“The Christian Women and Boko Haram – the Chibok Diaries”

BBC news reports today provided an excellent article entitled:  “Chibok diaries:  Chronicling a Boko Haram kidnapping”.  (BBC News, Top Stories, October 23, 2017)  The journalist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani interviews Naomi Adamu, who along with Sarah Samuel and three other girls used their books to chronicle some of their experiences while in captivity by the militants of Boko Haram (Nigeria).

Some 200 Christian and Muslim women were taken into captivity by certain militants who had come to the Christian school to obtain an “engine block” for a machine, but when this was not found instead took 200 young women into captivity.  According to this diary, these men did not want to go back to their leader, Abubakar Shekau without something to show for their efforts.  The said, “I can’t come with an empty car and go back with an empty car…If we take them the Shekau, [Boko Haram’s leader] he will know what to do.”

On the way to the Boko Harem’s forest hideout, some of the young women tried to escape by jumping off the trucks, but one girl in the car said, “Driver, some girls are jumping to escape…[when found] they said to them that “if they jump down again, if they saw her or any they will shoot her.”

On another occasion the Christian girls were separated from the Muslim girls and the militants threatened to burn those who would not convert to Islam with petrol.  Many remained as Christian, and the militants then gave them the jerrycan which they thought was petrol.  It was not petrol, only water.

The militants pleaded with the women not to lead them into temptation, so they had to keep their bodies covered in a hijab.  Mr. Abubakar Shekau  (the leader) said they had “kidnapped us to come and teach us the way to God, then your parents and the government and your principal are crying to us and saying we are raping  you and are doing bad, bad things to you…We brought you to teach you the way of Allah.”

Naomi Adamu told the journalist they were asked many times for those who wanted to get married.  Naomi said that those who refused to get married were treated as slaves.  “Every day they beat us.  They tell us to marry and if you refuse, they will beat you.  We will wash cloth, fetch water, do everything for their wives.  We were slaves.”

(Naomi continues):  “They said that those who do not accept Muslim religion are [like] sheep and cows and goats…they will kill them.”

Naomi Adamu and three other diarists-Rhoda Peter, Saratu Ayuba and Margaret Yama were released in May [2017].  Another diarist, Sarah Samuel agreed to marry a militant and remains in captivity.

Naomi says she wrote the diary with only her family in mind.  “I wrote it because of remembrance,” she said.  “For my brothers to see it, my sisters to see it, my parents to see it.”

Many of these women abducted by Boko Haram were Christian women.  Their suffering experienced at the hands of the Boko Haram militants exemplifies for us the conflict raging between militant Islam based on a 6^th century understanding of the Koran and the Christian church in Nigeria.  At the time of this writing many of these young woman have been released and have returned home to their villages and parents.  Some are still with the militants.  Some have been ostracized by their communities upon their return, and others warmly accepted.

This story provides an example of the distorted views of militant Islam in the 21^st century.  Militant Islam is springing up in many places all around the globe.  It is the theology fueling so much of the terrorism affecting our democratic societies.  Just as the prophet Mohammad forced Christians and Jews to convert in the 6^th century, or be killed or pay a tax to Islam, so also militant Islam is trying to recover what they consider to be the purest form of the Islamic faith, that based on the strictest interpretation possible of the Koran.

“Boko Haram” means “western education is forbidden” [or “is a sin”]. It is an extreme reaction to the desire of the Christian church to educate both women and men.  Militant Islam wants women to either serve them as their wives or their slaves.  The Christian church works at all levels to bring women into the freedom of their own self- expression and the realization of their hopes and dreams, whether married or not.

I composed this article based on the copyrighted article by the journalist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and excerpted these portions of a much larger article to give the reader a sense of the experience of these kidnapped Christian and Muslim women. I commend to the reader the full article which provides much more context and dialogue for the above excerpted remarks.

For me, this serves as a modern day example of what a distorted and a legalistic interpretation of the Koran can produce in militant religion, even in the 21^st century.  I would hope from this article a new dialogue might emerge between Christians and those of more moderate Islam, which could somehow help stop these distortions of religious faith from turning into such destructive acts, which ultimately threaten to destroy all religious faith.  Militant Islam, just like militant Christianity during the Crusades accomplishes nothing except to spill the blood of many, many innocents and to provide a lasting blight on the religious faith of us all!

B Wilson.