OPINION BY JULIUS OGUNRO: Boko Haram, fundamentalism and plurality | TheCable
several hours on new year’s eve in Borno State, northeast Nigeria. That skirmish is now emblematic of the crisis in the region. The Islamists have turned the gun on one another and are engaged in a fratricidal war for supremacy. And since the groups appear evenly matched, the war is protracted with each side laying ambushes for the other and slaughtering their former brother-in-arms like chickens.
Led by Abubakar Shekau, Yusuf’s former right-hand man and deputy, the Boko Haram sect was ferocious in the pursuit of its vision of a post-Nigerian state where the constitution will be replaced by the Sharia and every citizen will come under its firm theocratic rule. It engaged in the wholesale destruction of communities and murder of anyone that stood in its way of conquering the whole of the northeast region and thereafter the entire Nigeria.
So it is with other fundamentalist groups. It is just a matter of time before strains appear in them and they split into ideological factions and camps. But this rigid approach to life is not exclusive to Islamism and is reflected in many other areas too. It is in fact becoming evident in some Christian groups, especially of the Pentecostal kind, which have literalist interpretations of the Bible.
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