiveness is deemed more expedient for the public welfare than prosecution and punishment. Of course, it can be argued that all armed conflicts have a political undertone. But again, Boko Haram operatives focus more on hard-line conservative Islamist ideology than on the theory and practice of politics. Besides, the various public statements issued by the leaders (or supposed leaders) of the group and its factions make it horrifyingly clear that they are fighting to create an Islamic state in Nigeria.
What then is the possible solution to the ongoing menace of Boko Haram group to public order in the country?
Speaking last month in Port Harcourt at the opening of this year’s Rivers State Education Summit, Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, remarked that Boko Haram members had limited knowledge of Islam and that there was a need for them to be retrained on the content of Islam. He also mentioned that some of the greatest philosophers in history were Muslims. In truth, the intellectual riches of Islamic civilisation – the transmission to Europe of Greek science and philosophy in Arabic translations, the contributions to astronomy, mathematics (including the Arab invention of algebra), physics (optics), geology, botany and medicine, the majestic line of philosophers including Ibn Sina (known as Averroes in the West) whose work influenced St Thomas Aquina – cannot be put out of countenance to demobilise Boko Haram violent extremists and their supporters. To the extent that a religious duel with known members of Boko Haram and their supporters becomes essential. This, of course, means challenging them to justify their beliefs and actions by citing religious texts, and reminding them of the values of mainstream Islam using only the authority of the Qur’an.
This is not a mere assertion. It is has some plausibility. In 2002, a Yemeni judge, Hamoud Abdulhamid al-Hitar, pioneered a religious re-education programme for Islamic militant groups and their supporters in Yemen using theological “arguing” as a tool for engaging and combating militant ideology. This programme, which received the attention of London’s New Scotland Yard, as well as French and German police, including US diplomats, was later adopted by the Saudi government which in the past tended to appease terrorists, using them as pawns until a wave of deadly terrorist attacks began in the Kingdom starting with the Riyadh bombing by radical Islamist militant group in 2003. Presently, the prototype of the Qur’anic arbitration measure designed to combat the intellectual and ideological justifications for violent extremism is in popularity, with a number of countries, including Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia, adopting similar counter-radicalisation programmes.
By designing a soft counterterrorism measure to teach Boko Haram operatives the fallacies of extremist ideology through a programme of theological discussion, there is a possibility that this may encourage them to rethink their grasp of the Qur’an. Indeed, overwhelming evidence suggests that if people are exposed to more factual information and different experiences, they moderate their views. To give a typical example, a Saudi former militant for 11 years, from the age of 16, Mansour al-Nogaidan, set fire to video stores selling Western movies in Riyadh, and even burned down a charitable society for widows and orphans in his village because he was convinced it would lead to the liberation of women. After being introduced to liberal Muslim philosophers he recanted and began writing as a columnist in the Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh, taking his erstwhile friends to task for their blinkered reading of the religious texts, and testifying to have achieved some peace and atonement for his past ignorance and violence. Mansour’s testimony indicates that, with Qur’anic arbitration, any member of Boko Haram can go from militant Islam to modernism.
The dividing line between antiterrorism military operations versus amnesty option has got to be rethought for new times; for neither all-out military operation nor blanket amnesty, will accomplish much unless either is backed by a programme to change Boko Haram members’ ideology. With fresh plan by the Federal Government to constitute a committee that will be responsible for administering amnesty for members of Boko Haram, it is, therefore, suggested that the programme should be made up of a committee of Muslim scholars from around the country, principally from the North, to duel with known Boko Haram members and their supporters, challenging their motivations for joining extremist movements using only the authority of the Qur’an.
Of course, all teachers have their problem pupils. While Qur’anic arbitration programme may be lost on the truly hard-core Boko Haram terrorists, the programme may prove effective for those who have mostly flirted with extremist ideology. In any case, our guiding principle should always be that we are the seekers after answers, not the repository for people’s anger. In this respect, the Nigerian Muslim community leaders themselves must shoulder the responsibility for breaking the deadly nexus between Islamic religion and extremism by being dispassionate even when the issues involved arouse great passion. This responsibility highlights the perceptiveness of the observation by Pascal who wrote in the 17th century that: “Let us labour to think clearly; for such is the foundation of morality.” In a similar vein, George Orwell wrote: “We have sunk to such a depth that the restatement of the obvious has become the first duty of intelligent men.” On the whole, let everyone, therefore, endeavour to always cultivate intelligible tongue in which to express their feelings.
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