Radical Muslim sect kill dozens in Nigeria Christmas bombs

[Perseveranze]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/11/2011115104423575815.html
The Nigerian group Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the attacks, which represent the most co-ordinated and wide-ranging assault yet in their increasingly bloody sectarian fight with the country's weak central government. "We are responsible for the attack in Borno [state] and Damaturu," Boko Haram spokesman Abul Qaqa told the AFP on Saturday.

Absolute despicable attack. Every Muslim should speak up and condemn this bombing instead of questioning the authenticity of the report.

Asalaamu Alaikum,

Just warning you, Al Jazeera is not something you should rely on. They're as bad as any of the other Islamaphobe websites, I remember watching their channel and no doubt they were one of the first to assume the Oslo bombings had something to do with Muslims.

Just be careful is all I'm saying.

 

[Ramadhan]

http://www.onislam.net/english/news/africa/455365-global-muslim-body-slams-nigeria-strife.html


[h=2]Global Muslim Body Slams Nigeria Strife[/h] The IUMS called for peaceful co-existence between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria

CAIRO – A global Muslim body has condemned sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria, calling for concerted efforts to abort strife in Africa’s most populous nation.

“The International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS) strongly condemns gruesome massacres committed against Muslims and Christians in Nigeria and worship places,” the IUMS said in a statement obtained by OnIslam.net on Thursday, January 12.

Fears of sectarian war have gripped Nigeria in recent weeks following attacks by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram.
At least 40 people were killed in attacks by the radical groups on churches in northern Nigeria on Christmas Day.

In response, Christian leaders have vowed to take “measures” to defend their community, sparking fears of revenge against Muslim communities.

“We are following with deep concern the tragic incidents in Nigeria and the massacres committed against Christians, which the IUMS had strongly denounced, as well as the massacres committed by Christians against Muslims…which sent the country into abyss and bloody conflicts,” the IUMS said.
In a video on Wednesday, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said anti-Christians attacks were in revenge for assaults on Muslims.
"Christians, everyone knows what they have done to us and Muslims,” Shekau says in Hausa, sat in front of two Kalashnikov rifles and wearing a camouflage bullet proof jacket, Reuters reported.
“We were attacked and we decided to defend ourselves and, because we were on the right path, Allah has made us stronger.
The Boko Haram leader also said that Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan had no power to stop the group’s attacks.
"Jonathan, (you) know full well that this thing is beyond your powers," he added, referring to the president.
Shekau is understood to have taken over control of Boko Haram after the group’s founder Mohammed Yusuf was killed in police custody in 2009 following an uprising in which 700 people were killed.
"Everyone knows how our leader was murdered and everyone knows the way the Muslims were killed," Shekau says, remaining stony faced and calm throughout.
"Catastrophe is caused by unbelief, unrest is unbelief, injustice is unbelief, democracy is unbelief and the constitution is unbelief.
"Anyone who attacks us, we will attack him back even if he is a Muslim. We shall kill anyone who works against Islam, even if he is a Muslim," Shekau said in the online tape.

Co-existence


The IUMS called for peaceful co-existence between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria.

“We call for co-existence and tolerance in the country,” said the Dublin-based body, chaired by prominent scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi.
The IUMS also called for concerted efforts to end sectarian strife in heavyweight African nation.
“We call on the Nigerian government to provide security for all to help prevent any strife and give no room for foreign interference,” the Muslim body said.
“We also appeal to the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation to do utmost efforts to help Nigeria out of this crisis and dispatch a fact-finding mission to help defuse the strife.”
On Wednesday, the Christian Association of Nigeria called for talks with Muslim leaders to help defuse the sectarian tension in the country.
"We need Muslim leaders to be more proactive,” CAN head Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor told the BBC News Online.
“Number two, the government must find ways to empower the security agencies.
“The third point is the fact that one way or another, there must be room for some dialogue. But that dialogue must begin between myself, probably, and the leader of the Muslims."

Nigeria, one of the world's most religiously committed nations, is divided between a Muslim north and a Christian south.

Muslims and Christians, who constitute 55 and 40 percent of Nigeria's 140 million population respectively, have lived in peace for the most part.
But ethnic and religious tensions have bubbled for years, fuelled by decades of resentment between indigenous groups, mostly Christian or animist, who are vying for control of fertile farmlands with migrants and settlers from the Hausa-speaking Muslim north.

 

[Ramadhan]

What's crazy is that when mosques are attacked and muslims are killed in Nigeria, it does not make international news. Or if it is reported, it is reported as "fuel-strike"-related.

Nigerian fuel protests grow, mob kills 5 in mosque

By Tim Cocks and Mike Oboh
LAGOS/KANO | Wed Jan 11, 2012 3:19am IST

(Reuters) - A mob killed five people in an attack on a mosque in southern Nigeria on Tuesday, as tens of thousands took to the streets in a second day of nationwide protests against the scrapping of a fuel subsidy that has nearly doubled petrol prices.

