NOTHING more epitomises the unspeakable evil of militant Islamic extremism in its most barbaric form than the plight of the hundreds of schoolgirls in Nigeria abducted by terrorists of the Boko Haram jihadist movement linked to al-Qa’ida. The girls had the temerity to want an education, in defiance of Islamist warnings against girls attending classes. The leader of Boko Haram, which means “Western education is a sin” in the Hausa language of Islamic northern Nigeria, has trumpeted that “they are our slaves” and announced the jihadists’ intention to “sell them in the market, by Allah”, for $12 each.
Boko Haram’s aims, in the name of some distorted, obscurantist form of medieval Islamic extremism, are clear. They align the Nigerian Islamic militants with the evil of Taliban jihadists who shot the 15-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai in 2012 because she, too, had the nerve to want to go to school, and the countless schoolgirls in Afghanistan who have had acid thrown in their faces by extremists for attending classes. Inexplicably, ABC presenter and Fairfax Media columnist Waleed Aly has feebly maintained it is hard to define Boko Haram. It is no such thing; its extremist antecedents and grotesque intentions in the name of Islam are appallingly clear.