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The Islamic State West Africa Province, known more infamously as Boko Haram, is a militant Islamist group based in northeastern Nigeria. Originally founded in 2002, under the name Group of the People of Sunnah for Preaching and Jihad, the group pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2015, thereby adopting its new name. The word Boko Haram itself translates to a condemnation of Western education in the region’s Hausa language.
Boko Haram has become identified with its opposition to modern education, particularly after its kidnapping of 276 school girls in 2014, which garnered widespread international attention. However, the group’s core ideology is based on a more widely applicable theological exclusivism. This is a product of Boko Haram’s prescription to Salafi-Jihadism, a strain of fundamentalist Islam that claims to embody the true legacy of the early Muslim community. Salafism additionally opposes all other value systems, leading Boko Haram to reject the legitimacy of institutions such as the Nigerian state, liberal democracy and other Islamic sects. Along with its theological underpinnings, Boko Haram's ideology is also shaped by the historical and political grievances of Muslims in Nigeria. The group was initially able to gain power due to its capitalization of a widespread dissatisfaction with the Nigerian government. By presenting a new Islamic state as an alternative to the perceived corruption and greed of the existing government, Boko Haram gained considerable support in highly impoverished regions such as Borno.
In practice, Boko Haram's ideological convictions have materialized, not only in an opposition to Western styled education, but also more broadly as a violent regional insurgency. Since its conception, the group's bombings, assassinations, and other guerilla tactics have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, and the displacement of over 2 million people within Nigeria. The group's seemingly indiscriminate acts of terror not only deter any ideological opposition within the region’s populations, but also serve to further Boko Haram's political aim of overthrowing existing African governments and extending the authority of the Islamic Caliphatate.
As it stands, Boko Haram does not pose an existential threat to the states in which it operates. However, the group's actions have had a devastating impact on Nigeria’s population, particularly in the Lake Chad region, presenting a new humanitarian crisis as millions of people are displaced from their homes without adequate supplies or infrastructure to support them.
Gaphel Kongsta is a fourth year Political Science and Philosophy student at the University of Toronto. His interests include political philosophy and ethics.
Source
"Nigeria IDP Figures Analysis," Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, accessed: 9 February, 2018 from http://www.internal-displacement.org/sub-saharan-africa/nigeria/figures-analysis