The attack in Benin City raised fears that President Goodluck Jonathan's two major security headaches, opposition to fuel deregulation and sectarian strife, were merging into one.
An aid worker whose organisation operates in the area, who declined to be identified, said the mosque attack had forced 3,000 Muslims of northern origin to flee.
The assault was most likely a reprisal against northern Muslims for attacks by the radical Islamist sect Boko Haram on Christians of southern origin in the north, including a spate of deadly raids on churches which have killed dozens.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/01/10/nigeria-mosque-attack-idINDEE8090M520120110



Thousands displaced in wake of Nigerian mosque attack
Jan 11, 2012, 12:32 GMT

Abuja - More than 8,000 people have been displaced after an attack the day before on a mosque in the southern Nigerian city of Benin, the Nigerian Red Cross told dpa Wednesday.

The attack - in which 25 people stormed the mosque and a Koranic school next door - left five people dead and several more injured.
A police source said young people had 'capitalized on (fuel subsidy protests) to carry out a reprisal attack on Muslims as revenge after (attacks) on southerners in the north.'
Nigeria's south is heavily Christian while the north is heavily Muslim. Tensions between the two regions have been on the rise in the wake of recent attacks by radical Islamist group Boko Haram on Christians in the north.

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/n...s-displaced-in-wake-of-Nigerian-mosque-attack

 

[Ramadhan]

This happens every single time.
When a christian was killed in a sectarian violence in Indonesia, all international media were abuzz, but they never reported that more muslims have actually been killed by radical christians in sectarian violence in Central Sulawesi and Maluku than the opposite.

 

[Eric H]

Greetings and peace be with you Ramadhan;

the government must find ways to empower the security agencies.

I feel the people who have the most power to bring about any form of peace are the families and friends of the victims. You might read the following story about a Palestinian and a Jew, who have both had family members killed by the other side.

These are the people most in need of justice, but they seem to be forgiving and giving up their right for justice for themselves. It seems they are more keen to pursue a future peace that no more people should suffer.


Ghazi Briegeith, a Palestinian electrician living in Hebron, and Rami Elhanan, an Israeli graphic designer from Jerusalem, met through the Parents’ Circle – a group of bereaved families supporting reconciliation and peace. Ghazi’s brother was killed at a checkpoint in 2000. Rami’s 14-year-old daughter was the victim of a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 1997.

Rami
I was on my way to the airport when my wife called and told me Smadar was missing. When something like this happens a cold hand grabs your heart. You rush between friends’ houses and hospitals, then eventually you find yourself in the morgue and you see a sight you’ll never forget for the rest of your life. From that moment you are a new person. Everything is different.
At first I was tormented with anger and grief; I wanted revenge, to get even. But we are people – not animals! I asked myself, “Will killing someone else release my pain?” Of course not. It was clear to my wife and I that the blame rests with the occupation. The suicide bomber was a victim just like my daughter, grown crazy out of anger and shame.
I don’t forgive and I don’t forget, but when this happened to my daughter I had to ask myself whether I’d contributed in any way. The answer was that I had – my people had, for ruling, dominating and oppressing three-and-a-half million Palestinians for 35 years. It is a sin and you pay for sins.
At first I foolishly thought I could just go back to work and resume my life, but the pain was unbearable. Then, a year later, I met Ytzhak Frankenthal, the founder of the Parents’ Circle. He was wearing a ‘kippah’ on his head, and immediately I stereotyped him as an ‘Arab eater’. Even when he told me his personal story, and about the reconciliation work of Parents’ Circle, I was very cynical.
He invited me to a meeting, and reluctantly I went along, just to take a look. I saw buses full of people, among them legends – parents who had lost kids in wars and who still wanted peace. I saw an Arab lady in a long black dress. On her chest was a picture of a six-year-old kid. A singer sang in Hebrew and Arabic, and suddenly I was hit by lightening. I can’t explain it, but from that moment I had a reason to get up in the morning again.
Since then my work with the Parents’ Circle has become the centre of my life, a sacred mission. If we – Ghazi and I – can talk and stand together after paying the highest price possible, then anyone can. There is a high wall between our two nations, a wall of hate and fear. Someone needs to put cracks in the wall in order for it to fall down.

Ghazi
You need a ticket to belong to the Parents’ Circle – the ticket is to have lost a member of your close family. This means Rami and I are brothers of pain.
My own brother was killed in 2000 at the beginning of the Intifada. I’d been with him just minutes before he died. As I was walking home I heard a shot. I found out later he’d been stopped and searched at the checkpoint. When he protested, the soldier shouted, “Shut your mouth, or I’ll shoot you, you son of a *****,” to which my brother replied: “YOU son of a *****!” So the soldier shot him. It was a machine gun in a kid’s hand. Sometimes the power makes them mad.
At first I was completely out of my mind – crazy with grief. There should be no forgiveness for the killers of innocents, and yet even then I saw the soldier as a victim of the occupation just as my brother was, just as I am still. But forgiveness is a very personal thing. Even if I choose to forgive the person who killed my brother, I can’t force my brother’s kids to forgive. But I can show them that far more valuable than a violent response, is opening your heart to reconciliation and peace. I can show them that opening a new page is their only hope of living a better life than ours.
The Palestinians have nothing left to lose, so the Israelis must realise that they are destroying their own nation by causing so much suffering. You don’t need to love each other to build a bridge between the two nations: you need respect. If I can stand with my Jewish brother Rami, respecting him as he respects me, then there is hope.

http://theforgivenessproject.com/stories/ghazi-briegeith-rami-elhanan-israel/

In the spirit of praying for justice for all people

Eric