I thought the newsreader said that Procul Harum had planted bombs. Surely not! And no, it wasn’t. It was Boko Haram, an extreme Islamist group in Nigeria who have killed over 1,000 people, including the 186 butchered in a recent attack on the city of Kano. And they say they’re going to keep on killing, until Nigeria has Shari’a law.

In an interview with the Guardian, a spokesman named Au Qaqa described the group as spiritual followers of al-Qa’ida. They claim to have met al-Qa’ida leaders in Saudi Arabia and to have their financial and technical support.
They want Nigeria to be an Islamic state but promise that if followers of other religions obey Shari’a law, they will be safe. But obey they must. “There are no exceptions,” their spokesman is quoted as saying. “Even if you are a Muslim and you don’t abide by Shari’a, we will kill you. Even if you are my own father, we will kill you.”
Charming.
Of course, doubts exist about their real strength and indeed their likely attractiveness for the masses. But as it is, 12 Nigerian states are already subject to Shari’a and the mainly Muslim north of Nigeria has all the right ingredients to breed religious extremism.
There are real social grievances and deeply embedded inequalities on which they can feed. And, for that matter, the Christianity that dominates the rest of Nigeria is intolerant and domineering. The vast (and vastly wealthy) country is famously corrupt. Civil disorder is the norm. Indeed, the country teeters on the brink of civil war. The oil that makes it rich also fuels ethnic violence and appalling environmental damage.
Fuck the luck of it, you might say. Why couldn’t the oil-rich places be where the rational, humanistic populations are? You know, the places where they try, as far as possible, to spread the wealth and ‘faith’ is understated? Like Norway?
As it is, where the world’s oil supply is concerned, we’re at the mercy of terrorists, zealots, despots and gangster profiteers.
But of course, the energy industry should answer for much of this. So too its partner organisation the American CIA, which has continually interfered in the internal affairs of energy-producing countries in order to ensure a steady supply of oil and gas to the US.
This mission has engendered the teetering world we now live in, starting with the overthrow of the legitimate government of Iran in 1953 and the installation of the US-friendly and oil-firm-friendly Shah. (Of course, one also should not discount the involvement of British agents in this travesty).
Not for nothing do the people of Iran suspect the West’s motives. To say so is not in any way to condone the rabid nonsense that now emanates from Tehran. But for the last 60 years, wherever there has been oil, Western governments have colluded and conspired against democracy, usually trumpeting that they do so in the interests of freedom.
In truth, if freedom or democracy or the interests of humanity were of any real interest, they’d have taken out the monster Mugabe. After all, Zimbabwe is fertile enough to feed all of Africa on its own. Indeed, in the late 19th century Zionists thought it might be the Promised Land… But it has no oil.
Is it appropriate to attempt to police the world in the first place? Look at the new reports that say Afghanistan will slide back under the Taliban once western military forces leave. And, this time, it might take Pakistan with it. All those deaths and soldiers and trillions of dollars expenditure on weaponry will have done nothing but enrich the military industries.
There’s a terrible irony here and it’s emerged (yet again) in the campaign for the Republican candidacy for the US presidency. All the candidates would by definition be pro-military, pro-intervention and anti-terrorist, pro-Israel and so on. Go USA. But to win the nomination they must also prove that they are fervent Christians and in favour of what can only be described as Christian shari’a and, as regards the outside world, a Christian jihad or crusade…
To an outsider, it isn’t any great surprise that some Islamists have suggested that the US is the most shari’a-compliant of western nations. For sure, of all the Western nations it is the one where evangelical religious fundamentalism is most clearly part of the mainstream political fabric. It’s just a different branch of what Pat Kenny and a guest recently summarised as Abrahamic religion.
(And it isn’t just in hot dusty places that religion is on the rise. In Britain, the Archbishop of Canterbury commented last autumn that the Church of England is faced with the “breathtaking” prospect of becoming the dominant force in state education. More of this anon.)
Over the last two millennia, the Abrahamic religions have been central to countless wars and deaths. Now it’s alleged that Iran is building nuclear weaponry and it’s increasingly likely that war will follow.
The problem, of course, is that Abrahamists believe in one god and one true religion and in their right, and sometimes duty, to force that faith on others. Their religion foretells an afterlife and guarantees them a place in paradise if they die trying to kill other people who believe in the same god but follow a different path.
This holds from Kansas to Karachi, from Tonopah to Tehran, Tel Aviv to Timbuktu and Kabul to Calabar. Apparently, the name Boko Haram means “no to western education”. Nigeria, and indeed the rest of the world, would be far better served if the name and intent was “no to murderous beliefs”, wouldn’t they?
Believe me, it would be better to be ruled by reason than faith. But recent years have seen us move in the opposite direction… towards the heart of darkness yet again.