Islamic fundamentalists shoot up Nigerian university

[wautd]

Gunmen kill students as they sleep in Nigerian college

(Reuters) - Suspected Islamist militants stormed a college in northeastern Nigeria and shot dead around 40 male students, some of them while they slept early on Sunday, witnesses said.

The gunmen, thought to be members of rebel sect Boko Haram, attacked one hostel, took some students outside before killing them and shot others trying to flee, people at the scene told Reuters.

"They started gathering students into groups outside, then they opened fire and killed one group and then moved onto the next group and killed them. It was so terrible," said one surviving student Idris, who would only give his first name.

"They came with guns around 1 a.m. (2400 GMT) and went directly to the male hostel and opened fire on them ... The college is in the bush so the other students were running around helplessly as guns went off and some of them were shot down," said Ahmed Gujunba, a taxi driver who lives by the college.

Boko Haram, which wants to establish an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, has intensified attacks on civilians in recent weeks in revenge for a military offensive against its insurgency.

Several schools, seen as the focus of Western-style education and culture, have been targeted.

Boko Haram and spin-off Islamist groups like the al Qaeda-linked Ansaru have become the biggest security threat in Africa's second largest economy and top oil exporter.

Western governments are increasingly worried about the threat posed by Islamist groups across Africa, from Mali and Algeria in the Sahara, to Kenya in the east, where Somalia's al-Shabaab fighters killed at least 67 people in an attack on a Nairobi shopping mall a week ago.

Bodies were recovered from dormitories, classrooms and outside in the undergrowth on Sunday, a member of staff at the college told Reuters, asking not to be named.

A Reuters witness counted 40 bloody corpses piled on the floor at the main hospital in Yobe state capital Damaturu on Sunday, mostly of young men believed to be students.

The bodies were brought from the college, which is in Gujba, a rural area 30 miles (50km) south of Damaturu and around 130 miles from Nigerian borders with Cameroon and Niger.

State police commissioner Sanusi Rufai said he suspected Boko Haram was behind the attack but gave no details.

REVENGE ATTACKS

Thousands have been killed since Boko Haram launched its uprising in 2009, turning itself from a clerical movement opposed to Western culture into an armed militia with growing links to al Qaeda's West African wing.

President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in three northeastern state in May, including Yobe, and ordered a military offensive to crush Boko Haram's insurgency.

There was an initial lull in the violence as Islamists fled bases in cities, forests and mountains. Then the militants began revenge attacks on schools, security forces and civilians believed to be helping them.

In July, suspected Boko Haram militants killed 27 students and a teacher at a school in Potiskum, a town about 30 miles from the site of Sunday's attack.

Several hundred people have died in assaults over the past few weeks. Some observers say the army offensive has only succeeded in pushing attacks away from well-guarded large towns and cities into vulnerable rural areas.

Boko Haram's insurgency is also putting pressure on the economy of Africa's most populous nation. Nigeria's security spending has risen to more than 1 trillion naira ($6.26 billion) per year, or around 20 percent of the federal budget. ($1 = 159.8 Nigerian naira)

(Additional reporting by Isaac Abrak in Kaduna; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Mass murdering savages are at it again. Tragic when these middle age fanatics not only attack people but education itself

[Kitsune]

You just have to understand their culture.

[Channel72]

These idiots are getting more and more pathetic. They can't attack any serious military targets so they take out their anger on defenseless students, Columbine-style. Al-Qaeda has fallen pretty far, from a reasonably organized, well-funded think-tank capable of dealing a devastating blow to downtown Manhattan, to a bunch of desperate morons running around shooting civilians in malls and universities. Bin Laden must be rolling in his grave. Great strategy there guys, keep shooting random people - that will really get you the public support you need for your fantasy Caliphate or whatever.

[Lord of the Abyss]

These idiots are getting more and more pathetic. They can't attack any serious military targets so they take out their anger on defenseless students, Columbine-style. Al-Qaeda has fallen pretty far, from a reasonably organized, well-funded think-tank capable of dealing a devastating blow to downtown Manhattan, to a bunch of desperate morons running around shooting civilians in malls and universities.

These guys aren't Al Qaeda, and attacking students is exactly what they are all about; Boko Haram means "Western Education is Sinful/Forbidden".

[Channel72]

All of these groups have various ideological ties to Al Qaeda in Africa. To what extent that actually means ongoing communication, coordination, or actual contact between these groups is vague, and probably very limited or non-existent. But I think nowadays "Al Qaeda" is a sufficiently vague term that we can use it as a general umbrella term to describe the group of movements (such as Al Shaba, Al Ansari, etc.) in Africa and the Middle East that share ideological connections with Bin Laden's original group and the Taliban.

Also, Boko Haram doesn't usually target schools. They target churches, or anything they perceive as Western, including other Muslims who aren't sufficiently critical of Western civilization.

[Carinthium]

Query for somebody who knows more Muslim theology- do their actions make sense in light of it? My first guess would be that it does- after all if Mohammed's idea of Islam is what is good then it follows that Western culture, which the universities have much of, will be corrupting as it tears people away from it.

IF their actions make sense within Muslim theology (and I'm not sure about that), that should be taken into account when judging them.

[Channel72]

Whether or not it "makes sense" within Muslim theology is pretty subjective. Theology is not exactly a science, despite the -ology suffix. Obviously, radicals like Bin Laden and the Taliban interpret the Koranic/Hadithic passages regarding the fight against infidels as justifying large scale violence against the West. Other Muslim scholars disagree. It's pretty hard to get a consensus on what a religion actually teaches, due to the breadth and ambiguity of the source material.

Regardless, I guess if you actually believe the world is a cosmic battleground for the eternal fate of our souls, violently stamping out institutions which threaten to damn people for an eternity isn't exactly illogical.

[Simon_Jester]

Islam is particularly hard to pin down like this because it has always been open to different interpretations by different scholarly traditions. There are some things they've always been hostile to (cannibalism, blasphemy, failure to be properly charitable)... but others where opinions vary (the exact definition of 'charitable,' whether or not it is appropriate to throw acid in little girls' faces for the crimes of going to school or refusing to marry you).

[PainRack]

Query for somebody who knows more Muslim theology- do their actions make sense in light of it? My first guess would be that it does- after all if Mohammed's idea of Islam is what is good then it follows that Western culture, which the universities have much of, will be corrupting as it tears people away from it.

IF their actions make sense within Muslim theology (and I'm not sure about that), that should be taken into account when judging them.

One must understand that Boko Haram itself is opposed to both the traditional Muslim world as well as the Western world. Their argument is that the world itself has been tainted by Western ideology and etc and a course of purification is required.

Now, Jihad can refer to both inner and outer struggle and requires armed struggles against oppressors, and this is how Boko Haram is justifying their actions.

However, the concept of a just war in islam also means that one should refrain from targeting innocents, but again, Boko Haram has viewed them as irrevocoably tainted by the Devil.

[SMJB]

You just have to understand their culture.

LOL

IF their actions make sense within Muslim theology (and I'm not sure about that), that should be taken into account when judging them.

...Why???

Obviously, context is important in finding out why things happen and trying to prevent them from happening in the future, but judging someone isn't that complicated, barring mitigating circumstances--and there are no mitigating circumstances that excuse the deliberate slaughter of people for disagreeing with you.