Here’s yet another act of violence that isn’t motivated by any particular ideology. It has nothing to do with any other acts of violence, past or present. If you think otherwise, you’re a racist.
LAGOS, Nigeria – The pastor would not renounce his Christian faith so the Islamic extremists slit his throat.
High school students were taking exams in defiance of the militants of Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden.” So the gunmen mowed them down at their desks.
The group that Nigeria’s government has declared a prohibited terrorist organization “declared war” last week on vigilante youths who have been arresting suspects and handing them over to soldiers fighting to crush the insurgency in the northeast part of Africa’s most populous nation and the continent’s biggest oil producer.
The radical group that once attacked only government institutions and security forces is increasingly targeting civilians…
Nine students were killed, according to Dr. Salem Umar of the General Hospital, who received the bodies in school uniforms…
Last week, extremists sought out the Rev. Jacob Kwiza, a retired pastor with the Church of Christ in Nigeria. They found him picking mangoes in his father’s garden in the Gwoza hills, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) from Maiduguri, according to witnesses who fled the scene to Maiduguri.
The fighters ordered Kwiza to renounce his Christian faith and convert to Islam on pain of death.
When he repeatedly refused, they slit his throat, the witnesses said.
Well, we have to respect these freedom-fighters’ cultural differences. We have to paternalistically assume the worst about them: That they’re not capable of behaving like civilized human beings. To do otherwise is, again, racist.
I’m sure that if you asked most Muslims about such horrible, ideologically motivated violence, they’d condemn it unequivocally. But you’d better not ask. Did I mention that’s racist too?
Racist.
(Hat tip: @bree_mars)